Dr. sc.

Sibila Petlevski

Redefining «Spontaneity»

Abstract:
This paper is an attempt at cross-disciplinary understanding of the concept of spontaneity. It combines
insights from performance theory with systems theory and neurobiology. However, we are aware of the
major shift in research methodology from technical to more contextual and pragmatic approach. We think
that purely theoretical insight into spontaneity proves inadequate when it comes to analyzing performing
arts – and thus open up room for new applied methods for the social sciences and performance analysis
based on research in practice.
This paper is divided into three parts. In the Introductory remarks we discuss the illusion of
spontaneity in representational and non-representational systems of acting; we point to the everlasting
tension between theory and practice and distinguish between the notions of spontaneity and improvisation.
The second part of this paper suggests new possibilities of scientific (re)defining of an otherwise elusive
“aesthetic spontaneity”.
The third part of this paper makes a bold hypothesis that recent neurobiological explanations of
spontaneous brain activity connected to the experiments with “default-mode network” might have some
important implications on understanding creative potential of spontaneity in different media of artistic
expression, particularly in jazz improvisation and in certain acting techniques.

Keywords:
Spontaneity, Performance, Acting, Music, Systems Theory, Biomatrix, Improvisation, Conscious Resting State,
Stimulus-Independent Thought, Default-mode Network, Creativity.

I. “Spontaneity” In Performance Practice and Performance Theory

The notion of spontaneity seems to be elusive enough to make the imaginary gap between theory
and practice painfully reopened each time we try to bring theorists and practitioners together at the same
discussion table. We may well ask ourselves, then, how is it possible that we should still mind that gap in
our post-dramatic epoch, when practice-led research and research-led practice gets mentioned one way or
another in almost all syllabi for drama courses?

According to Webster’s 1913 Dictionary spontaneity is “the quality or state of being spontaneous,
or acting from native feeling, proneness, or temperament, without constraint or external force.” The
popular, commonsensical belief in “native feeling”, however, brings additional complication to the problem
of spontaneous behavior, especially when it comes to acting techniques based on “spontaneous
improvisation”. Not to mention that practically in every historical period one can find elements explicitly

1
characterized as improvised. For example, there has been a lot of improvisation and low, physical humor in
Phlyax play developed in the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia in the 4th century B.C., as well as in the genre
of Atellan farce from the 1st century B.C., in Greek and Roman mimes, in Renaissance commedia dell'arte
all'improvviso, in the 19th-century French Boulevard Pantomime Blanche and in some 20th-century
historical avant-garde theatres. Improvisation in contemporary performance is a primary subject by itself. A
new domain of interest has been set up in performance studies where a new concept of spontaneity
connected to the concept of “presence” is considered as an important point of challenge leading to
stimulating theoretical debate on the crossroads of different disciplines and scientific fields, different
media approaches and diverse artistic insights into the same deceptive, historically hard-to-understand
problem of spontaneity in performing arts. The shift in focus from questioning the correspondence
between descriptions and reality to matters of performing practices, resulted in the current move toward
performative alternatives to representationalism. However, preferring “presentational” performing styles
over “representational” modes of acting does not solve the mystery of spontaneity. No matter how clear
might seem the distinction between representation and presentation, based on the way performance
addresses the audience, and no matter how deep might be the philosophical explanation of the core
difference between the two – the practice of acting proves that, when it comes to rehearsal and concrete
exercises, both presentational and representational acting techniques search for the same ideal of
spontaneity, and tend to prescribe “recipes” for attaining some sort of native feeling necessary for the
production of the quality or state of being spontaneous. Once achieved internally, spontaneity is being
acted out. Both representational and presentational modes of performance share that common rule.
Spontaneity is located somewhere deep under the skin in no man’s land between intimacy and collective
consciousness; and it is doubtful whether it stays in the twilight zone of actor’s “public privacy”, as a form
of painfully achieved artistically operational self-sufficiency, or it emanates positive feelings of lightness
and pleasure, causing, as Mnouchkine would say, some sort of “therapeutic friction: when an emotion
bursts through unbidden in an improvisation and forms the basis for another improvisation”1

Equally doubtful is the claim that to act spontaneously is to be without constraint or external force.
Juxtaposing neurophysiological investigations of aestheticians’ accounts of dance’s impact, Susan Leigh
Foster tried to show how the influence that one body can exert over another, its propensity toward
contagion, has changed radically over the past hundred years.2 Foster starts from some remarks of the
dance critic John Martin who – in the 1930s – described movement’s effect on viewers as contagious,
spreading influence or emotion from one body to another, but suggesting pollution and disease. Forsters
compares practitioners’ insights into interkinestetic activity – for example, practical results of “contact

1
Miller, Judith G. (2007). Ariane Mnouchkine. Routledge Performance Practitioners. London and New York: Routledge,
p. 134.
2
Cf. Foster, Susan Leigh (2008). Movement’s contagion: The kinesthetic impact of performance in: The Cambridge
Companion to performance Studies (2008) ed. Tracy C. Davis. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, New York,
Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi. Pp. 46-59.

2
improvisation” in dance – with Gallese’s neuropsychological discoveries connected to mirror neuron
activity.

Viewers’ bodies, even in their seated stillness, nonetheless feel what the dancing body is feeling –
the tensions or expansiveness, the floating or driving momentums that compose the dancer’s motion. Then,
because such muscular sensations are inextricably linked to emotions, the viewer also feels the
choreographer’s desires and intentions.3

In some of our previous texts we have also written quite extensively on the topic of inter-subject
sympathy, embodied practice and choreomanic mechanism.4 Neuroscience research has demonstrated
common neural mechanisms between executed and observed action at the neural level. Neuroimaging
experiments in humans have showed the activation of a fronto-parietal neural network that is involved in
the observation and imagination of action. There are also new insights into the problem of the self,
representing the other, with the new cognitive neuroscience view of psychological identification. 5
Contemporary research in developmental science, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience provides
cumulative evidence for a view of similarities in the construction of representations of the self and others.
Trevarthen’s term (1979) intersubject sympathy – a predisposition to be sensitive and responsive to the
subjective states of other people – gains in relevance in the light of the newly conducted experiments with
neonatal imitation. These findings have led Gallagher and Meltzoff (1996) to propose that the
understanding of the other person is primarily a form of embodied practice. (2004: 579). The perception of
others’ action activates the premotor cortex and the parietal cortex in a somatotopical manner; watching
mouth actions activates the cortical representation of the mouth, while watching hand or foot actions
activates their respective representations (Buccino et al., 2001). Decety and Chaminade (2004) continue
the line of the previously made research indicating that we are from birth not only acting and thinking
selves, but we also express an intuitive need to relate ourselves to other people.

The way Foster (as a choreographer, dancer and performance theoretician) draws theoretical
conclusions from data obtained by scientific experiments made in social cognitive neuroscience
laboratories, is symptomatic of the generally haphazard, sloppy way humanities “borrow” information from
natural sciences. The poetization of the biological definition of spontaneity is obvious:

Emotional states, described here in the language of disease as contagious, are transmitted through

3
Foster, Susan Leigh. Ibid. p. 49.
4
Petlevski, Sibila (2011). Virulent Ideas, Memetic Engineering, Memeoid Identity, Aesthetic Warfare. In: Spaces of
Identity in the Performing Sphere (2011) Eds. Petlevski, Sibila & Pavlić, Goran. Zagreb: Fraktura/ADU. Pp. 13-49. See VI.
Medieval dancing mania: choreo-meme abd its replicating strategy.
5
Cf. Decety, J., Chaminade, T., Grezes, J., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2002). A PET
exploration of the neural mechanisms involved in reciprocal imitation.
Neuroimage, 15(1), 265–272.; Decety, J., & Chaminade, T. (2004). When the self represents the other: A new cognitive
neuroscience view of psychological identification. Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 577–596.

3
movement that has been devised spontaneously. The choreographer, tapping the emotional depths of his or
her psyche, is moved by the force of the feelings found there. Even as re-presented on the concert stage, the
resulting dance carries this primal force.6

Unfortunately, Foster’s thesis is, scientifically speaking, a big misunderstanding: spontaneity

connected to the “emotional depths of the psyche” has little to do with neural “movement contagion”
suggested by the title of Forster’s text. The value of this unfortunate marriage between popular natural
science and practice-based performance theory, thus, remains exclusively in the domain of dance
pedagogy.

Spontaneity does not necessarily imply freedom as, for example, Viola Spolin would think. Her
claim that the intuitive can only respond “in immediacy – right now” is close enough to Stanislavskian
“being in the moment”:

The intuitive comes bearing its gifts in the moment of spontaneity, the moment when we are freed
to relate and act, involving ourselves in the moving, changing world around us.

Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment
frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and
undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal
freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and
pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative
expression.7

Although undoubtedly under the influence of Stanislavsky, Spolin is more oriented towards
pragmatic questions for which she gets material in sociological studies, experiments and group games of
Neva Boyd8. In her opinion, acting can be taught to the "average" as well as the "talented" if the teaching
process is oriented towards making the techniques so intuitive that they become the students' own.
Spolin’s belief in an uncurbed flow of creativity and in blissful moments of absolute, private freedom, is
naïve but not devoid of charm. However, her argumentation suffers from circular logic fallacy. The acting
technique – Spolin claims – must be “so intuitive that it becomes the student’s own” while, on the other
hand, the only way to get to intuitive knowledge is through an activity that brings about spontaneity.

Jacob L. Moreno’s concept of the impromptu, “off-the-cuff”, out of the moment, extempore

6
Ibid. 49.
7
Spolin, Viola (1963). Improvisation for the Theatre. A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques. Nortwestern
University Press: Evanston, Illinois, p. 8.
8
See: Neva L. Boyd (1924). “The Social Education of Youth Through Recreation: The Value of Play in Education,” in
Paul Simon (ed.) (1971). Play and Game Theory in Group Work: A Collection of Papers by Neva Leona Boyd. Chicago:
The Jane Addams Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. p. 43.

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theatre, was for the first time presented in his study published in Berlin in 1923 under the title Das
Stegreiftheater9, (translated into English as the Spontaneity Theatre). Moreno’s philosophy of the moment
is often interpreted in the specialist context of psychodrama as a method of psychotherapy where dramatic
self-presentation and role playing exhibit therapeutic value for the individual who is supposed to respond
creatively to the challenge of the moment. However, Moreno makes difference between the general
concept of the spontaneity theatre and its psychoanalytically applied form. The therapeutic theatre uses
the vehicle of the spontaneity theatre for therapeutic ends. The key person is the mental patient. The
fictitious character of the dramatist's world is replaced by the actual structure of the patient's world, real or
imaginary.

It is not so much the therapeutic aspect of Moreno’s ideas as the anticipatory aspect of his analysis
of the theatre from the point of view of the category of the moment that seems interesting now, almost
eighty years from the first application of the concepts of spontaneity-creativity and improvisation in
Moreno’s approach to the new, non dogmatic theatre. The concept of drama is changed in favor of what
Moreno calls “the script of the stage-play”:

In the rigid, "dogmatic" theatre, the creative product is given: it appears in its final, irrevocable form.
The dramatist is no longer present, for his work is entirely divorced from him. His work, the creation of
which was the very essence of certain moments bygone, returns only to deprive the present moment of any
living creativity of its own. In consequence, the actors have had to give up their initiative and their
spontaneity. They are merely the receptacles of a creation now past its moment of true creativity. Dramatist,
actor, director and audience conspire in an interpretation of the moment which is mechanical. They have
surrendered themselves to the enjoyment of an extra-temporal, moment-less performance. The value which
appears supreme is like nothing but the spiritual bequest of someone who is dead. In this sense, the drama
is a thing of the past, a vanished reality. The conventional theatre is, at its best, dedicated to the worship
the dead, of dead events--a sort of resurrection-cult. (Moreno, 1941: 208)10.

The contrast between the theatre “as we know it” and the spontaneity theatre, in Moreno’s
opinion lies in their different treatments of the moment. The former endeavors to present its products
before an audience as definite, finished creations. The latter attempts to “produce the moment itself and,
at one stroke, to create as integral parts of it the form and content of the drama”. Moreno sees the
conventional theatre in the world of appearances where the “thing itself”, the spontaneous creative
process in statu nascendi, is suppressed. The extra-momentary character of traditional creation in the

9
Moreno, Jacob Levy. Das Stegreiftheater [Spontaneity theater]. Berlin_Potsdam: Kiepenheuer Verlag. (Part
translated in Sociometry, 4, 205_226. Published in English by Beacon House in 1947; second enlarged edition, 1973.
Selections also reprinted in Psychodrama, Vol. 1, 1970 and 1972 editions.)
10
Moreno, Jacob Levy (1941). “The philosophy of the moment and the spontaneity theatre”. Sociometry, 4, 205_226.
Psych. Abs., 15, 4683.

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conventional theatre “has its metaphysics in a time already past, outside of the precincts of the stage”. The
more recent terminological option for Moreno’s “thing in itself” could be “theatre presence”; what
Gertrude Stein in the 1930s defined as “the complete actual present”. Moreno critically remarks:

The dramatic work, at the moment when it was created during the fleeting moments of that past,
was not even then a thing of the present because it was directed towards a future moment – the moment of
its performance on the stage – and not toward the moment of its creation. A spontaneous performance
presents things only as they are at the moment of production. (Moreno, 1941: 208).

One could clearly recognize anticipatory value in Gertrude Stein’s meta-theatricality and her
dramaturgy of space based on the elimination of memory and narrativity. The same applies to spontaneity
theatre. Lehmann’s concept of the postdramatic owns much to Moreno’s concepts. Although H. T.
Lehmann does not mention Moreno in his groundbreaking, widely influential book on postdramatic
theatre11, it is hard to imagine that he never came across Das Stegreiftheater. The importance of Moreno’s
thoughts on theatre surpasses the niche of applied psychodrama because his thoughts on the philosophy of
the moment leads to a lucid analyses of the concept of the presence with its dramaturgical implications.
Moreno advocates an early postdramatic turn in drama, in acting, and in theatre production:

The spontaneity theatre is a vehicle organized for the presentation of drama of the moment. The
dramatist is in the key-role. He is not merely a writer, in fact he does not actually write anything – but an
active agent, confronting the players with an idea which may have been growing in his mind for some time,
and warming them up to immediate production. The role of the dramatist is often taken by one of the
actors, who then becomes dramatist and leading actor at the same time. (Moreno, 1941:209)

The spontaneity player is centrifugal. The spirit of the role is not in a book, as it is with the actor. It
is not outside of him in space, as with the painter or the sculptor, but a part of him. (…)What, with the actor,
is the point of departure—the spoken word – with the spontaneity player is the end stage. The spontaneity
player begins with the spontaneity state; he cannot proceed without it. (Moreno, 1941: 213)

The spontaneous concept of the moment has led to new methods of production. While the
conventional theatre places the spontaneity process backstage (in space) and prior to the performance (in
time) – in the creation of the script, the creation of the roles and the study of them, the designing of the
settings and costumes, the formation of the ensembles and the rehearsals – the spontaneity theatre brings
before the audience the original, primary processes of spontaneity, undiminished and inclusive of all phases
of the production. That which, in the conventional theatre, takes place behind the curtain—the very "thing
in itself," the spontaneous creative process, the "meta-theatre – now takes the stage. (Moreno, 1941: 208)

11
Lehmann, Hans-Thies (2006). Postdramatic Theatre.Translated and with an Introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby.
London and New York: Routledge. German edition: Verlag der Autoren, D-Frankfurt am Main 1999.

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 The impact of Moreno’s seminal ideas often remains half noticed or even unrecognized, and
sometimes, as in Boal’s Forum Theatre, the influence is clear and straightforward, When Schechner asked
him in an interview whether he feels any affinity to people like Jacob Moreno, the founder of psychodrama,
Boal seemed reluctant to admit the influence and he said that it was curious because he never thought of
Moreno. He recognized that once he read Theatre of Spontaneity which he supposedly did not like because
he felt it was too superficial.12

Starting from the reading of Boal’s Méthode Boal de théâtre et de thérapie: l’arc-en-ciel du désir13,
Daniel Feldhendler situates Theatre of the Opressed within the discipline of group psychotherapy –
particularly the work of J. L. Moreno, comparing Moreno’s theatre-based philosophy of therapy with Boal’s
therapy-based techniques of theatre. Boal’s Newspaper Theatre, used as part of several South American
literacy programs, parallels Moreno’s Living Newspaper in many ways, claims Feldhendler, pointing to the
similarity between the literal space in which theatrical action occurs called “locus nascendi” by Moreno and
“aesthetic space” by Boal. Moreno differentiates between three forms of catharsis: aesthetic catharsis;
audience catharsis and action catharsis or catharsis of integration. Using impromptu behavior in an
intermediary form between the theatre of spontaneity and psychodrama, Moreno discovered a “catharsis
of integration”. Although Boal recognized cathartic processes in connection to his work only recently, it is
clear that Moreno’s concept of action catharsis fits well into Boal’s conceptual framework. Feldhendler
explains that “Boal’s catharsis” emerged when the protagonist of an action was transformed into the
performer of himself or herself and hence triggered a deep experience of self-knowledge.14

II. Scientific Attempts at Defining “Aesthetic Spontaneity”

One of the key points for discussion in contemporary performance studies is the concept of
presence and various aspects of time treatment in performance and dramaturgy. Presence as “the sense of
being there” is also important in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality in its
broadest definition as a real or simulated environment in which the participant experiences telepresence –
which in in itself has repercussions for the thematization of the link between performance and new media.
The concept of presence is clearly one of the most important, ever actual and perpetually re-discussed
philosophical topics from Heidegger15, via Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the enduring moment of

12
Cf. Michael Taussig and Richard Schechner. Boal in Brazil, France and USA. An interview with Augusto Boal. In:
Playing Boal. Theatre, therapy, activism. Eds. Schutzman, Mady and Cohen-Cruz, Jan. (1994) London and New York:
Routledge. Pp. 26-27.
13
Boal, Augusto (1990). Méthode Boal de théâtre et de thérapie: l’arc-en-ciel du désir. Paris: Ramsay
14
Cf. Feldhendler, Daniel. Augusto Boal and Jacob L. Moreno. Theatre and Therapy. In: Playing Boal. Theatre, therapy,
activism. Eds. Schutzman, Mady and Cohen-Cruz, Jan. (1994) London and New York: Routledge. Pp. 98-99.
15
See, for example polemical contribution on Heidegger's concept of presence: Carman, Taylor (1995). Heidegger's
concept of presence. In: Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. Vol 38, Isue 4. Pp. 431-453. Carman argues:

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presence, the unfolding of the phenomenon where perception is the transcendence of the present to
consciousness, to Derrida’s presence as “the trace of the trace, the trace of the erasure of the trace” where
“the trace is not a presence but a simulacrum of presence that dislocates itself, displaces itself, refers itself,
it properly has no site – erasure belongs to its structure”.16 In such, derridean way, every presentation
becomes a representation where the trace as present thing erases itself in the production of the trace as
signifier.

Bertrand Russell claimed that a certain emancipation from slavery to time was essential to
philosophic thought. However, the answer to the mystery of how consciousness constitutes time now
seems to be more in the domain of science than in the field of humanities and social science. Knowledge of
things cannot be separated from power and human politics. Scientific truths are connected to political
interests. Various textual strategies, rhetoric, writing, staging have simultaneous impact on the nature of
things and on the social context. Bruno Latour was right: it is clearer than ever that in our contemporary
world we cannot segment facts, power and discourse into tree distinct sets:

“The agent of this double construction – science with society and society with science – emerges out
of a set of practices that the notion of deconstruction grasps as badly as possible. The ozone hole is too
social and too narrated to be truly natural; the strategy of industrial firms and heads of states too full of
chemical reactions to be reduced to power and interest; the discourse of the ecosphere is too real and too
social to boil down to meaning effects. Is it our fault if the networks are simultaneously real, like nature,
narrated, like discourse, and collective, like society? Are we to pursue them while abandoning all the
resources of criticism, or are we to abandon them while endorsing the common sense of the critical
tripartition? The tiny networks we have unfolded are torn apart like the Kurds by the Iranians, the Iraqis and
the Turks, once night has fallen, they slip across borders to get married, and they dream of a common
homeland that would be carved out of the three country which have divided them up.”17

Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception, begins the chapter on temporality with a quote

“The central question in Heidegger's philosophy, early and late, is that concerning the meaning of being. Recently,
some have suggested that Heidegger himself interprets being to mean presence (Anwesen, Anwesenheit, Praesenz),
citing as evidence lectures dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. I argue, on the contrary, that Heidegger regards the
equation between being and presence as the hallmark of metaphysical thinking, and that it only ever appears in his
texts as a gloss on the philosophical tradition, not as an expression of his own ontological commitments. In his early
work Heidegger seeks to confront and even correct the traditional interpretation of being by challenging its narrow
preoccupation with presence and the present. By the 1930s, however, he abandons the idea that there is anything
to‐be intrinsically right or wrong about with regard to the meaning of being and turns his attention instead to what he
calls ‘appropriation’ (Ereignis) or the truth of being, that is, the essentially ahistorical condition for the possibility of all
historically contingent interpretations of being, including the metaphysical interpretation of being as presence.”
16
Cf. Derrida, Jacques (1973). Speech and Phenomena. And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans. David B.
Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. P. 156. First published in French under the title La Voix et le
phénomène, Pari: P.U.F., Collection « Épiméthée », 1967.
17
Latour, Bruno, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essais d’anthropologie symmétrique. (1991). We Have Never
Been Modern, translated by C. Porter. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts 2001, pp.6-7.

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from Claudel's Art Poétique where time is being defined as the means offered to all that is destined to be,
to come into existence in order that it may no longer be. Already in the forties of the 20 th century, Merleau-
Ponty was able to conceive the subject and the time as communicating from within. Time presupposes a
view of time, a witness of its course. Therefore, it is not a real process, not “an actual succession that I am
content to record. It arises from my relation to things”18 Merleau-Ponty could not accept the past and the
future as mere concepts abstracted by us from our perception and recollections, mere denominations for
the actual series of “physic events”. Consciousness constitutes time:

“The passage of one present to the next is not a thing which I conceive, nor do I see it as an
onlooker. I effect it. …”19

Karl H. Pribram's holonomic model of the brain, developed in collaboration with quantum physicist
David Bohm, theorizes that memory and information is stored not in cells, but rather in wave interference
patterns. University of London physicist Bohm, one of the most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford
neurophysiologist Pribram, one of the pioneers of modern understanding of the brain, believe that the
universe itself may be a hologram-like construct partly created by the human mind.20
Other scientists, like Huping Hu and Maoxin Wu,21 explore the issue how mind influences the brain
through “spin processes” related to “dark chemistry” model of mind. Their thoughts are that the
manifestation of free will is intrinsically associated with the nuclear and/or electron spin processes inside
the varying high electric voltage environment of the neural membranes and proteins which likely enable
the said spin processes to be “ proactive,” that is, being able to utilize non-local energy (potential) and
quantum information to influence brain activities through spin chemistry and possibly other
chemical/physical processes in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. Merleau-Ponty’s theory
reads surprisingly fresh in the light of recent scientific discoveries of Fritz-Albert Popp on quantum
coherence of biophotons and living systems. Biophoton emission is a general phenomenon of living
systems. This universal phenomenon of biological systems is responsible for the information transfer within
and between cells, answering then the crucial question of intra- and extracellular bio-communication,
including the regulation of the metabolic activities of cells as well as of growth and differentiation and even
of evolutionary development. Human consciousness is viewed as a global event that takes place in entire
human body. From that perspective, our world functions as a dynamic network for energy exchange.

18
Merleau-Ponty. Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception(1945). English translation by C. Smith. London and New
York: Routledge, 2005, p. 478.
19
Ibid. p. 489
20
Cf. Pribram, K.H. (1991) Brain and Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum: New Jersey; Pribram, K.H: Languages of the Brain.
Prentice-Hall, New York 1971.; Pribram, Karl H. / Nuwer, Marc / Baron, Robert J.: The holographic hypothesis of
memory structure in brain function and perception. In: Krantz, D.H./ Atkinson, R.C./ Luce, R.D./ Suppes, P. (eds.):
Measurement, Psychophysics, and Neural Information Processing. W.H.Freeman, San Francisco 1974, pp.416-457.
21
Cf. Hu and Wu., On “dark chemistry”: how mind influences brain through “proactive” spin. NeuroQuantology | June
2007 | Vol. 5 | Issue 2 | pp. 205-213

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 Merleau-Ponty described the world as a field of experience based on vibration of our
psychophysical being:

„Both universality and the world lie at the core of individuality and the subject, and this will never
be understood immediately if the world is made into an object. It is understood immediately if the world is
the field of our experience, and if we are nothing but a view of the world, for in that case it is seen that the
most intimate vibration of our psycho-physical being already announces the world, the quality being the
outline of a thing, and the thing the outline of the world.“ 22

Roger Penrose, mathematical physicist, after more than nine hundred pages of “hard-core”
science, swarming with formulas and schemes – more precisely after the paragraph discussing the “string
theory” of the universe and the reasons why in our world we cannot experience the freedom of more than
ten theoretically known dimensions – surprises his reader with an unexpected remark:

“Indeed, according to some recent ways of looking at higher dimensions, the entire philosophy may
be overturned, as far as I can see, with no public intimation that any serious change has happened at all.”23

Penrose thinks that someone from the sphere of science should slip across the border into the filed
of humanities and take upon herself and himself responsibility to inform philosophers that our concept of
freedom has undergone dramatic changes in accordance with new discoveries in quantum physics.
Penrose’s remark seems extremely important to us because our deepest belief is that knowledge of things,
power and human politics go together. The topic of freedom provides the necessary link between them.

Penrose’s appeal to reason is at the same time an appeal to cross-disciplinary collaboration–

without prejudice and by sharing responsibility in creating the common ethical basis for research. An
impressive example for such open-minded collaboration is a book-length discussion about ethics, human
nature and the brain between Jean-Pierre Changeux, a French neuroscientist, and Paul Ricoeur, celebrated
French philosopher.24 In the 3rd chapter, in the section titled The Human Brain: Complexity, Hierarchy,
Spontaneity, Changeux calls attention to the notion of spontaneous activity arguing that our nervous
system is not active only when it is stimulated by sensory organs. The brain functions in a projective mode.
It is the permanent seat of important internal activities – when one thinks, when one plans a movement,
when one hears, perceives, imagines, or creates. This activities occur when we are awake, but also while
we are asleep. Changeux explains how these activities play a fundamental role in the sense that thay serve
as the basic material for sonstructing, elaborating, and organizing the representations that will be projected

22
Merleau-Ponty. Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception(1945). English translation by C. Smith. London and New
York: Routledge, 2005, p. 472.
23
Penrose, Roger, The Road to reality. A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Vintage: New York 2007, p. 923.
24
Changeux, Jean-Pierre; Paul Ricoeur (1998). Ce qui nous fait penser (2002) What Makes Us Think. A Neuroscientist
and a Philosopher Argue About Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Princetonand
Oxford: Princeton University Press.

10
onto the world, thereby making it possible to anticipate the future – to anticipate events that will occur in
both the external and the internal world:

They assure what Merleau-Ponty called the “meshing of my experiences with those of others”.
These spontaneous activities are manifested already with nerve cells in vitro. A few molecular switches
controlling the transfer of ions across the cell membrane suffice. One finds such switchesin the
“microbrains” of molluscs and insects. They are abundantly present in the brain of vertebrates. But
spontaneous activities have not been sufficiently studied by psychologists; nor have psychologists – with a
few notable exceptions – taken them into account in their own research.25

Commenting on Changeux’s remarks, Ricoeur points to Husserl’s last writings highlighting his thesis
that human agent does not content himself with being informed about his environment in order to modify
it afterward; from the beginning he interprets it and shapes it, or better – to use Husserl’s formulation – he
constitutes it as the world that surrounds him by projecting onto it the aims of his action and his demands
for meaning. Further on Ricoeur says:

This phenomenology of action, in its prelinguistic and (in this sense) preintellectual stage, points in
the same direction, it seems to me, as the recourse of the neurosciences to notions such as “choice”,
“hypothesis”, “wager”, “prediction”, “forecast”, and so on. You yourself have just mentioned spontaneous
activity. But doesn’t this borrow exactly from psychology that, as your say, remains to be worked out but, in
my view, is to be bound in embryonic from in the phenomenology of action, operating at a prelinguistic
level?26

Changeux notices that both Ricoeur and himself rejected the input-output model of cerebral
function common to cybernetics and information theory in favor of the projective schema. He partly agrees
with Ricouer, saying that we project husserlian “aims of action and demands of meaning” onto a world that
has neither fate nor meaning, and that it is with our brain that we create categories in a world that –
according to his opinion – possesses none, apart from those already created by human beings. Changeux
points to the experiments that have shown that distinct cortical (and subcortical) regions are mobilized by
the sight of the moving hand, the mental image of the movement of one’s own hand, and preparation for
executing this movement. He explains that when brain interacts with the external world, it develops and
functions according to a model of variation-selection that is sometimes called Darwinian. According to this
hypothesis, variation – the generation of diversity of internal forms – precedes the selection of the

25
Ibid, p. 88.
26
Ibid, p. 89.

11
adequate form. Representations are stabilized in our brain not simply by “imprint”, as it were a piece of
wax, but indirectly via process of selection.27

One of the rare theatre practitioners keenly, vividly interested in embodied acting and cognitive
foundations of performance is Phillip B. Zarrilli. In Acting (Re)Considered28 he argued that every time an
actor performs, he or shy implicitly enacts a “theory” – a set of assumptions and styles that guides an actor
through performance, the shape that those actions take (as a character, role, or sequence of actions as in
some performance art) an the relationship to the audience. In an essay on An Enactive Approach to
Understanding Acting 29, inspired by recent developments in phenomenology, cognitive science, and
anthropological ecology, he explores an enactive approach to meta-theoretical understanding of acting as a
phenomenon:

In contrast to representational and/or mimetic meta-theories of acting that construct their views of
action from a position as a outside observer to the process/phenomenon of acting, an enactive view
provides an account of acting from the perspective of the actor as enactor/ doer from “inside” the
processes. Acting should not be viewed as embodying a representation of a role or a character, but rather
as a dynamic, lived experience in which the actor is responsive to the demands of the particular moment
within a specific (theatrical) environment.30

Perceptual, sensiomotor knowledge is vitally important for an enactive view of acting. Zarrilli
promotes the perspective of the actor-as-(human) doer enactor inside the performance od an acting score.
Acting is here considered as an extra-daily skilled mode of embodied practice requiring the performer to
negotiate “interior” and “exterior” via perception-in-action in response to an environment. The type of
spontaneity Zarrilli advocates (the one that “allows one to become an animal, ready “to leap and act”,
“embodying the lion’s fury”) is based on daily training of actor-as-perceiver:

In the moment of enactment we are utilizing their perceptual and sensory experience and
cumulative embodied knowledge as skilled exploration in the moment od the specific theatrical “world” or
environment created during rehearsal process.31

27
Cf. Ibid, pp. 90-91.
28
Cf. Zarrilli, Phillip B., ed. (2002). Acting (Re)Considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide. London: Routledge, p. 3.
29
Zarrilli, Phillip B. (2007). An Enactive Approach to Understanding Acting. Theatre Journal 59, no. 4 (December 2007),
pp. 635-647.
30
Ibid, p. 638.
31
Ibid, p. 647.

12
III. Instead of Conclusion: “Default-mode network” experiments and creative potential of spontaneity

There are some recent attempts at analyzing the perception of spontaneity in improvised
performance; among them a fascinating study by Annerose Engel and Peter E. Keller titled The perception
of musical spontaneity in improvised and imitated jazz performances.32 The study addresses the behavioral
and brain mechanisms that mediate the perception of spontaneity in music performance. In a functional
magnetic resonance imaging experiment, 22 jazz musicians listened to piano melodies and judged whether
they were improvised or imitated. Judgment accuracy (mean 55%; range 44–65%), which was low but
above chance, was positively correlated with musical experience and empathy. Analysis of listeners’
hemodynamic responses revealed that amygdala activation was stronger for improvisations than imitations.
This activation correlated with the variability of performance timing and intensity (loudness) in the
melodies, suggesting that the amygdala is involved in the detection of behavioral uncertainty. An analysis
based on the subjective classification of melodies according to listeners’ judgments revealed that a network
including the pre-supplementary motor area, frontal operculum, and anterior insula was most strongly
activated for melodies judged to be improvised. This may reflect the increased engagement of an action
simulation network when melodic predictions are rendered challenging due to perceived instability in the
performer’s actions. Taken together, Engel and Keller results suggest that, while certain brain regions in
skilled individuals may be generally sensitive to objective cues to spontaneity in human behavior, the ability
to evaluate spontaneity accurately depends upon whether an individual’s action-related experience and
perspective taking skills enable faithful internal simulation of the given behavior. Authors conclude:

Spontaneously improvised piano melodies are characterized by greater variability in timing and
intensity than rehearsed imitations of the same melodies, and highly experienced, empathic listen-ers can
detect these differences more accurately than expected by chance. Distinct patterns of brain activation
associated with listening to improvised vs. imitated performances occur at two levels. At one level,
differences based on the objective classification of performances reflect a distinction in the way the brain
processes improvisations and imitations independently of whether the listener classifies them correctly. The
amygdala seems to be involved in this differentiation, operating as detector of cues to behavioral
uncertainty on the part of the performer who recorded the melody. At the other level, differences in brain
activation related to the listener’s subjective belief that a performance is improvised or imitated were
observed. A cortical network involved in generating online predictions via covert action simulation may
mediate judgments about whether a melody is improvised or imitated, perhaps based on the degree of
expectancy violation produced by perceived fluctuations in performance stability. It should be noted that the
above effects were found with musically trained listeners. Whether they generalize to untrained individuals

32
Engel, Annerose and Keller, Peter E. (2011). “The perception of musical spontaneity in improvised and imitated jazz
performances”. Frontiers in Psychology 2011; 2:83. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00083

13
remains to be seen. The current findings point to a bipartite answer to the question posed at the opening of
this article: Although your amygdala may be sensitive to whether the mesmerizing pianist is engaged in
spontaneous improvisation or rehearsed imitation, the ability to judge this would depend on whether your
musical experience and perspective taking skills enable faithful internal simulation of the performance. Thus,
while certain brain regions may be generally sensitive to cues to behavioral spontaneity, the conscious
evaluation of spontaneity may rely upon action-relevant experience and personality characteristics related
to empathy.33

The concluding part of this paper makes a bold hypothesis that recent neurobiological explanations
of spontaneous brain activity connected to the experiments with “default-mode network” might have some
important implications on understanding creative potential of spontaneity in different media of artistic
expression, particularly in jazz improvisation and in certain acting techniques. Starting from the premises of
the systems theory (Bartalanffy, Turchin, Luhmann)34 we define culture as complex adaptive system where,
as in every complex system, cultural works have to be seen in the context of the environment in which they
were produced and consumed, and with which they are interactive.35 We are particularly interested in
interaction and co-production of entity systems and activity systems (the biomatrix) and its unpredictable
outcomes. On the other hand, knowing that the spontaneous behavioral variability was an adaptive trait
selected by evolution, we reflect upon the recent shift in perspective in neuroscience from passively
responding brains to spontaneously acting brains. Functional imaging studies have shown that certain brain
regions, including posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC), consistently
show greater activity during resting states than during cognitive tasks. This finding led to the hypothesis
that these regions constitute a network supporting a default mode of brain function not only in non-
vertebral and vertebral animals previously examined, but also in humans. (Greicius, Krasnow. Rice, Mennon,
2003)36. Mapping such a network may provide insight into the neural underpinnings of a critical but poorly
understood component of human consciousness variably referred to as ‘‘a conscious resting state’’,
‘‘stimulus-independent thought’”, or a default mode of brain function (Reichle, McLeod, Snyder, Gusnard &

33
Ibid, pp. 11-12.
34
Cf. Bertalanffy, Ludwig von (1968). General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications New York:
George Braziller; Bertalanffy, L. von (1950), “An Outline of General System Theory”. British Journal for Philosophy of
Science Vol. 1 (No. 2); Luhmann, Niklas (1996). Social Systems. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, CA; Turchin
Valentin F. (1977). The Phenomenon of Science. New York: Columbia University Press; Turchin, Valentin F. (1995), “A
dialogue on metasystem transition”. World Futures 45 (1): 5–57.
35
We have already compared some of the premices of Autopoietic Systems Theory (Maturana and Varela, Luhmann)
with some concepts of Branko Gavella, Croatian theatre director, pedagogue of acting and theoretician. See: Petlevski,
Sibila (2005). “Prostor razmjene. Uvodna studija o Gavellinoj potrazi za metodologijom kulturalne povijesti”.
(„Exchange Space. A study on Gavella’s search for a methodology of cultural history“). In: Petlevski, Sibila (ed.) (2005)
Branko Gavella. Dvostruko lice govora. (Branko Gavella. Double Face of Speech. Zagreb: CDU
36
Cf. Greicius MD, Krasnow B, Reiss AL, Menon V. “Functional connectivity in the resting brain: a network analysis of
the default mode hypothesis”. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003;100:253–258.

14
Schulman, 2001)37. The so-called “default-mode network” (DMN) interacts with task-related “sensorimotor
networks” such that they mutually inhibit each other. Some studies show that participants in DMN
experiments might have more non-specific or non-goal-directed visual information gathering and
evaluation, and mind wandering or daydreaming during the resting state with the eyes open as compared
to that with the eyes closed. This spontaneous activity has spatial and temporal characteristics that
resemble those of intracortical electrical and optical recordings.

There is a substantial level of brain activity that occurs in the absence of overt or task-related
behavior. The brain's default mode supports self-referential, introspective mental activity. Regions of the
default network have been more specifically related to the “internal narrative,” the “autobiographical self,”
“mentalizing”, “stimulus independent thought,” and “self-projection” – an array of activities usually
associated with the creative mind. Internally oriented attention is a basis for creative work in any media.
The ability to evaluate spontaneity in human behavior is called upon in the esthetic appreciation of
dramatic arts and music, but the concept of spontaneity – as we tried to show in the overview part of this
paper – could not be approached scientifically without the help of neuroscience. The original hypothesis of
this paper is that there might be a vital connection between brain’s default-mode network activities and
creativity. A close cooperation across the respective fields of humanities, social sciences and natural
sciences would be needed for the experimentation phase of a possible collaborative project on this
challenging topic.

NOTES:
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17