ABSTRACT
Fingers doing thinking. This phrase, coming from David Sudnow’s 1978 book Ways of the Hand, arguably summarizes quite well the direct connection between artistic research and one of the most prominent features of jazz, namely improvisation. “Fingers doing thinking” testifies to a kind of knowledge that exceeds or precedes conceptualization, rationality, conscious reflection or cognition in favor of a primarily corporeal wisdom in which practice and theory are commingled: doing = thinking. In this chapter I argue that improvisation should not only be considered as the aim or result of such doing-thinking; rather, it becomes a method through which artistic research can be executed. Especially musical activities such as experimenting and improvising are never completely pre-thought: what works and what doesn’t is discovered during improvisational experimentations. In other words, these discoveries constitute new kinds of knowledge, which are produced in and through this doing-thinking. Artistic research, formed and informed by improvisation, can thus be thought of as a dynamic practice, not guided by strict routines and predetermined rules, but enabling the emergence of unknown unknowns. As such it is an invaluable contribution to the already existing discourses on jazz and improvisation.
