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14 May 04 - 08:12 AM (#1185574) Subject: Emergent Order in Sessions From: Pied Piper I woke up this morning (D DER DD); put the kettle on pored the boiling water on to a Morrison's organic fare trade tea bag and allowed it to brew. Nothing very interesting there you might say, but look a little closer pilgrim, and great truths are reviled. The water boiled that is to say the vapour pressure of the liquid water reached atmospheric pressure and the whole mass of the water began to change state into a gas. This property of water is an emergent property because it makes no sense to think of the boiling point of 1 molecule of water, or whether 1 molecule of water is a solid, a liquid or a gas. These properties are emergent only in large aggregates of molecules. Now of cause water molecules don't have any choice in the matter they all have the same physical properties that make their collective behaviour inevitable. But this type of behaviour is not limited to inanimate matter. Male fireflies produce flashes of light to attract females (flashing has the opposite effect on human females of cause). In some species large numbers of flies are able to synchronise there flashes producing an even more attractive signal to the females. These insects are not psychic; they have an intrinsic frequency of flashing that is modulated by the flashes of other individuals that they see. They start off uncoordinated and over a short period of time move into complete sync. Moving up the scale of complexity. It is a late summer evening in the UK a duck egg blue sky gives way to a Fighting Temeraire sun set, Starlings gather. They fly into their roosting area in dribs and drabs, from all points of the compass. Then something amazing happens, they come together to form a huge flock that moves and sways as an entity circling the roost. Some times as they dance you see through them in the direction of their travel, the whole mass shimmers as all the wings beat in time. But suddenly all this majestic order collapses as the super organism is drawn down, only to becomes a tree full of squabbling individuals acting out the hierarchies of "group dynamics" Clearly in these examples there is no leader fire fly or starling that organises this behaviour, like the boiling of water it emerges. Now most Human beings are more sophisticated than Fire flies and Starlings, and Human emergent behaviour is much more complex. On the negative side it can happen when a crowed turns into a mob (Riots, Football matches, Nuremburg, etc), but more positively it can occur when people make music together. For me the great pleasure of sessions is participating in the emergent order that sometimes happens when we play, for a short time to escape the paltry tyranny of the Ego-self and be part of something bigger. For this to happen people must be willing to surrender their individuality and role in the groups dynamics to the music's absolute equality. In this state there is no individual, let alone leader, only the supper-organism, as the tune plays us. PP |
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14 May 04 - 08:19 AM (#1185581) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: Strollin' Johnny PP - why are great truths reviled? Surely they should be praised, once they've been revealed?? :0) :0) J (LOL) |
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14 May 04 - 08:23 AM (#1185588) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: Pied Piper Oh dear thats the version before the spellchecker. Thanks lol |
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14 May 04 - 08:24 AM (#1185589) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: Strollin' Johnny My pleasure - at my age nit-pickin's all I'm good for! Johnny :0) |
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14 May 04 - 08:25 AM (#1185590) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: Geoff the Duck So.... An individual saunters into a bar... Three or four other random souls drift in through the different entrances... A focus or cusp of attention forms around a table at one end of the bar, but nobody approaches it... A haze of expectation coalesces in the smoke from the open log fire, and unrelated individals drift towards the warmth of the crackling blaze... One person opens a fiddle case, this is not a leader, just the earliest member to move... Suddenly a critical mass has been reached, almost as one, the remaining members of the throng open cases, fish whistles out of coat pockets or bones from a tin... They move en-masse to be seated on the stools and benches which litter the floor. The scraping of a fiddle bow against strings reverberates from the rafters as somebody tunes up... A chord strikes an anacrusis as the music magically forms... And Then... The prat who thinks he can play a bodhran strikes up! Quack! GtD. |
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14 May 04 - 09:26 AM (#1185644) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: Noreen Very well put, PP. |
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15 May 04 - 06:13 AM (#1186096) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: The Fooles Troupe Got it in one Geoff! Quack! |
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15 May 04 - 06:57 AM (#1186107) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: greg stephens Thanks, Pied Piper. A very beautiful description of a very beautiful thing that happens from time to time(quite often luckily). |
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15 May 04 - 12:27 PM (#1186243) Subject: RE: Emergent Order in Sessions From: JulieF Another possible way of looking at things is that sessions obey the laws of phyiscs. If all the circumstances are the same everything turns out the same. We arrive we sit in the same places , exhibit the same behavour and the outcome is the same. But sessions are very prone to chaos theory. Just one wee thing diffent can change the tone of the evening. Has someone had a bad day at work and has decided to drink more? Is there a new arrival sitting on the edge of the session? Has the landlord got a new guest beer in? The session mutates and for short time may become a new entity. As in nature most mutations fail but occassionally the session has developed and will never be the same again. So forget chaos theroy being defined by a butterfly flapping its wings - its whether the fiddler's remembered his glasses. Julie |