Musical Coordination in a Large Group Without Plans or Leaders

An experiment looked at whether harmony, in its many meanings, might emerge from a tossing together of musicians. This study tells what happened: “Musical Coordination in a Large Group Without Plans Nor Leaders,” Louise Goupil, Pierre Saint-Germier, Gaëlle Rouvier, Diemo Schwarz, and Clément Canonne, Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 20377, 2020. (Thanks to Tony Tweedale […]

Respecting the prize-winning dignity of plants, in Barcelona

Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house perhaps demonstrated, better than has ever been demonstrated, a principle that is part of the legal system in Switzerland: the principle that plants have dignity. We strongly urge you to watch the performance. CNN reports: Barcelona opera house reopens with performance to 2,292 plants It’s not uncommon for […]

Connections: Persian Rugs and Morton Feldman’s music [study]

  Does listening to Morton Feldman’s ‘Crippled Symmetry’ suite (above) remind you of a Persian rug? If not, you may not be attuned to Feldman’s repetitions and variations – which, on closer inspection, may, it’s said, in some senses, resonate with patterns on rugs. But, academically speaking, possible common threads have not been studied in […]