Multimodality of Creative Experience

My research on embodiment of musical creativity was featured at the International Conference on the Multimodal Experience of Music at the University of Sheffield in March 2015. I had a privilege to present a scholarly paper entitled The Multimodality of Creative Experience: Towards the Embodiment of Musical Creativity. The abridged abstract is included below.

International Conference on the Multimodal Experience of Music aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines who investigate the multimodality of musical experiences from different perspectives. Disciplines may include audiology, cognition, computer science, music performance and theory, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. Presentation formats include papers, symposia, demonstrations and posters.

Paper Abstract

From the perspective of a composer, the paper conceives of creativity as a multidisciplinary investigation into the structure of musical experience: a creative endeavor defined by a fusion of cognitive and perceptual mechanisms. It is from this perspective that the paper explores the creative modalities and multimodal associations through which composers engage with creativity. In particular, the paper defines creative experience as interplay of both mental and physical processes that contribute to the formation of cognitive and performative modalities of creative experience (such as auditory imagery and inner hearing, and completed or realized musical compositions and performances, respectively.) The main objective of this investigation is the developmental exploration of multi-modal dichotomies that underlie the embodied nature of creative awareness whose psychological and physiological associations become the foundation for the understanding of the embodiment of musical creativity. As a case study, the paper considers the most direct source for this inquiry to be the compositional process itself. Thus, the paper develops a theoretical framework to investigate the causality of the cognitive and performative referents of those modalities responsible for the formation of the embodiment of musical creativity.