Group Singing As A Complex Adaptive System (CAS)

In this short course, Dr Dave Camlin will outline some of the implications of understanding group singing as a complex adaptive system (CAS).

While perhaps hundreds of psychological, biological, social, and behavioural mechanisms might be implicated in the experience of singing together, how we understand such complex intra-actions presents an epistemological conundrum.

Participant reports of ‘magic moments’ point toward group singing as the experience of an ‘entangled state’, whereby our understanding of causality is radically altered.

As well as troubling our understanding of what we ‘know’ about it, thinking of group singing as a CAS also invites us to consider what we ‘do’ with it, and how we research it.

Drawing on perspectives as diverse as vitality dynamics (Stern, 2010) and quantum theory (Barad, 2007), the course will explore the complexity of issues surrounding group singing as it relates to health and (mutual) recovery; interpersonal attunement and entrainment; performance (of relationships and values as much as musical works), addressing such questions as:

• What does it mean to think of music (specifically group singing) as a complex adaptive system (CAS)?
• What human (or posthuman) values are ‘performed’ during group singing, and how might they be fostered?
• What is a ‘healthy public’, and how does group singing support such development?
• How might we connect the act of singing together to issues of sustainable global development?