What to Do and How to Do It: Fostering Creativity with Constraints

This chapter discusses the meaning and use of a range of Soundpainting’s what-signs, examining how key signs are designed, explicitly or implicitly, to facilitate improvisation and invite creative contributions from ensemble members. Whether the signs indicate a specific type of action or invite ensemble members to contribute with musical ideas of their own, they require creative and sensible interpretation on the part of ensemble members. Conceptualizing the signs as a rich and generative example of the creative use of constraints, the chapter argues that the creative potentials in Soundpainting’s inventory of what-signs depend on a carefully crafted balance and necessarily interdependent relationship between constraint and freedom. Soundpainting thus epitomizes a socially negotiated and highly interactive use of constraints, which hitherto has been absent in discussions of constraint theory.