Complex Time for Consciousness and Creativity in Music

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that complex time (with real plus imaginary components) could be a key to some of the most virulent problems in the artistic reality of music, namely the nature of artistic consciousness and creativity, especially in the performing perspective of music. The performing musician faces a complex combination of memory, technique, gestures, and the balance in the famous temporal καιρός between past and future moments. Successful musical performance is a highly creative and complex activity. At the very center thereof is the sophisticated consciousness of the artist which manages the harmonious collaboration of the above components in real time. We are confronted with a big “space” of consciousness that occupies only a single point in the physical time line. How can it be understood that a rich processuality is construed in no physical time? We argue that this type of phenomena is enabled by the existence of a huge “space” of consciousness that is attached to every moment of physical time. We claim and discuss the following hypothesis: Any workable concept of consciousness, and in particular artistic consciousness in the performing arts, must be construed upon a “space” that is added to the classical physical spatio-temporal ontology.