"Composing Vision": A demonstration of practice-led research into solo performance improvisation.

Drawing on my current research into the role of vision in understanding solo performance improvisation as a form of composition, the improvisation interweaves various practical strategies that have been developed through a practical engagement with the phenomenological discourse of french philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-64). The strategies function as pragmatic anchors that ground solo improvised performance in an awareness of the correlations between viewing modes and the generation and shaping of ideas and impulses. At the centre of this paradigm of compositional expression are the entwinement of the solo human body and her environment and the articulation of corporeal and imaginative responses to the particular exigencies of the current circumstances as they are revealed to the performer.