Improvisation as System

This chapter examines the nature of improvisation as a concept and practice, drawing on literature from the social sciences, humanities, performance studies, and the emerging field of critical improvisation. By providing an understanding of the nature of improvisation, some of its key characteristics, and its historical ties with the urban context, this chapter provides a basis for the work with improvisation for the design in a hybrid city context. The radical and experimental work from the 1960s has gained new significance today, and networked information technologies have reached levels of performance and pervasiveness that were unthinkable half a century ago. Past works have used improvisation predominantly as a concept and metaphor. This chapter suggests, instead, that we consider improvisation more thoroughly to inform a method for the design of interactions in hybrid city environments.