What Is Flow?

Abstract

The third pillar of the art of collaboration is flow, a phenomenon first described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [28]. We shall however not use the original concept, but an extension thereof to group phenomena as proposed by Keith Sawyer [89]. This is a seemingly restricted view on free jazz improvisation since the solo in free jazz is an important genre, in particular with Cecil Taylor’s approach. But the concept of a distributed identity as discussed when presenting Francis Bacon’s reflections, enables us to resolve the ‘group flow in the individual’ problem. The individual is a group of a special type: Its members are the multiple positions within the artist’s extended innervation of the canvas of creation.