The Indant-Directed Improvised Performances: What They Are and Whta Happens Through Them

Abstract

When adults interact with babies, they do special things. In this chapter, through a microanalysis of interaction scenes between an adult and a 7-month-old baby, we describe the infant-directed improvised performance. The aesthetic perspective assumed led us to continue the path initiated by others, evidencing remarkable structural and functional affnities between these kinds of encounters between adults and infants and the temporal arts. The infant-directed improvised performances are sound-kinetic phrases improvised by the adult through resources also used in temporal art performances, like the repetition-variation form. Adults create brief motifs collected from the baby?s behavior or contingencies in the surroundings and repeat them in varied forms. In this chapter, we specify the temporal, energetic, and spatial dimensions of these variations through the use of analytical tools developed for the exegesis of artistic expression. Interesting events occur in infantdirected improvised performance: adults summon infants to social life, offer them well-formed behavioral units favoring their recognition, and interpret the world for infants, regulating their moods. They also illuminate cognitive structures such as image schemas and invite infants to experience primary metaphors. By virtue of performances, babies are also initiated into corporeal and aesthetic enculturation.