REFLEIXVE REALITY 

Human perception is participatory.We do not simply receive a world that is already organized and then decide how to respond to it. What becomes perceptible is continually shaped by where we place our attention, how we enter what is happening, what others contribute, and what becomes possible between us.

I call this Reflexive Reality.

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The word reflexive points to a movement in which perception and participation continually return into one another. We listen while acting. We perceive the effects of our participation while we are participating. What we do changes what becomes available to perceive, and what we perceive changes what we can do next.

 

Reality, from this perspective, is never encountered from one position alone. It unfolds among different positions, sensory forms, people, materials, spaces, memories, and possibilities for action. These remain distinct while continually affecting one another.

 

The OperaGame gives this movement a compositional structure.

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The OperaGame Structure

The OperaGame is organized through two structures that move together in a recursive X:

 

THE PROCESS:
FIND IT → PLAY WITH IT → SHARE IT → CREATE IT

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THE PERSPECTIVE:
I → I–YOU → I–YOU–WE → I–YOU–WE–WORLD

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One describes how an activity unfolds. The other describes how the field of perception expands while we participate in it. Each movement in the process corresponds to a shift in perspective, and each shift in perspective feeds back into how the process continues. They do not run in parallel; they continuously fold into one another, forming a recursive structure in which every step re-enters the whole from a different position.

Together they form a practice of listening, joining, variation, and creation.

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'FIND IT'

Every composition begins with something already happening (A Treat)

A gesture. A sound. A movement. A repetition. A pause. A change in intensity. The way somebody enters a room. The way an object is being touched.​ FIND IT asks us to become available to what is there before deciding what should happen next. This is the beginning of the perspective of I.

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I become aware of what I notice, where my attention goes, how I listen, and how my own position participates in what becomes perceptible. Finding is therefore already an active process. The moment something becomes noticeable, a relationship with it has begun, and that relationship already begins to reshape what can be found next.

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'PLAY WITH IT'

What has been found can be entered. We may echo it, resonate it, move with it, alter its intensity, shift its timing, carry it into another sensory form, or introduce a variation that remains connected to what is already there.

This is PLAY WITH IT.

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Variation allows us to discover what can change while a relation continues. A rhythm may meet a movement. A movement may resonate a sound. A sound may alter the way another movement unfolds. The contributions do not need to become alike. They can resonate each other. Resonance, in this sense, belongs to the relation itself. Each contribution affects and is affected within the same unfolding movement. Like two membranes vibrating together, each remains distinct while the movement of either can no longer be understood entirely apart from the other. The perspective therefore expands from I into I–YOU.

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I continue to listen from my own position, while your position begins to participate in what I can perceive, and what I can perceive begins to feed back into how I continue to act. Now we start to co-compose our listening.

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SHARE IT

As participation continues, something can become available between us. A rhythm introduced by one person may be continued by another. A movement may return as sound. An initiative may be taken up, altered, interrupted, and entered again. What began from one position can gradually acquire a shared history. This is SHARE IT. The perspective expands again: I–YOU becomes I–YOU–WE.

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The WE does not appear simply because several people occupy the same space. It is composed through participation that continuously loops back into itself. What is shared is not fixed; it is what can be re-entered, re-shaped, and re-perceived from within the same unfolding field.​ Within this movement, roles can shift. The person who was listening may initiate. Someone who initiated may begin to follow. A contribution can move across participants without belonging exclusively to any one of them.

The composition becomes polyphonic.

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'CREATE IT'

Creation begins from what participation has made possible.

A shared movement may enter another material. A relation between two people may expand into a group. Something discovered through sound may continue through drawing, touch, space, language, or movement.

CREATE IT allows the composition to move beyond the form in which it first appeared, while still remaining part of the same recursive field.​ The perspective widens toward: I–YOU–WE–WORLD.

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WORLD is not a final destination. It is the expanding field in which participation takes place, and which simultaneously feeds back into how participation becomes possible.

People, objects, spaces, cultures, environments, histories, and circumstances enter the composition and change its possibilities. Creation therefore returns us to listening. Something exists now that did not exist in quite the same way before.

It can be found again. Listen. Join. Initiate.​​ Throughout the OperaGame, three actions remain continually available:​ LISTEN. JOIN. INITIATE.

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They do not form a sequence. Listening can already contain an initiative. Joining changes what is being joined. Initiating requires listening to what an initiative makes possible for someone else. A person may move repeatedly among these positions within the same encounter. At times the distinctions may become difficult to locate at all. Who is leading? Who is following? Where did the variation begin?

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This uncertainty is part of the composition. Participation becomes reflexive when we can act while remaining available to how the action changes the field around us, and how that changed field feeds back into the next action.

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A Polyphonic Joining

Polyphony offers a way of understanding what happens when several distinct contributions participate in one evolving organization. Each line retains its own movement. At the same time, each line changes the conditions in which the others unfold. This is Polyphonic Joining. Joining does not require another person to reproduce what we have done. A gesture can be joined by sound. Sound can be joined by movement. Silence can alter the timing of an entire group.

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Difference becomes part of how continuity is created. Resonance is central to this process. Two contributions can remain different while resonating each other at the same time. Each becomes part of the conditions through which the other continues, and each is simultaneously reshaped by that continuation.

The resulting meaning belongs neither entirely to one participant nor entirely to another.

It is composed in their relation.

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A Reflexive Composition

The OperaGame begins with a simple proposition: Find what is already there. Play with it and compose variations. Allow it to become shared. Create from what has become possible. Listening to myself listening to myself listening...

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Each creation changes the reality in which the next act of listening takes place, and that changed listening changes what can be created next. Each perspective remains present as another perspective enters, and each entry reconfigures the whole. Each participant is simultaneously perceiving the composition, participating in it, and becoming part of what others perceive.​ This continuing movement is what I explain as Reflexive Reality.

We are composing from within a world that is continuously composing us in return.