Author Archives: antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:33 am on August 8, 2018  

The complexity of citizen experience: ‘system effects’ mapping for intervention design – Luke Craven

The complexity of citizen experience: ‘system effects’ mapping for intervention design

System Effects is a methodology developed by UNSW Canberra Researcher Dr. Luke Craven to explore the ‘user’ or citizen experience of complex phenomena, such as climate resilience, poor health, or job market access. The method is proving to be useful for citizen and user engagement worldwide, and Luke details its varied applications and processes for us here. 

The System Effects methodology emphasises the varied nature of social phenomena, their causes and consequences, while at the same time giving policymakers tools to understand the complex nature of how those varied factors manifest at the community — or population — level. System Effects can be used to support the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions aimed at changing the structure of complex adaptive systems to drive particular outcomes. By beginning from the ‘user’ understanding of complex systems, the methodology helps to re-centre lived experience in social science and policymaking practice.

UNSW has produced a great video summary of the method, and Luke writes about it in detail for Power to Persuade below:

Developed as part of my PhD that focused on developing new tools to understand and address food insecurity from a systems-based perspective, System Effects is increasingly being applied to a whole range of issues by national, state, and local governments across the world. For example it is being used to:

  1. understand the barriers to job market entry in Oslo, in partnership with the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV);
  2. understand the systemic impact of disaster events in Sydney, in partnership with Resilient Sydney and the NSW Office of Emergency Management;
  3. support social workers to deliver systemic care to persons facing homelessness in Newcastle, UK, in partnership with Newcastle City Council;
  4. support the development of policy to prevent food borne disease in Cambodia, in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and USAID, and;
  5. support effective environmental stewardship in New York, in partnership with the US Forest Service.

The above is just a snapshot of the diversity of issues and decision contexts in which System Effects is currently used, with a more detailed picture in the map below.

System effects distributions.png

Figure: Where is System Effects being used?

But what exactly is System Effects and how does it work? The methodology draws on soft systems methodology, fuzzy cognitive mapping, and graph theoretical analysis. Its objective is to aggregate and quantify participant-generated system models of a given problem (e.g. poor health or malnutrition) and its determinants to inform intervention design.

The participant-led approach begins by asking research participants to visually map or depict the range of variables they perceive be causes of the problem at hand; drawing arrows between the variables to indicate causality.

Once completed, the researcher creates an adjacency matrix for each participant response, using a coding scheme to ensure consistency in the factors present across the community. The foundation of this method is that individual participant maps represent network diagrams, with the barriers between them acting as ‘nodes’ and the connections between them as ‘edges’ or links.

Continues in source: The complexity of citizen experience: ‘system effects’ mapping for intervention design | The Mandarin – The Mandarin

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:32 am on August 8, 2018  

Slides and Podcasts – Cognitive Edge (Dave Snowden)

As much as possible, Dave Snowden records every speaking engagement and makes it available as a podcast accompanied by slides. They are listed in chronological order for your convenience.

Source: Slides and Podcasts – Cognitive Edge

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:02 pm on August 7, 2018  

EJOR Special Issue on Community Operational Research

EJOR Special Issue on Community Operational Research: Home

Special Issue of the European Journal of Operational Research
image #1

Community Operational Research (COR) is based on meaningful engagement with communities to bring about transformational research and practice along with community empowerment and social change. We work directly with communities to identify, formulate, model and solve problems in which decisions and choices are the core focus. Our training and practice cross disciplinary, application and methodological boundaries: we are planners, engineers, management scholars, policy analysts and many others. The purpose of this website is to introduce you to a special issue of European Journal of Operational Research titled “Community Operational Research: Innovations, Internationalization and Agenda-Setting Applications” which has appeared in August 2018. The 31 papers in this special issue address issues in rural development, theory and methodology, working with youth, urban planning and many other areas. They represent applications of decision modeling that are more familiar to persons with traditional training in operations research and the management sciences, as well as those that reflect progressive notions of how qualitative analysis and a systems view can support positive community change.

Sometimes the perspective of authors in this special issue is on what decisions to make to achieve particular outcomes: How can we design design an energy generation strategy for a small town that balances environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and local energy autonomy? What are new ways to ensure access to nutritious and affordable food in lower-income, primarily immigrant communities that combines behavior changes by residents with new services by stores and government agencies? How can we develop a peace education program in an area rife with political and other violence in which young people learn of alternatives to violence to solve conflicts?

Other times the authors in this special issue seek to examine events that have already occurred to learn how a community-engaged decision modeling perspective can explain what we have observed: If co-production of health care through community engagement and shared responsibility for health care fail in one place after succeeding in another place, could a better understanding of doctors’ professional identities combined with putting key stakeholders at the center of system redesign result in improved outcomes in the future? In the wake of a destructive tsunami and subsequent rebuilding, how can an arts-based methodology help us understand how a community in crisis draws on social networks, cultural practices and collective interventions to build from within?

Continues in source: Home – EJOR Special Issue on Community Operational Research – Research Guides at University of Massachusetts Boston

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:20 pm on August 7, 2018  

Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method | John Barton, John Stephens, Tim Haslett

[A hugely valuable paper unearthed by David Ing]
ORIGINAL PAPER
Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method
John Barton, John Stephens, Tim Haslett
Published online: 22 August 2009
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract
This paper considers those interpretations of action research that can be traced to Kurt Lewin at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan,and the work in social ecology by Emery and Trist at the Tavistock Institute. It locates the logical basis of these interpretations in the philosophy of pragmatism, particularly as it relates to Peirce’s inferential logic and inquiry system. Drawing on this argument, and on the  significant developments in approaches to systemic thinking over the past 40–50 years,a normative set of criteria is established for action research. The paper concludes that both positivist science (which relates to closed systems thinking) and action research (which relates to open systems thinking) are essential to any complete scientific approach.
Keywords
 Action research, Open systems, Scientific method, Peirce, Pragmatism, Abduction

Full paper in source (academia.edu something-wall):  Action Research: Its Foundations in Open Systems Thinking and Relationship to the Scientific Method | Tim Haslett – Academia.edu

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:49 am on August 7, 2018  

Complexity Live: Systems Change – 10 August 6pm GMT / 1pm Eastern Time

Scheduled for 10 Aug 2018 6pm GMT/1pm Eastern Time
The 3rd Complexity Live will be live streaming on the 10th at 6pm GMT as we talk about “Systems Change”
Guests
Lycia Harper, A fellow at Schumacher Institute and partner at Future Considerations http://bit.ly/2AitYe3
Orit Gal, Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Complexity at Regent’s University London http://bit.ly/2Aereys
[Our very own] David Ing, Canadian systems scientist, business architect, management consultant and marketing scientist. http://bit.ly/2n7ATxl
James Greyson, Global Security thought-leader, speaker & consultant http://bit.ly/2LS85HW

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:37 pm on August 6, 2018  

Joel Simon – evolving floorplans

Evolving Floorplans – 2017.

 

Source: Joel Simon

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:08 am on August 6, 2018  

infed.org | Chris Argyris: theories of action, double-loop learning and organizational learning

Chris Argyris: theories of action, double-loop learning and organizational learning

Picture: Double loop learning by Boris Drenec. Sourced from Flickr and reproduced under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) licence.

Chris Argyris: theories of action, double-loop learning and organizational learning. The work of Chris Argyris (1923-2013) has influenced thinking about the relationship of people and organizations, organizational learning and action research. Here we examine some key aspects of his thinking.

contents: introduction · life · theories of action: theory in use and espoused theory · single-loop and double-loop learning · model I and model II · organizational learning · conclusion · further reading and references · links · cite

Chris Argyris has made a significant contribution to the development of our appreciation of organizational learning, and, almost in passing, deepened our understanding of experiential learning. On this page we examine the significance of the models he developed with Donald Schön of single-loop and double-loop learning, and how these translate into contrasting models of organizational learning systems.

Continues in source: infed.org | Chris Argyris: theories of action, double-loop learning and organizational learning

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:31 am on August 6, 2018  

General complexity: A philosophical and critical perspective

cxdig's avatarComplexity Digest

In this paper we argue that a rigorous understanding of the nature and implications of complexityreveals that the underlying assumptions that inform our understanding of complex phenomena are deeply related to general philosophical issues. We draw on a very specific philosophical interpretation of complexity, as informed by the work of Paul Cilliers and Edgar Morin. This interpretation of complexity, we argue, resonates with specific themes in post-structural philosophy in general, and deconstruction in particular. We argue that post-structural terms such as différance carry critical insights into furthering our understanding of complexity. The defining feature that distinguishes the account of complexity offered here to other contemporary theories of complexity is the notion of critique. The critical imperative that can be located in a philosophical interpretation of complexity exposes the limitations of totalising theories and subsequently calls for examining the normativity inherent in the knowledge claims that we make. The conjunction of…

View original post 60 more words

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:35 am on July 31, 2018  

UK Cybernetics Society 50th anniversary conference – 22 September

50th Anniversary Conference

The Conference will be held on Saturday 22nd September 2018
The Council Room, King’s College, 152-170 Strand, London WC2R 1ES

Programme

9.30     Registration

10.00 “The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened up the Cold War World“ Dr. Egle Rindzeviciute, Associate Professor (Reader) in Sociology, Kingston University London, and author of the book with the same title.

10.45 “Sketches of Another Future: Cybernetics in Britain, 1940-2000” Prof. Andrew Pickering, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Philosophy, University of Exeter, and author of “The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future”.

11.30 Break

11.45 “When Science Becomes Engineering in a Non-linear World“ Prof Peter Cochrane OBE, Professor of Sentient Systems, University of Suffolk, former Head of Research at BT, and author of “Uncommon Sense: Out-of-the-Box Thinking for an In-the-Box World”

12.30 “Systems Practice: How to Act in Situations of Uncertainty and Complexity in a Climate-Change World“ Ray Ison, Professor of Systems, Open University, and author of the book of the same title.

1.15 Lunch at Aldwych Cafe, Starbucks, Pret a Manger etc

2.30 “Radically Constructing Ethics“ Dr Ben Sweeting, Principal Lecturer, University of Brighton and researcher in cybernetics and systems thinking amongst designers.

3.15 “Making Systems Ethical: The Ethical Regulator Theorem” Mick Ashby, Archivist of the W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive, an AI language developer and researcher in the cybernetics of ethics.

4.00 Break

4.15 “Producing Desirable Social Systems” Prof. Raul Espejo, President of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics, an academician of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences, and Past Professor of Systems and Cybernetics at the University of Lincoln.

5.00 “Be Careful What You Wish For: The Internet of Unintended Consequences“ Wendy M. Grossman, Technology Journalist and author or editor of several books including Net.wars.

5.45 Break

6.00 “Cybernetics and the Control of Complex Human Systems“ Jeffrey Johnson, Professor of Complexity Science and Design, Open University, and Vice-president of the UNESCO UniTwin Complex Systems Digital Campus.

6.45 Panel question and answer session for any speaker.

Finish at 7.15 to be followed by dinner at 7.30pm at Salieri’s Restaurant, Strand.

Cybernetics Society members, staff, students and alumni of King’s College are admitted free of charge. Non-members may apply to join at the conference. The membership fee for the three months to the end of the year is £5. The student membership fee for the three months is £2.50. Application forms will be made available on the day. If you are considering attending please email so that we can estimate numbers. If you are contemplating joining us for dinner, please let us know for restaurant booking.

Further information on the Society and an application form is available on our website here.

Please put the date in your diary now.

See more including speaker profiles and abstracts in source: The Cybernetics Society

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:17 pm on July 26, 2018  

Considering Appropriate spatial-temporal Scale — bigger and faster isn’t always better! Daniel Christian Wahl

Daniel Christian Wahl

Considering Appropriate spatial-temporal Scale — bigger and faster isn’t always better!

An excerpt from ‘Exploring Participation’ (D.C.Wahl, 2002)

In their book Ecological Design, Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan introduce the concept of ‘scale-linking’. They argue that since we traditionally have studied the world using the language, metaphors and tools of a single discipline at a time, we have been predisposed to “seeing process on a single scale”.

Van der Ryn and Cowan believe that this approach is insufficient in capturing the underlying phenomena, since:

“Nature’s processes are inherently scale linking, for they inherently depend on the flow of energy and materials across scales. … Global cycles link organisms together in a highly effective recycling system crossing about seventeen tenfold jumps in scale, from the ten-billionth of a meter (the scale of photosynthesis) to ten thousand kilometres (the scale of the Earth itself).”139

In their opinion:

“Scale-linking systems imply a holism in which everything influences, or potentially influences everything else — because everything is in some sense constantly interacting with everything else. Nature is infused with the dynamical interpenetration of the vast and minute, an endless dervish mixing. Matter and energy continually flow across scales, the small informing the large and the large informing the small …

Unless we work with nature’s own finely tuned scale-linking systems we endanger the stability of life on the planet… If we are to properly include ecological concerns within design, we must take seriously the challenge offered by scale linking. We need to discover ways to integrate our design processes across multiple levels of scale and make these processes compatible with natural cycles of water, energy, and material.”140

— Van der Ryn & Cowan

Van der Ryn and Cowan argue that fractal geometry provides a tool to study the geometry of scale linking, as it helps to connect remarkable ranges of scale “from twig to tree, from rivulet to watershed.”141 They see our failure not to pay attention to scale-linking and therefore not to match the human flows of energy and materials to the limits of a particular landscape as a critical cause of the current environmental crisis. [Note: This is an excerpt from my 2002masters dissertation in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. Be mindful that I wrote this 15 years ago and enjoy!]

Sim Van der Ryn’s Ecological Learning Curve (Source)

Continutes in source: Considering Appropriate spatial-temporal Scale — bigger and faster isn’t always better!

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:58 am on July 26, 2018  

Systems thinking open access articles from MDPI

See below for a rich list of articles. I note from a quick google that MDPI is a not entirely uncontroversial publisher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI seems balanced) – broadly it seems that they are not on ‘predatory journals’ lists but their academic quality has sometimes been called into question. However, some interesting titles here and you can judge for yourself.

 
systems-logo www.mdpi.com
Dear Readers,

We are pleased to announce the publication of the following issue of Systems:

Systems, Volume 6, Issue 2 (June 2018)

Table of Contents

Special Issue Modelling of Economic Systems

Article: Adding Feedbacks and Non-Linearity to the Neoclassical Growth Model: A New Realm for System Dynamics Applications
by Lukáš Režný and Vladimír Bureš
Systems 2018, 6(2), 8; doi:10.3390/systems6020008

Article: Efficient and Equitable Climate Change Policies
by Socrates Kypreos, James Glynn, Evangelos Panos, George Giannakidis and Brian Ó Gallachóir
Systems 2018, 6(2), 10; doi:10.3390/systems6020010

Article: How to Express and to Measure Whether an Economic System Develops Intensively
by Petr Wawrosz, Jiří Mihola and Jana Kotěšovcová
Systems 2018, 6(2), 24; doi:10.3390/systems6020024

Article: Monetary and Fiscal Policy Interactions in the Czech Republic
by Pavel Rezabek and Petr Doucek
Systems 2018, 6(2), 25; doi:10.3390/systems6020025

Special Issue Governance Change in Organizational and Territorial Systems

Article: Online Academic Networks as Knowledge Brokers: The Mediating Role of Organizational Support
by Elena-Mădălina Vătămănescu, Andreia Gabriela Andrei, Patrizia Gazzola and Gandolfo Dominici
Systems 2018, 6(2), 11; doi:10.3390/systems6020011

Article: Mapping Digital Co-Creation for Urban Communities and Public Places
by Monika Mačiulienė
Systems 2018, 6(2), 14; doi:10.3390/systems6020014

Special Issue Systems Thinking

Article: Using Systems Thinking to Understand and Enlarge Mental Models: Helping the Transition to a Sustainable World
by Edward J. Garrity
Systems 2018, 6(2), 15; doi:10.3390/systems6020015

Article: Modeling Isomorphic Systems Processes Using Monterey Phoenix
by Kristin Giammarco and Len Troncale
Systems 2018, 6(2), 18; doi:10.3390/systems6020018

Communication: Natural Systems Thinking and the Human Family
by Daniel Papero, Randall Frost, Laura Havstad and Robert Noone
Systems 2018, 6(2), 19; doi:10.3390/systems6020019

Article: Maturity Models for Systems Thinking
by Pamela Buckle
Systems 2018, 6(2), 23; doi:10.3390/systems6020023

Special Issue Civil/Environmental Systems Design

Article: Resilience of Critical Infrastructure Elements and Its Main Factors
by David Rehak, Pavel Senovsky and Simona Slivkova
Systems 2018, 6(2), 21; doi:10.3390/systems6020021

Further Publications

Article: Conceptual Framework for Product Service Systems
by Amir Pirayesh, Guy Doumeingts, Marco Seregni, Sergio Gusmeroli, Ingo Westphal, Lara Gonzalez, Carl Hans, María José Núñez Ariño, Alessandro Canepa Eugenio and Andoni Laskurain
Systems 2018, 6(2), 20; doi:10.3390/systems6020020

Article: Evolution of ERP Systems in the Cloud: A Study on System Updates
by Elise Bjelland and Moutaz Haddara
Systems 2018, 6(2), 22; doi:10.3390/systems6020022

Special Issues Open for Submissions

Human Factors in Complex Systems
(Deadline: 31 August 2018)

Deep Learning and Optimization Techniques for Intelligent Transportation System
(Deadline: 1 October 2018)

Enterprise Systems & Gamification
(Deadline: 31 October 2018)

Systems Thinking
(Deadline: 31 October 2018)

Systems Thinking: Concepts, Issues, and Applications in Large Complex Systems
(Deadline: 31 December 2018)

A Systems Approach to Sustainability within Agenda 2030 and across SDGs
(Deadline: 28 February 2019)

Artificial Intelligence Knowledge Representation
(Deadline: 30 June 2019)

To access the full list of Special Issues, please click here
To manage your journal subscriptions, please log in to http://susy.mdpi.com/user/subscriptions
MDPI
Postfach, CH-4020 Basel, Switzerland
Office: St. Alban-Anlage 66, CH-4052 Basel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 61 683 77 34
Fax +41 61 302 89 18
www.mdpi.com		 Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Google+

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 1:34 am on July 24, 2018  

It’s a wicked problem, stupid! (revisited) | CSL4D

A bit over 5 years ago I first learned about wicked problems. So I looked at the oft-cited seminal article by Rittel & Webber of 1973 and tried to make sense of it (see old post). There was a lot of information in the article, which made it a bit confusing. The most often quoted part of the article is the list of ten characteristics of wicked problems. These ten points seem to be clear to most people, but to me it remained a bit cryptical. Time for a second effort. I will make use of a second paper by Rittel entitled ‘On the planning crisis’ of 1972 (presented 1971). The reader must bear with me, because both papers are very long (on average over 8240 words each), rich and profound. I am pretty sure the essence of Rittel’s work has been properly condensed now. Here we go.

[Continues in source]: It’s a wicked problem, stupid! (revisited) | CSL4D

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 1:31 am on July 24, 2018  

Ritual anti-structure as an alternate pathway to social complexity

“There is growing dissatisfaction with the traditional approach to the evolution of complex societies, which treated it principally as a sequence of transformations toward political centralization driven by the construction of increasingly vertical hierarchies by a powerful elite.”

[Aha! As I suspected, yet more proof that lazy tropes are lazy tropes… if anyone gives you a linear progressive narrative of history, they’re selling something. Don’t buy it! Don’t buy it!]

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:52 am on July 22, 2018  

Connecting the Purpose(s) – Intelligente-Organisationen

Connecting the Purpose(s)

The VSM as a Way of Looking at the World and How to Align Visions in Order to Create a Unifying Meta-Purpose

The discussions about the so called „Organizational Purpose“ have reached in recent years a new level – at least in my perception. Of course there always was (and will be) a never ending debate about what the „true“ purpose of an organization might be. I am pretty sure, that it is crucial to distinguish between the imagined/visionary purpose and the results an organization „really“ achieves. The imagined/visionary purpose is here purely a mental projection or a bet on how the future might look like. There is the definition of Stafford Beer who said that the purpose of an organization is what it does – in short POSIWID. This distinction is important, because people often mix up the Purpose of an Organization and its Vision. In this respect I am a great fan of looking at the Imagined Purpose (aka Vision) and Achieved Purpose (aka Production) separately.

For the Reflective Practitioner, who does not only want to understand how the „thing“ works, as an Expert would do, two questions arise: what should one do with the above mentioned distinction in the real world, in a real company with existing constraints? How to deal with the difference of the imagined outcomes and truly achieved goals?

For me and my cognitive biased brain the VSM offers an elegant, plausible and aesthetic way to understand this pseudo-paradox and connect the different functional and systemic (Sub-) Purposes of a System (in the context of the VSM).

Micro Excursion I

Elegance, Plausibility and Aesthetics are not necessarily parameters in a scientific way of thinking. They could promote the distribution of Bullshit and must be treated with greatest skepticism. Nevertheless I use them as indicators, if a solution is simple enough, but not too simple (in order to re-phrase Albert Einstein).

 

How can the VSM help to connect the different Functional (skill and task related) and the Systemic (VSM-like) Purposes of an Organization?

This question might sound quite academic, but out there in the wild life of business I do see an urging relevance for the topic mentioned in the headline. It needs in economic/social systems an integrated way to connect the Functional Purpose of the different units with the VSM-System-specific responsibilities. It’s about enabling a „Holistic Whole“. The following example might be useful to illustrate the application of the VSM for this matter.

Continues in source: Connecting the Purpose(s) – Intelligente-Organisationen

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:44 am on July 22, 2018  

Improvisation Blog: Redundancy and the Communication of Meaning in Music: Bach’s 3-part Invention (Sinfonia) no. 9 in F minor

Saturday, 21 July 2018

Redundancy and the Communication of Meaning in Music: Bach’s 3-part Invention (Sinfonia) no. 9 in F minor

Hindemith chose Bach’s F minor 3 part invention for analysis to demonstrate his theory of composition in “The craft of musical composition”. It is a fascinating piece – one of Bach’s most chromatic and expressive pieces of keyboard writing, and rather like other extraordinary musical moments (like Wagner’s musical orgasm in Tristan), it raises the question “What is going on?”. I like Hindemith’s theory very much (although not as much as I like his music!), but his analysis sent me on my own analytical journey through the lens of information theory.

What happens in music, I believe, is the unfolding of a structure where multiple constraints are interwoven and overlaid. Information theory can provide some insight into this (as is discussed in a very recent paper from Loet Leydesdorff, myself and Inga Ivanova in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/asi.24052), and particularly the meaningfulness of the communication.

When considering music from the perspective of information theory, there are three fundamental problems to be overcome:

  1. Music has no object of reference. So how is meaning communicated without reference?
  2. Music emerges over time, producing novelty and unfolding a diachronic structure which appears to be linked to its synchronic structure. For this reason, music is not ergodic, unlike the use of letters in a language: its entropy over one period of time is not the same as its entropy over a different period of time.
  3. Music’s unfolding novelty is not arbitrary: novelty in music appears to be a symmetry-breaking process similar to that found in epigenesis where both synchronic and diachronic symmetries gradually define structure
The first page of Bach’s music looks like this:
Here’s a performance:
The piece is fugal, and obviously in three parts, there is a very bare texture, and this bareness seems to contribute to the expressiveness of the music. However, there is a harmonic structure which is articulated throughout the piece, and a reduction of the harmonic written as chords per beat, looks something like this:
This kind of harmonic reduction is very common in music analysis as a method for getting at the “deep structure” of music (particularly in Schenker). It is typical of Bach’s music that the harmonic reduction is very much like a chorale (hymn). In trying to understand how Bach’s music works, we can start by asking about the relation between the harmonic reduction and the finished piece.
At first glance, from an information theory perspective, the block chords of the reduction seem to remove a considerable amount of entropy which exists in the movement of parts in the original. It does this by compressing the variety into single “beats”, which taken as an entirety have an entropy of 1. However, the variety compression makes more apparent the shifting harmonies. Written in chord symbols, this is an extended I (tonic) – V (dominant) – I (tonic) movement, interspersed with diminished chords (which are harmonically ambiguous) and a oscillation between major and minor chords. But if one was to calculate the entropy of the harmony, it wouldn’t be that great.

Continues in source: Improvisation Blog: Redundancy and the Communication of Meaning in Music: Bach’s 3-part Invention (Sinfonia) no. 9 in F minor

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