1. Introduction
Mimesis is a concept that has inspired scholars over centuries. Its origin is commonly associated with the philosopher Plato, who first explored the concept in the context of artistic creation, notably in The Republic, where he defined it as a link between an object of reality and its artistic representations. He criticized poetry and dramatic art as mere forms of imitation of the physical world – thrice removed from the realm of Ideas that underlie the processes of the universe, which is to say, the truth (Juan-Navarro Reference Juan-Navarro2007). The term eventually influenced philosophers and thinkers in subsequent eras, including Aristotle, Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Catherine Malabou.
The concept was popularized during the 1990s within the school of electroacoustic music in the United Kingdom, thanks to the work of Emmerson (Reference Emmerson and Emmerson1986), where it strongly influenced the aesthetic of the acousmatic medium. In Emmerson’s original approach, mimesis was a concept taken from the Platonic tradition to provide a system for understanding the functions of natural sounds in music and their potential uses (e.g., the sound of rain, animal sounds, and soundscapes). Emmerson characterized mimesis mainly in terms of referentiality: a sound from the natural world could be integrated into a piece by either explicitly referencing its source (mimetic discourse – e.g., evoking a specific image or environment) or by abstracting its musical qualities (aural discourse).
In this article, I present mimesis as a performative/temporal process in music. By contextualizing the interpretations of mimesis and its applications in surrounding artistic contexts, I aim to highlight a characteristic of mimesis that is often underemphasized in the field: its generative force. This nuance of the term, which describes a process of assimilation of the new, may potentially be useful to scholars seeking to expand this framework in the future. Mimesis may not just be about sounds resembling nature – about representing something external – but about integrating those sounds into the musical work and re-elaborating them to create a new system, which could be described as “making it one’s own.” Specifically, this approach may become important in future studies, as a second objective of this article consists in highlighting the emergent character of mimesis and its similarities with the concept of complex systems, promoting new potential applications connecting music, natural sciences, and technology.
2. Mimesis: A narrative introduction to the concept
In a study called The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West, Karl F. Morrison (1982/Reference Morrison2014) asserts the following: “Hardly anyone would question that societies and cultures unconsciously procreate and reform themselves by mimetic processes” (391).
What does this mean? Does it suggest that all societies imitate something, perhaps the ideas that lie beyond the sky? And how does this relate to Aristotle’s (1922) statement that “the music of the flute and of the lyre, are all in their general conception modes of imitation [μιμήσϵισ]” (7)? Or his claim that mimesis is present in human beings from childhood? What about his assertion that tragedy’s plot is a mimesis of an action or that “most important of all is the structure of the incidents” (9)? To provide the conceptual groundwork for the following sections, I propose first a narrative impression to introduce the concepts that will be described.
Imagine a writer, pencil in hand, sitting before a blank page. The writer has a perfect schema, notating the main events and cornerstones of the work. Yet, something unexpected soon breaks down within the mechanism. The words already written have brought along with them “an unforeseeable nothing which changes everything” (Bergson, Reference Bergson1946: 107). The writer reviews the pages, skimming the staves and observing the intricate web of lines and points that develops. A new, incommensurable space opens up on the page. The evolving organism of the text does not allow itself to be imprisoned within the initial model or expectation. It builds around itself – it assimilates something. The plan was perfect, but the voice the writer was trying to lead suddenly started singing, demanding space within the work. It demanded a change in plans, and the writer complied. Later, the writer knows, some adjustments will be required: the senses of beauty and proportion have their hidden laws and demand order. The plan was good and appropriately followed, but in its execution, numerous incidents were born, which the organism began assimilating. Reading it back now, its “new past” suggests some new futures. These incidents furnish it with a new “nothing” that changes it substantially, changing its taste and thus its future moral choices. It tries to copy itself over time, to not leave itself to chance, and to preserve some principles: it repeats and renews itself continuously. Indeed, it cannot just halt and start over perpetually – it would feel static, unable to evolve, completely hesitant. It copies, improves, evolves, reproduces, generates a multiplicity of other organisms, teaches and influences them, is influenced by them, and generates new incidents: it continues synthesizing itself at every moment so that the whole may balance, include, reflect, and reveal all its parts. The writer grew it and showed it their view of the world, but at a certain point, it started to resist, to reason autonomously, and to organize itself independently. That organism has started speaking up, and the writer has started listening to its voice, considering its needs. It has grown and has found other ideas around it that were engraved on its soul. It is no longer as it was, but it is nevertheless the same. Probably, it was imitating the writer at some points – taking something, interpreting it, transforming it, and making it its own. Other times, it happened to walk, visit new panoramas, listen to unusual sounds, and let itself be influenced by them. Maybe that was the moment when it started to resemble the universe.
3. Mimesis in electroacoustic music
While mimesis is often described in terms of imitation or representation, its meaning is far more complex and varied (Maran Reference Maran2003). An influential interpretation of mimesis in art was advanced by Erich Auerbach (Reference Auerbach1953) in the mid-20th century, who characterized the concept by an intense externalization toward either objectivity or subjectivity (Bakker Reference Bakker1999). This work became a seminal text in the field of comparative literature, describing how writers represented reality across different ages (Engberg-Pedersen Reference Engberg-Pedersen2019). This approach, along with its impact on literary studies, likely strengthened a mainstream view of the earliest interpretations of mimesis in Plato’s work as a direct relationship between a text and its referent, within a “mimetic tradition that considers art as a copy or imitation of the natural world” (Juan-Navarro Reference Juan-Navarro2007: 98).
The theoretical framework provided by Emmerson (Reference Emmerson and Emmerson1986) to describe the aspects of the electroacoustic musical discourse is situated within this externalizing context. He implicitly considers it a prerogative of mimesis by saying that he would “use the term ‘mimesis’ to denote the imitation not only of nature but also of aspects of human culture” (17). He thus posits that all sounds or musical objects are capable of a metaphorical correspondence with a non-musical aspect of reality – e.g., “symbolic representations” (21). In this framework, musical structures that highlight relationships among the images evoked by natural sounds would be called “mimetic discourses.” On the other hand, musical structures that emphasize the intrinsic musical qualities of sounds without evoking real-world phenomena would be called “aural discourses.”
Emmerson defines a grid with two types of discourses on the X-axis and two types of syntaxes on the Y-axis: abstract syntax and abstracted syntax. An abstract syntax is described as a system for combining sounds in an independent way, where the organizing principle is not related to the sounds themselves; it is imposed on them from the outside. In contrast, an abstracted syntax is a type of organization determined by the sounds incorporated into the composition. For example, the exclusive choice of sounds from flying animals would infer certain “rules” for the listener, suggesting constraints for the use of those sounds and their combination with others. This classification of discourses and syntaxes allows Emmerson to describe how sound materials are used in diverse types of works, suggesting, for example, that Stravinsky’s Petrushka is characterized by an abstracted syntax. This is because the choice of sounds in the composition is directly tied to the world described in its program notes.
This approach was later adopted by other researchers and composers. For example, Fischman (Reference Fischman2008) reused the grid to define the boundaries of a mimetic space and added two additional dimensions for its categorization: the “phonographic/constructed” dimension, which determines whether a mimetic sound is directly recorded or constructed through technical means (e.g., reverberation); and the “real/unreal” dimension, which addresses whether a mimetic space aims to represent a realistic environment or not.
In an interesting article, James O’Callaghan (Reference O’Callaghan2015) uses this framework to describe the practice of transcribing natural environments, such as field recordings, for acoustic instruments, calling this “mimetic instrumental resynthesis” (e.g., instrumental imitations of environments). Charles F. Underriner (Reference Underriner2017) applies the framework to discuss the concept of audio reality in context-based composition, describing the audio reality effect as what happens “when a listener, after identifying the source of a sound used in a musical context, infers and superimposes their own memories and experiences into their experiences of the piece” (22). In this sense, the musical work would convey such a detailed level of realism as to provoke a sensory experience in the listener, like the tactile sensation derived from the memory of feeling rain upon their body.
4. Mimesis between representation and impersonation, depiction and performance
The approach to mimesis as a representation of external phenomena has recently been reinterpreted within performative contexts. While the concept’s initial use in art was mostly tied to fixed forms of media (e.g., literature, fine arts), its radical reinterpretation is largely supported by a perspective that views the performative act – such as in drama and rituals (Baktir Reference Baktir2003) – as the climax of Ancient Greek artistic expression. Larlham (Reference Larlham2012), for example, warns of the danger of taking up “mimesis as a vague placeholder term, chosen over ‘representation’ for its pleasingly antique ring” (2).
This renewed focus on the dynamic, process-oriented nature of mimesis in the performative arts directly challenges its traditional, fixed-media interpretation. Similarly, while introducing his rereading of Auerbach’s first chapter, Bakker (Reference Bakker1999) observes how performance was central in Homer’s work, characterized by noun-epithet formulas in oral tradition (Bakker, Reference Bakker1999). He argues, however, that Auerbach never mentioned the term “orality” in his work to contextualize Homer’s work, where the performance “was the occasion on which the poet puts the system of formulas in practice” (15). Bakker continues:
In its prehistory as a literary term, mimesis denotes not the properties of a textual artifact but a certain type of poetic action: the representation, re-presentation, of the previous performance” (Bakker Reference Bakker1999, p.17) […] “Thus mimesis originally does not denote a relation between a text (as in a finished product, see above) and its referent, but between an action (i.e., a process) and its model (see also Vernant 1991, 165-66). This “performative” sense of mimesis is prominent in the third book of Plato’s Republic (393b-d; cf. Plato 1974, 150-51), where the word seems to be used for the first time as a theoretical term. Mimesis is used here to denote impersonation, “becoming another.” (16)
It is important to emphasize the nature of mimesis as a process, an act toward the re-affirmation of a new form. Following the interpretation of Morrison (1982/Reference Morrison2014), we can see, for example, how in Greek philosophy the constant repetition and diversification of seasons were conceived under the idea of mimesis as a performative process: a continuous transformation and evolution into new contingent forms of the same or related topoi, where “mimesis impelled the cycles of planetary motion, of the seasons, and of biological reproduction” (392). Here, Morrison introduces how mimesis is not just the representation, simulation of, or adaptation to some external phenomena, but is a constitutive part of the phenomenon itself, which is at the same time both a reference to and an outcome of the mimetic activity, self-determining the contingent form of the phenomenon. While the Platonic tradition often references mimesis as a copy, focusing on the value of the original, Morrison highlights that the link between this action and its model is probably not discrete like that between a blueprint and a finished product, but rather one of metamorphosis.
The act of becoming another is a central concept in this discussion, which can be better understood by introducing the Aristotelian framework on mimesis. From a historical point of view, mimesis in art was introduced by Plato within that externalizing framework introduced above and was later reinterpreted by Aristotle. Woodruff (Reference Woodruff and Rorty1992) considers reductive the translation of mimesis by terms like “image-making,” “imitation,” “representation,” “reproduction,” “expression,” “fiction,” “emulation,” and “make-believe.” Describing the Aristotelian conception of mimesis in tragedy, Woodruff identifies at least four main properties of mimesis: completion of the artwork, multiplicity of internal actions, formation of potential effects, and the causation principle. He states:
Specifically tragic mimesis has as its object an action that is complete and whole, and has a certain magnitude; the main idea is that this action consists of smaller actions (pragmata) arranged in accordance with certain general principles (Poetics 7-9, cf. 1450a15 ff.). “The poet’s job is to tell not what has happened, but the sort of things that could happen – what is possible in accordance with probability or necessity” (1450b36-8). (81).
5. Stumbling upon incidents: non-linearity
Let us consider the word necessity. For Aristotle (1922), tragedy is the imitation (mimesis) of an action. He defines tragedy as comprising six parts, namely, plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. Among them, he declares plot and characters the most important. On the one hand, tragedy is characterized by “a plot and artistically constructed incidents” (27); on the other hand, “character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids” (29).
It is in the coherent self-formation of the internal agents through the production of incidents that tragedy resides. Mimesis is imitation and representation, but it is also proportion and causation, where agents self-develop, suggesting a potential future – the things that could happen. An organism, an environment, an object, or an artwork is mimetic as they are continuously adapting to incidents by necessity, adapting to changes along their path. Internal properties are so defined by and, in turn, define the overall structure and make “all parts of the action must be equally essential to the whole” (Baktir Reference Baktir2003: 173). By interpreting, the organism produces alterations and, by assimilating its own novelty, provides coherence among its incidents. In this way, the organism renews itself: it becomes, indeed, another. If it were human, we would simply say that the organism learns, forming a coherent self. And this is why “the instinct of imitation [μιμϵῖσθαι] is implanted in man from childhood” (Aristotle 1922: 15).
In this view, mimesis is characterized by the following main properties: a never-ending action or evolution, a capacity for adaptation, a multiplicity of internal agents, and a potential for self-determination. In a musical context, the structure conceived at the start of the compositional process acts as a loose guideline leading the artwork’s evolution, which generates incidents along its way and consequently self-adapts to those incidents, generating new guidelines and completely transforming future directions. The creation of an incident causes a chain of correlating events, transformations, or constrictions to which the following entities – and the form of the entire work – must adapt by necessity. There are many types of mimetic strategies in art: symmetry is an example where part of the artwork adapts in relation to internal references – a self-adaptation for the sake of the artistic form, non-related to symbolic content. Motivic development may be another strategy in this view. In the field of human behavior, daily routine might be a different example of mimetic activity not strictly referential to or depending on external constrictions.
6. Examples of mimetic processes in music
6.1. Mimesis and metamorphosis: Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room
Mimesis is an abstract process that affects a multitude of different organisms. It becomes, therefore, interesting to underscore specific examples of this process within the musical medium. Mimesis has been often described, in the Platonic tradition, as a bad copy of something, three times removed from the truth (Juan-Navarro Reference Juan-Navarro2007). And as a bad copy, it tends to re-present itself with some differences. The easiest and most basic visualization of this process can, therefore, be found in those musical structures that present a level of progressive variance within clear repetitive patterns. A musical example is Alvin Lucier’s 1969 sound-art work I am sitting in a room, in which a static text is projected and re-recorded multiple times within a room to allow for the emergence of the resonant frequencies of the spatial environment of the performance. In this way, the beginning sound that was mainly composed of air impulses and noises starts copying itself over time with a (fixed) variation that allows the sound to morph into a new form.
Metamorphosis, the idea of becoming or transforming into another, has indeed been associated with the concept of mimesis by multiple scholars. In his doctoral dissertation, Borst (Reference Borst2021) stresses that the term re-presentation may fit the concept of mimesis better than that of imitation and how the idea of a mimetic metamorphosis is a process that requires time. Other scholars, like those contributing to the volume Homo Mimeticus III: Plasticity, Mimesis, and Metamorphosis with Catherine Malabou, edited by Lawtoo and Verkerk Reference Lawtoo and Verkerk2025, also investigate the concept of mimesis as metamorphosis. Similarly to DNA, changes and incidents can inform replication, potentially triggering forms of evolution over time.
From this perspective, it is important to highlight that this metamorphosis does not consist in the sudden or inconsequential presentation of new material but rather in the progressive deformation or transformation of that material throughout a duration. In Lucier’s work, the focus is not isolated to the final sonic outcome; instead, it rests upon the continuous reference to the original concrete material and its transformation (the actual action) occurring through time. The perpetual action of the environment upon this material allows for the emergence of properties characterizing the performative space.
6.2. Dynamic reorganization: Luciano Berio’s Lied for Clarinet
Although the repetitive pattern of Alvin Lucier’s work is particularly good for highlighting the basics of change through fixed repetition, this is not what happens in the majority of pieces, which tend to develop dynamically. It is therefore interesting to provide an example of this process in other forms of composition, capitalizing again on the antithesis of repetition/variation.
We can consider, as an example, the beginning of Luciano Berio’s Lied for Clarinet. This work has been thoroughly analyzed by Fabio De Sanctis De Benedictis (Reference De Benedictis2008) through the use of the pitch-class set theory. In his analysis, De Sanctis De Benedictis highlights how “the work gravitates around the initial pitches, that is the tetrachord and the grace notes, that have the tendency to propose themselves always in the same absolute pitches, for a better recognizability and coherence” (36). I report in Figures 1 and 2 an image from the original article to show the viewer the tetrachord highlighted by the author as a recurrent motivic element, composed of the notes D, E, F, and G (which define a form of repetition through which change can be more easily visualized).
An excerpt of De Sanctis De Benedictis’s analysis of Luciano Berio’s Lied for Clarinet, First Staff, highlighting the recurring use throughout the fragment of the four notes that inform the beginning of the work.
An excerpt of De Sanctis De Benedictis’s analysis of Luciano Berio’s Lied for Clarinet, third and fourth staffs, highlighting the recurring use throughout the fragment of the four notes that inform the beginning of the work.
Constrained, perhaps, by the rigidity of the pitch-class set theory – which, like many descriptive systems, tends to highlight recurrences – De Sanctis De Benedictis does not emphasize the note A-flat in Section B of Figures 3 and 4. A-flat, however, may be a fundamental element in describing the evolution of the work from Section B to Section D through Section C. The first presentation of the A-flat seems to act as an accident in this recurring pattern highlighted by De Sanctis De Benedictis, motivating the following progressive expansion of this half-note into the structures [C-sharp, D, A-flat] in Section C and [E, A-flat, E, D-flat]. In this sense, A-flat represents an accident that is then reworked throughout the development of the work and permits the creation of musical variations and new identities.
An excerpt of Luciano Berio’s Lied for Clarinet, first staff. The circled area highlights the A-flat in Section B.
An excerpt of Luciano Berio’s Lied for Clarinet, third and fourth staff. The circled areas highlight the A-flat in Sections C and D. The squared areas highlight two potential developments emerging from the introduction of the A-flat in Section B (Figure 3).
6.3. Mimesis and performativity: The case of musical improvisation
This mimetic process and its implications in musical development become more clear when we consider the case of improvised music, particularly within an instrumental context. As performers start playing, each bringing their personal ideas to their music, over time, these performers start acting and reacting to the changes introduced by one another. In this perspective, the instrumental context may be particularly good for didactic purposes, as performers may be influenced by physical gestures and encouraged to imitate one another. However, the discourse becomes more interesting if we consider forms of improvisation that lack this embodied character, as in the cases of electronic improvisation or live-coding practices, which suggest that this transformational power may emerge from cues in the sound itself.
6.4. Mimesis and concrete materials: Jonty Harrison’s Klang
It is more complicated to highlight this process in fixed media works, as composers can discover new sounds or variations by mistake in the middle of a composition and then rework the whole piece in light of that change or even start completely anew with that discovered sound in mind. Although mimesis in acousmatic music is often associated with concrete sounds and their behaviors, the term is not confined to realistic or natural images, as it primarily denotes an abstract process of repetition and differentiation. However, to provide a clear example of how this process can work in relation to concrete sounds, it is easier to consider those works that declaratively present an original concrete sound as thematic material upon which the following development is based.
In this paper, I consider the work Klang composed by Jonty Harrison. This work is often described in program notes as being based on the sounds produced by the interactions of two earthenware casseroles, allegedly accidentally discovered in the kitchen of Denis Smalley, including attack/resonance and continuous/prolonged sounds. The musical piece starts with the presentation of the materials, which forms a sustained pitch. In a few gestures, the elements are forced to interact in a way that, through repetitive attempts, probably by “accident,” reveals a soft fluctuation in pitch. This fluctuation informs the development of the musical piece and is presented at various speeds, affecting at times single materials and at times multiple voices and resulting in its culmination in the second half of the piece, where this process affects the entire resulting sound.
The discovered reaction of the interacting materials, therefore, becomes the distinguishing element that characterizes the full work and that gradually emerges through time. Andean (Reference Andean2016) describes this with the term mimetic narrative, not because the narrative necessarily presents the inclusion of natural materials themselves, but because the narrative is based on the composer’s understanding of movements and behaviors that inform the world – that is the identification and emphasis of certain processes or structures that are placed at the center of musical development. In this case, this “incidental” discovery of the two casseroles and the physical experimentation with them allowed for the emergence of such a fluctuation (a deformation of sound) that resulted in the creation of an entire sonic universe. However, as highlighted by Fischman (Reference Fischman2008) through the dichotomy of real/unreal, it is not always the objective of mimesis to describe a realistic environment.
7. Discussion and potential future directions: The durational becoming
The current article suggests that while mimesis has traditionally been considered in spatial terms – e.g., sound objects, “memory space” (Emmerson Reference Emmerson2008) – another type of mimesis may exist along the axis of time, which we may call temporal mimesis for simplification. Specifically, the article highlights the properties of evolution, adaptation, multiplicity, and self-determination that are associated with this nuance of mimesis through a tradition that considers mimesis in terms of performativity. As depicted by Aristotle through his account on tragedy, these properties allow for the emergence of behavior and change in the work of art through the creation of incidents that are absorbed by the action itself, permitting the evolution of the plot.
Corning (Reference Corning2012) has highlighted how the concept of emergence first appeared in evolutionary theories, particularly at the hands of Conwy Lloyd Morgan, who wrote three volumes on the subject between 1923 and 1933 (Emergent Evolution—Life, Spirit and Mind—and The Emergence of Novelty), suggesting that “quantitative, incremental changes can lead to qualitative changes that are different from, and irreducible to, their parts” (298). Significantly, the concept of emergence came to characterize the behavior of complex systems, as emergent behavior permits the creation of novelty that permits the building up of complexity.
In the current article, this process of repetition and change has been highlighted at a basic level through the examples of Alvin Lucier, Luciano Berio, and instrumental or live-coding improvisation, followed by a more substantiated example taken from Klang by Jonty Harrison to highlight how a musical quality produced by the interaction of two materials may emerge as a foundational property throughout the piece. Specifically, through forms of repetition (better called re-synthesis) and differentiation, mimetic processes have characterized discussions spanning from the arts to cultural dynamics and evolution (Wulf, Reference Wulf2022). For this reason, I believe that the concept holds potential for future applications in relation, for example, to the emerging field of complex systems.
Complex systems form a rapidly growing field of research. Beginning around 1984, the year of the foundation of the Santa Fe Institute, an interdisciplinary group of scientists met in New Mexico to discuss the properties of dynamic systems and promote “a unity of knowledge” (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2009: x). It is interesting to notice how George Cowan, the institute’s first president, recalls that the concept started emerging in 1956, when he attended a literature conference at the Aspen Institute hosting scholars in the arts, sciences, and culture (Santa Fe Institute n.d.).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, an interdisciplinary perspective on complex systems is also emerging in music. Recently, a group of scientists associated with the Santa Fe Institute promoted a topical issue on music as a complex adaptive system, to be published in the journal Advances in Complex Systems (Buongiorno Nardelli et al. Reference Buongiorno Nardelli, Fuentes, Marghetis and Tymoczko2024). Echoes of this emerging interest can also be seen in the music journal Organized Sound, which previously published works on the topic by Worrall (Reference Worrall2004), who discussed how complex adaptive systems can inform composition and improvisation practices, and Sanfilippo (Reference Sanfilippo2023), who focused on the history and aesthetics of feedback-based music.
Notably, the idea of becoming (another) has been a central notion in this discussion of mimesis. This becoming, as highlighted by Borst (Reference Borst2021), happens in time and, therefore, in duration. At the beginning of the 20th century, Nobel laureate Henri Bergson was already developing a framework based on the notion of durational becoming (which inspires the title of this article due to its centrality), and his work has indeed been recently associated by David Kreps (Reference Kreps2015) with the principles governing complexity theory in a dedicated book.
For the philosopher, reality is not a series of static moments but a constant process of becoming and transformation (Bergson, Reference Bergson1946). Duration (durée) is Bergson’s central concept. In this duration and unfolding of the past into the present, the organism is in a state of continuous resynthesis, constantly reshaping its identity and forming new versions of itself. Grosz, Reference Grosz2005 observes that “becoming is the operation of self-differentiation, the elaboration of a difference within a thing, a quality or a system that emerges or actualizes only in duration” (4). For Bergson, this continuous change forms the foundation of his theory of creative evolution, which posits that life is not a predetermined, mechanistic process. Instead, it is driven by unpredictable vital impulses (élan vital) that constantly generate new and unforeseen forms (Asuquo et al. Reference Asuquo, Umotong and Dennis2022).
Bergson often used music to exemplify this concept, addressing melody as an emergent phenomenon and highlighting how, in this duration, individual notes merge with the memory of the notes that came before them to form a unified, continuous experience. In this qualitative resynthesis of the past and present, the object of perception becomes capable of tracing a path, thereby projecting the organism into the future (Asuquo et al. Reference Asuquo, Umotong and Dennis2022) and suggesting its potential futures – the things that could happen. In this process of unfolding, the organism eventually encounters or forms new accidents (e.g., élan vital), which define its new contingent identity and must be assimilated into a new entity in continuity with its past.
Highlighting this generative force of mimesis as a form of becoming may, therefore, contribute to future research in music aesthetics. In this light, if the concept of complex systems informs our understanding of the physical world and natural sciences, the concept of mimesis may function as an aesthetic correspondence for the cultural world. Complex systems often inform the study of natural organisms and events that characterize the sounds used in the composition of acousmatic music (e.g., the sound resulting from the complex interactions characterizing ecological systems). In this context, this discussion of mimesis as a performative phenomenon may help expand the discourse around the term in music and suggest new applications for interdisciplinary studies at the intersection of music and the sciences.
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