The Dynamics of Ambiguity

Abstract

One way of obtaining an encore at the end of a good concert nowadays is, usually, the following. Taking advantage of the moment in which the soloist or the orchestra director has left the stage and the number of people clapping their hands has decreased, someone triggers, perhaps with the cooperation of a neighbor who may not even be aware of it, a cadenced applause which at first may be scarcely discernable against the background noise. Those who freely wish to participate again in the sonorous request, as if perceiving a state of necessity, will react coherently to the stimulus of the rhythm suggested by the small number of people applauding. Joining the latter in clapping their hands all together in phase, they will develop a growing storm of rhythmic applause, coherent and extremely intense, which the maestro, on re-entering the hall, can interrupt only by giving the audience its way: an audience which, at this point, has been transformed into a gigantic metronome, and has become singularly ordered and persuasive thanks to the amplification of the cooperativeness triggered at the beginning, like a fluctuation, almost by chance.