Reflexive Listening, developed by Keren Rosenbaum, shifts our awareness to the active and dynamic process of listening. Unlike hearing, which is a passive reception of sound, listening requires an engaged interpretation—one that integrates cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dimensions. It is inherently a two-way communication process, where meaning is constantly created in the moment.

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Reflexive Listening can now be defined as the capacity to remain immersed in emergent interaction while simultaneously attuning to its sensory, emotional, and relational dynamics. This layered perception allows practitioners to listen while listening—to adjust the unfolding moment in real-time, engaging with sound and presence as both participant and co-creator. It offers a shift from reflective listening (which considers experience after it occurs) and even from reflective listening in real-time (which adjusts based on a conscious, moment-to-moment awareness), to a deeper reflexive state in which listening is lived as an embodied, relational improvisation. Here, action and awareness are interwoven rather than sequential.

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We cannot shut our ears; they function uniquely within the body, serving both hearing and balance. More than just passive receivers, our ears operate like musical instruments, capable of generating their own internal sounds. Many experimental musicians have leveraged this concept, turning the listener’s ear into an active participant in music-making. Reflexive Listening extends this principle, treating the ear as an instrument that must be tuned, trained, and refined throughout life—our true instrument, beyond any external tool such as a cello, flute, or piano. Through our body—our fingers, breath, movement—we sculpt our listening, shaping it into a deeply personal and expressive instrument.

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This approach fosters a mindset in which noises are not disturbances but integral components of the whole composition of life. By embracing the interplay between internal and external noise, we enter a state of infinite playfulness, improvising and composing our interactions within a living, breathing community. When we fully engage in Reflexive Listening, we expand our perception, creating a balance between sensory input, imagination, and thought.

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Since 1992, when the first Reflexive Score was composed—SUBITO CELLO (A duet for Cello and Soundtrack, performed during Mai Festival, Netherlands)—Reflexive Listening has been applied to enhance musical performance. The Reflexive Visual Scores and the ZERO to 100 IT COLLETCION Collection enable anyone to participate in music-making, regardless of prior experience. These scores evolved into a powerful set of tools known as Reflex Invisible Scores, a structured yet open-ended system of click-tracks, cues, and visual prompts that support performers in cultivating the listening flexibility required for real-time reflexivity. Through these scores, listening becomes a live choreography of sound, attention, and response—a multilayered improvisation within a clear structure.

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Reflexive Listening has been shared through workshops with thousands of participants worldwide, fostering ongoing projects in diverse communities. It is not merely a technique but a lived experience, heightening awareness of the synesthetic nature of perception. Reflexive Listening reveals what I call Synesthetic Communication: a foundational, cross-sensory form of relational expression in which sound, gesture, movement, tone, and rhythm function as a shared language. This is not a metaphor, but an embodied reality—one that invites us to perceive listening as movement, speech as rhythm, and presence as resonance. In this mode of communication, meaning emerges not from symbolic content but from how senses are attuned and composed together in real time. We are all born synesthetic—our senses overlap, with one stimulating another in an involuntary dance. While some retain this awareness more vividly than others, Reflexive Listening encourages the brain to reconnect sensory pathways, engaging a more fluid and playful interaction with reality.

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The ALP/Playground Approach embodies this live practice of Reflexive Listening. Rooted in compositions dating back to 1988 like CRUMPLE IT, the Playground assembles spontaneous ensembles of participants to explore the principle that everything is music. Here, the responsibility is not about mastering an external instrument, but about playing oneself—one’s presence, awareness, and interaction. Musical training is not required; only the urge to play is necessary. Through activating all our senses in listening, we remain committed to composing meaning, expanding the very definitions of music and communication. Playfulness is not a tool but the goal itself—playing is the music.

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Over years of embodied practice, Reflexive Listening has led to the articulation of Reflexive Attunement—a neuroaesthetic framework for co-regulated interaction. Reflexive Attunement is not simply about tuning in to another person but co-creating a perceptual field where rhythms, gestures, and emotional signals are composed together in real time. It is grounded in the same logic as Reflexive Listening but emphasizes the interpersonal dimension—how we compose connection through sensory-emotional alignment. Reflexive Listening, then, becomes both the training ground and the core of this interpersonal co-creation—mediated by Synesthetic Communication. In this space, interaction is not limited to verbal exchange; instead, it is sculpted through a fluid interplay of sound, gaze, gesture, breath, tempo, and spatial awareness. This form of communication offers profound resonance for those who are non-speaking or neurodivergent, whose relational expression often unfolds through such cross-sensory cues.

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The term 'Reflexive Listening' originally emerged as a way to describe the type of listening required to experience Reflexive Music. It cultivates the flexibility to shift between perspectives, enriching expressive range and enhancing the ability to simultaneously perceive the bigger picture and the present moment. Diagnosed with Synesthesia—a strong intertwining of taste, hearing, and texture—I composed scores to support performers in accessing a kind of perception that felt natural to me but often unfamiliar to them. Over time, these compositions became known as the Active Listening Playground, an evolving space-time environment necessary for performing Reflexive Music.

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In 2005, my Extended Earphone technique was featured in Notations21 by Theresa Sauer (published by Mark Batty Publisher, 2009), a compendium and anthology including composers from around the globe exploring experimental notation in the last 40 years, deriving its inspiration from Cage's seminal work Notations (1969). I began referring to my notation as Reflex Invisible Scores. My exploration of Reflexive Music led me to investigate the distinction between Reflexiveness and Reflectiveness. While reflectiveness involves careful consideration before initiating a reaction, reflexiveness describes a self-relating process where action and reaction are interwoven. Listening, in this sense, is inherently reflexive—our experience of sound is shaped by how we respond to it. However, recognizing this reflexivity requires heightened awareness, allowing us to engage with sound in unexpected and playful ways, expanding mindfulness and shifting perspectives with each new moment. I call this Reflexive Reality.

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Reflexivity is a circular relationship between cause and effect—each influences the other, existing in a dynamic, ever-changing exchange. In the realm of music, this means that a composition is never static; it transforms with each performer, each interpretation, each moment. This principle applies beyond music, influencing how we navigate social structures and interact with our environments. In traditional music interpretation, the performer is viewed as the interpreter of a score. Reflexive Music disrupts this notion, inviting a continuous, live reinterpretation—a process I describe as Invitation for Planning. A score is not a rigid set of instructions but an open invitation for infinite reimaginings.

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This approach parallels the idea in social sciences that heightened social reflexivity allows individuals to shape their own norms, tastes, and desires. In music, this translates to an orchestra—a collective of individual musicians led by a conductor. Success depends on the ability of musicians to fluidly shift between their personal interpretation and the conductor’s vision. If an orchestra struggles, it may be due to musicians failing to adapt between these perspectives or a conductor lacking clarity in unifying the whole. When balance is achieved, music transcends into the extraordinary and where a conductor is the temporary leader of a fantastic opera of soloists within a collaborative structure.

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My deep exploration of the distinction between hearing and listening began in 1995, and I have had the fortune of engaging in constant dialogue with remarkable collaborators. Among them are Alona Peretz, founder of Merkaz Ha’Rega in Israel; Cassie Tunick, improviser and educator in Action Theater; Danny Felsteiner of Musicians Without Borders; Isabel Eddouks of ALP Morocco; Nina Colosi of The Streaming Museum; Theresa Sauer of Notations21; Giorgia Ghizzoni of The Creative Way Around; Kiki Ylimutka of Super Sisters; and many more who make up the extended Reflex Community.

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As I continue developing the ALP/Playground Approach & tools, integrating Reflexive Music and Reflexive Listening, my hope is to forge new pathways for deep, effective, and artful communication. I envision a world where anyone can become a Reflexive Performer—not merely in music, but in life. Inspired by classical opera, where multiple voices sing different texts simultaneously yet remain comprehensible, I see the potential for our world to function as an OperaGame—a space where every individual’s voice is heard, contributing to a harmonious, multilayered whole. To achieve this, we must introduce new ideas of counterpoint and harmony, expanding our notions of music, trust, and human connections. As we deepen this practice, Synesthetic Communication stands at the heart of a new aesthetic of connection—one that can transform not only how we make music, but how we understand empathy, presence, and participation in human relationships.

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