Interfacial Scores: An exploration of approaches to indeterminacy of performing means

Interfacial Scores

An exploration of approaches to indeterminacy of performing means

 

1. Introduction

A year ago I found myself in a music room of a primary school in East London. This room was full of music instruments, whiteboards and pin boards with colored pieces of paper with miscellaneous hand-written information related to music. My attention was caught by one pin board with the heading: “Notation”. The pieces of paper on this board presented examples of music notations expanding from conventional notation to more contemporary ones, and describing different ways in which composers score their ideas.

 

On top of everything else, there was a piece of paper heading the whole presentation (and presumably the respective lesson) with a seemingly simple and coherent assumption: “Composer is someone who writes music”.

This paper’s goal is to propose otherwise.

 

2. Definition

The scope of this paper, as well as my PhD research, is to investigate, explore and provide a sense of understanding of the phenomenon of interfacial scores. Interfacial scores are open scores composed and notated in ways that allow for alternative interpretations using substantially different media. Therefore they represent an interface between different performing means.

 

3. Performance and framing

In our everyday experience we perceive multiple aesthetic stimuli engaging all our senses. Our everyday perception is inevitably inclusive and art perception is not an exception. Compositions like John Cage’s 4’33’’ indicated not only that there is no true separation between sound and silence, but also that there is no true separation between musical and theatrical action, as this kind of performances are frequently considered and perceived both as musical and theatrical. Navigation of our attention towards one of our senses, like hearing in a concert situation or vision in a theatre play is mainly implied by the very context into which these activities are taking place as well as their cultural significance. Based on these ideas, established art forms such as visual art or music and presentation contexts such as concerts or exhibitions are essentially – as Cage put it - “oversimplification[s] of the situation we are actually in”.

 

As the boundaries between established art forms become more and more blurred in contemporary art scene, performative arts are often referred to as an all-encompassing whole. In order to understand what makes people identify performance as performance, we must explore the principal essential common characteristics of performance and performative arts.

 

A frequently occurring aspect of performance perception in the work of several performance theorists such as Richard Bauman, Erving Goffman and Roger Caillois is that they refer to the identification of performance as such not as a result of the performer’s actions, but rather as a result of the particular context in which these actions take place. As Goffman observes, performance can be described as “a framing arrangement which places a circumscribed sequence of activity before persons in an ‘audience’ role”. This setting-apart is established and demonstrated through certain framing devices that define the specific space and time of the performance and/or the actions to be taken. These are the frameworks within which the circumscribed actions are to be considered as performance. Scores in general represent such a framing device, as they circumscribe a range of actions which comprise (and are identified as) the scored composition.

 

4. What’s in an interfacial score?

In the case of interfacial scores, the exact nature of the framed actions is not predetermined by the composer. There are two ways for an open score to allow for alternative interpretations with substantially different performing media: The first one is not to indicate performing means at all, both in the instructions (should there are any) and on the score itself. An iconic example of this approach is George Brecht’s Word Event (1961), on which the bulleted word “EXIT” can be perceived both as noun and a verb. This grammatical indeterminacy can stimulate almost endless performance possibilities and contexts. The performers should interpret the abstract word, and imagine or realize a performance, being provoked to experiment across performing media and beyond traditional art forms.

 

The second, much rarer, way of allowing different performing means in an open scored piece is to provide a set of alternative performing ways for a single score. In this case, symbols of any kind can be performed according to instructions which indicate alternative readings of these symbols and stimulate a range of performances using different media. For example, in George Maciunas’ In Memoriam to Andiano Olivetti (version of 8 November 1962) the performers use found digits from Olivetti machines’ tapes as performing material. There are six different ways for the performers to interpret the digits: Version 1 (Poem), where the performers pronounce their numbers in any language, Version 2 (ballet), where the performers have to execute some actions assigned to their digits, Version 3 (ballet), where the performers lift and place hats on their heads, Version 4 (chorale), in which the performers are to produce percussive sounds with their mouths as described by the composer, Version 5 (string quartet and ensemble) where the digits correspond to various instrumental sounds, and finally Version 6 (for string quartet only), where the digits correspond to the note c in different octaves. The composer also indicates that combinations of these versions are allowed. The score uses verbal notation to describe ways of converting a found series of numbers to action notation in several different ways.

 

5. Interfacial Score Database and variables

Having the investigation of the ontology and the devising of a typology of interfacial scores as my first research objective, I am collecting data in the form of scores and relevant information, which compile a database of interfacial scores. This data is collected through literature, online research and direct correspondence with composers. During the analysis of these scores patterns and distinctions between different compositional strategies emerge and are used as means to devise a categorization of interfacial scores. This identification and analysis of typologies is further explored through the creation of scores which make use and elaborate on the variables of the typology, such as notations, types of indications etc. This is a bidirectional process, where compositional practice is informed by the database, but also the compositional outcomes provide further data of interfacial scores.

 

The aim of this research process is to formulate a framework for the composition and analysis of interfacial scores through searching for patterns that emerge from the different compositional approaches and examining the ways different compositional ideas are practically demonstrated on various scores.

 

From the patterns of compositional strategies that emerged through the analysis of around 200 interfacial scores that compile the database to date, I identified nine different types of indications. These are information types that frame and circumscribe the compositions and their subsequent performances. These indication types are:

1. Description of performing context
2. Non-contextual information
3. Open sequence of performance activities
4. Closed sequence of performance activities or single performance activity
5. Non-directional stimulation
6. People
7. Objects
8. Parameters of actions
9. Process of creating performing material

 

Essentially this list represents a series of tags that one can assign to different compositions by answering Yes, No or Maybe to each one of them. Next I will present one example of a score for each indication type in order to illustrate how this information is presented in different scores.

 

6. Examples of scores within indication types

A. Description of performing context.

One profound example of a score indicating the context in which it should be performed is Stefan Thut’s am wind (2010). The score hardly indicates anything more than the context in which the piece should be performed: at night, somewhere close to the wind. Anything performed in such circumstances is within the scope of the piece, with the only other indication (in brackets) being that if the piece is to be realised as a field recording it should be unprocessed.

 

B. Non-contextual information.

Cornelius Cardew’s piece with the title CCIRTSOW25 (1969) comprises a single word: “Reflect”. It is part of Nature Study Rites, a score collection with pieces by Scratch Orchestra, the famous experimental music ensemble founded by Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton. Here the information is somewhat cryptic, as the context into which the word is placed is deliberately removed to provide an abstract piece of information which the performers are invited to interpret both philosophically and within performance context.

 

C. Open sequence of performance activities

A series of activities whose sequence is not predetermined is represented in Toke Brorson Odin’s composition, Arrow (2013). Here the group is to inhale and exhale in sychronisation. Inhalation should be slow and is represented by the small circles on the score, while exhalation should be as long as possible, is represented by the arrows, and carries a gesture along with it. The gesture should be performed on any medium each individual performer chooses. The gestures carry a quality, which is described as “gravitational content” which is indicated for each action by the orientation of the corresponding arrow. There are also some arrows with double arrowheads indicating alternative paths within the score. This means that all performers start on cue 1, but they can separate their paths as they choose to go towards different arrow sequences. When they reach the end of a line, there is a second cue that guides them to the next line they should follow.

 

D. Closed sequence of performance activities or a single performance activity.

The composition entitled for four (2011) by Dominic Lash is an example of a score indicating a closed sequence of actions in time. The composer instructs the four performers to follow a sequence of periodically repeated indications whose actual performance quality changes over time according to the performing environment, as they refer to whatever else happens at the same time. It is a characteristic example of a score not determining the nature of the activities, but their sequence in time (structure).

 

E. Non-directional stimulation.

This indication type refers mainly to language used in verbal scores. It encompasses scores which do not directly instruct the performers to do something, but rather provide abstract information which stimulates their realization. An example would be Davi Det Hompsons’ Calculations (1970) in which the composer iterates merely that “Sixty two and sixty two and sixty two is one hundred eighty six”. There is no directional stimulation to the performer and no instruction to do this or that in order to interpret the piece. This kind of scores, in a sense, poses riddles to be solved, but riddles for which there is no single correct answer, a situation which is perhaps similar to the koans of Zen tradition.

 

F. People

Another type of scored indications in interfacial scores would include the ones which instruct for specific interactions between the people involved. Such a score is CHSBR19 (1969) by Christopher Hobbs. This score is again part of Scratch Orchestra’s Nature Study Rites. It instructs the performers to be paired off, and one of each pair to engage in any kind of activity that doesn’t involve their moving around, while the other one strokes the first one’s lips with a small brush. When the first performer finds the stroking intolerable, they swap roles, and this interaction continues until none of them can bear their lips being stroked anymore.

 

G. Objects

During the process of collection and analysis of interfacial scores it became apparent that a great number of them describes objects and/or interactions with them. Many of the scores of this kind fall also in the non-directional stimulation and in the non-contextual information categories, as they list objects or materials without any further contextualization or instructions on how they should be used in performance. For example, George Brecht’s 3 Table and Chair Events (1962) comprises 3 bullets which presumably indicate the three events of the title. The first one is described by the single word “newspaper” and the second one by the word “game”, while there are five objects assigned to the third bullet: “plate, knife, fork, spoon, glass”. Although the events probably refer to pre-dinner activities and preparations, there is no explicit indication on how the words are to be performed, or whether they should be performed in sequence, and there is no instruction for the performers to realise all three of them in a single performance.

 

H. Parameters of actions

Scores that include this indication type do not define the nature of the activities to be performed, but they do define the parameters which these activities should have. An example which we already saw is Odin’s Arrow, where the undetermined actions should possess an upwards, downwards or straight gravitational quality. Another example of a score defining activities parameters would be my Counter-Viewpoints I (2012). Here performers assign a series of activities to numbers 1-21. Then they make their individual paths through pages which indicate two parameters of actions: a) the tempo (perceived as internal rate) and b) the dynamics of each activity represented by its corresponding number. Duration of each activity and total duration are free.

 

I. Process of creating performing material

The scope of these interfacial scores is to outline the rules, the context and the process to be undertaken by the performers in order to map the material and/or the structure of performance prior to it. Counter-Viewpoints I that we saw earlier is one such example, and a more well-known one would be John Cage’s Variations III. This is the first of Cage’s Variations in which the word “sound” is not referred to in the instructions. The score consists of two transparent plastic sheets, one blank, and the other containing 42 circles. These circles are to be cut and dropped on a piece of paper, removing any circles that do not overlap with any other circle, so that a single large group of circles remains. The empty transparency is placed upon this structure in order to hold on the cutouts.

Starting with any circle, the performer should count the number of circles overlapping with it, and “make an action or actions having the corresponding number of interpenetrating variables”. After that, he/she moves to an overlapping circle, repeating the process, etc.

 

7. Conclusion

The process of collecting data in the form of scores and their analysis, has direct practical implications to composition, as it provides the resources and compositional elements that can be used as starting points and functional parameters for devising interfacial compositions.

 

Based on the above, it seems now apparent that composer is not necessarily someone who writes music. The composer can rather be someone who creates processes, structures, abstract indications, directions for interaction, processes of creating performing materials, or define contexts for performances which use performing means of any sort. Someone who creates work between and beyond art forms, and someone who possesses or invents the resources to make scores which establish interfaces between art forms, in order to make art which resembles the fascinating holistic experience that life and nature is.