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The Use of Visual Scores in Live Audiovisual Performance Ana Carvalho CIAC / CELCC – ISMAI, Portugal

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The Use of Visual Scores in Live Audiovisual Performance Ana Carvalho CIAC / CELCC – ISMAI, Portugal The use of visual scores in Live Audiovisual Performance Ana Carvalho CIAC / CELCC – ISMAI, Portugal Abstract results to include improvisational and collaborative practices. The text will focus on the connection between moving image and music to what concerns the The graphic score at the intersection possibilities of presenting composition scores between sound and image as part of the creative process of live audiovisual performance in a way that The score is autonomous from the emphasizes its improvisation and collaborative performances, interpretations and variations it aspects. Scores are documents which preserve relates to. As an autonomous document, a the ephemeral quality of the event and score is not necessarily translated into a simultaneously makes possible its study and performance. To composer Cornelius Cardew, construction of its memory. How can score “written compositions are fired off into the composition convey the improvisation and future; even if never performed, the writing include the performer? Graphic scores in remains as a point of reference.” (Cardew composition for music has been doing that 1971). Also, scores cannot exist in place, or as since the 1950s through the work of several replacement, of a performance nor is a composers. We take as example the graphic translation of a performance into a document. score titled Treatise composed by Cornelius Graphic scores, as development from the Cardew. intermedia relationships established during the As we understand today, scores are resultant 1950s, from classical music scores, use visual from the interexchange between the arts. elements instead of musical symbols, to Scores, as representation of a composition to constitute a language that conveys instructions be performed, allow simultaneously organized to performers. improvisation and collaborative energies to In the history of visual arts, several artists, such come together in ways that reinforce the as Kandinsky and Paul Klee, have translated creative process. music into painting and abstract film. More specifically, in the history of the moving image, Keywords: sound has been part of film exhibition since its Liveness, Performer, Score, Audiovisual, beginnings and cue sheets for musicians to Improvisation. accompany films emerged once cinema started to ascend towards a successful industry. The Introduction suggested musical accompaniment, as the one included in the cue sheet for Frankenstein Live audiovisual performance defines a group of (1910), produced by the Edison Company, had practices that require digital and analogical the structure organized by dividing the length of technology as mediation to express the film in sections and for each section a aesthetically a dialogue between sound and different music was suggested. Although image. In this exchange, presence and context indications are given, cue sheets for a film are of utmost importance. The creative potential permitted to the musician to improvise (Larsen in the combination with other arts and with other 2007, p.27) and gradually became more knowledge areas, opens live audiovisual elaborate to include a wide range of performance to ceaseless evolution that on one compositions and present possible variations. hand allows the ongoing appear of new Anthologies then appeared. These contained expressions and, on the other hand, leaves original compositions organized by moods, to theoretical discourse at hands with this be played by different instruments, as is instability. To this end, the ephemerality of the example the Motion Picture Moods for Pianists practices constitutes a difficulty to its study and and Organists (1924) by Erno Rapée (Larsen theoretical reflection. Contemporary artists 2007, p.30). Further developments, allowed almost exclusively document their work through composers to make specific works for films video, which reflects the result but doesn’t which would include, besides music, other extend and expand conceptually their work. sounds composed with specific functions, as for Composition scores, as documents produced example sound to accompany the climbing of a across the performing arts, not only express the stair. In this case, music is adapted to the performance separately from its result as an movement of the character (Motte-Haber 2011, event, as also opens to the possible multiple p.120). In moving image, as in music, the function of the composer became detached of thought about score composition, from the function of the instrumentalist. interpretation is open to active participation of For the film Entr’acte (1924) by René Clair, Eric the instrumentalist. The role of the Satie composed a score in a similar way, by instrumentalist, rather than translate the dividing the film in sections. Visually, the film is symbols into music, he or she should be able to constituted by a series of apparently interpret. The graphic score demands a incoherently related scenes that vary from personal approach to the event in particular, dancing movements of a ballerina captured and to art and life in general. The from bellow, to two men playing chess on a roof instrumentalist, or the performer, has a part to top and a series of boxing movements, among say in the making of each new performance. As others. The musical composition brings example, on the first of the Variations series by cohesion to the sequence of images. It also John Cage, the several transparencies that brings cohesion between the film and the whole constitute the score are meant to be arranged event where it was included. Entr’acte was differently for each performance by the produced to be exhibited between acts of the a interpreter. The indications from the composer, Dada theatre play titled Relâche, produced by provided by the instructions contained in the Ballets Suédois, premiered in 1924, in Paris. score, are directed to the actions and not This work is a fine example of combination of directly to the sounds possible to be produced. the arts, both ephemeral and as document. Both Cornelius Cardew and John Cage take On a different direction, the visual arts have silence as a musical element and both develop been a great contribution to the changes within a musical-philosophical argument, one that the musical composition. Especially, during the would induce reflection and sequent action period of 1950s and onwards, as reflection towards social change. The compositions upon new ways of perceiving the world, created during Cornelius Cardew’s short but composers as John Cage, Morton Feldman, intense life, were influenced by John Cage and Iannis Xenakis and Cornelius Cardew, among La Monte Young among other experimental many others, expressed musically new theories, composers and also the work he developed for scientific discoveries and social concerns. In all Stockhausen. Besides visually and textually the above cases, new ways of composing are very beautiful, his works convey challenging related to the inclusion of visual elements and aspects of musical composition, such as the materials with the aim to convey different relationship between composition and instructions and create a disruption with the improvisation, the role of the composer and the formality of the classic notations systems. In role of the player, the participation of the formal composition, actions, movement, audience as listeners and, ultimately, the expressions, etc., can only be transmitted to the contribution of each individual to a social players as verbal instructions, “In musical reflection. graphics, the expressive qualities that in cases of music written in traditional staff notation can Composing in live audiovisual be experienced only during the performance performance can emanate directly from the visual effect” (Larsen 2007, p.153). Other practices, besides Live audiovisual performance deals with the visual arts, affected the way we define, in moving image in a dialogical relationship with contemporary terms, composing, to include sound, which goes beyond the secondary role happenings, performances and other moments that image plays in a musical performance and and art. These time based artistic practices the similar role sound plays in cinema. The became crucial in the inclusion of movement event of live audiovisual performance is and actions as instructions given by the constituted, besides the live manipulation of composer to the instrumentalists. sound and image, also by its performative The changes occurred in the composition of aspect, that is, the dynamics of presence of scores changed several aspects of the both the artists-performers and the audience. relationship between the composer and the While some events are the sole work of one instrumentalist. performer, who create simultaneously sound and image, often it is a team of two or more The central category of this form of notation artists. During the event, sound and image are is indeterminacy, through which the composer grants the performer improvisatory often improvised, although in some cases the latitude (Schroder 2010, p.151). experience is result from a highly rehearsed event. The role of the composer is to organize sounds, Within the contemporary performing arts, says John Cage in the book Silence which besides oral transmition, a document presents contains many of his writings, and, in this frame itself as the possibility to remain evidence of a given event. In contemporary live audiovisual philosophical argument and a music score. performance, the event is very often registered Cardew develops a series of notes
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