Beyond Paper: Attributes of the Media Score
Media scores—expansion of musical notation that incorporate other modalities, particularly enabling interactive and generative elements—have reshaped the relationships between composer, score, and performer. The research examines attributes of the media score that differentiate it from traditional notation. Through historical and contemporary examples, the discussion highlights how these qualities manifest in various artistic practices.
Nine attributes are explored, as a way discussing the possibilities inherent in media scores: hypermediacy, aboutness, transparency, adaptability, interactivity, multimodality, generativity, spatiality and mutability. The research encompasses works that highlight specific aspects of these attributes, including some of my own compositions, illustrating how the unique qualities of the media score have influenced my own creative process. Much of this research has culminated in the work Mutability, performed at the Holland Festival in June 2024. This piece is deeply intertwined with many of the ideas explored in the research.
The results of the project will involve a written paper, a series of my own works that could be performed in an installation concert and a work group formed by students from the KC, who will create and perform their own works. For the latter part, I will revive an ensemble that I used to run in the KC called KHZ—the analogue electronic studio ensemble—where we have previously explored the use of 'media scores' as a way of describing the performance of electronic instruments that could not be notated in a conventional score. The ensemble would meet weekly as an elective or a project and would result in the presentation of works in various stages of the academic year, in the Spring Festival, in Rewire, or in a KC lab concert. The ensemble could also expand to include non-electronic musicians and musicians interested in open-score and improvisation for the final presentation of pieces.
The goal of this project would essentially be to establish and develop a practice, both for creators and musicians, that involves thinking about composition, score, or notation beyond a fixed medium, but as something modular, adaptive, and mutable that makes use of current technologies, and that can also reshape the hierarchies that exist in traditional music performance.
