[ISEA2011] Panel Statement: Arthur Clay & Jason Free­man (moderators) – Chasing Ghosts: Reactive Notation and Extreme Sight Reading

Panel Statement

Chair Per­sons: Arthur Clay & Jason Free­man
Pre­sen­ters: Basak Di­lara Ozdemir, Thor Mag­nus­son, Georg Hajdu, Shane Mc Kenna & John Ea­cott

Over the last decade, a grow­ing num­ber of com­posers have begun to use what is known as real-time no­ta­tion in their work and many have de­vel­oped di­verse sys­tems to fa­cil­i­tate its use in all types of per­for­ma­tive sit­u­a­tions. Real-time music no­ta­tion in­cludes any no­ta­tion, ei­ther tra­di­tional or graphic, which is formed or cre­ated dur­ing the ac­tual per­for­mance. Other terms such as dy­namic music no­ta­tion, live scor­ing, vir­tual scor­ing, and re­ac­tive no­ta­tion have also been used to de­scribe the same process.  This panel event seeks to con­vey the ex­cite­ment of cur­rent real-time no­ta­tion prac­tice to the pub­lic by pre­sent­ing work done in the area by promi­nent com­posers, mu­si­cians, and re­searchers. The pre­sen­ters will ex­plore key is­sues be­hind vir­tual scor­ing and real-time no­ta­tion from tech­ni­cal, mu­si­cal and de­sign per­spec­tives and pro­vide an overview of the var­i­ous ap­proaches, their sys­tems, and the styles of music that have emerged from them.  Rel­e­vant works from the past and the pre­sent will be dis­cussed to show how real-time no­ta­tion re­lates to ear­lier ex­per­i­men­tal meth­ods in open-form and mal­leable mu­si­cal scores and in com­puter-as­sisted com­po­si­tion, in order to fa­cil­i­tate un­der­stand­ing through show­cas­ing the ex­plo­ration of the con­nec­tions and bound­aries among com­posers, per­form­ers and the au­di­ence.  Par­tic­i­pants from the planned ac­com­pa­ny­ing work­shop In­ter­ac­tive Music Ba­sics & Re­al­Time Scor­ing will join the panel and dis­cuss their ex­pe­ri­ences while using soft­ware and hard­ware tools to cre­ate real-time no­ta­tion sys­tems or deal­ing with the chal­lenges as in­ter­preters of ex­treme sight read­ing.  Above all, the or­ga­niz­ers of the panel hope that the events will spark in­ter­est and dis­cus­sion that will fur­ther the de­vel­op­ment of a com­mu­nity of prac­tice around vir­tual scor­ing and real-time play­ing and raise aware­ness of this new area within the con­tem­po­rary music cir­cles to aid in at­tract­ing new peo­ple to this ex­cit­ing field.

  • Arthur Clay, a sound artist and cu­ra­tor, was born in New York, USA, and lives in Basel, Switzerland. He is a spe­cial­ist in the per­for­mance of self cre­ated works with the use of in­ter­me­dia and has ap­peared at in­ter­na­tional fes­ti­vals, on radio and tele­vi­sion tele­vi­sion in Eu­rope, Asia and North Amer­ica. His re­cent work fo­cuses on media based works and large per­for­ma­tive works and spec­ta­cles using mo­bile de­vices. He has won prizes for per­for­mance, the­atre, new media art and cu­ra­tion. He has taught media and in­ter­ac­tive arts at var­i­ous art schools and uni­ver­si­ties in Eu­rope and North Amer­ica in­clud­ing the Uni­ver­sity of the Arts in Zurich.
  • Jason Free­man‘s works break down con­ven­tional bar­ri­ers be­tween com­posers, per­form­ers, and lis­ten­ers, using cut­ting-edge tech­nol­ogy and un­con­ven­tional no­ta­tion to turn au­di­ences and mu­si­cians into com­po­si­tional col­lab­o­ra­tors. His music has been per­formed by groups such as the Amer­i­can Com­posers Or­ches­tra and the Rova Sax­o­phone Quar­tet and fea­tured in the New York Times and on Na­tional Pub­lic Radio. Free­man stud­ied at Yale Uni­ver­sity and Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity. He is cur­rently an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in the School of Music at Geor­gia Tech in At­lanta.