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1 GUIDE TO VIEWING CREATIVE WORK Project Title: mnotation Project Location: Category: Work-in-progress (non-refereed performances to date); multiple facets of a single ongoing project, including performance, digital film, web archive, and software design/development. Public Performance: Opening of Culture and Society/Living Room Theater Building (November, 2010, FAU Main Campus, Boca Raton, FL) On DVD#1: Video documentation (interactive/intermedia/performance>mnotation); Digital film IXION (digital films>ixion ). Both duplicated online. Online: (complete site and resources; Flash plug-in required); includes parts for orchestral string and brass instruments, and scores for future performances. Description: mnotation is, at the most essential level, software that displays short, random passages of music notation. The application is browser-based, and is available, free online. mnotation is made of two separate components, the parts for individual orchestral instruments, and scores that direct the activity of multiple players (usually, a combination of several or many different instruments. view project at: Video Documentation: The easiest way to see mnotation in action is to watch the video documentation, Trio for Brass and Digital Film IXION. The performance lasted about 45 minutes (the video excerpt is only 7 minutes), and the intention was not to create a concert work where the audience sits, paying close attention to every detail of the work, but rather the work is something of a dynamic/interactive installation, where the audience can wander around the floors of the building and experience the clouds of modernist brass music (second floor), and my digital film (IXION) with ambient electronic soundtrack on the third floor. I shot raw footage for IXION while the building was under construction, then processed it in Final Cut to create the Warhol-inspired color scheme. Another Warhol inspiration was to present two different prints of the footage side by side, creating what I call an auto-stereoscopic or Fake 3D effect. At the 2002 Warhol Retrospective in Los Angeles, I discovered I could view many of Warhol s diptych prints as a single fake 3D image. When I stood the right distance from side-by-side similar prints (for instance of Liz

2 Taylor or Marilyn Monroe), relaxed my focus, and let my fields of vision cross ( go cross-eyed ), the two images would superimpose, and any differences between the images would seem to be floating or vibrating. In IXION, try to superimpose the white outlines, then the stereoscopic effect will be more pronounced. Try the technique on this still image first, then try viewing the film that way: Digital Film IXION available online at or on DVD#1 (Digital Film/Video>IXION) Using the mnotation Software (Note: mnotation software was created in Adobe Flash, so it is not viewable on an ipad or the iphone, although the text and video documentation can be viewed on any platform. Other tablets or smartphones supporting Flash may be used, but have not been tested with this project. For general web viewing, Firefox Browser with Flash Plug-in is recommended). PARTS: Music notation is a rich, complicated, and idosyncratic system, and for that reason, the mnotation software is hand-crafted for individual orchestral instruments, following the range and idiomatic special effects for each instrument. On the mnotation web site are links to all the instruments currently available: orchestral strings (first and second violins, viola, cello, and bass), and brass (horn, trumpet, trombone). A generic bass and treble part (roughly corresponding to tuba and B-flat clarinet) are also available. Instructions: Go to the URL above. Select a part from the drop-down menu:

3 You ll arrive on the overview page: Click on the placeholder graphic to activate the software. You ll open up a new window running mnotation : Next, you ll be guided through a number of screens to set the performance parameters of the software to match the characteristics of the score you re about to play. These parameters include: 1) Ensemble Size/Event Density. Click on the button corresponding to the size of your ensemble (solo, chamber group, large group, etc.). This parameter sets how often the software is triggered to generate some music notation. Generally, the larger the ensemble, the sparser the activity of a single performer. You can also enter a numerical value ( Or enter your value... ): The density value (dv) is how often events get generated. Solo (50 dv) and duo-to-quintet (128 dv) will generate notation events fairly quickly, about 37 and 26 times over a five minute period respectively. Small ensemble (378 dv) will be about 18 events, and large ensemble (1024 dv), 7 events over the same 5 minute period. The idea is that 80 performers each playing seven events randomly over five minutes would result in a fairly interesting orchestral texture. The longest possible time (in seconds) between events is very roughly, the dv number divided by 2pi (6.28 yes, there is some math behind all this!). The shortest possible time between generated events is 1/2 second. Type in a value between about 14 and 50 for more or less constant activity. A value of 1000 or more will generate notation events at a nearly glacial rate (although, since the advent of climate change, glacial has a more accelerated rate of meaning).

4 2) Next, select a vocabulary. Although this will change from instrument to instrument, it should be pretty self-explanatory for musicians. For nonmusicians, you should know that special effects are determined by the individual characteristics of your instrument. 3) Dynamic range is the next parameter. You select the overall dynamic range (soft, loud, or all). Now, you re finally ready to begin. You are confonted by three choices. You can click on BEGIN on cue and start the software (in performance, you d click here when the conductor gave you his cue to do so), you can click on Begin with Random Parameters, if you re performing a score that requires that, or you can return to the opening page to enter new performance parameters by clicking on the blue Performance Parameters button. When you click on the BEGIN cue, you arrive at the mnotation main player page, the screen from which musicians read and perform the everchanging notation. You ll see a screen of notation, and hear the metronome (the red, then green dots) click off, providing the performer with temporal guidelines for performance. You won t hear anything else with this software such as an electronic realization of the notation it s the live performer s job to play the music as (s)he sees it on screen. If you are fluent in music notation, you can open several instrumental parts and imagine the results. You can also open one of the currently unperformed scores.

5 SCORES: The next level of the mnotation project are the scores, the combination of multiple parts. mnotation can be performed for any length of time, and can involve any number of musicians playing any kind of instrument. The only catch is the performers need to be able to read traditional Western music notation, and they ll need a laptop or tablet computer that runs Adobe Flash (i.e. not an ipad). The first score that incorporated mnotation was mytrio for Brass and Digital Film Ixion (2010; details below) Of course, mnotation is not just for brass trio. Two other scores are available on the website: Sextet for unspecified instruments and String Quartet with Digital Audio. In each instance, I notated the performance parameters the players enter into their parts, and the duration for those particular parameters. They both use aspects of graphic scoring: the tradition of visually representing sound or visual events with non-standard notation, a technique that dates back to the early days of (analog) multimedia, pioneered by composers like Xenakis and John Cage. Sextet (excerpt) String Quartet with Digital Audio (excerpt)