Notations and Scores: the Potential to Perform

Martha Rosler presents a lexicon of kitchen objects from A to Z in a feminist parody of the domesticated housewife from the 1970s in her video piece, ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’. The recorded video performance currently sits online, the ‘housewife’ staring out from behind the kitchen table awaiting the start of our interactions. The parody has consequently spawned many imitations and re -­‐ interpretations, comparable to the modern video meme. The underlying process of ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’ has unintentionally created as one of its strongest features a form of ‘score’ which allows the original video to be perpetually re-­‐opened and re-­‐performed. By extending the existence of the work in this manner the relationship of matter and meaning can be negotiated and evolved according to either the original context or an equivalence. Collectively, each performance and iteration of the work through the process of a ‘score’ contributes to an unauthorised archive; material, digital, distributable, tactical, and with a register of ‘voices’. This presentation will explore how materiality in the form of notations and scores creates methodologies for making and engaging visual arts archives and other cultural/social encounters. At its core this creative approach when developed with intention encourages dialogic and subjective qualities of communication and interactions. Taking an important cue from the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and 1970s: (anti formal art in preference for an audience engaged interaction/participation) these following definitions are important to the practice: Visual Notations aim to capture and communicate; movement, gesture, thought and relationships of body to material worlds, to derive and make meaning. Scores aim to present the ideas of others as a system of constituent parts so they can be accessed, shared and constructed by participants. The creative methodologies of Notations and Scores in relation to a range of public visual materials and exhibits was introduced to the MA Graphic Communication Design students at Chelsea College of Arts as a design challenge. The journey of the project included critical evaluation of how graphic communication design as a process could contribute to capturing and framing the more intangible and temporal aspects of material interactions and physical encounters. Giving leverage to an unmaking process due emphasis was given to exploring graphical visual language as notation. This paradigm shift from formal image text relationships to more gestural uses of drawing, typography and sign connected with the proposition of making material (printed) scores. Conceptually, I propose that scores can be positioned as either a witness event, or an invitation to re-­‐enact/re imagine what was seen or created by others. Therefore in the context of an archive, notations and scores potentially allows 1.the re-­‐making of meaning; 2. extending and capturing the parameters of the space which forms the context for each specialist archive collection.