random ideas

Hey all, I'm just wondering if you guys are familiar with so-called "graphical scores" - that is scores not necessarily based on notes, but suggested by other visual diagrams. For my Digital Ensemble Group, I've more or less been given the task of writing such a thing - so far, I just have the idea of "revolutions", as portrayed by a series of cells or overlapping circles or whatever inside another circle. This model came to me as I read Waterland by Graham Swift, and his notions of the cyclic nature of history, among other things. The idea is to start somewhere in the middle, and work you way to the outside; whether the paths are chosen beforehand or not is up to the performer, but basically, it's mainly improvisation. The paths will contain some sort of idea as to get the performer a motif (also, thinking of adding extra visual/audio aid if person is not familiar with subject - perhaps sampled media, which will taper off (at least the audio portion) as the performer starts). At the end (not sure if reaching the final circle will dictate that, or creating a closed loop, or simply at the performer's discretion), everything will have been recorded, and further editing may take place.

An alternative to this is sort of to model sort of the life of a star (or perhaps, even the universe), in which everything spreads out from the origin at a hyperbolic rate, until it finally hits the edge and collapses. That version is more appropriate for synthesizers, or whatnot.

Eh, either one sounds cool to me. I'd be interested to hear what you come up with.