All Problems of Notation Will be Solved by the Masses, Simon Yuil

Musicians in the 1960s and 70s devised innovative notation systems and protocols to break away from aesthetic and social conventions. Today, Simon Yuill argues that digital users passionate about code-based production and improvisation are continuing this tradition.

The Commodification of Collaboration and the Contradiction of Collaboration in Art

Collaboration in art, as described in Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics, is often commodified and used as a tool for generating revenue or enhancing corporate productivity. While originally intended to foster critical and liberatory relationships, collaboration in art risks being reduced to a commercial strategy, losing its intrinsic value and becoming a means to serve capitalist interests.

FLOSS and Artistic Practice: From Collaboration to Distribution

Comparing current FLOSS-related art practices with earlier similar artistic forms clarifies the relationship between symbolic production and distributive practices. FLOSS-related art goes beyond mere collaboration by presenting a new distributive model that decentralizes production and enables self-directed creation by others. This suggests that the code-based production methods of FLOSS can influence artistic practices, promoting more autonomous and decentralized forms of creation. The true potential of FLOSS-linked art lies not just in collaboration or legal frameworks, but in expanding the principles of symbolic production into distributive practices, opening up new possibilities for creation 흠..?. Reinterpreting the FLOSS model as one of autonomous creation through distribution rather than just collaboration can pave the way for new artistic horizons.

Live Coding, Hacklab

If live coding is one of the most emblematic artistic expressions of FLOSS, then the hacklab represents its most iconic social form. While these two forms do not occupy the same trajectory, they overlap and complement each other in many significant ways. At their core is the shared principle of "enabling production by others." This is not merely an issue of distribution at the level of software as a product, but a matter of practice. The practice itself is inherently distributive, integrating the dissemination of knowledge about production into the process of production itself. This opens up the possibility for collaborative production, but it is distinct from collaboration. While collaborative practice gathers the efforts of many towards a single goal and directs the distribution of their labor, distributive practice enables others to direct their own labor in their own way. This is realized not only as code that creates products but also as an output that serves as a notation with ongoing vitality beyond its initial implementation.

Notational Production 기보법적 생산

Livecoding works from within a particular relation between notation and contingency. The specificity of code is opened towards the indeterminism of improvisation.

라이브코딩이 기보법(Notation)과 우연성(Contingency) 사이에서 어떻게 작동하나?
* 기보법과 우연성의 관계: 기보법은 전통적으로 음악이나 예술에서 구체적이고 명확한 지시를 제공하는 체계이며, 이는 악보나 코드를 통해 예술가가 의도한 대로 작품을 재현할 수 있게 해준다. 그러나 라이브코딩은 이러한 기보법의 틀을 유지하면서도, 즉흥성이라는 요소를 도입합니다.
* 코드의 구체성과 즉흥성의 불확정성: 라이브코딩에서 사용되는 컴퓨터 코드는 매우 구체적이고 명확한 지시를 포함한다. 그러나 라이브코딩은 이러한 코드를 실시간으로 작성하고 수정하며, 그 과정에서 우연한 결과가 도출될 가능성이 있다. 이 불확정성은 즉흥적인 요소로 작용하여, 코드가 예상치 못한 방식으로 작동하거나 새로운 소리와 구조를 생성할 수 있게 한다.

see reference:
Free Open Form Performance
Umberto Eco, 'Poetics of the Open Work

Noise Interrupts

Nature Study Notes are all in the form of text-based instructions. However, few of them explain how to produce sound; instead, they focus on various social interactions that structure and address power dynamics among the performers. Many of the scores set up small scale 'operating systems', simple organisational structures that enable other works to be produced within them. The notion of the performance as an operating system is one that ap have taken up in their Life Coding project. Adapting mechanisms from computer systems, the interaction of performers is dictated by interrupt signals connected to actions defined in look-up tables.

Edsger Dijkstra, one of the inventors of the interrupt system, noted:
"...the exact moments of the interrupts were unpredictable and outside our control, the interrupt mechanism turned the computer into a nondeterministic machine with a non­reproducible behaviour..."

"Interrupts aren't hidden"

 인터럽트와 음악적 진화 
 see reference: 
 Jacques Attali, ‘Noise: The Political Economy of Music’ 
 Sun Ra의 Arkestra 

 The operating system of Ra's Arkestra incorporated such 'noise' and restructured itself in the process. This 'noise' is not simply that of unmusical sound, but also in the sense that Jacques Attali adapts from information and systems theory, any material that is not recognised by an existing system, and is therefore opposed to 'information' which is material that has value or significance in a given system.

Schooltime Compositions

1969-THE LOGO TURTLE–Seymour Papert et al (Sth African/American)

…In so far as LOGO expresses of potential actions out of which a drawing emerges it has an analogy to the notations of the Scratch Orchestra, which often did not express sound directly but rather actions from which sound could arise.

As Cardew wrote in his notes to Treatise:

‘Notation is a way of making people move.’

Like the Scratch Orchestra, the LOGO Labs grew out of a conscious pedagogical interest directed towards developing forms of collective, self-directed practical research. These were realised through semi-structured 'improvisational' activities and used self-developed notational systems as a means of constructing, communicating and reflecting upon these.

Papert believed that programming was a skill that should be available to everyone not as a 'technology' – a mechanism for manufacture abstracted from human labour – but as a means of conceptual exploration.

See also
Ivan Illich - Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality (and others!)

For both Papert and Cardew, pedagogy was a two way thing. The lab and the orchestra broke down distinctions between pupil and tutor, and placed learning in the context of self- directed production. In these ways they were forms of distributive practice.

Training in Contingency

An element of the contingent was essential to this. In Papert's eyes, one of the strengths of programming as a tool for learning, was the attitude to error that it encouraged.

As with the Arkestra, embracing error is a productive possibility.

HECKMEM
Short for 'hack memo', this was a collection of code snippets and programming ideas distributed amongst the hackers within the AI Labs. Many of the entries utilise possibilities discovered through bugs and inconsistencies within the PDP computers that the AI Lab worked on. Other entries suggest ways that a particular algorithm might be played with, encouraging people to mess around with it in what can only be described as a form of aesthetic code play.

Within the LOGO Labs, code was written and exchanged between students in a similar manner. Rather than planning out programs in advance, pupils would 'improvise' with their code responding to the how the turtle performed and modifying their programs accordingly.

read - eval - print - loop

Constraints of notation interpretation

Cardew’s concerns in the development of new notations:

Opportunity: notations need not only encode existing patterns or defined systems of sound, but could also be proposals and provocations to create new ones.
Danger: the fact that a trained musician, when confronted with an unfamiliar notation system, rather than responding to it directly, might fall back into their personal predispositions and ingrained habits.

i.e. The amateur jazz musician described by Adorno, unable to stray from the existing models to which he has adapted and subordinated himself.
While the trained musician approached a performance with a predefined system of producing sound against which the new notation was interpreted. What was novel in the new notation may simply be responded to as 'error' or noise within that system and therefore avoided.

New notations required performers with a similar attitude to that of the hacker and LOGO Lab student, one who could respond creatively to the unknown and unexpected. The performer, therefore, could not rehearse such music but rather 'trained' for it like a martial art, developing ways of acting upon contingency. This similarly developed through a feedback loop of coding-performance that formed the basis of Scratch Music practice.

The Virtues of Practice

Alasdair MacIntyre understands practices not merely as technical activities but within the social and historical relationships in which they are performed.
Social: The relationships that practitioners (members of a community) have with each other. (예를 들어, 동료 음악가들 사이의 협력이나 의사들 사이의 의학적 토론 등.)
Historical: The relationships related to how current practices have developed over time and what influences they have undergone during that development.

Concept of Internal/external goods
Internal goods: The qualities or features that allow a practice to develop and flourish in itself. (예를 들어, 의학에서 새로운 치료법이나 진단법을 개발하는 것. 실천 그 자체를 더 효과적이고 발전하게 만드는 요소)
External goods: The benefits that result from a practice, which can positively impact others who are not practitioners. (예를 들어, 의학에서 개발된 새로운 치료법이 환자의 건강을 개선시키는 것과 같은 결과)

맥킨타이어의 virtue, ‘덕’의 개념은 실천을 구성하는 목적과 기준을 다른 사람들과 공유하고, 그들과의 관계를 정의하는 내적 선을 의미한다. 덕은 정적인 도덕 규범이 아니라, 실천을 통해 발전하고 변화하는 동적인 특성이다. 이러한 덕 윤리를 바탕으로, 실천practice은 사회적, 역사적 관계 속에서 발전하며, 그 과정에서 내적 선과 외적 선이 형성된다. 이 실천의 미덕은 공동체 내에서 협력하고 발전하는 방식으로 표현되어야한다.

Ethical direction of FLOSS

Both free software and open source present collaborative production models, but their directions are fundamentally different. Free software presents a distributive collaboration model, supporting others in determining their production autonomously. MacIntyre would argue that such a practice requires critical judgment and the exercise of virtue, which cannot be subordinated to ‘the routinizable application of rules’.

On the other hand, open source presents an accumulative collaboration model, aiming to reduce production costs and increase profit by utilizing others' labor. This can be seen in the shift from positive freedom, which enables self-distribution, to negative freedom, which operates in the free economy, evident in the changes in Creative Commons licenses and the regulatory, goal-oriented (rather than virtuous) sharing of Web 2.0.

Evolution of practice ethics in the Scratch Orchestra

Like free software, the history of the Scratch Orchestra can be understood as a process in which a community of practitioners develops their practice ethics. The fact that the constitution was rewritten and revised during the group's existence indicates there was an ongoing evaluation of this definition in relation to that evolving practice.

Cardew’s ‘Towards an Ethic of Improvisation’

The essay ends with an outline of seven ‘virtues that a musician can develop,’ including ‘simplicity,’ ‘selflessness,’ and ‘preparedness.’ The virtue of ‘forbearance’ reflects Sun Ra's attitude and is broadly explained as ‘Overcoming your instinctual revulsion against whatever is out of tune (in the broadest sense)’.

One of the most important aspects of this essay is that it emphasizes improvisation as a form of ‘active life’. This idea later strongly connects with the activities of the Scratch Orchestra, particularly in their explicit aim to ‘function in the public domain.’

Cardew tells us that virtue is ‘is viewed to best advantage in action’ whilst improvisation is only purposeful when 'it occurs in a public environment' for 'its force depends to some extent on public response.' Improvisation, like virtue, depends on a social context and both have value only when realised through actions within such a context. 

...improvisation exemplifies virtuosity

The Praxis of Virtues

Virno defines virtuosity in terms of two particular qualities.

The first is that of 'an activity which finds its own fulfilment (that is, its own purpose) in itself' and therefore has no end product and, like improvisation, no 'object which would survive the performance.’
The second quality is that it is 'an activity which requires the presence of others, which exists only in the presence of an audience.’

비르노는 이 덕미학을 아리스토텔레스의 정치적 행동 개념, 즉 프락시스(praxis)와 연결한다. (포이에시스(poiesis)는 ‘행동과 분리된 산물’을 만드는 것을 목표로 하지만, 프락시스는 행동 자체가 목적.)

For Aristotle, the action which finds fulfilment in itself is also the virtuous action, and following from this, MacIntyre describes those who pursue a practice in terms of furthering its internal goods as those who similarly find fulfilment in the activity itself. Virtuosity then could be defined as 'the performance of a practice at the height of its virtues' and a form of poesis that is realised as praxis. …This is clearly exemplified in Cardew's ethics of improvisation and carries through into the Scratch Orchestra as the conscious creation of a practitioner community based around such an ethic.

Free Software, emphasises the code as something that enters into a continuum of production. It is an 'activity-without-end-product' not in the sense of having no output, but rather in the sense of constantly creating the capacity for production elsewhere. The fact that the knowledge of production can be expressed in notation, in the form of source code, is integral to this.

This is similarly reflected in the Scratch Orchestra, where the production of notation is emphasized as a continuous and public activity. The Scratch Orchestra's notation-based improvisations differ from those performed without a score. Even though the actual performance may not be repeated, the capacity for production elsewhere remains. Therefore, notation not only preserves the history of how a practice develops, thereby aiding in the advancement of its internal goods, but also plays a role in expanding these internal goods into external goods by enabling them to be conveyed to others.