User:Kim/reading/Problems of Notation

All Problems of Notation Will be Solved by the Masses: Free Open Form Performance, Free/Libre Open Source Software, and Distributive Practice

Simon Yuill

• recent valorization of 'collaboration' omits basic condition of collaboration - that all forms of production ultimately rely on various degrees and arrangements
• 'collaboration' becomes commodified (art, consumer as worker)
• can FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) counteract?
• problems with FLOSS:
  • issue of collaboration and legislation (and how these relate to medium code)
  • FLOSS emerging cultural practices fail to relate to outside (non-FLOSS art/ culture)
    • these practices are not collaborative but distributive
• article outlines relation between notational production and distributive practice

Livecoding

• embodies FLOSS key principles (code - algorithms - music)

1. continual re-writing of code as primary mode of artistic production
2. presentation of the work as open ended, mutable rather than static artefact

Livecoding Aesthetics

• production is 'live' and living
• workshops / pedagogic aspect important

Hacklabs + Hackmeets

• First Hacklabs developed in Europe - emerging from squatting movements
• FLOSS + Hacklabs share principle of 'enabling the possibility of production by others'

collaborative practice brings together production of many under single goal (directing disposition of every individuals labour)
distributive practice enables disposition of labour by others (under their own direction)

• is facilitated in the output of production as notation/ code
• not only creating product but letting it become an active being beyond initial implementation

Notational production

• is not unique to software
• in lifecoding: specificity of code is opened towards indeterminism of improvisation
• echoes music period of 'free playing' Jazz + avant-garde compositional systems
  • 'free play' instead of improvisation (see Black Notational Production)

Scratch History

• emerged from public classes (workers education centre) in experimental music in UK, late 1960s
• Scratch music pieces were active experimentation with different notational forms (graphic, musical, collage...)
• all notations from Scratch Orchestra were freely distributable
• encouraged to not only copy but use, add and modify scores

Noise Interrupts

• Scratch Orchestra Nature Study Notes set up small scale operating systems
  • organizational structures enabling other works to be produced within them
  • performance as an operating system
• In conventional computers interrupt mechanism enables signals from peripheral devices (keyboard, mouse) to enter operating system
  • when interrupt signal is received - computer selects response action
  • response chosen by matching identifier code for each signal (pre programmed routines aka 'interrupt handlers')
• interrupt creates vector between internal operation, notational operation and contingency of outside (physical) world

HAKMEM Tortoises?