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 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
• interrupts break linear, internally operating Turing Machine
• in Linux release 'interrupts aren't hidden'
• with this possibility of errors occurs
  • treating error as positive, productive opportunity

• noise as any material that is not recognized by an existing system and is therefore opposed to information

Schooltime Compositions

• Logo Lab Student program at MIT
  • LOGO simple programming language directing 'turtle' Tortoises?
• overlaps Scratch Orchestra:
  • Interest in developing collective, self-directed practical research
    • through self developed notational systems, 'improvisational' activities
  • criticism of institutionalized conservatism (although more or less dependent on)
    • breaking student - tutor hierarchies, learning as self-directed production
  • attitude to (encourage) error

Training in Contingency

• LOGO students 'improvise' with their code, responding and adjusting to turtles performance (similar to coding-performing feedback loop of livecoding)

• Computer and programming languages are more constrained in their interpretation of notation than humans (= danger and opportunity)
• feedback loops
  • unexpected errors of the past become future possibilities
  • with absorbing this, notation records historical development of practices (versioning)

The virtues of Practice

• practice over product
• practice is not solely determined by performance of the skills it comprises. Rather: activities of practice exist within a set of relations (social and historical)
  • internal goods qualities that enable practice to flourish
  • external goods what it produces (might become property to non-practitioners)
  • virtues internal goods, in contrast to ethics are not defined and realised by law, but by action and are not static but evolving with situation
  • vices

• free software (4 principles or virtues)
  • 4. freedom connects internal good of hacking to external good of distribution
• open source (19 rules - not ethics but management model)
• Open Source vs Free Software:
  • both: models of collaborate production
  • free software is distributive model
  • open source: acquisitive model of collaboration

The Praxis of Virtues

• virtuosity the performance of a practice at the height of its virtues
• Hacking emphasizes code as part of a ongoing dialogue between practitioners
• FLOSS today represented through code repositories
  • these foregrounds project as continuum and act as pulic context
• Free software enters continuum of production
• circulates differently
• activity-without-end-product not as in having no output but creating capacity for production elsewhere

• notation records development of practice (aiding internal good) but at the same time expressing these in a format that created capacity for others - becoming external good

Black Notated Music

• notations definition and distribution = political process
• denial of notation for Black musicians (they should play 'improvised') = denial of self-legitimation
  • denial of notation becomes denial of history / development of practice
  • 'free Playing' instead of 'improvisation'
• Black Notated Music goes beyond description of sound on paper - and into functionality of sound at socially structuring level
• not the same as Scratch Orchestra or LOGO - the later are dependent on academia networks
  • For Black Musicians basic access to education was an issue - no academia dependency available, questioning their legitimizing mechanisms (white lap coat)

Legislating for Nonconformity (open licenses)

• problem with copyleft (and notions of 'remix' and legalised 'appropriation):
  • only presents an alternative within system of proprietary, acquisitive production, rather than alternative to that

Distributive Production

• not all collaboration is inherently distributive
• all notations of production are architechtural: inscribe and interweave relations of power
  • notation proposes and is embedded in architechtures of production and inscriptions of power

• history of notation - history of factory
  • current reviving interest in collective improvisation related to transition from factory-within-walls (fordist production lines) to polymorphic, unstable factory-without-walls (post fordist networks)
  • the factory has become improvised collective ensemble, composed of temporary contract workers, consumers unknowingly contributing labour
• agile responsiveness of the virtuoso hacker becomes basic skill of the average employee (Hacker Manifesto, McKenzie Wark?)
• post fordism: virtuosity without virtue - practices directed towards external goods set by management goals (rather than internal goods)

• every aspect of live is notated (in small, previously unknown scripts)
• through such notation immaterial labour is valorised and managed
• livecoding echoes demand or scores to be brought on stage
• Problems of notation should not be solved by the masses, rather notation sof production should constantly made problematic
• Free-as-in-libre labour rather than free-as-in-unpaid can only hppaen when foregrounding freedoms of production rather than freedoms of circulation
• careful to not valorize distributiveness as end in itself (would lead to same condition as rn with 'collaboration')