Graphic notation just as classical notation is a way to write and express music, although graphic notation breaks away from the conservative rules of western classical notation, having no boundaries and limits, making any design and notation able to translate into sound. An example will be the picture above, a small extract from Cornelius Cardew “Treatise”. A piece made of 193 pages with different designs and notations, considered as one of the greatest graphical scores ever design (Hall, 2021). Cardew’s work can be argued that is not merely a sound practice but a visual work of art, he has a background in graphic design and each page of the piece is fielled with beautiful designs and drawings, making this piece a visual symphony. His score has not further explanation but its graphics, giving totally freedom of interpretation to the performer, making every performance totally unique (Forrest, 2019).

Using Autodraw, I decided to create my own graphic score. My main objective of it was to create a design that doesn’t have a time linear aspect, like most graphic notation have. I decided to draw a room instead, the performer would have to make sound that fits that room.

Above is a picture of my final design. The symbols at the back of the room are rules that I established for the performer to follow. Both the treble clef and bass clef with the red cross mean that no western notation tuning can be used. The ear with the lighting means that all sounds must be electronically made, preferable from a VCO. The shoe at the bottom is used to establish where the floor of the room is. The curved lines in the walls are symbols for acoustic diffusers, this makes the performer aware of the acoustic properties of the room. Finally the silhouette of the person meditating is a symbol that is totally made for own interpretation. For this drawing I was inspired by the piece “I am sitting in a room” by Alvin Lucier. In this piece Lucier recorded his voice and then played it back to a wall, repeating this process a several times until the room acoustic is the only sound left. This piece made me think about how acoustics can influence a composition or piece, giving me the idea to make it the main focus of my graphic notation.

To take this idea to the next level, I decided to experiment using the autodraw graphic score and a max for life device called image to midi converter, that literally converts images into midi notation.

Above is the final result. As you may guessed, when the midi was played back using a software synth the result was very harsh, due the vast amount of pitch information. This experiment could work better in the future if I used a much simpler graphic notation design and I could organize the pitches triggered with a scale midi effect.