Exposition

Tactile Paths: on and through Notation for Improvisers (2017)

Christopher Williams
open exposition

About this exposition

Tactile Paths is a native digital, media-rich PhD dissertation. It aims to articulate and expand the nexus of notation and improvisation in contemporary and experimental music. The project interweaves direct artistic experience with insights from improvisation studies, the social sciences, philosophy, and various scholarship in the arts to reveal methodological connections among diverse artists such as Richard Barrett, Cornelius Cardew, Malcolm Goldstein, Lawrence Halprin, Bob Ostertag, Ben Patterson, and the author. By focusing on how notation is used, rather than on what it represents in an abstract sense, the author shows how written scores emerge from and feed back into ongoing improvisational processes. Thus, it is argued, they are not fixed texts whose primary purpose is to prescribe and preserve, but rather tactile paths in the improviser’s ever-crescent musical and social environment. This practice-based approach aims to lay the conceptual groundwork for theorizing and broadening the creative relevance of work whose importance to practitioners belies its marginal presence in academia and institutions.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsnotation, improvisation, Experimental music, contemporary music
date13/12/2016
published04/05/2017
last modified04/05/2017
statuspublished
share statusprivate
affiliationAcademy of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Leiden
licenseAll rights reserved
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/100392/100393
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/rc.100392
published inResearch Catalogue
connected toAcademy of Creative and Performing Arts
external linkwww.tactilepaths.net


Simple Media

id name copyright license
102897 wheatfield dude All rights reserved
102892 carpet noone All rights reserved
102886 patterson-1 Benjamin Patterson, 1999 All rights reserved
102884 patterson-0 Benjamin Patterson, 1999 All rights reserved
102880 patterson_variations_score Ben Patterson, 1999 All rights reserved
102847 patterson_variations_090314 cameraman All rights reserved
102808 patterson_variations_090314 Cameraman All rights reserved
100405 patterson_variations_score Ben Patterson, 1999 All rights reserved
100399 Jade Mountain Soundings Zachary Kerschberg All rights reserved

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