Frequently, some reflections on a given artistic discipline may benefit from concepts and derivations pertaining to other disciplines, which have developed specific elements of it in relation to their own context but which may have also raised important questions that resonate with the subject of inquiry.
Looking to the dynamics between the system audience-performers or composer-performers within indeterminacy artworks, an important input can be given by the reflections outlined by Espen J. Aarseth in his widely known Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. In this work, the author tries to outline the theory of "typology of cybertext”, aiming to classify ergodic texts by their functional qualities. Espen Aarseth is the father of the analysis of ergodic literature, which, in the same book, he defines and states the definition as “literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text.”
This analysis could be considered as a “normal” inquiry into the relationship between a text, its associated media, and reader engagement; it was because of the novelty of the topic and the lacking of a methodology around ergodic texts that made Aarseth delve into such precise and deep considerations. The term “ergodic” derives from the combination of two Greek words, “ergon”, meaning "work", and “hodos”, meaning “path". It is important to notice that the “non-trivial effort” mainly relies on the fact that it is common to conceiving literature as a linear discipline, where the reader is involved only as a “passive” actor, while instead the literature that Aarseth includes in his research doesn’t have this limit, and actually often involves an active role of the reader due to different type of media or text disposition/fruition. Therefore, what he refers to is that kind of literature that you can experience by changing the order to the given texts, navigating in them, changing its structure and even choosing to avoid part of them. In modern times, these approaches have also undergone expansion and enhancement, thanks to technological improvements that enable texts to exist within the digital realm. Consequently, the media through which texts are presented can change, along with their features. A straightforward and immediate example could illustrate this point: consider the difference between reading an adventure book in its traditional format, where the reader must navigate through chapters to unravel the story's adventure, and reading the same story on a tablet or an ebook. In the digital format, the physical labyrinthine arrangement has already been streamlined by the device. This occurs through the utilization of digital frameworks that leverage the immateriality of the content within the device. Consequently, they incorporate new elements that not only "enhance" or "remedy" the user experience but also exert a significant influence on it. From these new fields of biunivocal relationships (media - subject and vice versa) arises the need for a structured analysis that delves into the interconnected effects of these new media and how their characteristics impact not only the content they deliver, but also users' interactions with such content and media. Terms like hypertexts appear, meaning the availability of parallel section of texts available through other accessible displays, being web pages or others, determining an unprecedented change in the information mapping. Rightfully, this complex system could be seen as a net of which the texts involved are the node. This modification could be considered, in a sense, as relevant as the introduction of the perspective in Renaissance paintings.
This transformation resonates strongly with the realm of music, particularly when written texts (including books) are juxtaposed with musical scores. Although digital scores are less prevalent than text consumption on digital devices nowadays, it is important to note that music innovators extensively and creatively experimented with open forms and non-linear structures in more analog ways. We have witnessed this experimentation with figures like Cage, Fluxus groups, Zorn, as well as Stockhausen, Boulez, and Maderna in Europe. Game pieces, akin to gamebooks, represent a facet of this evolutionary trajectory, distinguished by their unique characteristics and features that offer diverse approaches and experiences for each listener/reader.
Because of the rise of this type of texts, Aarseth finds himself stuck in the broad and confused world of terminology and specific and individualistic analysis that was been done since that point. In the book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, he will therefore start an attempt of typology of this new notions, in order to proceed with the analysis of a cybertext. He starts by dividing a text primary element, scriptons and textons, defining them as “strings [of texts] as they appear to readers” for the first, and “strings as they exists in the text” for the latter. Between these two instances relies the “transversal function”, “the mechanism by which scripts are revealed or generated from sextons and presented to the user of the text.” Their application to music score are clear and evident, not even needing for further explanation.
What comes after, instead, is what could trigger deeper and more interesting relation: Aarseth proceed in fact in giving some variables of the transversal function, which are for examples the Dynamics (the state of scriptons, static or in movement), the Transiency (the change of state of a text upon users activation), the Access (the scriptons availability) and so on. One of these features is determining to start designing a first limit of the field to be taken in consideration: the Perspective, defined as personal “if the text requires the user to play a strategic role as a character in the world described by the text”, or impersonal if not. The examples are decisive: Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler…, that showcases a recursive and intertwined meta-story that pretends to involve the reader as a participant. The reader, though, doesn’t have to make any practical or active decision. The opportunity for the reader to skip chapters or to go back to read previous ones is not mentioned. The book is a demonstration of a process, not a medium that invites the users to experience the process itself. This difference is something that could really help the current dissertation in finding a first defining of what a game piece is. Standing on Aarseth typology structure, it is clear that two types of musical game exists: the ones with a personal perspective and the one with an impersonal perspective.
In music, the difference is even more relevant due to an “extra” medium that doesn’t exist in the realm of literature: the performer, who has the role to bring the sonic outcome of a composition to the audience. Music is not experienced by reading a score by ourselves, as literature is by reading books autonomously; music is almost always experienced via a third element in the chain who enhances the possibility of a perspective. In that sense, the “player(s)” one and the “audience” perspective can be defined as the “hyper-personal” and “personal” perspective.
In this sense, there should be another aspect to be taken in consideration, previously mentioned: the role of technology in this process. Videogames have expanded the possibilities for a personal perspective in storytelling. These narratives are no longer solely text-based but have their origins, as seen in works like Colossal Cave Adventure by Will Crowther, a text-based adventure game universally recognized as one of the first examples of interactive fiction. The advent of video games can be seen in parallel to the advent of electronic music, through which often the medium of the performer is canceled by the machine’s capacities to make sounds and realize composer’s intentions immediately. Besides such a naive and direct correlation, all the previously mentioned examples of game pieces could have been allocated in a specific point of an imaginary graph of Perspective, as defined by Aaerseth, and Tech: the Biedermeier Musikalisches Würfelspiel, that involved the audience through dice (thus involving them); the Zorn composition, using cards to address indication (not involving the audience, therefore “hyperpersonal”) and more modern and multimedial example that will further explained in this chapter. Such a chart would probably not show an increasing frequency in audience involvement (therefore “personal” Perspective) in relation to the tech development in time. As the Norwegian research also mentions, the development of technology doesn’t directly influence per se the approach to the content of such media, not as directly as the desire by the author to make processes transparent or not, to involve their audience or not.
Aaerseth reflections hold significance in the context of game music in order to mark some boundaries. While it is definitely hard to define exactly what a game is, it may be less difficult to define when something is actually not a game. Or, at least, when an open-form presents some features of game dynamics but is more inclined in pursuing a wider idea of indeterminacy, not ruled by any ludified behaviour or structure.
While it is true that every game is basically an open form, the opposite is not true at all.
This author dedicated attention to the individuation and the definition of games structure in literatures, aiming to find a clear analytical toolkit to individuate, classify, and separate them from other forms of non-linear structures. His findings hold a great importance for the musical landscape as well.