The Amanuensis — a vehicle for real-time graphic score generation
Gino RobairAs an improviser and composer, I often combine both approaches within a single piece, while keeping an eye open for multilayered results. A recent work of mine that satisfies these criteria is The Amanuensis, a structured improvisation that grew out of my opera, I, Norton.
The main focus of The Amanuensis is to generate and interpret a graphic score in real time, but in a way that results in multiple streams of information. The vehicle is shorthand dictation, which was originally designed to capture spoken language based on the sound of words. In this piece, the translation goes both ways: the sound of spoken words is translated into shorthand, which in turn becomes the graphic score for the performers to interpret when it is projected onto a screen.
An aspect of the piece that I find interesting is that the majority of people involved—audience and performers—do not read shorthand (and, in fact, there are several competing styles of shorthand notation to choose from). Although everyone hears the text being read out loud, the transcription is experienced primarily in a visual way. The information encoded into the graphic symbols is ignored by the performers.
Rather than take a one-to-one approach when interpreting the handwritten shapes (e.g., a line that curves upward results in everyone playing a sound that goes higher in pitch or loudness), interpretive strategies are employed. These include canonic playing, a trio section where only three performers can be active at a time, and a bingo-like game where players are active only when they see a shape on the screen that matches one on their card.
Nothing about the content of the text has been mentioned thus far: in keeping with the title of the piece, the text comes from external sources. My original intention was that the material would be generated automatically during the performance using a software algorithm that grabs phrases from the Web, based on a set of criteria that can be altered for each event. I have also used an analog approach, cutting up texts (in this case, from a variety of shorthand manuals dating back a century or more) and putting the fragments into a container from which the reader blindly chooses. In every case, a different story emerges each time the piece is realised.
The indeterminate textual element is further enhanced when more than one reader is included (and encouraged to let their readings overlap), yet only one person is taking dictation. The resulting shorthand transcription will include elements of both texts, and the audience member who can read shorthand will be treated to a collaged text. When more than one transcriber is used, each of their shorthand transcriptions will be slightly different, and the projections can be overlapped or shown separately.
Notable performances have been done at the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra Festival VI (2013) and the 17th Annual Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival in Oakland, CA (2014).
In 2015, Wolf Notes invited composers and musicians to write a short text about one of their own pieces. A word count of no more than 500-words was the only guidance given.
Gino Robair examines how systems of human interaction are influenced by perceptions of materiality. As a composer and percussionist, Gino has recorded with Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, John Butcher, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Otomo Yoshihide, and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. His opera, I, Norton, based on the life of the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, has been performed throughout North America and Europe.