Typically, the notation systems of musical scores do not possess a work identity in the sense of a piece of art. They are a means to an end, a tool that enables the realization of a musical work. While it is completely unimportant how a sheet of music looks as long as it is decodable and can thus always reproduce the same piece of music, a painting or sculpture, for example, is a unique, directly experienceable phenomenon, a work of art, an original. In my new series, I have elevated the aesthetically insignificant, fleeting, and temporary character of a musical score to the level of an artwork by crafting it in an artistic, stylistic, and technical manner. The musical scores become graphic artworks, and through an experimental approach to notation, inspired by the individually developed systems of contemporary composers, they lose any properties that define them as a notation system. In this way, I reverse the direction of the relationship between a musical score and the performed piece. The notation representation itself becomes the artwork and is transformed into an original, while the performed interpretations of a piece are subject to the variability, flexibility, arbitrariness, intuition, and imagination of the performer. Theoretical references for this cycle include: Walter Benjamin with his considerations on the technical reproducibility of the artwork, Richard Wollheim with his ideas about the artwork as type and token, Nelson Goodman’s distinction between allographic and autographic characteristics of art, conceptual art, appropriation art, Andy Warhol, Mike Bidlo, Eleni Sturtevant, Luhmann’s systems theory, as well as pop music, electronic music, and new music.
Spring 2024