The text below was written prior to the PhD project in plastic music. The plan changed and the piece(s) that resulted are found at plasticmusic.net. I'm leaving it in here to remind me of how I got to the final work and what ideas that I left behind might be worth resurrecting
I attempted here to maintain the primacy of the ear so stressed in acousmatics, while attempting to give a visual AND aural part for a performer. It will be easy to obscure the player, in order to comply with the accepted definition, but I don't believe, at least in this case, that is what is important about the approach.
The intent is, that the player, not just the composer, will be required to use his ear to create the part. In order to give the player something to work with, I am supplying a recording and a graphic score. I've already tried free improv and although the results were solid, interesting, and actually beautiful, (see NYU live recording) I am unconvinced that intent and performance were synonymous.
I've referred before to Walker Percy in my nascent attempt at sound art, and again I think it's appropriate in this context. Percy's essay, Metaphor As Mistake, proposed that authentic poetic experience can be attained by mistake. That it is the tension created between an object and its name that is the source of that experience.
Here the ear will reign as the prime "reader" of the score. Although a graphic element does exist, it also is a derivative of a completed fixed source. The model for the cellist is a set of samples of metals being quickly cooled by solid carbon dioxide: dry ice. The cellist, in addition to the graphic, will have an extracted soundfile 'solo' part by which to interpret his part. The aforementioned 'tension' comes in as the cellist attempts sounds on his instrument that actually cannot be made. There is precedent for this interpretative approach. One such example is John Zorn's Cobra. In Cobra players are required from time to time to pass a line around the group. Clearly drums, trumpet, and guitars have limited access to each others' vocabulary and that's where the fun starts.
Ideally for the performance, I would like to have a screen in front of the player. Three panels, each a part of the graphic score, obscures or partially obscures the cellist. The audience will see one side of the score and the performer the other. I've yet to work out exactly how to do this. One idea is to have it done on untreated canvas so different views were seen by each. I am also not clear on the techniques on painting this way, nor do I have a practical workspace, so the canvases may have to be commissioned. Although my doing the painting has its obvious advantages, there is also much to be said for another ear's ideas being brought forth. Details are forthcoming but I would like to forgo too much prejudging of the end form at this point. I have several painters in a wide variety of styles in mind either to instruct me or to do the work themselves.