This project documents graphic scores—works that exist between image and sound, between instruction and interpretation.

Between 1957 and 1969, composers abandoned traditional musical notation.

They created visual systems. Maps for the unmappable. Instructions for organized chaos.

(1957) Daphne Oram - Oramics

(1958) John Cage - Fontana Mix

(1961) Pauline Oliveros - Sound Patterns

(1963-1967) Cornelius Cardew - Treatise

DAPHNE
ORAM

1957

oramics

Daphne Oram drew sound before it existed.

Oramics Machine. Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition in Tower Folly, Fairseat, Wrotham, Kent
Source

Working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, she developed Oramics: a system that converted drawn shapes into electronic sound. Her "drawn sound" technique used photoelectric cells to read patterns on 35mm film strips.

Daphne Oram working in studio:

Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition in Tower Folly, Fairseat, Wrotham, Kent. Source

Visual input. Sonic output. Oram’s machine personalized synthesis.

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Oram’s painted glass waveform slides.

Source:

The Science Museum, London

Daphne painting waveforms at the Oramics Machine

Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition in Tower Folly, Fairseat, Wrotham, Kent

Oramics was a pioneering experiment in possible sound coding and conversion using novel machine technologies.

She proved that sound could be authored with a brush stroke.

Close up of Daphne painting waveforms

Oramics Graphic Sound Diagram

Close up of analogue waveforms & pitch control circuits

JOHN
CAGE

1958

fontana mix

Chance operations. Transparency. Overlap.

Fontana Mix. Material for Tape Music of that Title. Milan, 1958

John Cage's Fontana Mix uses ten transparent sheets with points and lines, six paper sheets with curves, and a graph. The performer overlays them randomly, then traces connection points to generate notation.

Scan of John Cage original score Fontana Mix title page. Milan 1958

Distributed 1960 Henmar press NY, NY

Cage let the materials make decisions on their own.

John Cage

Prepared piano c. 1954

Fontana Mix Instructions for creating score and utilization of score materials

Milan 1958

Fontana Mix

Scans of score materials

Milan 1958

Fontana Mix

Scans of score materials

Milan 1958

Cage removes authorship. The material composes. The composer sets parameters with minimal input, then allows the score to reveal itself.

Indeterminacy as process

Fontana Mix

Scans of score materials

Milan 1958

Luciano Berio - E. E. Cummings / Sylvano Bussotti / John Cage – Circles / Frammento / Aria With Fontana Mix

Time Records 1962

PAULINE
OLIVEROS

1961

sound patterns

A score that looks like seismographic activity. A map of vocal chaos.

Pauline Oliveros

Sound Patterns 1961 Score

Pauline Oliveros's Sound Patterns abandons words entirely. Singers read shapes, clusters, densities. The notation depicts breathing, clicking, tongue percussion, vocal fry.

Pauline Oliveros. Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, San Francisco. Source

The mouth as extension of the human body forms an opening for indeterminacy in this sonic meditation.

Excerpt, Sound Patterns 1961 Score

Excerpt, Wind Horse for Chorus 1989 Score

Oliveros called it "deep listening." Designed to improve a practitioner’s sonic awareness, with the potential to increase creativity, enhance openness and compassion, and expand overall consciousness.

The score documents texture, not melody. Breath, not pitch.

Pauline Oliveros and the female

Ensemble performing Teach Yourself to Fly from Sonic Meditations, 1970, Rancho Santa Fe, CA

CORNELIUS
CARDEW

1963-1967

treatise

193 pages of improvised graphic interpretation.

Excerpt, Treatise 1963-1967 Score

Published 1967, The Gallery Upstairs Press, Buffalo, N.Y.

Cornelius Cardew's Treatise is one of the longest graphic scores ever created. Circles, lines, geometric forms, staffs that warp and dissolve. Formal complexities give way to a vast open architecture between the kaleidoscopic staffs.

Cornelius Cardew, (Source)

Cornelius Cardew Treatise Original Bound Score. (Source)

Cardew provided no key. No legend. No "correct" interpretation.

Excerpts, Treatise 1963-1967 Score

Published 1967, The Gallery Upstairs Press, Buffalo, N.Y.

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Excerpt, Treatise 1963-1967 Score

Published 1967, The Gallery Upstairs Press, Buffalo, N.Y.

Performers are readers. Readers are interpreters. Open interpretation allowed the performer to become the composer.

The score is a proposition, not a prescription.

Excerpt, Treatise 1963-1967 Score

Published 1967, The Gallery Upstairs Press, Buffalo, N.Y.

Excerpt, Treatise 1963-1967 Score

Published 1967, The Gallery Upstairs Press, Buffalo, N.Y.

Cornelius-Cardew-Scratch-Music-and-George-Ohr-Pottery-4.jpg

Scratch Music Cover, Cornelius Cardew. 1972

Cardew energetically denied any form of hierarchy in not only musical but political organization. He sought an open and equal plane when it came to the creation, authorship, and realization of music.

THE SHOP

Experimental notation becomes wearable research.

Each shirt is created through a two-layer dye process—successive applications where the second layer responds to the first.

Like graphic notation, the method is deliberate but the outcome resists total control. Pigment migrates, overlaps, creates patterns we can guide but not dictate.