I took influence from Kraftwerk, whom we learnt about in a previous module, for my original idea of the stance and what myself and the other two performers would act like for the performance. Here is one of their song ‘Robots’ which I found fascinating to watch as they barely move throughout, hence ‘Robots’ I suppose.
I had also come across Blue Man Group beforehand, here is one of their performances:
This gave me the idea of masks and black clothing, I also liked the way they performed so mostly scrapped the idea of standing still when performing and as the masks would be on the top of our heads, we could easily sway side to side or bob our heads up and down to create a strange visual whereas if we wore the masks simply on our face it would not be as effective moving about.
I found it quite difficult to research on graphic scores with backstories apart from the ones we had already looked at in lectures and a few images online. I did enjoy ‘Treatise’ by Cornelius Cardew and took influence from that (linked in a previous post). Here are two images that helped me create my Graphic Scores:
As mentioned, I found it quite challenging to find graphic scores to my interest but found a very good article from The Guardian showing all different kinds of graphic scores after researching about Cornelius Cardew.
Graphic Music Scores – In Pictures
I also felt I took an influence of works from the artist Picasso as he uses many shapes and sizes to create avant-garde paintings such as this:
Furthermore, I was influenced by Dawson – Davies (Link in improvisation resources) with the improvisation they created being quite droning and atmospheric. I wanted to base my improvisation around that and into a darker tone.
Rowan Larcher 