Edinburgh Napier University

  ‘There it is, another code ready to be used’ is a notational environment and a system for improvisation on any instrument of the saxophone family (with or without live electronics) developed by Dimitris Papageorgiou. The project is the result of an artistic research study launched in June 2018 as part of Dimitris’ postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Artistic Research, Uniarts Helsinki. Acknowledgement goes to saxophonist Francisco Sánchez Díaz for his invaluable suggestions. The first part of this lecture-recital will explore Dimitris’ developing theory through practice and will attempt to translate ‘com-provisation’ as syn-schediasmos (GR: συν-σχεδιασμός) by proposing ‘composition’ (synthesis) as a phenomenon enacted by all participants in an ecology of components, and by suggesting ‘improvisation’ (autoschediasmos) as a performance practice that manifests a process of discovering akin to that of ‘wayfinding’ and drawing (schediázo: ‘to draw’). Echoing Jonathan Impett’s proposition of notations as “forms of soft-technology,” the presentation will suggest that notations, rather than compositional products or fields of authoritative acts, can be thought of as another component within a dynamic system of correspondences between people, instruments, and technologies. From this basis, the presentation will proceed by documenting the notational and live electronics methodologies, strategies and design frameworks explored during the development of ‘There it is, another code ready to be used’, in addition to the demonstrating of examples by Francisco. The aim is to examine ways in which this notational environment: 1) provides for the improvisational fact to come about while enacting the notations’ materiality and inscribed affordances, with the sounding-figure emerging through gestural synergy, attentive listening, and the performer’s physicality; and 2) aligns the theory with the practice of ‘comprovisation’, repurposed here to be understood as syn-schediasmos. The lecture-recital will either begin or close with a performance (ca. 10 minutes) of the system (with electronics).