P. 40
It started as 'scores' of the interrelationships of different fields of art and developed into 'scores' for all human fields such as grocery lists and calendars. Halprin describes himself as a "professional environmental designer and planner involved in the broad landscape where human beings and nature interface" and his wife Ann Halprin is a dancer and choreographer. Both of their fields are process-oriented and not result-oriented, so a deep involvement in activity is important for both. I thought that could be good for my thesis, to work in a process-oriented way and not only a result-oriented way. I think too many people focus on the result and forget the process. It is the same when it comes to travelling, people might not see the travel to the destination as a part of the trip, but for me is the whole process important. Meeting new people along the way and experiencing new ways of getting around. Halprin says "The process is like an iceberg - 9/10 invisible but vital to achievement." 'Scoring' will make any process visible in any art field, a way to communicate design processes over time and space. Many different people anywhere in the world could communicate with others in another place, to act together on a creation, that allows participation, feedback and communication.
P. 40-41
Halprin explored primitive scores, mystical scores, and scores for happenings, based on his wife's work and his friends who have been pushing the boundaries of their art. His book will explore both personal experiences (which he has explored the most) and street scores, ecological scores, city scores and community scores. I think it is good that he has explored many different types to make sure that they work across many fields and purposes.
What do you need to be a good 'scorer'?:
scores should be non-judgemental
outside witnessing must be reached in some instances
preliminary work:
Allow for feedback: analysis before, during, and after allow for change
focus on the creative process: only scores will not do that
All of these points are a good basis for a person wanting to try scoring. It shows that the process is in focus.
P. 42-43
Halprin made a cycle of four points, all working together is important and they must interact with each other. It is the RSVP Cycle:
" R - Resources, which are what you have to work with. These include human and physical resources and their motivation and aims.
S - Scores, which describe the process leading to the performance.
V - Valuation, which analyses the results of action and possible selectivity and decisions. The term 'valuation' is one coined to suggest the action-oriented as well as the decision-oriented aspects of V in the cycle.
P - Performance, which is the resultant of scores and is the 'style' of the process."
Fig from the text.
Note: Halprin, 2014, p.43.
All the points I listed before come in handy now when you wanna use the RSVP Fig.1. And there I will make another list of how it should be used:
Must feedback along the way, each to the other
Make communication possible
Must all be visible continuously
Avoid secrecy and the manipulation of people
From the figure you can also see that:
The cycle operates in any direction
Overlapping
Can start at any point
Move in any direction
I think the point of avoiding secrecy is very good so people can't manipulate the process. I think it is unfortunately common that people slightly change things or manipulate them to go towards the result they want. It might be an instinct but it destroys the point of scoring and the natural rhythm. Linking back to rhythm analysis, you might have to step out of "your self" to be able to see what is in front of you without manipulation or specific opinions.
The cycle must work at two levels. The personal and private level and the community group-oriented level.
The self-oriented cycle. is the inner one and the group-oriented is the outer cycle.
Self-oriented is:
Gestalt psychology, which is one's own personal gestalt.
The people who are close to you
Your personal environment
Attitudes
Interests
hang-ups;
one's motivational inner world
I feel like this one again reflects on rhythm analysis. With a pinch of Vibrant matter, in the way that things are shaped by various factors and as humans, we might see it differently. But Vibrant matter is also in the outer cycle a bit, I guess they both are. Everything links together somehow, in a way that they all are trying to make some understanding of the world that we live in.
P. 44
You can start wherever you want in the cycle, if you start at P - Performance, it means that you are improvising. It is sometimes important in the creative field to maybe get over obstacles or free ideas. But it will link back to and provide information to the other categories in the cycle.
Something Halprin is clear about is that it is not meant to categorize or organize. It should be a free process that has one main purpose, to make the process visible. If you can see the process, it might help you to realize where you might be stuck, to see what is causing it. It is a great way to help you along the way and might assist you in your progress. Though it has nothing to do with talent or ability.
P. 44-45
Looking at Halprins' view as an ecological designer, which is something I am interested in myself too. He sees the earth and the life process as a model for the creative process. Which I find inspiring because I think that it is a great example of how we can learn from and work with nature. In today's society, we have gotten away too much from our natural rhythms. To work together with our ecosystem and all the interrelated parts it has. Our communities have their systems, but they might not be aligned with the rest of the planet. Talking about not taking too much or outweighing the other (such as humans destroying too much of nature), it should be that: "No one force outweighs the other. This I believe true of all human affairs and a model for the life processes that we need to integrate ourselves."
P. 45-46
What we learn and focus on on these two last pages is that the journey or the process is more important than the goal. I could not agree more, if you only focus on the goal you might miss all the important steps to make the goal function. If we take school and learning as an example. It is a big focus on what you should learn, and not on how the best way to learn works for you. Everyone works differently if I am trying to learn a language, I can not just sit and read the words to learn. The process of learning is very important, it should be fun and meaningful to you. I think there is a big change that needs to be made in the educational system. But that is a topic for another time. Perfection is also mentioned in the text, and there is no such thing as perfection, maybe there is individual perfection but what I find perfect might be different for someone else. If I should stay motivated I need a good process instead of just doing it to reach my goal. That is what I think 'scoring' is about. It is a non-utopian sense of scoring.
"The RSVP cycle is a balance scheme in which all the parts are mutually related and constantly interacting. It functions best when all parts are operating. Its purpose is to make procedures and processes visible, to allow for constant communication and ultimately to ensure the diversity and pluralism necessary for change and growth."
The two last sentences are just how nature and ecosystems work. All the parts in an ecosystem work together and I could use 'scores' to see the interactions and the interference of all the factors, in nature and design. To better understand the process and develop together with nature.
I chose some words from the text:
Visible
Hidden
Interrelationships
Time
Gestalt
Ecosystem
Error
Ongoingness
Process-oriented
The three chosen words with their verbs:
Ecosystem To circle, To rotate, To function
Ongoingness To continue, To move
Process-oriented To act with, To live, To be present
With all of this, we moved on to the task of taking scores of a place. My group (Naz, Sina, Samia and I) chose the lift. For 45 minutes we stood in there, going up and down and sometimes standing still. Naz felt some motion sickness and had to go out every once in a while. We started with noting things happening in the lift, I wrote some points down:
Hurry to get in the lift
Small talk!!
Waiting
Silence
Security camera
Observing others conversations
Move for others
Green and red flashing
We started very soon to organize who did what and kept track of what. Naz recorded the sounds she heard inside and outside the lift. Sina recorded the amount of people coming in and out of the lift. Samia focused on noises. Here are their drawings:
I had the task of recording what floors the lift went to and for how long it stayed. My drawing looks like this:
At the top are the starting time and end time noted. 12.00-12.25, was the time I recorded the different floors. I also noted the different floors 0-4. Then I started putting a point where we stopped and if the doors opened and closed on the same floor. The horizontal lines are longer if we stand still in a place for a longer time.
After this, we were asked to design or perform or do something with this as we saw fit. We were discussing that my drawing looked like notes almost so we came up with the idea to play piano with them. We went down to the piano and I played my drawing on the notes C-D-E-F-G C representing 0 and G representing 4 and so on. We recorded this and decided to make a performance with the "Lift music". The performance was thought to be in the lift and happen at specific movements and actions. The notes we recorded would play in our performance on the levels the lift went to. We also had four different tasks to perform to with our designs from the EPC:
Naz: Every time the lift doors opened and closed the bells would sound on her design.
Sina: Played on his design like drums every time people went into the lift and out.
Samia: Played her instrument in sync with all the noises happening inside and outside the lift.
Linnéa: I focused on dancing with my dress and the movements aligned with the movement of the lift (the notes that were played) Up means some sort of rising movement and down means some sort of downward movement. If we were standing still I could pause or move on the same level.
We made a movie to record this see the video HERE.
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