Hollow Graphic features eleven musicians’ spontaneous interpretations of abstract photographs as graphic musical scores.

Because of their non-conventional mode of creation, the scores lack certain fixed aspects of traditional musical notation, such as measures and note values.  However, each pattern’s position in relation to the lines of the staff is universally translatable. The colors, textures, shapes, and other aspects of the image are more ambiguous, leading to varied interpretations among the musicians. Through a more intuitive system of dictating a note or chord’s tone, progression, or duration, these graphic scores deconstruct traditional musical notation and suggest an alternative, multisensory mode of reading an image.

The scores are presented as light boxes and holographic projections, which change in response to the corresponding audio and video of musicians performing. These changes reveal which score is being played, and expose similarities and differences between the musicians’ unique interpretations. Sound is paired with image to illustrate a new musical semiotic system while simultaneously invoking synesthetic experience in the viewer. 

Below: Installation view: Hollow Graphic, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, 2021

This “sound box” features a graphic score that I created by superimposing photographs of birds on wires onto sheet music. After creating the score, I asked musicians Hankus Netsky and Mia Friedman, to create their own musical interpretations. To create the audio component of this piece, I aligned Hankus Netsky and Mia Friedman’s compositions, to expose the similarities and differences in interpretation. The birds are laser cut holes, allowing the sound to travel through the wood.