Monte Albán - LAE:// Music - Originally Published in 2017
Revisiting a series of graphic musical scores I produced while in graduate school.
I started grad school at VCFA in 2017. That first semester, I spent my time designing and implementing various systems for producing music and other audio material, by means of graphic scores.
I really dug this concept, using a non-western/traditional document to instruct or guide a musician (or designer) on how to go about a piece of music. This video below is one of my favorite tangental outputs from the 2D grid system I was working on.
Basically, the shapes, working on a loose grid, would correspond to a position/note in a predetermined scale. The background initially was only there to influence the mood. These were the very beginnings of the system, which split into separate and more complex ideas down the road.
The footage used in this psychedelic fever-dream of an A/V experience is a compilation of clips I filmed while in Oaxaca in 2016, at the ruins of, you guessed it, Monte Albán.
* Examples of the (2 of 16) posters used to generate the chordal tones heard in the piece.