"The Contrarian Multimodal Scores of Bil Smith: A Hyper-Referential Analysis" By Alex Kim

"The Contrarian Multimodal Scores of Bil Smith: A Hyper-Referential Analysis" By Alex Kim

Link to PDF File (Article). 26 Pages

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xv6xhTaLb1f9Wvf5dZtmmC9q4qe75Ryc/view?usp=sharing

Fragments of Sound and Vision in Bil Smith’s “Artworks”

A musical score laced with phentermine diet pills, thermochromic metals, and graphite dust might sound like a mad chemist’s experiment rather than a composition. Yet this is precisely the territory of Bil Smith’s contrarian multimodal musical scores, which he pointedly frames as artworks. On his website’s “Artworks” section, titles like “Orgone Dossier” (2024) and “Broke and Broken Cogito” (2024) greet the viewer with cryptic allusions and unconventional materials. These visual scores are not merely eccentric for shock value; they are deliberate explorations of what a musical score can be when freed from tradition. Smith’s compositions are graphic and tactile creations—musical tablatures that unify sound, image, text, and even chemistry into one sensory experience. In this way, each score becomes an art object and philosophical statement at once, inviting the performer and audience into a recursive game of interpretation and introspection.

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