Notational Mythomechanics - Sculptural Deities and Mythological Figures as Notational Agents

 

Sculptural Deities and Mythological Figures as Notational Agents 

In the evolving praxis of my notational environments, the presence of mythological figures and sculptural deities is not decorative. It is operational. These chromed, hyperreal busts and anthropomorphic forms, rendered in luminous materials like copper, emerald, and magenta chrome operate not only as visual anchors, but as semantic prostheses, channeling layers of ancient narrative, ritual memory, and future code.

My visual scores are already understood as polysemic documents. They become  fields where sound, symbol, and typography cohabitate in a space of productive ambiguity. But when these iconic beings appear within or adjacent to the scores, something far deeper unfolds. The deities become actors of notation, agents of signification, and socio-sonic avatars.

Icon as Instrument: Deities Beyond Ornament

In classical and post-classical traditions, sculptural forms of gods and mythic beings were not merely symbolic, they were operative conduits, perceived to house divine presence or mediate between cosmology and ritual. I revive this conceptual potency through radical materiality and placement: the figures are cast in reflective industrial surfaces (polished chrome, hyper-pigmented metallics), emphasizing their spectral techno-presence. They are no longer static mythic references.  They evolve into performative vectors embedded with notational intent.

• The bronze Aphrodite-like bust, adorned with photographic film canisters and unspooling 35mm tape, immediately suggests a Mnemosynic invocation of a goddess of memory entwined with the apparatus of documentation. Here, memory and media converge into a literal crown of cognition.

• The green Medusa variant with serpentine coils of filmstrip serves as a Medial Oracle, where image capture and narrative petrification blur. The notation is no longer read...it is gazed into. Her hair (composed of film) becomes temporal syntax, a nonlinear archive through which the performer navigates.

• The pink chrome figure crowned with looping metallic spheres conjures a futuristic Sibyl, a prophetess speaking not in language, but through a material grammar of vibration, spherical iteration, and refracted selfhood.

The Notational Gaze: Mythological Presence as Directive

When situated alongside my graphic scores, these mythic figures take on a peculiar function: they look back at the performer. They assert a presence not to be interpreted but reckoned with. In doing so, they reverse the conventional score-reader dynamic.

In traditional music, the performer “decodes” a score. But here, the deity-figure becomes a scopic presence; a watcher, a holder of the symbolic, and possibly even a gatekeeper of hidden sonic layers.

They demand a form of ritual engagement: an acknowledgement that reading is not just interpretive, but also invocative transitioning into a summoning of a hidden epistemology embedded within the visual field.

Primordial Language and Sonic Archetypes

The figural elements that populate my score-worlds speak to pre-linguistic modes of transmission. Mythic figures were among the first symbols through which humans externalized the unknown, encoded ethics, or marked the seasons. By reinserting these beings into a hyper-contemporary, synthetic score landscape, I suggest a looping temporality, where ancient and future code collapse into one another.

• The chrome mother-child-horse triad conjures deep pastoral myths: Demeter-Persephone-Horse, Madonna-Child-Animal. In its techno-form, it becomes a commentary on maternal continuity, power exchange, and sonic domestication. In performance, it may anchor affective registers guiding tempo through tenderness, movement through tension.

• The modular diagram with the central orange bust and symbolic nodes suggests a ritual cartography as if the deity is a hub of vibrational logic, and the symbols around it are ritual gestures or performative glyphs. This is not so much a diagram as a mytho-sonic map, where sound is routed through iconography and visual talismans.

The Body as Notation: Metallic Flesh and Sonic Conductivity

These sculptural forms, with their slick, seamless surfaces and hypermaterial bodies, also foreground a vital idea: that the body itself is a notational device. Their presence asserts that sound-making is not only cerebral or symbolic, but corporeal, erotic, and sculptural.

The deities’ mirrored finishes imply reflexivity as the performer is reflected in the mythic figure, collapsing the boundary between observer and observed. The performer becomes part of the score, just as the figure has become part of the sonic architecture. This dynamic relationship activates the mythic figure not just as muse, but as co-performer.

These are not idols. These are affective engines.

Hidden Significance: Myth, Memory, Media

Embedded within these sculptures is a codex of cultural residues:

• The film spools evoke the camera obscura and media theory, memory as translation, history as framing device.

• The choice of metallic chroma alludes to consumerist fetishism, yet reframes it as sacred, gilded noise made divine.

• The retro-feminine beach figures with the dog introduce a satire of gendered iconography, forming a kind of mythological chorus: archetypes of femininity both controlled and re-enchanted.

These artifacts operate as semantic overloaders.  They become iconic disruptions that cause the score to behave differently in space, time, and meaning. In essence, my sculptures function as auratic triggers: embedded nodes of visual charisma that detune rationality and heighten sonic play.

Sculptural Deities as Notational Mythomechanics

The use of mythological, sculptural beings within my visual scores is a deeply curated epistemology.  It presents a speculative practice where sonic semiotics, cultural memory, and visual charisma collide. These figures are not just adornments or thematic flourishes.  They are actors, symbols, and technologies of meaning. They house the primordial logics of music before notation, before language when meaning was still a ritual, and sound was an offering.

To engage with these scores is to enter a mythomechanical space: one where performance becomes a form of invocation, and where reading becomes a ritual act as directed by silent gods with mirrored eyes.