Desiring Machines and Impressions: Roussel and the Notational Logic of Subjective Mechanics

Desiring Machines and Impressions of Africa: Roussel and the Notational Logic of Subjective Mechanics

At the surreal edge of early 20th-century invention lies Impressions d’Afrique, Raymond Roussel’s theatrical hallucination of mechanical marvels, linguistic automata, and ritualized absurdities. It is not merely a play or novel, but a structural machine in itself—one powered less by plot than by processes of invention. Within its eccentric tableaux, Roussel presented machines that operated without function, rituals without precedent, and contraptions whose logic bypassed utility altogether. These artificial systems, unconcerned with realism, foreshadowed a lineage of conceptual machinery that would be retooled by artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia—figures who took Roussel’s perverse mechanization and rendered it into a language of erotic engineering and poetic obstruction.

Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique presents a world governed not by mechanical efficiency but by mental interference. His machines are metaphysical jokes, often producing aesthetic or linguistic results rather than physical outcomes. It is precisely this tension—between the machinic and the subjective—that so deeply influenced Duchamp’s own diagrams of desire, most notably in his Large Glass, or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Here, the bachelor machine is an erotically frustrated system—a parody of Newtonian logic in which fluids stall, pistons hesitate, and desire misfires across layers of transparent glass. The machine, like Roussel’s inventions, is designed to not work—at least not according to the traditional laws of motion or cause-and-effect. Picabia, too, followed suit, his drawings populated with mechanical forms that were more symbolic than operational, drawn from crankshaft schematics and sexual innuendo rather than engineering blueprints.

Where Roussel gave us machines that symbolized inner thought and circular logics, Duchamp and Picabia imagined a new class of mechanism altogether: the bachelor machine—a machine not for production but for interpretation, not for utility but for symbolism, governed not by thermodynamics but by erotic failure. The machine becomes a vessel for inner contradiction, a ritualistic object capable of enacting desire, delay, and conceptual comedy.

It is in this precise tradition that my notational systems evolve—not as devices for translating composerly intent into performance, but as score-machines, configured to resist linear instruction while inviting interpretive friction. My approach is not one of symbolic legibility but of architectural complexity. Visual notational elements are placed within, under, next to, and inside each other—not as mere superimposition, but as a designed refusal of standard compatibility. Like Roussel’s inventions, my notational forms are compatible with their own material logics, but not necessarily with the performer’s expectations. They invite an ontology of notation that is self-sufficient—self-imagining, even—where the signs refer not to sound, but to their internal relations, interdependencies, and disobedient syntax.

The performer, in this scheme, is not a reader of instructions, but a decipherer of tensions. The score-machine, like the bachelor machine, is eroticized—not in the sexual sense, but in its pursuit of affect, resistance, and entanglement. It draws attention to itself as a structure, not simply a path. If Roussel could invent a phonographic plant that grows wax cylinders or a machine that translates color into sound into gesture, then I too aim to place glyphs and forms in paradoxical constellations—notations that resist being performed as they insist on being seen.

Thus, these scores become a mode of material abstraction, animated not by a drive to be played but by a drive to be solved, misread, and misremembered. In this light, the influence of Roussel is not merely aesthetic, but mechanical and conceptual. His legacy passes through Duchamp’s transparent partitions, Picabia’s eroticized cogs, and lands here—in the flickering tension of a page where notation has ceased to instruct and instead begins to dream.

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Serio-Constructivism as Compositional Documentation: Hanne Darboven’s Temporal Systems and Exhaustive Sonic Enumeration

 

                                                                    Bil Smith: Quartett

Serio-Constructivism as Documentation: Hanne Darboven’s Temporal Systems and Exhaustive Sonic Enumeration

Introduction: Serio-Constructivism as an Archival Act

                                                                 Hanne Darboven: 12th Song

Hanne Darboven’s work exists at the intersection of time, structure, and exhaustive repetition, embracing an approach that transforms notation into an act of documentation rather than mere musical instruction. Her obsessive numerical systems, often spanning years, occupying thousands of sheets of paper, and structured as self-contained archives, resonate deeply with the ethos of Serio-Construcivist music composition, where discrete, pre-determined processes dictate the unfolding of sound over time.

I examine Darboven’s numerical methodologies as a form of sonic Serio-Constructivism, drawing connections between her written systems of time and musical serial techniques, ultimately positioning her temporal documentation as a form of sound morphology in and of itself.

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Hanne Darboven’s Numerical Systems as Sonic Constructs

Darboven’s works—such as Mathematical Music (1980) and Opus 17a (1984)—are fundamentally time-based, operating through recursive numerical sequences that determine their visual structure. While she never positioned herself explicitly as a composer in the traditional sense, her processes bear striking similarities to serialist and process-based composition, where structure supersedes subjective expression.

Her numerical transcriptions, consisting of arithmetical progressions and accumulative counting methods, translate seamlessly into the structural framework of serialist music, in which numbers dictate pitch sets, rhythmic cells, and phrase organization. The result is a sonic phenomenon rooted not in harmony or melody, but in systemic enumeration.

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Serial Enumeration as a Sound Strategy

The Darboven Numbering Method

Darboven’s calendar-based numerical grids function as a meta-rhythmic process, resembling compositional systems that manipulate repetition and permutation as an aesthetic principle.

• Her works often assign values to specific days, months, or years, systematically encoding time into numerical sequences.
• These sequences are translated into pitches and rhythmic values, creating a self-generating, non-expressive sonic structure.

Correspondences to Music

Darboven’s mathematical systems closely mirror 12-tone serial techniques, particularly in the way they:

• Assign arbitrary but rigorous numerical values to structural elements.
• Emphasize process and progression over emotional interpretation.
• Generate patterns that accumulate meaning through repetition rather than variation.

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Exhaustive Enumeration and the Sound of Overload

One of the most striking aspects of Darboven’s work is its overwhelming density, often comprising hundreds or thousands of pages, demanding exhaustive perception over cognition.

Excess as a Sonic Principle

Her approach aligns with certain avant-garde composers—particularly Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, and Éliane Radigue, whose music is characterized by extreme durations and accumulative sonic density.

• Just as serialism exhausts pitch and rhythmic possibilities, Darboven exhausts numerical iterations, creating a form of process-based sound saturation.
• Her numerical grids function like sonic palimpsests, where successive layers obscure rather than clarify, leading to a state of perceptual overload.

The Role of Time in Darboven’s Sound Structures

                                       Hanne Darboven

Darboven’s works are not meant to be absorbed at once; rather, they demand slow, forensic reading—a characteristic shared with certain spectral music compositions, where sound unfolds through gradual, irreversible processes.

• This non-gestural approach to time and structure suggests a listening mode that aligns more with deep historical process than momentary musical engagement.
• Just as her numerical accumulations map time as an archival structure, sound can function as a slow-moving, accumulative document, stretching perception beyond traditional listening frames.

                                                Bil Smith: Work in Progress, March 2025

The Score as Archive: Notation Beyond Instruction

Darboven’s exhaustive approach invites us to reconsider the role of notation in music, shifting it away from instruction and toward a documentary aesthetic.

Notation as a Conceptual Object

Her systems challenge conventional notation by functioning as:

• A record of time rather than a set of instructions.
• A score that exists outside of performance, akin to Sol LeWitt’s instruction-based conceptual works.
• A sonic process rather than a fixed composition.

Expanding Serialist Notation into Archival Structures

Darboven’s serial structures prompt us to explore new models of notation that integrate:

• Accumulated data streams, where notation evolves in real time rather than pre-determined form.
• Non-linear performative engagements, where musicians navigate massive visual fields of notation without a fixed order.
• Process-based transcription, where sound emerges from systemic transformations rather than expressive intention.

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Sonic Implications of Darboven’s Aesthetic

            Bil Smith: "Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash"  For String Quartet              

Performing the Exhaustive Score

If we translate Darboven’s methodology into sonic performance, we encounter a notation that resists completion, challenges performability, and demands immersive engagement.

• A performer reading a Darboven-like score may never reach an endpoint, reinforcing the idea that time is mapped rather than executed.
• The audience, much like the reader of her works, experiences an accumulation rather than a conventional musical arc.

Music as Data Processing

By approaching sound through exhaustive serial documentation, Darboven’s methods intersect with data-driven generative music, where:

• Sound is extracted from algorithmic sequences rather than composed intuitively.
• The ‘score’ is less an instruction manual and more a system of sonic documentation.
• Performance is secondary to process, transforming the act of composition into an ongoing, perpetual transcription.

Hanne Darboven’s exhaustive approach to enumeration and serial structure reconfigures our understanding of music as something beyond the expressive or performative realm. Instead, it suggests a system of time-mapping, where music exists as a document of its own structural logic.

Her work prompts us to ask:

• Can music exist as documentation rather than event?
• Is notation merely an artifact of process rather than a tool for execution?
• Does exhaustive structure hold a sonic potential beyond its visual framework?

Darboven’s legacy, then, is not simply an alternative compositional technique but a radical expansion of the role of notation, where serialism becomes not just a method of organizing sound—but a methodology for archiving time itself.

The Typographic Score: Ed Ruscha and the Sonic Syntax of Word- Introduction: Typography as Sonic Architecture

 

In the expanding frontier of non-traditional notation, the intersection of typography and sound remains an underexplored yet profoundly fertile domain. Ed Ruscha’s word-based paintings, which treat typography as both semantic carrier and formal structure, offer a compelling visual framework for rethinking notation as a linguistic and performative system.

This essay examines how Ruscha’s typographic aesthetics—his use of displaced, fragmented, and emotionally charged lettering—can be repurposed as a sonic syntax within experimental music notation. It explores the idea of the typographic score, where textual elements assume performative musical functions, and notation moves beyond its traditional role as pitch and duration indicator, instead becoming a visual-linguistic event in and of itself.

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Word as Score: The Ruscha Aesthetic and its Sonic Potential

Ed Ruscha’s work is driven by an engagement with language as an image, distilling words into isolated, suspended, or distorted entities that demand interaction beyond conventional reading. His works such as OOF (1962) and HONK (1962) present words not as conveyors of meaning, but as sensory objects, forcing the viewer to engage with their phonetic, visual, and material dimensions.

In the context of music notation, this suggests an alternative sonic approach, where words function as dynamic triggers for musical action rather than simply as textual markers. A typographic score, then, is one in which the design, font weight, kerning, spatiality, and distortion of letters inform the gestural and sonic interpretation of the performer.

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Building a Typographic Notation System: Key Elements

1. Font as Timbre and Sonic Density

• Heavyweight fonts (e.g., Ruscha’s bold block lettering) could signify fortissimo dynamics, thick sonic textures, or clustered harmonic density.
• Light, delicate serifs might indicate whispered, ephemeral, or airy tones, guiding performers into highly sensitive sound worlds.

2. Letter Spacing and Sonic Time

• Condensed typography suggests compressed, accelerated phrasing or glissandi.
• Widely spaced letters might imply sustained resonance, delay effects, or spatial separation in ensemble performance.

3. Orientation and Distortion as Sonic Manipulation

• Words tilted or fragmented in the score function as instructions for bending pitch, modifying timbre, or shifting rhythmic perception.
• Ruscha’s fading or dissolving text could translate into gradual diminuendos, spectral dissipation, or textural deconstructions.

4. Word-Specific Phonetics and Performative Action

• Words that contain plosives (P, T, K, B) could trigger percussive articulations.
• Sibilant-heavy words (S, Z, Sh) might direct performers towards breathy extended techniques or noise-based sound production.
• Onomatopoeic text elements (WHAM, BUZZ, CLICK) become direct performative cues, suggesting specific instrumental or vocal articulations.

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Typographic Scores in Practice: Experimenting with Word-Based Notation

A typographic score does not simply integrate words as text annotations—it treats typography as the primary vehicle of sound encoding.

Example 1: The Sonic Grid of Letterforms

A typographic score could present words in a gridded matrix, where the vertical axis determines pitch range or harmonic spectrum, while the horizontal axis determines temporal unfolding or rhythmic density. Bolder, larger text may function as sound anchors, while faded or italicized letters function as transitional elements.

Example 2: Text as Kinetic Notation

Taking inspiration from Ruscha’s liquid-like distortions, a score could present words that visually melt, fracture, or collapse, requiring the performer to sonically interpret their rate of deformation. If a word in the score visually dissolves, a performer might gradually introduce granular synthesis, microtonal inflections, or bowed textures that fade into indistinction.

Example 3: Negative Space and Sonic Silence

Just as Ruscha often emphasizes negative space as an active design component, a typographic score might utilize blank gaps, word fragmentation, or obscured lettering as a way to articulate silence, spatialized rests, or non-action in performance.

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Beyond Ruscha: The Future of Typographic Scores

While Ruscha’s work provides a foundational visual model, typographic notation has the potential to expand in multiple directions:

• Augmented Reality Scores: Using digital typography that changes in real time, reacting to performer input.
• AI-Generated Word Scores: Allowing machine learning models to generate new typographic sonic structures based on linguistic and phonetic analysis.
• Neural-Responsive Typography: Using brain-computer interfaces to dynamically alter the typographic score based on performer biofeedback.

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Word as a Sonic Event

Ed Ruscha’s typographic paintings demonstrate that words are not simply vessels for meaning—they are material forms, perceptual fields, and objects of physical interaction. In the same way, typographic scores redefine how notation operates, shifting it from a linear system of musical instruction to an immersive, visually-driven sonic event.

Through the careful manipulation of font, spatial layout, and typographic architecture, a typographic score does not merely represent music—it becomes an active participant in its realization.

Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash for String Quartet

 "Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash"

Notational Topographies and the Transfigured Spatialization of Time

A Critical Examination of a Tablature-Driven Archetype for String Quartet

Preliminary Considerations: Refractive Notational Systems and the Encrypted Temporality of the Score

The score, in its most rudimentary conceptualization, exists as an interlocutionary medium between composerly intent and performative instantiation. Yet, far from serving as a mere cartographic delineation of musical events within a preordained chronology, the score operates as an autonomous aesthetic entity—a topology of gestures, inscriptions, and semiotic resonances that both encode and resist interpretation.

In Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash, Bil Smith advances a radical recalibration of the notational archetype by invoking a dual-modal system wherein quantitative serialism and photographic indexicality coalesce into a stratified matrix of performative potentialities. This work, composed for string quartet, not only problematizes traditional taxonomies of rhythm, articulation, and gestural transmission but also articulates a methodology wherein the visual domain—predicated upon the works of Hanne Darboven and Thomas Ruff—becomes inseparable from the aural resultant.

The tabular inscription in Perisetta manifests as an interstitial form between Darboven’s numerological topographies and Ruff’s quasi-clinical representations of physiognomy. This aesthetic lineage gestures toward an intricate systematization of time, wherein numerical constructs dictate musical morphology in a manner that eschews linearity in favor of multi-directional simultaneities. Through this prism, the act of reading—a function historically tethered to conventional notational epistemologies—is reconceived as a kinetic engagement with a notation that is at once spatialized, deconstructed, and architectonic.

Temporality and Numerological Encoding: Toward an Anti-Linear Chronology

Temporal configurations within Perisetta resist metered regularity, instead favoring a synthetic elasticity of durational proportioning that derives from Darboven’s engagement with cross-sum calculations, recursive date formations, and vectorized numerical configurations. Where Darboven’s oeuvre posits an algebraic concretization of temporal succession, Smith’s score appropriates and mutates this approach by deploying a modular numerical syntax wherein additive and subtractive procedures dictate the relational properties of pitch, contour, and bowing pressure.

The score itself is structured around a matrix of algorithmically derived temporal units, each functioning as an independent isochronous cell, which may expand or contract according to a secondary, non-fixed durational logic. This results in a phenomenon wherein the act of execution becomes a form of chronological negotiation rather than a realization of pre-determined rhythmic stratification.

Smith’s recursive encoding mechanisms are an explicit reference to Darboven’s calendar systems, wherein the artist developed a distinctive conversion methodology that transformed numerical configurations into graphical transcriptions. In Perisetta, this logic is repurposed such that each performance instance is inextricably bound to a localized, yet infinitely permutable, durational syntax.

 Computational Indexing and Serialist Layering

The parametric layering within the score derives not from a conventional serialist approach but from an interlocking permutation of vectors that dictate the density and gradation of sonic material. These strata are defined through:

A numerically inscribed tablature system, which situates pitch, articulation, and dynamics within a set of spatial coordinates.

A performative indexing matrix, wherein each quadrant of the page is assigned a gestural function, corresponding to a discrete set of bowing techniques and contact points.

An integrated phonographic notation, in which pre-composed photographic portraits of performers dictate gesture, posture, and tension thresholds.

This three-tiered structuration operates as a non-hierarchical field of encoded parameters, necessitating a form of interpretation that is both visual and kinetic, yet simultaneously resistant to traditional modes of reading.

Photographic Realism as Notational Inscription: The Thomas Ruff Parallax

A defining element of Perisetta is its engagement with photographic realism as a notational extension. By integrating high-resolution portraiture inspired by Thomas Ruff’s aesthetic objectivism, Smith introduces a physiognomic coding system that directly influences performative decision-making.

Where Ruff’s portraiture achieves an apparent neutrality through the suppression of emotive signifiers, Smith utilizes this aesthetic mechanism as a precondition for gestural determination. The extraction of temporal specificity from the physiognomic field creates an image-based notation wherein performer identity is implicated within the structural mechanics of execution.

By employing photographic indexicality, Smith establishes a threefold dialectic between:

The encoded visual gesture, wherein the formal properties of the performer’s portrait inform the mechanics of bow pressure, vibrato articulation, and attack envelope.

The aleatoric stratification of visual sequences, leading to a form of notation that resists singular interpretation, instead favoring contingent realizations based on individual performer morphology.

The residual trace of photographic memory, transforming the execution of the score into an iterative process of re-inscription, wherein the visual referent lingers as a mnemonic structure.

Thus, Perisetta becomes a palimpsest of interstitial codes, wherein notation, performance, and photographic inscription merge into a single, mutable entity.

Aesthetic Idealism and the Chronotopic Collapse of Musical Time

The culmination of these methodologies—Darboven’s temporal inscription, Ruff’s documentary realism, and Smith’s notational expansionism—results in a radical reconceptualization of musical temporality. In Perisetta, the chronotopic parameters of the score do not function as a singular linear sequence but rather as a multi-axial structure of durational interpenetration.

This approach aligns with Darboven’s assertion that time cannot be objectified outside of human perception, and that its representation is inherently synthetic. Consequently, Perisetta engages with:

The dissolution of fixed temporality, where performative events exist within a spectrum of probabilistic occurrences.

A recursive re-framing of notation, wherein symbols operate not as direct imperatives but as relational possibilities.

A visual-auditory dualism, collapsing the distinction between performative gesture and encoded structure.

Notation as Temporality, Notation as Image

Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash exemplifies a radical departure from traditional string quartet idioms, engaging with notation as a performative cartography wherein inscription, duration, and embodiment are inextricably linked. By synthesizing Darboven’s numerological inscriptions, Ruff’s photographic realism, and an experimental tablature system, Smith presents a work wherein notation itself becomes a performative entity—a site of multiplicity, subjectivity, and transformation.

Rather than merely codifying sound, the score reconfigures our fundamental assumptions about temporality, notation, and musical semiotics, positioning itself not as a static document, but as an evolving palimpsest of aesthetic potentialities.