Artificial Life 2007 (2007)

Performance Guidelines
Artificial Life 2007 is a situational-form musical composition designed for ensembles of between eight and thirty (or more) players. The work presents a model of group improvisation as an emergent phenomenon arising from negotiation and local intelligence.

AL2007 is partially open in terms of scale, duration, and instrumentation; there is no centralized score, and no conductor is needed. The work consists of two “pages” that provide a set of quasi-algorithmic procedures for structuring musical communication, facilitating the articulation and circulation of relationships, forms, and recurrences among individual performers or groups of performers who are acting in concert to create music in real time. Either or both pages may be performed in any order (or even simultaneously), using any permitted ensemble organization scheme.

The sounds and silences are produced according to the improvisors’ intuition and considered judgment. There is usually no rush to perform any task or procedure, and moments where no sound is being made need not be considered awkward. There is no need on the part of the performers to articulate or impose global form, teleologies, or contrasts.

Any articulation, bowing, instrument, muting, or other effect is permitted unless an instruction indicates otherwise. Players are asked to follow their own parts, and to avoid asserting ensembles with other groups or individuals or initiating call-and-response interactions unless an instruction asks them to do so. However, since this is a situational and relational work with many, many generative possibilities, it is important to be aware of the sonic environment at all times.

Artificial Life 2007 is open to performers from any musical tradition, including those that do not regularly include improvisative modes of performance. Extensive prior experience with improvisation, while welcome, does not necessarily confer an advantage in performing this deceptively complex work; the best results will be achieved by reading and following the instructions provided with care. The instructions serve as a kind of toolbox for producing a range of sounds and forms that will far exceed what the composer would imagine. For that reason, there is no canonically correct way for the piece to sound. Rather than assuming that recorded or live versions of the work might constitute a model for how the work should sound, performers should assume the freedom to create what they want to hear from a combination of the tools provided and their own creative and cultural standpoints.

Even so, as with all improvisations, including our everyday-life human efforts, the success of a given performance of this work will be less a question of individual freedom than of the assumption of personal responsibility for the sonic environment.

Artificial Life 2007 was created for the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra under a commission from the Scottish Arts Council. The work received its premiere on December 6, 2007, at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

Part Names/Instrument Types

• Bowed Strings: Violin, violoncello, viola, contrabass, haegeum, rebab, erhu, ajaeng, musical saw, daxophone, etc.
• Brass: Trumpet, cornet, bugle, shofar, trombone, horn, euphonium, tuba, alphorn, didgeridoo, vuvuzela, etc.
• Drums: All kinds of idiophones, chordophones, membranophone, or other struck percussion instruments, definite or indefinite pitch.
• Electronics: All kinds of electronic instruments.
• Piano: All kinds of non-electronic keyboard instruments.
• Plucked Strings: Guitar (electric or acoustic) and related instruments, electric bass, mandolin, banjo, koto, pi’pa, lute, sitar, gayageum, geomungo, guzheng, oud, kanun, etc.
• Reeds: Any woodwind: clarinets, saxophones, bassoons, oboes, flutes, bagpipes, tárogató, ocarina, panpipes, etc.
• Voice: Any vocal range or quality.
• Any instrument: Any instrument not otherwise envisioned above.