scores: scores can take many forms – e.g. text score, e.g. a little yellow book called ‘grapefruit’ by Yoko Ono. some are short and read like a poem which the viewer/reader can imagine and hear in their head. others have instructions which are the score for the piece – a set of instructions for a set of actions.
notation: this is a word to describe a set of writing. for music, it began in the medieval times and became the language of western music, using dots, lines etc to indicate pitch, tempo etc. in the 1950s Stockhaven and John Cage began to experiment with western notation, because they were using non traditional instruments and they wanted to break from the confinements of western notation. e.g. John Cage cuts up a score and spills them on the floor and a group of musicians play according to the random arrangement every time the piece is played/scattered. check out Cages book ‘Notations’. scores here become to look more like diagrams and maps.
question: why does music and sound need a notation and score? for repetition of the sound and music – to be played that way again and again through time. there are examples of cast bells going back thousands of years in China and Korea and they were marked where they are meant to be hit and therefore sound – an early example of notation. in Delphi there are also have marks over writing systems to indicate how they are to be intoned and pronounced – part of an oral language influencing written language – not just part of music but of oral language.
books check out: Diana Taylor ‘The Archive and the Repertoire’ where she argues that many sections of the community without power – women, disposed etc, do not have access or control to the written word and archive but have access and influence over the repertoire – an oral or gestural tradition. Another recommended book is a compilation of essays by Elizabeth Boone and Walter Mignolo, which looks at methods of non written language from central America and the Andes that continue to influence language including computer language, e.g. the khipus which is a system of knots to record history – both personal and cultural.
inscription: scores can be inscribed on many different things – on your body (emotions and gestures) and on the land (Australia song lines – a cartography of the land through song and dance which describe precisely what the nature of that space is, function etc – and acts as a way of passing down this information through language. also in Alaska where rocks are inscribed with particular songs to be song there – the landscape becomes the score.
check out –
Charles Gaines’s Manifesto Series: a series of drawings that lead to performance based on manifestos, which he transcribed into musical scores.
Anna Halprin: who developed a score for action, choreography and dance. she saw these scores as having the potential for physical healing and even broader to political traumas such as Vietnam war. Her scores describe how the body travels and moves in space and time.
Beau Dick: A Native Canadian chief who carved masks from a long tradition of mask making, and each mask has its own song, choreography and meaning.
the question: think about how an object can enable a type of action to take place.
elaine crowe 
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