Space as the score. In the UNKNOWN, a journey, the first of the operas of the Miniature Opera Project, space becomes an interactive score; its audience creates unique musical sequences by making choices about connective paths on a physical art piece. Each project installation centers on a large “game board” made of an array of light-sensitive tiles. Strategically positioned on the array, and illuminated from within, are “word nodes” or “character nodes” formulated to create a “stage of possibility” for an operatic libretto. In each iteration of the short opera, an audience member (or members) engage with the work by placing or tossing beanbags to create paths that connect the nodes, in a way that expresses the story they want to hear. As they cover each light sensor in a tile, they trigger a unique musical gesture, shaped by its place in the sequence; if they complete a path from one node to another, a story-defining moment is added to the work. When all the beanbags have been placed, the work is complete, the beanbags are recovered, and the work is ready to create another opera for its audience.

 

The miniature opera project installations are “games” for their audiences, which invite each participant to play with the ideas of story told through music and of scores created by manipulating space. It engages them with the simple fun ludic challenge of playing “beanbag toss” while at the same time provoking a critical thinking on issues as varied as Science, Art, Innovation, the Future, the Universe, Energy, Climate, Poverty and Inequality, Love and Relation, etc., or just a simple story.

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By mapping each event (each bean bag toss that successfully covers the light sensor in a tile) to prerecorded sound gestures, the layout of the tiles becomes the score and each individual and unique sequence of connections becomes a miniature opera. Each player (or players, collectively) will create a unique narrative every time.

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The modularity of the installation design allows for different miniature operas to rotate on the same physical space Each opera would use the same physical installation, but with different operating software and signage creating a different experience for participants. 

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UNKNOWN, a journey, for voices and fixed media (four channel audio, polystyrene, plexiglas, electronic components and orange beanbags), 2018. [soprano: Adria Le Boeuf; spoken voice: Heather Spence; libretto: Ken Eklund, Heather Spence, Adria Le Boeuf, Peter Walter, Marco Buongiorno Nardelli ("The Band of Six")]. This miniature opera was conceived at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in July 2017 as a collaborative art installation. In it, we are asking participants to express their own ideas about the steps and progress of a creative journey into the unknown. On the array we place nodes that describe different moments of the creative process in Science and/or Art, and the audience undertakes sense-making by connecting (all or just some of) the nodes to represent their own creative process. The libretto for the miniature opera UNKNOWN, a journey is composed by the following words: TRANSFORM, ILLUMINATE, FLOURISH, SYNTHESIZE, EVOLVE, LISTEN, ENVISION, STEW, PITCH, FAIL, PRUNE, and DIG; and by the following interludes: 

 

Water, flow, rhythm,

cycles swirl around cycles,

all are connected.

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Can negative space

have a positive impact?

Space for memories?

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How to document

three dimensional process 

fractally growing...

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Behavior tracking

through a sampling process.

What will people do?

(Heather Spence, 2018)

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Although the installation UNKNOWN, a journey can be enjoyed as a passive performance piece (the audience only activates the sounds), a use that reflects even more poignantly the concept of “space as the score” is when the array of tiles and their sounds is used to guide forms of improvisational responses. Such improvisations can be musical, spoken, acted, danced, painted, etc. and should abide to one simple rule:

 

The time/space between two acts of bag tossing and the resulting sounds marks the “measure” of each improvisation. Each “measure” should be distinct from the preceding and the following one, so that improvisational styles must change at each bag tossing and in response to the sound.

 

Additional sub rules can be decided by the performance collective, but they are not required and we encourage performers to explore their inner meaning of creativity as a response to the UNKNOWN. The possibility of staging a performance using the installation can be discussed on a case by case basis.