Drawn from a Score

Drawn from a Score

Curated by by David Familian

 

October 7 – February 25, 2018

Beall Center for Art + Technology

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 7, 2– 5 p.m.

Drawn from a Score features artists who produce art from a score, ranging from “event scores” - developed by John Cage and others in the late 1950s - to the contemporary uses of code as a score for computational works. In addition to traditional written scores, it will include drawings, sculptures, performances, video projections and computer-generated forms of art.

In Cage’s seminal course at the New School for Social Research, he taught young artists how to write visual “event scores” using chance operations, found sound, and everyday objects to produce live performances. Drawn from a Score will present some of these early scores by Cage and artists who took his New School course from 1956-58. It will also feature a reconstruction of Cage’s 1968 Reunion ––his chess board that triggers sound while a game is being played––that underline his idea of how to produce “indeterminacy.”

Other historical examples in the exhibition will include score-based work by Conceptual and Fluxus artists from the 1960s. Sol Lewitt’s written “instructions” serve as scores to produce detailed, geometric line drawings that are made directly on the wall’s surface. Assorted event scores by Fluxus artists will be exhibited and performed live. Additionally, the exhibition will show the score and ephemera from The House of Dust (1971), a collaboration between Fluxus artist Alison Knowles and the composer James Tenney that yielded the first computer-generated poem created in the language Fortran. A few years later, German artist Manfred Mohr made Plotter prints also using Fortran that will also be on view.

Some of the more contemporary works in this exhibition also use computer generated or real-time animation in projections. Los Angeles-based Casey Reas expands on Sol Lewitt’s instructions by writing computational scores to make infinitely mutable projected images. Israeli artist Shirley Shor’s Landslide uses computationally generated imagery to project virtual on the physical surface of white sand, creating a constantly changing topography.

Drawn from a Score will be accompanied by a series of public events and/or performances. A publication with writing from guest essayists will examine the use of scores in the works in the exhibition from the historical and the analogue, to contemporary forms of digital production.

This exhibition is possible due to the generosity of the Beall Family Foundation.

 

 

 

712 Arts Plaza | Irvine, CA 92697 | beallcenter.uci.edu
Gallery Hours | Monday - Saturday | 12–6 p.m.

Free admission and docent-led tours, open to the public.

Holiday Closures: November 10 & 11, November 23-25, December 18-January 7, January 15, February 19

The Beall Center received its initial support from the Rockwell Corporation in honor of retired chairman Don Beall and his wife, Joan, the core idea being to merge their lifelong passions – technology, business and the arts – in one place. Today major support is generously provided by the Beall Family Foundation.

 

Dates: 
Saturday Oct 7, 2017, 12:00 am to Sunday Feb 25, 2018, 12:00 am
Saturday Oct 7, 2017, 2:00 pm