To design the City Score for
the class, I kept several things in mind:
- There is no standard formulation for
scoring a site; each site suggests a different score to the author. It is
exactly this extreme site-specificity of the choreography that will make
it rich and relevant.
- The score should, if possible, be
designed on the site itself, both to ensure the aforementioned
site-specificity in the instructions and also to allow the score to emerge
naturally through the author's own deep experiential involvement with the
site. First and foremost, the author of the score must react to their own
corporeal experience, paying close attention themselves to the interplay
between the site and their body and movement.
- The instructions should be geared toward
drawing out reaction to certain elements. They should address some issue,
theme, or feeling of the place. The specific score section might address
some scale issue at a particular spot, or some key element that seems to
be preventing the success of a place. So long as there is an opinion on
the part of the author embedded in the instruction, participants may react
with or against this opinion.
- While it may be useful to tell participants
to be perceptive, it is more effective to allow them to become deeply
engaged through specific activities, especially at the beginning of the
score.
- The score should have a flow- in the
beginning, the participant might be asked to notice behaviors in other
people on the site first to allow them to key in comfortably to the
activity, and then to direct their perceptive attention towards their own
reactions and responses. As the score continues, it can shift in tone from
directional to more inquisitory-- as the participant becomes more deeply
involved in the activity, they may begin to formulate opinions and make
connections. At some point in the score (towards/at the end), the
questioning should become more general, allowing for synthesis to occur on
the terms of the individual participant.