Co-presented by SONCITIES and Crossroads contemporary music festival in Armenia

Festival curator: Aram Hovhannisyan

Workshop Conveners: Gascia Ouzounian and Eve Egoyan

The workshop SCORING THE CITY takes inspiration from the graphic score, a type of notation that has flourished in experimental music traditions since the 1960s. It seeks to explore the possibilities of using the graphic score as a model for architectural and urban design. While architects and planners regularly work with two-dimensional design forms like blueprints and plans, they typically imagine their designs as fixed forms that can only lead to one outcome. By contrast the graphic score in experimental music is treated as an open and dynamic form: a notation that invites numerous interpretations, improvisation, and interaction. By facilitating exchange between music/sound art and architecture/design communities through the medium of the graphic score, we hope to expand the tools that architects and urbanists have to shape the lives of cities.

In the first half of this workshop, we will explore different scoring methods in experimental music and urban design, in discussion with the musicologist and sonic theorist Gascia Ouzounian; we will engage with a performance of a graphic score interpreted by pianist Eve Egoyan; and visit a local site to explore its sounds, architectural history, and social histories. In the second half of the workshop, participants will be invited to sketch a score responding to the site we visit. 

Scoring: Yerevan follows from a series of workshops jointly conceived and co-hosted by Gascia Ouzounian and John Bingham-Hall (Theatrum Mundi) in London, Belfast, Paris, and Beirut. The outcomes of these workshops, and related scores, essays, and performances are featured in an online exhibition at scoring.city

With thanks to Aram Hovhannisyan, Ruben Antonyan, and Eve Egoyan for their support of this workshop.