I employed a musical writing strategy to conceive, organize and score my data. I borrowed the term “score” which conventionally describes the act of musical writing. Musical writing organizes written musical notations into small sections. These sections are referred to as a bar or measure. “The bar line is a vertical line written in the music which separates the bars” (definition from link above).
The inspiration for using a musical writing strategy to score my data came from the bridge I selected as the performance site to dance my data. Curiously, there were 19 stabilizing steel posts along the length of the bridge structure. I could not ignore the significance of the number 19. Structurally the 19 vertical reinforcing steel posts were perfect in terms of representing the vertical bar lines to organize my score. In total my score contained 18 bars (measured units) of data that spanned the length of the bridge. The space between two posts defined the unit or measure of each thematic set of composed/scored data. Each bar in the score measured 6 feet wide (horizontally across the bridge) and six feet in length (between each steel post). The six-foot measurement was relevant data. The 6’ x 6’ measure/bar defines individual units of SPACE in which to map and constrain my data as well as constrain my spatial and performed experience of the data.
I first scored my data on individual sheets of paper, which represented an individual bar (unit/measure). The individual sheets were then torn from my sketch book and taped to the corresponding steel posts along the 100-foot pedestrian bridge. This facilitated the transfer and transposition of the visual/spatial score onto the bridge.
