Notation as Instrument: From Representation to Enaction

The paper explores the hybridization of notation and instrument as a cognitive movement from representation to enaction. Features of such hybridization are latent in every notation, as a mix of descriptive and prescriptive functions. Current advances in the fields of computer music representation (interactive scores) and New Interfaces for Musical Expression, with precedents in graphic and action-oriented scores, are turning notation into a shared multimodal platform between composer and performer, liquidizing the limit between notation and instrument. We will present this dynamic rapport between scores and interfaces (haptic interactions, INScore, GesTCom, post-Klaus K. Hübler tablature notations of decoupled action-structures) in the light of theoretical models (enaction defined as navigation of affordances from the field of embodied and extended cognition, Leman's action-reaction cycle extended from instrument-making into notation, Veitl's conception of software as tablature, Atau Tanaka's definition of instruments as open-ended systems etc.). We are following an explicit line from new interfaces involving notation back to graphic and action-oriented scores, considering them in the theoretical framework of enaction