"On 'G.2.20'" by David Harrison Horton

To begin, I think it’s grade school to ask which of the two recent performances of “G.2.20” was better when dealing with an open score. The point of the open score is that you will have a very different performance every time, depending on who is performing, and in the case of my score, the amount of performers. The score specifically calls for one to infinity players. Even with the same players each time, it would be a different piece each time because of the openness of the score.

The score itself is graphic and simple, to allow the most possible people to be able to participate without much preparation. It asks that the players: 1) name their past and present boyfriends and/or girlfriends; 2) name the streets they lived on; 3) name writers, artists, and philosophers and add the word “hurrah” afterwards; and 4) name common nouns. There are arrows and more explanations, but these are the basic directions. Overlap, dissonance and sonics are the intended goal.

Having performed this piece twice within the month via computer from Beijing lends itself to comparison, but again I don’t find this a fruitful exercise. Likewise, whether or not I was piping in from my boss’ computer or sitting at home in my skivvies seems beyond the point at hand.

Instead, I will note some differences that made the two performances different for me as a performer.

Chicago: I could hear Chad Lietz from Oakland over skype but I couldn’t hear Kevin Kilroy, the participant in Chicago. It didn’t matter much because as a participant coming in from Beijing I knew that a physical presence was there in front of the audience being the embodiment of a very purposefully disembodied piece. It’s much easier to absorb material coming in from the outer when there is something in the compound of reception to focus on.

Buffalo: Same piece. Chad Lietz and I. This time, no on-site participant. True telematic. As a performer, I got disrupted by my knowing that this was performed during a conference on avant and that when the audience members began asking questions, I remember asking Dan via chat if the Q&A had started and we were finished. Obviously not knowing the status of the performance during the performance affected the performance. I wonder if the folks who threw questions out understood that Beijing and Oakland could hear them; ie, that the perceivers were also in fact being perceived.

But both were fair representations of the score.