Score Club is a group of artists, musicians and composers exploring text-based scores as a provocation for music and art making. Our interest lies with the score as a conduit for experimentation within an arts-based practice. The score can be read as poetry, a kind of manifesto-document, an instruction for performance, or a way to structure improvisation. It can also be used as a way to compose, generate and explore new sonic ideas and material. These kinds of scores are an impetus for improvisation and a template for listening and interacting, offering both a non-cochlear way of engaging with music/sound and a cochlear method of engaging with art.

Our interest lies in the idea of the score as a fluid document, and in the potential for alternative forms of notation to break down the boundaries and hierarchies between subject and object and amongst notions of composer/performer/audience. Because alternative notation often uses simple instruction that invites open-ended interpretation (or is just written in a seemingly naïve style), it allows anyone to be the performer, regardless of experience.

Score Club at firstdraft will feature scores written individually by Alexandra Spence, MP Hopkins, Megan Alice Clune and Andrew Fedorovitch. The works will examine the above notions regarding music/sound and performance in a visual form, some scores will be printed on paper, others existing as abstracted installations or as video. The exhibition will feature two separate performances of the works by Score Club members, one on opening night and one at the artist talks, both will include an open, ‘audience participation’ element.