Tectonic Pannotia is the first implementation of a telematic musical score using the Decibel Scoreplayer "Canvas" format. Canvas allows for a computer to send drawing instructions to the Scoreplayer opening the possibility of indeterminate, generative processes to be explored. Although it had previously been used in a Local Area Network, this was the first time that scores were distributed to an ensemble of non- "co-located" performers.
It belongs to a series of works by Vickery, named after: primordial supercontinents: (Vaalbara [2010], Rodinia [2016]); oceans (Iapetus [2020], Mirovia [2021]; Landforms (Tjoritja [2025] and Wuyi-Yunkai) and animals (Medusoid [2022]). 
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Ancient Oceans: Iapetus [2020] and Mirovia [2021] - fixed scrolling scores with “extended” notation, scores and individual instrumental parts;

A range of score paradigms were considered for the next planned work in the series, Tectonic: Pannotia. These may be explored in future work.
​ A graphical texture terrain – although this may be a possible and attractive solution, it was abandoned because it required:

• significant computer processing – potentially reducing the dependability of a “distributed score”;
• reading of abstract graphical scores is a specialised skill;
• animation of this type was not yet implemented in the Decibel Scoreplayer;
• the scoreplayer provides dependable network communication.

The textures of Medusoid were based on text prompts that I had long used  as a shorthand means for planning the evolution of musical structures. In 2023, I built out this collection of text prompts to include varieties of Musical objects, tempi, textures, structures, emotions, transitions, kinetics, morphological variables, physical states, living things, machines and environments. Textual instructions based on these prompts were incorporated in the next phase - Salmon Hats.

Salmon Hats [2024], created for a performance by Audiovisual improvising noise group Black Zenith and staff at WAAPA,   was not explicitly part of the Tectonic series. For the work, a notated score was rejected in favour of (almost entirely) text-based prompts. Several elements of the work contributed to the final model adopted in Pannotia:

• A networked scrolling score allowing the possibility of both coordinated evolving and periodic textures and sections.
• Instructive and allusive textual indications
• Graphical indications variously for players, section boundaries and events.
• Synchronised WAN capability. (It was performed in the Text Score Performance Demo earlier today.)

The ​Final Pannotia Score Paradigm:
To these fixed text/graphical prompt screens are added indications of part name, dynamic and next texture and red indicators for register and a “playhead” that scrolls across the page from left to right. This recording shows the sound of the work (in the room) with 25 performers in 4 acoustic instruments and one electronic instrument groups:  Pannotia Rehearsal and this is a recording of the telematic performance of Pannotia as part of NowNet - the Jacktrip MIX was unfortunately quite unbalanced.

(page (excerpt) from TECTONIC: Pannotia [2025])

Issues encountered:

• in the NowNet performance draw commands were occasionally “lost” on the network, resulting in the score “hanging” or being otherwise ambiguous - this appeared to have been mitigated by increasing the buffer size for the Open Sound Control object in Max;
• although scoring the structure and the “scheduling” process were gradually streamlined, it was relatively laborious.

Unknown or future work

• The exact degree of synchronization has not been precisely measured;
• the text+graphic prompt model could be further refined by adding more effective and removing more ambiguous  prompts.

Ablinger says it is “always the connection between modules, the edge, is the crucial part: the perfect cut”. ​The facility to coordinate multiple channels of audio on iPads via WiFi was used to precisely synchronise the unfolding of each module and its contrasting performance practice.

Sage Pbbbt Narrows / Expands / Elides [2018]  29 Jul 2018 5pm
The first performance in the Limited Hangout series was Sage Pbbbt’sNarrows / Expands / Elides. The site for the work was the underside of the Perth Narrows Bridge –the central conduit between the north and south sides of the Swan river. The piececonsists of three movements; the first two attempting to “explore ideas of (non)striated space and (de)colonization” and the third reflecting on the problematic nature of such attempts.

njookenbooro [2018] for 12 performers at  Herdsman Lake 2 Sep 2018 8pm

The first section of the score was created through the transcription of prominent environmental frequencies which were mapped directly onto a spectrogram of a field recording made at the location several days earlier.

New piece for GreyWing for the concert Artificial Field - rising water. A field recording by Leah Barclay of flood waters in Queensland was resynthesised: firstly by using frequency data to control amplitude and amplitude data to control frequency; secondly by "threshing" - using and sustaining only the strongest sinusoids (the lower spectrogram); and finally by "freezing" the frequency spectrum at points of prominent amplitude transitions (the upper spectrogram). The spectral freeze points were then used to derive a sectional formal structure for the work. "Lyrebird" software was used to create a "base" score representing strongest sinusoids and coloring them according to their timbral qualities. This score was then separated into three colours (timbres) and distributed to the three instruments (bass clarinet, electric guitar and harp). Then layers sometimes obscuring this score were built by transcribing shapes from the "thresh" and freeze" spectrograms. The variation in this  material was used to define the sectional structure (which had been derived from the data in the original recording). Thanks to Leah Barclay for letting me use another of her fantastic field recordings. Below is the opening few seconds of the "full score".

The work ends with the repetitive huff/clicks of the possum. Some of the prominent pitched content is highlights on bass clarinet and melodica.

​The final score (excerpt below) comprises the lines (representing the volume/spatiality of the field recordings) and the stylised representations of terrain, forest and river.