TECTONIC: Pannotia [2025]

Tectonic: Pannotia [2025] – is the latest in a set of works based on the concept of a score-based composition with groups of players interacting like Tectonic plates. It draws on conventions and practices in Post-War music including: Sound-Mass, Group Improvisation, Acousmatic and Interactive Composition and research in Digital Notation that has been one of the preoccupations of the Decibel New Music Ensemble, that Aaron and I have both been part of for over 10 years.
In Pannotia, this project collided with the experience of “vertical communities” - like minded but geographically  disconnected people perhaps especially from isolated locations like Perth/Australia and and made particularly acute by COVID.
A number of issues informed its development:

Creative work
Agency (Improvisation)
Identity (Structure)
Stakes
Engagement

Notation
Level of specificity 
Semantic clarity
Interactive realtime responsiveness

Difficult environment
Opaque threats cybersecurity -> firewalls
Ubiquity, capital and seamlessness of streaming platforms and online gaming as a contrast to the ad hoc nature of technological/creative development

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]). 
​

Tectonic: Vaalbara [2008] - indeterminate structure, independent tempi, instrumental groups, parts only, ~ traditional notation;

Tectonic: Rodinia [2016] - networked generative scores, collision avoidant open “extended” notation on iPads, instrumental groups, score and “parts”;

Ancient Oceans: Iapetus [2020] and Mirovia [2021] - fixed scrolling scores with “extended” notation, scores and individual instrumental parts;

( Iapetus Ocean [2020] excerpt)

( Mirovia Ocean [2021] excerpt)

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.

A second approach explored an extended notation-based solution generated in realtime using texture “models” shared over the network. The intention was to use networked Max applications on distributed computers allowing for “tectonic-like” interaction between the generative models. Because this phase of development took place during the COVID lock-down, in this model the Individual players would take part from in separate locations. Players would select their instrument (defining transposition and range parameters for data generated from each model and read in “Extreme sightreading mode” following a swiping cursor.

(Draft of "extended notation" Telematic concept for TECTONIC: Pannotia).

(some of the 367 notation glyphs  created) 

Again, some variation on this approach may be attempted in the future, but as a solution for TECTONIC: Pannotia the it was not pursued because of:

• the complexity of the “extended notation system” and managing rhythmic flexibility to an expressive level;
• The availability of existing well-implemented realtime notation solutions such as MaxScore and Bach (Max).

​This approach began to be explored in the work Medusoid (2022).

(score examples from Medusoid [2022])

Medusoid (2022) – implemented generative score distributed over LAN in canvas Mode in the Decibel Scoreplayer on iPad. In the work, twenty-nine compositional textures (with nicknames such as "Blocks gliding", Clouds, Rain, Waves, Clusters.. etc) were selected and then broadcast by Max to the network of iPads as instrumental parts and a score. The score consists of a simple scrolling proportional notation - length = duration, vertical height = pitch and thickness = dynamic - in a different colour for each instrument. The work permutates the textures in realtime, but treated the ensemble (of 8) as a means of generating “mass effects” akin to Sound Mass or Sonorism works such as Ligeti’s Atmospheres (1961).

The work was somewhat successful, but we found it better for the performers to read from the score (so they could see their contribution to the texture) and unfortunately we were unable to implement text in the score at that time.

(an early concept for the Medusoid ​score layout).

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.)

(Salmon Hats [2024] excerpt).

The Text-based texture prompts were expanded and categorised into 100 Shapes (ie grains, points), States (ie solid, liquid, gas), Sound and Music Objects (ie rain, trill), Transitions (ie melt, fadeout), Actions (ie solo, slide) and Reactions (ie recoil, follow). In some cases the categories form logical sequences (e.g. gas-liquid-solid), enabling contrasts between evolving transformations or disjunct blocks of texture. The aim of this  approach was to support the goal of improvised spontaneity, together with a more composed sense of cohesion. Since some of the prompts were potentially conceptually unclear, it was decided to add a graphical prompt to visually illustrate what was intended.

An intermediate “proof-of-concept” small ensemble work, Tjoritja (2025), trialled a simplified score, distributed over LAN in the Scoreplayer Canvas Mode. The feedback from this performance, was that the score could be simplified further as they were superfluous, distracting or both: this included the words “high” and “low”, the second dynamic,  tempo number and flashing metronome. 

(example of a part for Tjoritja [2025] )

(Tjoritja Max patch displaying parts)

These were removed from the Pannotia score. However, it was suggested that having a text prompt indicating the subsequent texture would assist creating transitions from one section to the next.

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])

Another small ensemble version Pannotia: Wuyi-Yunkai [2025] using the same format as TECTONIC: Pannotia but with an altered structure was created for the 10th International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (Beijing). This version included 3 members of Decibel New Music Ensemble and two students from the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing. The inclusion of performers with no experience in improvisation or reading graphical notation, created an interesting text of the effectiveness of the text/graphic combination.

(sample (excerpt) Word/Graphic prompts from Pannotia: Wuyi-Yunkai [2025].) 

Evaluation of the score delivery approach developed for TECTONIC: Pannotia:

• performers quickly and appropriately responded to the text/graphic prompts;
• the approach was successful as a strategy to coordinate a distributed, synchronised musical structure;
• the approach effectively resulted in quasi-improvised performance exploring a “middle-ground” improvised/structured compositional approach, combining relative performer freedom combined with the sort of coordination and rapid sectional changes more typical of traditionally scored music;
• the Canvas Mode is a promising and expandable medium for telematic score distribution, that delivered synchronization for coordinated discrete changes in texture that encouraged “telepresence” in the ensemble;
• the text+graphic prompt model was mostly successful at conveying the composer’s intentions.

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.

(TECTONIC: Pannotia [2025] Max patch displaying parts)