Graphic notation -> Musical graphics
Paradigmatic dependency of the West European understanding of music in terms of notation has led to the belief supported by a group of 20th century authors (e.g. Nelson Goodman) that the category of notationality should be an ideal which has the same importance as musicality: notational record which is not notational enough represents an arguable source of music it is supposed to represent!
However graphic aspect of notation has always relied on a specific type of its own efficiency during any transfer of notational record into sound, in other words, music. Let us put up the following frames: a heart-shaped canon Belle bonne by Baude Cordier (around 1400) suggests the direction of reading by its graphic layout; Mondrian-like abstract nature of the graphic December 52 (1952) by Earl Brown implies a suggestive relationship among auditive events on the horizontal axis of the flow of time which is proportional with spatial relationships among specific sound symbols on the sheet; graphic layout of Imaginative Music (1974) by Tom Johnson materialises associations triggered by musically relevant titles of the composition; "score for listening" of the electronic composition entitled Artikulation (1958) by György Ligeti which was published in 1970 by Rainer Wehinger has a graphic layout which should make it easier for the listener to follow this extremely complex music (regardless of the fact that the composition is very short).
However it is quite evident that there are some exhibited pieces which suggest their independent visual-artistic nature, i.e. that they could be accepted as a true source of visual pleasure without the necessity to transform them into sound owing to their notational-musical nature.
The problem of emancipation of the notation sheet from its realisation should be explained from two standpoints:
a) In his famous interview with Roger Reynolds from 1962, John Cage claimed that composing, performing and listening had nothing in common. He subsequently elaborated this standpoint on numerous occasions fighting, in fact, for a greater independence of the notation record from composer's intentions, i.e. for a greater independence of performance from notation and for a greater independence of listening from composing and performing. Naturally, in this context, composing/composition, performing/performance and listening have nothing in common with their traditional meanings.
b) Composer's intentions are – in a traditionally coordinated relationship between composing, performing and listening – recorded by corresponding notational signs which acquire their full meaning in a sign system typically revealing the manner of understanding music. However, when the existent sign system becomes insufficient to represent composer's intentions, composer, naturally, starts introducing new signs. (Hence, history of music – as a history of changes in understanding music – is equally a history of changes within notational sign systems). New sign systems dating mostly from the 20th century are also identified as graphic notation. Musical graphics, however, suggests that composer has no intention to indicate his/her intentions via notation sheet and at that moment notation record – as musical graphics – becomes really emancipated from the necessity to be realised auditively. (This may be the consequence of composer's direct admittance that his/her intentions cannot be represented by any notational sign system within the meaning of graphic notation!).
Pieces shown at this exhibition document this situation each in its own way regardless of the extent to which they may appear, due to their "realisation instructions", functionally dependent on performance, i.e. music which is created when they are transformed into sound. This process is further explained by the installation by Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp.
Nikša Gligo

Tuned Graphics
Remarks about the work of Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp
Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp are renowned video and media artists who are at home in Berlin and in Zagreb and who are recognized in both cities. Since 1991 they work together as an artistic couple. The numerous works they have created bear witness to their joy of experimenting, always moving on the borderline to the unknown. Employing new technologies, they investigate different, so far unknown optic and acoustic phenomena. The observer's senses, his hearing, his sight and his touch, are always consciously engaged, irritating his perception. Daxl and Fülepp show new ways in the artistic exploration of the technical possibilities of creating sounds and abstract images which force the observer to an integrated reception. They seek to make the recipient think about the reality which is imparted to him in an artificial and technical way.
In the installation Tuned Graphics, conceived for the Rigo Gallery, the artists integrated all of the elements of which they regularly make use in their work: image, text and sound as well as video, projections and objects, created by themselves or in cooperation with fellow artists – in this case including the music of contemporary Croatian composer Igor Kuljerić. The individual parts of this installation complement each other, giving it a narrative character. Ever since the invention of moving pictures, artists have been drawn towards combining images and music, thus creating distinctive experiential worlds for the observer – an intention which is also the basis of this work by Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp. They do, however, not content themselves simply with aesthetic variations of pictures and music and the resulting changes of sound and image. The observer is consciously engaged from the very beginning. In the works of these two artists it is always apparent that the effect they have on the observer is created deliberately. In this installation the visitor is also expected to actively intervene in the work itself, changing its optical characteristics. The artists' own joy of experimenting is thus transferred to the audience, stimulating its playing skills, which are the basis for any artistic and technical experiment.
The experiments of Daxl and Fülepp are often technically so advanced that the visitor may not always be fully able to understand the technical preconditions of their work, and thus appreciate it adequately. Yet, in the contemporary arts scene they have their firm place, and both pass their knowledge on to younger generations. They have lectured and still lecture at different schools of higher education from Europe to Asia, where they explore new paths with their students and share their rich experience with them.
Dr. Barbara Barsch, Director, ifa-Galerie Berlin, Institute for International Relations, May 2005

Project Description
Musical Graphics
Like so many composers of contemporary music who have been opening new musical spaces and possibilities of interpretation by using graphical presentation for their music which differs from traditional notation, we also try to unify sound and movable image in video medium in a different manner, namely, in a different spatial context.
Historically speaking, from the very beginning of the development of cinematic medium, there were experiments and works triggered by the wish to "find an optical equivalent to the structure of a new temporal construction of music" what Theo van Doesburg identified as "Bach’s dream". Doesburg also specifies a viewer who does not watch a movie as a mere silent show, but "experiences it acoustically and optically to the same degree". On the other hand, Einstein studied the principles of cubist art in order to apply them to film production – movie sequences were expanded by dynamics of motion. Later, when sound movie became a regular form of cinematic art, many painters, cinematographers and architects tried to interpret music through the medium of painting (Len Ley, Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger, John Whitney, etc.).
Video/object installation Voda – naglavce (Wasser – auf dem Kopf stehend / Water – Upside Down) was conceived as a combination of a static object and a projection of “fluid” interpretations of music on the ceiling.
A glass plate filled with water is situated on an elevated pedestal. A video projector is hidden in the pedestal emitting image on the ceiling through the container which functions as lens. Water is at the same time a "surrounding" for the observer who can change features of aquatic lens with a touch of a finger and, accordingly, have an effect on a projected image and its relation to music. In his composition Plus-minus (1963) Karlheinz Stockhausen has defined only composing principles by using complex symbols relying on traditional notation. Hence, performers create a piece on their own by combining and permuting these symbols. The aim of the installation is to make the observer a part of the work in a similar, though simpler manner by enabling him/her to influence the projection by mere touch without any technical appliances. Without observer's intervention, the installation consists of a series of video sequences and represents a completed piece of work.
For the purpose of the "Musical Graphics" project we first shot a video based on the composition "Waltz" by a contemporary Croatian composer Igor Kuljerić. The video consists of rhythmically edited abstract images which create a specific type of auditive, movable graphic images. Our intention was to project this video through a plate filled with water on the ceiling of the Rigo Gallery during the whole duration of the exhibition.
Furthermore, we also intend to show graphic notations from Nikša Gligo's collection that have been animated and linked into an estranging video on LCD monitor placed in the window of the Gallery thus extending exhibition space to include a public surface.
Heiko Daxl and Ingeborg Fülepp have been researching this field for a long time. Since they established cooperation with the Department of Electro-acoustic Music from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, they have been intensively carrying out projects in connection with contemporary music. From 1994, they have created a major number of video installations for museums, stage productions, concerts and theatre plays.