I hope that scores will lead into n

I hope that scores will lead into new ways of designing and planning large-scale environments of regions and large communities whose essential nature is complexity and whose purpose is diversity. I hope that the idea of scores will make it possible to work in these regional communities as a method for energizing processes and people and the natural environment in a constantly evolving and mutually involving procedure over time. I hope to see scores used as catalytic agents for creativity leading to a constructive use of change.
The book itself [RSVP Cycles] has been a score. It was not preconceived, and has developed its own shape while a work in progress. I started out with many scores for ephemera that I have done for dance or for environmental events over the years. I explored primitive scores, mystical scores, scores for happenings, based on my wife’s work, and my friends’, who, too, have been pushing the boundaries of their arts. Inevitably much of my own personal experience comes out of the “scores for environment” which is my professional interest as well as the field in which I have had my most personal experiences. Thus, the second half of the book explores street scores, ecological scoring, city scores, and finally community scores.
As I worked on the score for the book, however, one fact kept on emerging to plague me—it demanded consideration, and this became increasingly clear as I worked in com- muniscores. The scheme was not complete. As I worked on “scores” only, there were elements that kept cropping up in the creative process which were not being covered by the scoring procedure, especially as the projects became more and more complex. I found that scores are nonjudgmental—this is one of their primary characteristics. Yet, in many instances some outside witnessing must be reached, some selectivity must be exercised. But scores do not do that, they don’t perform that function.
As I continued to develop the characteristics of scores, I found that often before actual scoring starts the scorer has a great deal of preliminary work to do in collecting resource material, inventory items to use in his scores. I found too that a clear differentiation has to be made between the score, which is usually graphic and precedes the fact, and the performance, which is the resultant of the score. Much of my own professional life has been involved in this apparent dichotomy: between the score and the performance, which are not the same but have an intricate relationship to each other. Finally, I found that scoring has to allow for feedback, for analysis before, during, and after a score is created in order for the score to develop and allow for change—to grow. All of these important functions were not, I found, taken care of in scores themselves.
In the long run, I found that what I had really been working toward, what I really wanted to explore, was nothing less than the creative process—what energizes it—how it functions— and how its universal aspects can have implications for all our fields. Scores alone were not doing this. I was not interested exclusively in what the score-performance relation was—- how the particular event, the building, or piece of music, or piece of legislation, was beautiful, but how the process of arriving at it came about. I found that I had to understand the context in which it all had happened and to see if, by understanding what had been required to make it happen, I could apply the principle across many fields, in a multidi mensional way, to a life process. Perhaps most importantly, I found that by themselves scores could not deal with the humanistic aspects of life situations including individual passions, wills, and values. And it seemed necessary to round out the scheme so that human communications—including values and decisions as well as performance—could be accounted for in the process.
When that became clear, I found that the procedures I needed to get all these inputs into some context had four parts and they were all interrelated. Each part had its own internal significance, but got really cracking only when it related to the others. They have similarities to Jung’s cycle which he called the compass of the psyche.