Beginning, middle, end︎︎︎
Once a group has a chance to do smaller studies around elements of time and space, it’s good to start to think about a sense of form, to create studies that have an overall structure. This can be thought of as an architecture or sequence that the content lives in.
One interesting way of thinking about form is what makes a beginning, a middle or an ending. One project is having participants create one of the three in isolation (make a small work that feels like only an ending...). This is a good way of talking about what qualities we expect in these three parts of a work and how we might re-think them.
**The witer John Irving. always knows his endings before he starts to write (not how it begins). This has become part of his practice- to forsee where he is going helps him know how to start.
Assigning material using forms from music, nature or other structures is a good way to start.
Elements of nature can also be a good starting place: seasons, cycles of plants, human life cycles from a single day and night to birth, life, death, a volcano, planet rotation, etc.
Musical forms: AB, ABA, Rondo, Fugue, Suite, Sonata, Chance... Using musical structures as a basis for a composition is always a simple way to create a new work and make a connection between form and content. For ABA for example, you can start with a simple motif (musical, movement or image), then develop a second part for B, then repeat the original motif. The last part can shift slightly, based on the B part, but the repetition creates a sense of wholeness or beginning, middle and end.
One interesting way of thinking about form is what makes a beginning, a middle or an ending. One project is having participants create one of the three in isolation (make a small work that feels like only an ending...). This is a good way of talking about what qualities we expect in these three parts of a work and how we might re-think them.
**The witer John Irving. always knows his endings before he starts to write (not how it begins). This has become part of his practice- to forsee where he is going helps him know how to start.
Assigning material using forms from music, nature or other structures is a good way to start.
Elements of nature can also be a good starting place: seasons, cycles of plants, human life cycles from a single day and night to birth, life, death, a volcano, planet rotation, etc.
Musical forms: AB, ABA, Rondo, Fugue, Suite, Sonata, Chance... Using musical structures as a basis for a composition is always a simple way to create a new work and make a connection between form and content. For ABA for example, you can start with a simple motif (musical, movement or image), then develop a second part for B, then repeat the original motif. The last part can shift slightly, based on the B part, but the repetition creates a sense of wholeness or beginning, middle and end.
︎︎︎from Rob Kitsos