Sun Ra Musical Score

This is my final Graphic Score, my map and installation.

My concept was that Sun Ra was fascinated with space since he ‘claimed’ he was teleported to saturn and was a missionary on earth. I took the idea of extra terestrial experiences people have had on earth, mainly America where Sun Ra was brought up and found several maps of plots of UFO sightings across americe. I chose to settle on a map of ‘flying triangle’ sightings. The map shows all the flying triangle report locations in the last 10 years. There is about 400 spots that were reported. Each reported sighting is marked with a triangle. I remade this map and simplified it to uise in my piece.

The triangles were reported to have been lit up with white, red and blue lights. And to be hovering in the sky traveling very slowly. The UFO’s were thought to be the size of a football pitch and hovered around 100 feet above the ground.

I had been looking at simplifying maps using the London underground design as inspiration and used the triangle plot as a basic grid to plot my journey. I wanted the players to be taken on a journey to make them think in the style of Sun Ra and break away from the typical forms of Jazz, making them play in the futuristic style that Sun Ra would have intended the music to be played in. Obviously the idea of using UFO sightings fitted well with this idea.

I decided to make an instillation as a final piece taking what I had researched about Sun Ra, the london underground and UFO sightings. I plotted my map, designating diferent journey lines to different players. The music follows a rough pattern of the music which the player is free to improvise from, but has some sense of form with the shape and small icons indicating pauses, volume, time checks and repeats. After I had the map plotted I worked on the instillation. I laser cut two pieces of purspex, one with time lines on and one with the triangles on. I then printed my map on assitate and sandwiched it inbetween the perspex. Onec I had the final piece I hung it with fishing line, which, from a distance, is not visible and looks like the map is ‘hovering’ much like the flying triangles. I then lit up the instillation with a merge of red and blue lights which gave a purple/red light as I thought that blue and red lights made the piece look too police like. The photo’s I took work really well and I feel have a real extra terestrial feel to them. This is a scaled down version of what I would like to have made if we were doing the project for a performance. This instilation would have filled the whole stage so both the crowd and musicians could see the huge glowing UFO which has the written on.

I also made some indevidual maps for each player. I looked at some maps and decided a basic lay out. The map includes a key on the back so the musicians can work out what to play at each part of the music. The maps work really well as an indevidual piece for the players to refer to and also fits in well with the theme.

I think this project went really well and I am pleased with the way my Sun Ra inspired graphic score has turned out.