notation.html

<ul>
<li>why did musical notation (sheet music, in the west) become unified, but dance notations did not
</li>
<li>will we see a unified programming language?
</li></ul><p>
How does an artistic notation specify (express) the essence of a performance, while allowing various degrees of artistic expression.
<p>
My question is not about what constitutes a &quot;legally distinct&quot; work of art, but about how notation affects the following distinctions:
<ul>
<li>aspects of performance &quot;intended by the creator&quot; vs those left up to &quot;artistic expression&quot; by the performer
</li>
<li>expression within a given form (performance of an established work) vs an expression of a new form (creation of a new work).
</li>
<li>&quot;heavy borrowing&quot; vs &quot;copying&quot; vs &quot;stealing&quot; artistic motifs/ideas
</li>
<li>accessibility to &quot;outsiders&quot; of the domain vs speed for &quot;insiders&quot; (jargon, language surface area)
</li></ul><p>
<p>
Sheet music specifies a lot about the sounds that are expected
Dance has various notations (usually for a specific kind of dance)
<p>
<h1>music notation</h1><p>
<ul>
<li>music has midi, which specifies many things about the 'music', but doesn't specify exact instrument. Sheet music specifies even less, yet still reliably produces the &quot;specified&quot; sounds
</li>
<li>just as how sheet music can capture the essense of a piece.
</li>
<li>guitar tabs?
</li>
<li>digital audio manipulation allows complex and total manipulation of sound waves, but musicians/producers do not regularly think of their work in the language of physics. Artistic controls are developed to manipulate the sound in a domain-relavent way. In this sense, the interface of a DAW (and its plugins) form a kind of notation by which the artist works.
</li></ul><p>
<h1>dance notation</h1><p>
Unlike musical notation, generalized notation for dance never really emerged. With the advent of video, it is much easier to just record someone dancing and call that choreography rather than writing what is intended. This fails to separate the performance from the work being performed. Does the dance call for a clawed hand, or is that an unintended (unspecified or mis-specified) aspect of the performance, that needn't be replicated by dances performing the work?
<p>
Martial arts is probably hard to record for the same reasons.
<p>
But how does one express choreography?
<ul>
<li>rigging for animation as an artistic medium for the expression of human motion in an analytic medium
</li></ul><p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choreography">:choreography</a>
</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_notation">:Dance notation</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauchamp%E2%80%93Feuillet_notation">:beauchamp-feuillet</a>
</li></ul><li><a href="https://zacksdancelab.com/blog/a-new-kind-of-dance-science/">a new kind of dance science</a> (combinatorics)
</li></ul><p>
<h1>writing novels</h1><p>
<ul>
<li>authors often have very specific images of their characters in mind, even if they do not put those descriptions into the final novel.
<ul>
<li>in this case, the reader is &quot;performing&quot; the novel in their imagination.
</li></ul></li></ul><p>
<h1>cooking</h1><p>
recipes can be written with optional ingredients, scalable portions, substitutions, alternative techniques
typically written with ingredient amounts listed separately from the technique, which drives me mad.
<p>
There is a standard way to refer to different common cooking techniques, but they are often inconsistently used, and not taught the casual home cook.
<a href="https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/125/whats-the-difference-between-pan-frying-sauteing-and-shallow-frying">saute vs pan fry</a>
<p>
Technique may be over or under specified.
Specialized equipment can often be approximated with common things, do you write what you actually do, or the method with the 'correct' equipment?
At what point does a recipe with heavy substitution become a new recipe?
Wildly different recipes can produce very similar dishes by the same cook, and underspecified 
Is there a &quot;normal form&quot; of recipes? Similar recipes (going by their written form) always produce similar dishes, and similar dishes are always produced by similar recipes?
<p>
In programming there is an idea that a good notation should make bad/invalid results hard/impossible to represent.
This is not at all embodies by recipe notation, since it is extremely easy to write recipes that taste awful, or are otherwise unworkable. (specifying ingredient amounts separately from their usage contributes to this).
inconsistent and imprecise systems of measurement also contribute to this. Ingredients can vary in quality.
There is no notion of specifying tolerances. &quot;One bag of chocolate chips&quot; might be a valid measurement for a cookie recipe, but so could &quot;500g semi-sweet baking chocolate&quot;. The first implies that the exact amount and type doesn't matter that much, while the second may or may not need to be exactly what is said. But &quot;one bag&quot; also fails to say how big a bag is, even approximately. If, in the future or on another continent, chocolate is sold in a wildly different bag size, then the recipe will fail to replicate the correct cookie.
These are things that the cook is &quot;expected to know&quot;. Cooking is full of implicit knowledge, which practically-speaking must be learned through experience.
This is I believe a failure of notation, and contributes heavily to the common plight of being &quot;unable to cook&quot;.
<p>
Cooking <em>should</em> be as simple as following instructions while looking up and unfamiliar terms.
Unlike sheet music, or dance notation which will usually only be &quot;performed&quot; by people who already have specialist knowledge of the domain, cooking must be done by all people at some point.
<p>
It is also common in programming that there should be a 'canonical'/right way to do simple things.
<h1>theater</h1><p>
scripts specify the dialogue and often some stage directions, but they could specify more or less.
<ul>
<li>is a play still the same play if the words are updated into the vernacular?
</li>
<li>what if the plot is changed in the details, but not in structure?
</li>
<li>what if some minor characters are rolled into a single supporting role, so a smaller cast can do the show?
</li></ul><p>
<ul>
<li>my favorite rendition of shakespeare is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2094064/">Much Ado About Nothing (2012)</a>, which pairs modern visuals (though in black and white) with the original script.
</li></ul><p>
<h1>vector vs raster visual art</h1><p>
visual art is not usually considered a performance art like music or dance, but there are still some amount of &quot;expression&quot; that is not necessarily specified by the creator, especially when considering digital art.
<ul>
<li>scale can affect the perception, vector and roster art scale differently
</li>
<li>displays may not accurately recreate colors
</li>
<li>context may be freely changed
</li>
<li>digital art tools often try to re-create the functionality of physical media, and so offer the same creative tools the artist, but this doesn't have to be the case.
<ul>
<li>what constraints on thinking are carried over between digital and physical tools? How does that mode of thinking constrain the art that is made?
</li></ul></li></ul><p>
<h1>games</h1><p>
games are a multimodal experience
<ul>
<li>the 3d modeler may not be the same person as the rigger or animator.
<ul>
<li>the rigger provides an articulated model which constrains the design space within which the animator develops their art. In a sense, the rigger provides the notation with which the animator works
</li>
<li>the player then &quot;performs&quot; this work by adding the final inputs. They are also &quot;in the audience&quot;, which makes the experience interactive.
</li></ul><li>similarly, in games with adaptive audio
</li></ul><p>
<p>
<h1>math, programming</h1><p>
<ul>
<li>programming language is a notation of computation.
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm">notation as a tool of thought</a>
</li></ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity">:sapir-whorf hypothesis</a>
</li>
<li>