Washing Cycle
1) Pick up a dirty laundry
2) Wash it until it’s clean
3) Throw it at any surface that would make it dirty and do one of the following
a)Pick up the laundry and repeat step 1-3
b)Leave the laundry
Development and Inspiration
The first iteration of my score is a simple three step instruction. The first step is to “pick up a dirty clothes”. The second step is to simply “wash it clean”. And the third and final step is “throw it in a dirty puddle”. My inspiration for this score came from the scores in Grapefruit. In Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit there is a lot of seemingly pointless and absurd scores and instructions. Scores that stand out to me are Water piece which just simply stated “water”. Another one is where it tells you to hide until everyone forgets about you and die. I wanted to make a score that seem pointless like washing a dirty clothes just to throw it away and make it dirty. During the class discussion people brought up a lot of good points and observation about my score. Such as the score could represent a cycle or breaking of it. And that there is no further instructions after the last step, where it’s up to the person. So I took in those ideas and made the final version of my score. I wanted to give a clear option to the person performing this score. One option will create a cycle and another with break it. I also changed some of the wording to give more freedom to the performer. I changed dirty clothes to dirty laundry so that they can use other things such as socks, pants or even backpack. I changed the dirty puddle part to any surface that would dirtied the laundry. The reason for this change is because during the discussion someone brought up the point of what if the performer couldn’t find a dirty puddle. All these changes would let the performer use any laundry and at anywhere.
Idea
My idea behind the score is the idea of redundancy and cycle. Everybody is technically already doing the first three steps in their everyday life. They got dirty laundry and they would wash it. Eventually the clothes gets dirty by touching multiple surfaces and then the cycle repeats again. This is why I made the score vague in terms of time. I did not tell the performer to do the step right after the other. I left out the words such as “then” and “finally” so that each step can be done at any time. Everyone is repeating the 3 step until they chose to leave the laundry. The option at the end is a representation of the option everyone has: an option to stop. But ending a cycle is difficult. For example a bad habit, people can tell you stop but it’s difficult. You’re not gonna stop unless you want it to. Like the dirty laundry why would you throw it away just because a score gave you an option to. Only reason you would want to is you choose it yourself.