Sally Jane Norman

Object of Notation is a sonic and poetic manifesto on the tension between fleeting bodily experience and the symbolic structures we build to try to hold it. Structured in six spoken movements, ‘Nota Bene,’ ‘Reading Things,’ ‘Distancing Means,’ ‘Politics of Literacy,’ ‘Palimpsest Dynamics’ and ‘Scoring Scales,’ the work follows Norman’s voice as it reflects on how we learn to read the substance of the world, from the rings of a tree to maps, codes and musical scores. Her poem questions the tools and interfaces that offer ‘a seeming hold over matter,’ reminding us that every act of notation imposes one order among countless possible others, and that ‘the world sees and talks back.’ ‘Do we mark to remember, to reinterpret, or to create anew?’ she asks. Rather than a static archive or a dry trace of the past, notation emerges as a dynamic palimpsest, ‘ever tentative,’ like ‘placeholder scores of omnidirectionally shifting grains of sand,’ open to all that is living, contingent and incalculable.