Les presses du réel, ISBN 978-2378962135, English, French, 512 pages, 2022, France

There is a growing interest in scores. Scores were revolutionised from the 1960s onwards as an artistic format to be explored. They are now being used by (sound) artists as another visual or conceptual medium, as evidenced, for example, by the recent periodical publication “Graphème” [1]). In this context, Elena Biserna’ has critically collected ninety-five works from the 1960s to 2020 in this book and divided them into three main sections: “Walking”, “itinerant listening” and “Playing on the Move”. Walking From Scores allows us to enjoy pieces by famous artists (Max Neuhaus, Giuseppe Chiari, Dick Higgins, La Monte Young, George Brecht, Nam June Paik), experimental musicians (Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, Walter Marchetti) and performance artists (Yoko Ono, Esther Ferrer), but also younger artists such as Blank Noise, Davide Tidoni and Franziska Windisch. There is an explicit reference to Fluxus and its significant influence on interesting contemporary art, especially with its relational qualities, which are thoroughly expressed here in “walking”, as most scores can be physically experienced. The intertwining of the conceptual and procedural nature of the scores (which are not too dissimilar to a set of executable computer code instructions) triggers processes that are explicitly non-local and foster a new ability to “read the space”.