Open Scores Lab is as an environment where creative practitioners can experiment with new approaches to scoring, creating cross-disciplinary work to support their research and practice.

The Lab brings together: composers and artists whose practice includes making open scores in different media; performers who are experienced in realising open scores in performance; graphic designers who focus on the visual display and communication of information; creative computing specialists who explore networked processes and interactive systems; other researchers in related disciplines where there is a common interest in scoring and communicating instructions.

The work of the Lab is to develop new approaches to scoring, and consequently to develop new modes of music making. This takes place through monthly meetings and a series of focused projects that deal with a specific aspect of score making.

The Lab meets for one day every month during term time, and includes presentations, workshops and practical experimentation featuring work by internal and visiting researcher-practitioners. We also run the ensemble Material to perform work by Lab members.

PhD

Opportunities

We welcome proposals from prospective PhD students wanting to join the Open Scores Lab, focusing on topics which intersect with current interests of Lab members or which extend the scope of our work. We can support practice-led projects incorporating a portfolio of creative work and more theoretical/musicological research, as well as interdisciplinary approaches. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss a proposal.

Bath Spa is also part of the South, West and Wales AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, an alliance between ten leading universities: Bath Spa, Aberystwyth University, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, University of Bristol, Cardiff University, Cranfield University, University of Exeter, University of Reading, University of Southampton, and the University of the West of England. Individually our research excellence is internationally recognised. Collectively our expertise creates a centre of excellence supporting and supervising PhD and doctoral students across the humanities, languages and creative arts. 

The Training Partnership awards annual fully funded doctoral studentships for the best postgraduate research projects across the full range of Arts and Humanities disciplines. You can find out more about the scope and excellence of the Partnerships’s research activities on their website. We also welcome interdisciplinary applications and practice-led research projects. 

For University regulations, fees, and general information, please also visit the our research degrees pages.

Current PhD Students
  • Vassilis Chatzimakris – Indeterminate mix: exploring ways of incorporating indeterminacy in the context of mixed-media performances
  • Louis d’Heudieres – Spontaneously realising the unspontaneous:developing a compositional strategy that exploits reduced exposure between performers and scores
  • Oogoo Maia: Compositional and performative approaches to indeterminate scores in experimental music theatre and multimedia events
  • Misha Penton – Voice: sound, body, image - solo and collaborative pathways in the creation of new post-opera works
  • Caitlin Rowley – Questioning the division of ‘public’ and ‘private’ creative spaces through an interdisciplinary approach to composition derived from a performative interpretation of visual art processes
  • Harry Matthews - Listening to noise [pollution]: performer and audience environments
  • Goni Peles – Developing scorecraft: from game design to collaborative composition
  • Oliver Ginger – Borders: liminality within the spaces where different sound environments meet
  • Cameron Graham – Immediacy and new material ethnography in new music and sound installation.

Find out more

For more information about Open Scores Lab, please follow us on Twitter below, or see our blog for updates on events and group news.