Saunders, J (2025) just trying to do what I’m told and keep up and do the best that I can.
Score (353kB) |
| Item Type: | Composition |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Saunders, J |
| Abstract: | just trying to do what I'm told and keep up and do the best that I can (2025) puts the pianist in an increasingly difficult situation where they are asked to respond to a series of instructions which get progressively harder to follow. The piece reflects on the experience of managing situations where the flow of information and requirement to respond accurately and efficiently becomes overly taxing and impossible to maintain. In these situations, coping strategies might be developed to find a manageable solution or to accept defeat. In the piece, artificial voices give live-generated text instructions that are not known in advance by the pianist, forcing them to respond to each instruction as they hear it. In parallel an AI voice comments on the activities and can be engaged in conversation by the pianist, seeking advice or assisting with the task in different ways. The character and attitude of the AI voice sits somewhere between a benign but largely unhelpful assistant and the intelligence of a telephone automated menu, although it has the potential to transcend both depending on what it is asked. The unforgiving nature of the artificial voices delivering instructions with no accountability or reciprocity with the human player aims to reflect on situations where control is beyond us, but we must still complete the arbitrary tasks we are given. |
| Official URL: | https://www.james-saunders.com/just-trying-to-do-w... |
| Date: | 12 October 2025 |
| Projects: | Cyborg Soloists |
| Note: | Commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, with the support of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London. |
| Subjects: | M Music and Books on Music > M Music |
| Divisions: | Bath School of Music and Performing Arts |
| Research Centres and Groups: | OpenScores Lab Research Group |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Mar 2026 17:09 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Mar 2026 17:14 |
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