Body Scores project exists across different kind of monstration: books of photography, photo exhibitions in art galleries or art centres, live performances during which scores are painted lively, concerts where scores are projected on stage while musicians are playing. In February 2018, Chanel gave a commission for composing a new string quartet. It is Jacopo's fifth string quartet named N.5 and dedicated to Richard Collasse, President & Representative Director of Chanel K.K., Tokyo, Japan.
For ten days Jacopo Baboni Schilingi wrote his new music on several Japanese models.
There are countless photographs of musicians: singers, violinists, pianists, percussionists, guitarists, or conductors. Their faces, facial expressions, their tense bodies… Or the musical instruments, with or without the musicians. It may seem that nothing new can exist in the relationship between music and photography. But despite this, one questions remains unanswered: what are these musicians playing? Is it possible to take into account, via photography, the deepest nature of music, its composition? The musical score.
The score is a codified link, written by hand, which indicates how to embody the emotions that the composer expresses through his creation.
Today, musical scores are generated by software, which allows the musical transcriptions to be printed and distributed, directly. Therefore the “original” notation is in fact already an automated product. Before the advent of such tools, scores were hand written by composers, and the calligraphic excellence required was part of their stringent training. As with any precise, concentrated work, writing scores by hand demands long, intense labor. With time, a composer’s handwriting becomes a style, part of their personal signature, which corresponds to their sensibility. This is the school of composition in which Jacopo Baboni Schilingi was trained.
Writing by hand is not only a necessary process for basic learning, but – as we now know – the gesture of writing links vision and touch; or, more precisely: the brain simulates the movement before the act of writing. Accordingly, moving the hand is not the same process as calling forth a letter (or a note) on a screen. In other words, cognitive structures are a function of physical activity. Therefore it is logical that the mechanics of writing should transform the resulting text.
Since 2013, Jacopo Baboni Schilingi modified his compositional method to rediscover a “sculptural” sensibility, which had previously been altered by machines, via living materials, indispensable for creation. His choice is drastic, emphatic and powerful, as it represents – literally – a return to the body, a carnal return: his scores are henceforth not just written by hand, but also written directly onto human bodies. In his studio, converted into both a calligraphy atelier and photography studio, he collaborates with male and female models, who serve as living canvases for his compositions.