Workshop | Rob Canning: Executable Scores: Embedded Cue Semantics and Animated SVG Notation with Oscilla

This workshop introduces Oscilla, a browser-based framework for animated, cue-driven graphic scores in which performance semantics are embedded directly into SVG notation. Rather than separating score, control system, and playback environment, Oscilla treats the score as a single executable surface—authored visually in Inkscape and enacted in real time via a lightweight browser runtime.

Participants will explore how temporal organization, gesture fields, navigation, OSC-driven control, and media cues can be authored directly into drawings using a compact microsyntax.

The session combines conceptual framing, live demonstration, and hands-on authoring of small examples.

Topics include: temporal articulation (pauses, speed shaping, countdowns), animated gestures (rotation, scaling, path-following), navigational structures (pages, sections, probabilistic traversal), OSC integration for hybrid acoustic-electronic performance, and tight network synchronisation for coordinating scores across multiple devices.

Because Oscilla blurs the line between interactive score and controller, it can also be used to build custom performance interfaces—opening possibilities for both notation-driven and control-surface-driven workflows.

Source code and binaries are available here.

Rob Canning (Dublin 1974) is an composer, improviser, and creative technologist whose work explores animated notation, improvisation, and the dynamics of networked musical systems. He holds a PhD in composition from Goldsmiths, University of London, where his research examined distributed authorship in computer-aided music. A long-time advocate of Free and Open Source Software, he develops Oscilla, an open-source platform for animated graphic notation and networked performance.