Desarrollo de los métodos no destructivos

I have said that a score is not identical with a musical work, but neither is a score a realisation of a work. A score and a realisation have very different properties; for instance, one can listen to a performance, but not to its score; a score is written on paper, and one can tear up a score, but hardly a performance. A score is a manifestation of the work’s notation, but it is not a realisation of

the work: it is rather a means to the end of realising it. Musicians use the score to play the piece of music it is the score of.

There are other objects that function as means to realise a work, for instance film reels, CDs, or printing plates. They are tools for realising artworks, and the tools are not to be confused with the actual realisations of the works. A film reel, like the projector and the silver screen, are devices used for tokening the film.103 A film is determined by other qualities than those of the film reel: for example, a film could have a duration of 118 minutes and 12 seconds, but a film reel is not 118 minutes and 12 seconds long. A film reel rather has a length in metres – and a film does not. Additionally, the film reel’s properties are contingent. It is conceivable that celluloid might be replaced by another material or that the relation between the length of the film reel in metres to the film’s length in minutes could be different.104 There doesn’t even have to be a film reel, because a film can be realised by playing a DVD as well, and the invention of digital film meant that film is not anymore necessarily a chemically based medium. The point of all this is just that I want to emphasise the difference between realisations of films and the means employed to do this. There is more than one way to realise a film, and even more are imaginable, but there is only one film, and arguably it could not have been different from how it actually is.105

The realisation of a film is the screening of it. This can take place in a cinema, but also somewhere else by means of a DVD player, VCR, or computer. The qualities of the realisations can vary. The screen used to realise a film in a cinema is likely to be bigger than someone’s TV, the resolution of a HDTV is

103 _{Cf. Reicher: Metaphysik der Kunst, p. 158.} 104 _{Reicher: Metaphysik der Kunst, p. 158.} 105 _{Cf. Chapter 3.5.}

higher than that of an analog TV, a DVD is able to produce sharper pictures than a video tape, and so on, but nevertheless all those different screenings are tokens of the same type. Like performances of musical works, the realisations of a films are events, though Berys Gaut observes that it would be improper to call the screening of a film a performance, “since one cannot, for instance, talk of a screening being a misinterpretation of a work.”106

Like film, a musical work can be realised in different ways, the most obvious being performing it. But also playing a CD, tape, mp3 file or any other medium it (or rather: an instance of it) is recorded on realises the work – though like film screenings, these latter means should not count as performances. A musical work is determined by a sequence of sounds plus instructions concerning tempo, instruments, etc. Despite the risk of sounding tautological, what is realised when the music recorded on a CD is played is the musical work. Making the work audible by playing a CD meets the identity conditions between type and token – compliance with the notation and reference to its history of production.107 There are also works that were never performed and are only ever realised by playing a recording of it. 108 Especially pieces of electronic music come to mind here.

Realisations of literary works are either inscriptions like books, or spoken words performances like the author’s reading of her novel or the recitation of a poem. There can also be a recording of a spoken word performance, and playing the recording would also realise the work.

106 _{Gaut, Berys: “Film Authorship and Collaboration”. In: Allen, Richard / Smith, Murray}

(Eds.): Film Theory and Philosophy. Oxford 1997, pp. 149-172:162.

107 _{More on that, as noted, in Chapter 3.3.}

108 _{Assuming that recording instruments separately in a studio and only later mixing them}

Like film reels and CDs, photographic negatives are not realisations of works of photography, but means to realise them.

One can easily see that by the fact that the negative does not have those colour-, respectively, light-dark-qualities, by which the work is determined, but rather exactly their complements.109

Also, the negatives may be destroyed or lost without the artwork being destroyed or lost. The same goes for the plates used to make works of printmaking. Like negatives, they should not be confused with the actual artwork or a realisation of it.