"...Judging in DCI is more art than science."

[Suviduvi]

here is how scoring works....the later that you appear in the performance line up, the higher your score will be.

easy fix, mix up the line up

[doyle079]

I hope this wasn't a surprise to anyone.

oh no my life has completely changed, i dont know how to live anymore!!

[bawker]

here is how scoring works....the later that you appear in the performance line up, the higher your score will be.

easy fix, mix up the line up

They tried that in 1988 . . .it worked too well to be done again.

[Bruckner8]

It seems to some of you are confusing the original idea. The problem is concerning judging being the art, not judging the art.

I tend to agree that saying judging is an art (which in some respects it is) and using that as an excuse to justify the outcome should not be permitted. That is what the original poster is implying the problem he is having with John Phillips's words.

Then again, I could be wrong

Regards,

John

Thank you John, you have it right. It sets a horrible tone by claiming the act of judging is also an art.

[Jeff Ream]

He can be whatever he wants, but using scientific principles to judge how something is put together and how well it is performed will never yield consistent results.

You can't use scientifc principles to decide whether to say one group of performers is "better" than another when performing different programs. When you do, it results in category error.

If every corps marched the exact same show it would be easier, but there would still be a great deal of subjectivity. It's inescapable. You can't get rid of judgment when evaluating performance, and judgment and the scientific method are 100% incompatible.

exactly. my dad once went on a rant that " a tic is a tic is a tic". yes, but what exactly is a tic?

if line a plays clean but has muddy tuning, they may have moments that sound fuzzy due to the tuning, but are clean.

if line b has crystal clear tuning, any errors may stick out a lot.

so depending on your tolerance, do you give a the benefit due to tuning or give it up to b for risking it all?

i've seen both happen. your tick may not be my tick. they were as subjective as anything we have now, and actually used to account for some wild swings in scores in a caption from day to day.

science is involved, but so is art. and to be honest, the art is being able to figure out the science

[Bruckner8]

I'm a teacher. Believe, I know what rubrics are supposed to equalize.

I have a Master Degree in Education (Math Teacher!) What's your point? Stating our credentials doesn't change much, but I'll be sure to take it into consideration, lol.

Not really. I'm saying that if a show is being "judged", no matter how the rubric is structured, we have to accept that there isn't going to be a mechanism like the scientific method to disprove that judgment.

Yup. If any subjectivity is involved, no scientific method will disprove it. But we DO have control over the amount of subjectivity. We DO have control over the criteria, the "boxes," the judge education process. Now think about this: When Galileo proved the Earth revolved around the Sun, the "consesus" was the opposite. Was the consesus a subjective thing the day before Galileo made his pronouncement? The consesus THOUGHT they were CERTAIN, but they were actually guessing. They had simplistic methods, bad data and came to wrong conclusions...

I'm sure most judges try very hard to be as objective as possible, but judging shows is inescapably subjective. When we argue about what numbers judges throw at a performance, it's because we question their authority (bestowed on them only by DCI having hired them for it), the rubrics they're using, or both.

Being a judge is THE MOST DIFFICULT JOB in all DCI, hands down. Harder than Corps Director, DCI Director, even harder than Truck Driver (which is also very difficult). I completely respect their task. I'm perfectly happy if they get THE CORRECT BOX. Forget about the minute tenths or less for a second. I'm just talking about meeting the criteria of a SINGLE BOX for cryin out loud.

What if two judges disagree? I'm not talking about the latitude within a box; I'm talking about the criterion separating the boxes. What if two judges judge the same caption at the same time from the same position and come to a different box conclusion? (Abstract Thought Experiment here, duh)

Mr Phillips' conclusion: They're aritsts! Judging is more art than science! One judge "felt" different than the other!

DCP responders to this thread's conclusion: Judging is difficult. Given them a break. Get over it. It's entirely subjective. It is what it is.

Bruckner8's conclusion: One or both of the judges are unqualified, or--more likely--woefully unprepared/misinformed. They missed their primary repsonsibility: Using the sheet criterion to get the correct box. (The decision of giving Corps X a tenth over Corps Y plays to the bias/art/CI part of the equation, where championships are won/lost. I'm not talking about that here!)

[mad_scotty]

I'm disappointed with the "pass" everyone's giving this judge, agreeing with his premise, and basically telling me "to get over it."

For a system to be fair, credible, and trustworthy, it has to be definable and repeatable (practically the definition of the Scientific Method)

The entire process of redoing the sheets, going from ticks to other crieria, and having multiple judges MEANS that DCI knows this, and DCI wants the process to be as objective as possible. They've spent lots of $$ promoting and refining the judging aspect, striving to make it fair. Kudos to the history of DCI.

Now we have the Judge Administrator saying that judging is MORE art than science. Think about that. Seriously. That means he's basically saying "therefore, you can't judge US, since we're artists. We're allowed to take risks; to take liberties, just like any other artist. By golly, we can't be held accountable! WE'RE ARTISTS!"

If that's the case, then we should have the exact same judging panel every night finals week. After all, the art on the field (the shows) are the exact same night-to-night, and the corps are just trying to improve and "get it right" every time out. Shouldn't the artistic talents of the judges be allowed this latitude? Shouldn't they be allowed to improve, and to adjust their art? They're just artists, after all, no differnt than the corps shows themselves.

There is art in judging. I get that. The phrase "General Effect" is loaded with subjectivity, let alone the definition of its measure. But we should STRIVE, hear me? STRIVE to make it less so, if we want people to trust it, to believe it, and to easily train others to judge it.

We should be minimizing the artistic part of judging, not lauding it! If the art portion is greater than 50% (as the term MORE implies), we're going down the wrong road. It's a cop-out.

(But it actually explains a lot...and adds major credence to Competetive Inertia)

i can't understand where you are coming from at all. i guess it's because to me drum corps, as athletic as it is, as competitive as it is, is still primarily an art form, not a sport. i have never trusted the system of "olympic" judging, and i think we are all well aware that it is at best a deeply flawed system that creates a false illusion of "fair competition" and at worst a hammer that breeds assimilation within a narrowly defined scope of achievement. there is a lot less diversity in drum corps than most people realize, everyone is playing to the judges first, and notions of creating something original or passionate or communicating with an audience are far too often swept aside because we all know what happens to shows that refuse to play to the green shirts. the trade off of judging drum corps by a single criteria is a single vision that corps flow into, the sort of unifying blandness that has been driving fans away for a decade now.

drum corps is the only major art form i know of that accepts this kind of confinement of spirit. i think the only sensible way to judge shows, if they must be judged at all, is to use the same jury system concept other art forms use to adjuticate. let the jury review the shows, make specific critical comments for the staffs use only (like they already do) and instead of affixing a weird, false numerical score to each show just give out an overall best in show, and maybe some best in class awards for individual sections, and have the leeway to occasionally but not always grant a special award to a corps who has produced an iconic performance of that rare, don't see something like this every year variety, like a star 93 or madison 95. and even that will not always get it right (the stands in jackson exhaled a huge wave of relief in 93 when star was announced in second, even people who loathed the cadets show didn't want star to win, not until the vids came out and people started really seeing and hearing that show).

[Schickmeister]

Care to enlighten us?

No..not really. But he sure gets some great discussions going on here.

I think that it is an interesting commentary (the remarks from the judge) though. I kind of equate it to the British Monarchy...looks great when you see it...but when you look closer, it's just a whole lot of politics behind the scenes.

[Lance]

I have a Master Degree in Education (Math Teacher!) What's your point? Stating our credentials doesn't change much, but I'll be sure to take it into consideration, lol.

Congrats on your degree, but all I meant was that I work a lot with grading rubrics, and I've found that they don't really make grading anything more subjective. You obviously disagree, and that's fine.

[mobrien]

The idea that art and science occupy opposing ends of a spectrum is faulty in and of itself, since the nature of creating something that works well (aka "art") relies on scientific principles.

Composers know that certain tempi, keys, and chords evoke certain emotions, because trial and error shows it to be true. Architects know that people respond in different ways to different materials and shapes and know the structural characteristics of those materials. If a playwright comes to me with a script that isn't quite working, I can usually tell them exactly WHY it's not working, not because "I'm an artist", but because there are basic principles that govern human interaction with narrative and performance, and if you stop paying attention to those principles, the work suffers. By the same token, the best designers and arrangers in the activity know that certain things they can do will evoke certain responses, because they know that there are 'better' and 'worse' solutions to given challenges within the medium.

By the same token, adjudicators can and (hopefully, do) use those same criteria to determine relative quality. So fine, call it "an art", but be honest that if it's being done correctly, it should be art that is based on science.

Edited January 14, 2009 by mobrien