Composing for improvisation with chaotic oscillators

This paper describes a novel method for composing and improvisation with real-time chaotic oscillators. Recently discovered algebraically simple nonlinear third-order differential equations are solved and acoustical descriptors relating to their frequency spectrums are determined according to the MPEG-7 specification. A second nonlinearity is then added to these equations: a real-time audio signal. Descriptive properties of the complex behaviour of these equations are then determined as a function odifference tones derived from a Just Intonation scale and the amplitude of the audio signal. By using only the real-time audio signal from live performer/s as an input the causal relationship between acoustic performance gestures and computer output, including any visual or performer-instruction output, is deterministic even if the chaotic behaviours are not

and we continue

“and we continue” is an interactive online performance that tells a story about the behavior of complex systems through the lens of water. Each participant starts out as an iconic representation of various forms of water, such as Ice or Cloud, and explores its individual existence. Later, real-time interactions between participants are explored along with influences of outside actors to the system, creating unpredictability. In the last stage, participants come together to form a system that acts as an individual once again. The story is told through use of music, video and text, all of which react to the participants’ actions. Each of these three media, together with all participant interactions, plays a part in the story of water and complexity by highlighting shifting time scales as humans influence earth’s water systems and underscoring the unpredictable consequences of individual actions within such systems

Making Complex Music with Simple Algorithms, is it Even Possible?

Algorithmic composition is often limited to score generation, but may also include sound production. All levels from sound synthesis to the generation of a complete composition can be integrated into one monolithic program. A strict separation of the low level of sound synthesis and higher levels otherwise reserved for algorithmic composition is not necessary, information can flow between all levels. An interesting challenge in this kind of thorough algorithmic composition is to generate as complex music as possible with as little code as possible. The challenge has been accepted, successfully or not, in a series of compositions called Kolmogorov Variations. We discuss the techniques used in a few of the pieces as well as the promises and perils of this strict approach to algorithmic composition

Making Complex Music with Simple Algorithms, is it Even Possible?

Algorithmic composition is often limited to score generation, but may also include sound production. All levels from sound synthesis to the generation of a complete composition can be integrated into one monolithic program. A strict separation of the low level of sound synthesis and higher levels otherwise reserved for algorithmic composition is not necessary, information can flow between all levels. An interesting challenge in this kind of thorough algorithmic composition is to generate as complex music as possible with as little code as possible. The challenge has been accepted, successfully or not, in a series of compositions called Kolmogorov Variations. We discuss the techniques used in a few of the pieces as well as the promises and perils of this strict approach to algorithmic composition

Finding Music in Chaos: Designing and Composing with Virtual Instruments Inspired by Chaotic Equations

Using chaos theory to design novel audio synthesis engines has been explored little in computer music. This could be because of the difficulty of obtaining harmonic tones or the likelihood of chaos-based synthesis engines to explode, which then requires re-instantiating of the engine to proceed with sound production. This process is not desirable when composing because of the time wasted fixing the synthesis engine instead of the composer being able to focus completely on the creative aspects of composition. One way to remedy these issues is to connect chaotic equations to individual parts of the synthesis engine instead of relying on the chaos as the primary source of all sound-producing procedures. To do this, one can create a physically-based synthesis model and connect chaotic equations to individual parts of the model. The goal of this project is to design a physically-inspired virtual instrument based on a conceptual percussion instrument model that utilizes chaos theory in the synthesis engine to explore novel sounds in a reliable and repeatable way for other composers and performers to use. This project presents a two-movement composition utilizing these concepts and a modular set of virtual instruments that can be used by anyone, which can be interacted with by a new electronic music controller called the Hexapad controller and standard MIDI controllers. The physically-inspired instrument created for the Hexapad controller is called the Ambi-Drum and standard MIDI controllers are used to control synthesis parameters and other virtual instruments

Studio Bench: the DIY Nomad and Noise Selector

This thesis asks questions about developing a holistic practice that could be termed ‘Studio Bench’ from what have been previously seen as three separate activities: DIY electronic instrument making, sound studio practice, and live electronics. These activities also take place in three very specific spaces. Firstly, the workshop with its workbench provides a way of making and exploring sound(-making) objects, and this workbench is considered more transient and expedient in relation to finding sounds, and the term DIY Nomad is used to describe this new practitioner. Secondly, the recording studio provides a way to carefully analyse sound(-making) objects that have been self-built and record music to play back in different contexts. Finally, live practice is used to bridge the gap between the workbench and studio, by offering another place for making and an opportunity to observe and listen to the sound(-making) object in another environment in front of a live audience. The DIY Nomad’s transient nature allows for free movement between these three spaces, finding sounds and making in a holistic fashion. Spaces are subverted. Instruments are built in the studio and recordings made on the workbench. From the nomadity of the musician, sounds are found and made quickly and intuitively, and it is through this recontextualisation that the DIY Nomad embraces appropriation, remixing, hacking and expediency. The DIY Nomad also appropriates cultures and the research is shaped through DJ practice - remixing and record selecting - noise music, and improvisation

Everything in its Place: A Conceptual Framework For Anti-Music

In this paper I describe my live performance practice utilising bespoke synthesisers and controllers. I address the conceptual approach and processes in the context of esoteric systems and give a technical description of the instruments. I situate my work in the context of Victorian Spiritualism and magic ritual. Following their precedent, I amalgamate systems and esoteric concepts to meet the goals of transformation and connecting to unknown forces, designing hybrid systems that allow me to approach a performance as an automatic mediumship process. I work primarily with NASA’s lunar orbital data, W.B. Yeats’ esoteric system detailed in A Vision (1937), and the Tarot. These systems, in conjunction with the hardware instruments, allow me to devise an invocation performance practice, where I draw forth music from the aether, tapping into unseen and unknown forces outside of myself. Opposing binaries of the analogue and the digital, hardware and software, scientific data and esoteric systems, produce a ritual invocatory performance. The depth and complexity of the systems are such that I can abandon Western musical conventions while maintaining a sense of form and structure, creating a framework for receiving and embracing transmissions from the vast possibilities of noise, the cosmos, and translating them into an immersive listening experience

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal