The opening bar of Prologue is repeated three times and follows a logic that is stable and ordered. The melodic line is shaped like a sinoidal curve superimposed over the note material. This is followed by a repeated beat at the end of the bar. This beat forms a recurring theme that functions as an anchor as the melodic line gradually increases in complexity. The melodic figures eventually behave like cross-modulated sine wave signals, but the beats in between remain relatively stable, forming contrast and tension.
Digital / Kosmas Giannoutakis / Tom Mudd
Kosmas Giannoutakis
Kosmas Giannoutakis (1985) is a Greek composer investigating the artistic potential of self-organizing principles at play when algorithmic models and human interferences meet. In June 2018, a few months before the start of my Ph.D. in Artistic Research, both Giannoutakis and myself were participants in a workshop as part of the ALMAT (Algorithms that Matter) project titled, "Thresholds of the Algorithmic." The workshop started with the opening of an exhibition in which each participant installed an art installation. In the following days, these works became the starting point for further developments, attempting to push the art towards a threshold where new and perhaps unforeseen aspects could be discovered and explored.
“Thresholds are locations of transitions, points where one modality becomes another, where a qualitative change occurs.In physics the point where an aggregate state changes—the phase transition—is a distinguished transitional location where the properties of the adjacent states become evident.”
Giannoutakis presented his work Sonic Currents, which consists of an algorithm that is made aware of its surroundings through microphones but is also able to affect its surroundings through speakers. In his work, the concept of human-algorithmic systems plays an important role, alluding to the notion of reflexivity, where the environment in which the system is located becomes part of the system itself. Audiences become performers themselves, wondering about the level of influence they may have on the sonic behaviors that they are experiencing.
The use of chaotic circuits is exceptionally useful within this context as it is possible to achieve an astounding variety of sounds using only a minimal amount of components. This is in fact an important aspect of chaotic forms of complexity that warrants some elaboration. Intuitively, one would be tempted to think that creating sonic complexity requires the addition of more and more processes. Here the idea of sonic complexity is the result of technological abundance, and granted, this approach will certainly get you there eventually. There is a very different and arguably more intriguing approach though, which is to create a recursive web of interconnections within the processes that make up the circuitry, allowing the instrument to listen and respond to its own inner workings.
“What’s been interesting to me is setting up really complicated patches on the synthesizer but then the voice goes through the patch in different ways, so that the direct voice signal right after the mic preamp is controlling the wave shape of an oscillator or its frequency.”
Suddenly, and with only a relatively small number of these recursive loops in place, the sound starts to behave in complex patterns. It seems like there is some kind of trick being played, because how can such a complex universe of sounds originate from such a simple set of processes? Rylan's instruments often operate on the basis of chaotic principles, combining nonlinear feedback paths with a microphone input allowing her to manipulate the chaotic patterns with her voice.
“The thing with analog circuits is they follow very simple natural laws, just like breaking a tree branch, or like water, or even birds flying in a V - they push and are pushed into that pattern because it’s the path of least resistance. With analog circuits, I like that you just put the stuff together, and whatever starts it, like you turn on the power, it’s just following whatever the vibration would do.”
Rylan explores chaotic processes through analog electronics. For a few years, she started up a synthesizer company called Flower Electronics, that focused on high quality, unique musical instruments for education, sound art, and noise communities. The instruments she developed were mostly battery-operated, small-scale modular synthesizers, and capable of a wide range of noisy, chaotic sonic behaviors.
Avoiding circuits that alter the temporal aspect of the sound, such as in delays or reverbs, the resulting sonic universe is raw and direct. This directness is mirrored by her vocal performances, blending into the electronics, destabilizing the currents that flow through her instrument, while at the same time having an almost raw folk-like quality.
“It's an intensely personal investigation of being alive in the instant.”
Rob Hordijk
Rob Hordijk (1958-2022) was a highly influential Dutch synthesizer designer and builder. He invented the Rungler circuit which uses the output of two oscillators as logic inputs for a shift register. The output is converted back to a control signal through a digital to analog converter, and then routed back to influence the frequencies of the oscillators.
“The Rungler mangles sound by combining analog oscillators and a primitive digital memory. I am interested not only in the sounds it makes but also the philosophical value of combining analog and digital. Each realm misinterprets the other; this is the same sort of mechanism that generates sublime poetry in translation from one language to another.”
P. Blasser (N. Collins, 2019, 267)
This nonlinear feedback loop, with its peculiar transitions between analog and digital signal treatments, forms the heart of many of Hordijk's most iconic instruments, including the Benjolin, the Blippoo Box, and the Hordijk Modular. In a paper published in the Leonardo Music Journal in 2009, Hordijk describes the Blippoo Box as "a chaotic electronic music instrument, bent by design."
“To play a Blippoo Box means to anticipate what the box is doing and not vice versa, as the behavior can only be predicted in a broad sense. This forces the player to improvise.”
The instrument incorporates acts of circuit bending, but rather implements these bends as permanent features. The Blippoo Box features two Rungler circuits alongside oscillators, sample and hold circuits, and a twin-peak filter; all housed in a compact enclosure. The instrument embodies the concept of creating a near infinite amount of sonic variation through a minimum of ingredients.
“Despite this confusing behavior of the Blippoo, it gives the impression of being far from random. Instead it seems to be acting on some organic whim which evades human understanding but is logical nonetheless.”
Artists inspired by the work of Rob Hordijk include: Derek Holzer (Macumbista), Peter Blasser (Ciat Lonbarde), Peter Edwards (Casperelectronics), Meng Qi, and many others.
Andrew Fitch
Andrew Fitch is a modular synthesizer designer from Australia, focusing on chaotic processes. Through his company Nonlinear Circuits, he has designed numerous Eurorack modules that are based on nonlinearities. He is a strong supporter of the DIY-scene in Perth, providing a lot of useful resources and advice through his website, organizing workshops, and making most of his designs available as kits. Fitch has a Ph.D. focused on chaos in analog electronic circuit design.
“Chaos; it's unpredictable within a bounded region. So it's not all over the place, everywhere. It's all over the place in this area (waves hand). [...] It is (cyclical) but every cycle is slightly different. It never repeats itself, it's always changing. You may be able to guess three or four times which way it changes, but then it will do a zero crossing and it will go off to another direction altogether. It is a little bit predictable but it's also… you don’t really know what is going to happen next.”
In an interview with Music Thing Modular, Fitch discusses the relationship between chaos and unpredictability. His description reveals his nuanced understanding of the difference between random and chaotic processes. He mentions the cyclical aspects, but is quick to emphasize that none of the individual cycles are quite alike. When discussing the notion of predictability, the same balance comes up. While the chaotic circuits he designs may generate unpredictable behaviors, they are definitely not formless. It is precisely this intricate balance between unpredictable yet formative aspects that makes chaos so engaging. Within my own reflections I refer to this balance as a mirage. A shimmer of order peaking through the chaos, dissipating and reforming elsewhere, as soon as it is approached.
All of the hardware designers mentioned here have influenced my artistic practice to some degree, although there are also important differences to note. Both Hordijk and Fitch are clearly focused on designing and building analog instruments, but are less engaged with a performative practice. Rylan also moved in that direction with the start of her synth company, before she left the artistic field for a more academic career. With the rise of modular synthesis since the late Nineties, there appears to be a healthy, vibrant field of analog synthesizer developers, some of whom are implementing chaotic processes within their designs. My own approach is geared more toward the development of simple modules that become chaotic due to the manner in which they are patched together. Chaos through modulation rather than created within a black box.
Acoustic / Scott McLaughlin / Lesley Flanigan
Scott McLaughlin
Scott McLaughlin is an artist and researcher working in the fields of both composition and improvisation. In his work, he combines approaches ranging from experimental music, dynamical systems theory, and philosophy; exploring autopoiesis and recursive feedback systems in constraint-based open form compositions. His current works include a series of explorative pieces for clarinet under the title, The Garden of Forking Paths. The instrument is exposed to various complex conditions, making it impossible to know in advance what sounds will be produced.
“Any given fingering is assumed to conform to an ideal/platonic set of behaviors. This assumption is a deliberate move that sets up the ideal so that performative exploration of that ideal reveals the real by letting the (non-platonic) material world in.”
During the "Feedback Musicianship Meetup" at the University in Sussex, McLaughlin performed with a feedback clarinet, developed by Sam Underwood. The mouthpiece is replaced with a speaker, and by adding a microphone in or near the body of the instrument, feedback is allowed to build up, responding to changes made in the instrument.
“My interest as a performer is in ‘surfing’ the indeterminacy of emergent structures in feedback. Moving between stable and unstable configurations of fingerings to find meta-stable situations that can be explored.”
S. McLaughlin (2022)
The performance itself explores the emergent sonic qualities of feedback, reimagining the notion of a clarinet in a radically different way. These forms of feedback instruments are incredibly sensitive, not only to performative interventions by the player, but also on the acoustic properties of the space, and the volume of the sound filling the room. McLaughlin's metaphor of surfing is appropriate. These types of performances require continuous micro adjustments, preventing the feedback from: either blowing up, engulfing the sound entirely, or to fizzle out and end up in silence.
Lesley Flanigan
Lesley Flanigan is an American experimental-electronic musician and artist. she builds her own instruments, often based on feedback using microphones and speakers. On her 2009 album, Amplifications, she focuses solely on the interactions between voice and feedback. The sustaining character of her Speaker Synth instruments, provide a sorrowful undercurrent upon which Flanigan builds layers of counter melodies with her voice. Her work balances the tensions and frictions within the feedback loops with choral sensibilities within her singing.
As the piece progresses there is a gradual movement from harmonicity to inharmonicity and the initial pitch material, which is based on a harmonic series based on the pitch E, eventually moves to an inharmonic field of noise. In the course of the work, glissandi become integrated in the melodic phrases, thereby increasing the inharmonic nature of each phrase. At first, only the last two notes of each phrase become connected through a glissando, but then the last three, four, five notes of these phrase are connected. Eventually, all of the individual notes of the melody are strung together to form a singular descending melodic line with glissandi, where the notes in the middle of the phrase become indeterminate and thereby increasingly inharmonic. Simultaneously, the bow pressure is also increased which eventually allows for the section with overpressed bow and the highest noise content in the piece.
Désordre starts at a quick, frantic pace that is maintained throughout the piece. Both hands share a rhythmical structure. At the end of the 4th bar, the bar lengths already begin to deviate. Due to a set of iterative metric interventions, the rhythmic structures become more and more misaligned, causing the piece to descend from a state of order towards disorder. The manner in which this misalignment is achieved is reminiscent of exactly the type of nonlinear recursive mathematics that lies at the heart of chaos and fractal geometry.
Chapter II
Artists
This chapter discusses a selection of artists that are either a direct inspiration or speak to specific parts of my practice. My artistic work is fundamentally interdisciplinary, encompassing instrument design, system design, composition, improvisation, performance, and visuals. In practice, all of these elements blend together. An effort has been made here to differentiate between the different aspects of my practice, and to contextualize each individually. Unfortunately, this can give the impression that these aspects can be neatly separated. It should be kept in mind that throughout the processes of making, composing, and playing, the boundaries between these activities are ambiguous at best. This section discusses a selection of artists, composers, performers, and instrument designers. The illustration below can be used to explore this section, by clicking on the terms.
“The system can be driven by external acoustic stimuli which subtly influence the generative audio network. The output is thus shaped by the internal agential dynamics and from the environment, creating an ambiguous behavior that can raise the question: does the installation sense the environment? Does it behave genuinely or intelligently? Does it achieve a state of a sonic self?”
The works by Giannoutakis examine the frictions between intricate algorithms based on neural networks as they encounter the complexities of a larger environment. The software is able to adapt to circumstances in the environment, responding in subtle and nuanced manners to the movements of the audience or other sonic happenings in the exhibition space. The system always acts in novel ways, sidestepping expectations.
Tom Mudd
Tom Mudd is a UK-based programmer, artist, and researcher, exploring connections between nonlinear chaotic synthesis and physical modeling. In recent years, he has made important contributions to the discourse around chaotic music and synthesis, presenting at conferences such as NIME, and publishing in the Computer Music Journal. In his artistic work, Mudd combines chaotic forms of synthesis with digital, physical modeling techniques, to explore rich sonic universes through his software.
“Physical modelling synthesis algorithms are generally discrete renderings of nonlinear dynamical systems that are very similar to the kinds of systems explored through chaotic synthesis.”
On his 2018 album and software release Gutter Synthesis, a soundworld is presented that is both versatile and organic. On a first listen, it is hard to imagine that the sounds are all derived from digital signal processing (DSP) as the ear is tricked into recognizing distinctively acoustic sound properties. As the title suggests, the sounds are guttural, growling, full of intricate details that arise from the unstable physical model. As Mudd explains:
“Gutter synthesis is a purely digital synthesis process that creates very physical, acoustic-like sounds using a network of resonant Duffing oscillators. The software was created specifically for this project, and is included with the release as an equal part of the creative output. This version uses an interrelated set of eight Duffing oscillators and associated filter banks.”
Playing the software amounts to an exploration of the available parameter space. Yet, due to the nonlinearity of the software, even moving a single parameter can already yield a nearly endless amount of different results, depending on the state of the synthesis engine (hysteresis), the timing of the interaction, and how the system responds to the change that is made.
Giannoutakis and Mudd are only two examples of artists that focus on digital methods in creating chaotic forms of synthesis. Despite the digital nature of their practices, the sounds that emerge from their setups are organic and fluid. Chaotic music often displays these kinds of qualities. This organic quality probably arises due to the interconnectedness of all of the parameters. When a sound increases in volume, the timbre and pitch content shifts along as well. Within my own practice, digital processes are linked to analog hardware, forming an additional layer of sonic processing, often implementing machine learning techniques to connect the digital and analog domains.
Analog / Jessica Rylan / Rob Hordijk / Andrew Fitch
Jessica Rylan
The American noise musician, mathematician, and instrument builder Jessica Rylan embodies this connection of making the tools that are used to make the art. When Rylan performed under the moniker Can’t, she toured with a range of self-designed and self-built instruments including the Personal Synthesizer. While she designed this instrument, an important requirement was portability, to create something that would be easy to travel while touring on the road.
The concept of combining speakers and piezo pickups in feedback configurations is a simple yet effective strategy to create instruments with a surprisingly wide array of sonic qualities. The American instrument-designer, artist, and researcher Derek Holzer has organized many workshops, building Soundboxes, which operate on the same basic premise. By adding various materials to either the speaker or the piezo disc, the sonic behaviors are given the ability to expand even further.
These works of McLaughlin, Flanigan, and other artists working with acoustic feedback, could be seen as working with instruments that are open to becoming influenced by the surrounding environment. While the speakers, pickups, and microphones may be built in as part of the instrument, they are highly sensitive to the acoustics of the room and all manner of circumstantial sounds that happen in the vicinity of the performance. Performing with these types of instruments requires a full awareness of the fragilities and vulnerabilities regarding the effect of the environment on ongoing sonic behaviors. In contrast, the instruments developed as part of my research are closed to the environment, focusing on the nonlinearities present only within the circuits and code.
As the citations above already indicate, the perception and affect of sound plays a vital role in determining how the music is experienced. As sonic complexity increases, it becomes progressively more difficult to predict how rhythmical structures will develop, eventually leading to a state of disorder or chaos. It is the task of the composer to navigate through these measures of order and disorder, carefully constructing expectations that can be breached further up ahead.
“These shocks, these impacts, because of the affect they provoke, will illuminate certain sound events and render then unforgettable in their own right. We will then have regained entropy a little, and in our own way.”
G. Grisey (1987, 274)
One work that specifically investigates notions of chaos is Prologue, for solo viola (1976). Although it was composed well over a decade before the essay on musical time, the piece playfully investigates the musical impact of a gradual evolution from a state of order to disorder. There are at least two distinct approaches used to establish this sense of disorder. One is more structural in nature and deals with the manner in which the musical material develops throughout the piece. The other is performative in nature and comes about through the use of playing techniques that forces the viola to produce sonic behaviors that are unpredictable and chaotic.
The ambitus and length of the melodic line steadily increases while it slowly becomes impossible for the listener to foresee whether the next note will move up or down.
It is at this point that the piece reaches its maximum level of disorder. Returning to the schematic from "Tempus ex Machina," it could be argued that the piece becomes rhythmically smooth, and impossible to fully predict, even by the musician performing the score.
György Ligeti
György Ligeti (1923 - 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary music. Throughout his career he continually evolved his compositional approaches and interests, incorporating elements from folk music, electronic music, African polyrhythms, and also new developments in science and mathematics. It is said that Ligiti’s first etude for piano titled, Désordre, takes its inspiration from chaos theory. This short but intense piece revolves around the evolving relationship between the left and right hand of the performer. Throughout the piece, the right hand plays diatonically (white keys on the piano) and the left hand plays pentatonically (black keys on the piano). These two tonal systems merge together to form a mass of sound, within which it is impossible to find a clear tonal center.
As the piece progresses, the sense of complexity is affirmed as the amount of accents increase, which are unevenly spaced between each hand. Rhythmically the piece evolves into a rapid-fire eight-note pulse. The transitional stages between the order of the opening bars and the order of the pulse is full of friction and complexity. Further along, the ambitus of the piece widens, or rather, separates.
Once the rhythmical pulse is reached, the intensity increases right before a tipping point is breached, resulting in a sudden change of sound. The left hand briefly pauses, leaving only the right hand to play its melody in the upper register of the instrument. As the left-hand joins in again, a new but different temporary state of stability is found and eventually lost again.
Ligeti, Grisey, and other score-based composers, showcase the variety of ways in which chaotic processes can be used to create compelling pieces of music. My own approach, however, is to set chaotic processes in motion as the works are performed. The sonic outcome of the works are only discovered as the pieces play out in time. My role could be described as curating serendipity: creating chaotic environments within which the chance for a compelling aesthetic experience is maximized.
Roland Kayn
The use of cybernetic principles also influenced the works of the German composer Roland Kayn (1933 - 2011). In many of his long-form electronic compositions, he strived to minimize his role as a traditional composer. Instead, he chose to initiate self-regulating processes that would result in slowly evolving sonic expressions. His work, Tektra, realized at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht in 1980-81, investigates the emergent sonic behaviors of an elaborate electronic feedback system. The music builds up in waves of intensities, only to subside again as a new harmonic wave of sound forms.
“The cybernetic composer does not resort to a preordained program. Instead, he must continuously rebuild his field of action out of a primordial chaos. The more willing he is to not commit himself, the more he can succeed in penetrating into the depths of the unknown and in bringing about innovation.”
R. Kayn (1984)
Again the notion of anticommunication can be applied. The role of the composer here is not to communicate a concept or idea but rather to investigate and question communication itself. Composing cybernetic music consists of the exploration of processes that evade comprehension, speaking in a language that is still in formation. As the pieces play out, the attentive listener begins to get a grasp of the behaviors that emerge, perhaps not to the point that the work becomes predictable but enough to make the attempt at comprehension meaningful in itself.
“[Cybernetic music] emerges out of a process set in motion by the play of interconnected feedback loops, whereby certain forms of information take on special significance - in particular, commands and electrical signals directed towards a memory storage system (human or machine).”
Compositional Strategies
When discussing compositional strategies in relation to chaotic music, there is an important differentiation to make. Within the context of my practice, my focus is drawn to the music that emerges as chaotic processes are in motion. This focus has important consequences related to the notion of musical form. My role as a composer moves away from defining what the form of a piece of music should be. Instead, it aims to develop an environment in which processes of formation are allowed to take place. Within these types of process-minded pieces, sonic qualities are discovered by performers and audiences simultaneously. The discovery of chaos theory and fractal geometry have also influenced several composers working within notated music. In these cases, the chaotic processes are captured and translated into musical material. In the following section two composers who have used chaotic processes as the basis for their compositions are discussed.
Form / Gérard Grisey / György Ligeti
“The real content of music is not mathematics, quantum physics, or even aesthetic philosophy, but sound, the way sound changes in time and the affects it produces in the human mind.”
Gérard Henri Grisey (1946 - 1998) was a French composer of contemporary music. Much of his work was associated with the genre of spectral music, although Grisey rejected this classification himself later in his career. His oeuvre indeed touched upon a much wider variety of interests. The perception of musical time was one of these interests, leading to the essay "Tempus Ex Machina," published in 1987. The following diagram shows an effort to systematize various gradations of rhythmic complexity, ranging from predictable order to a situation that is so chaotic, that the music becomes fully unpredictable and rhythmically silent:
Later on in the piece, performative instructions are introduced that impact the amount of control the performer has on the sonic output of the instrument. One example of such instruction involves the use of force on the bow as the performer plays a repeating series of descending glissandi. As the bow bounces on top of the strings, this passage creates a frantic percussive feel as it builds up tension to the point where the note material is abandoned altogether. It is replaced by an indication of a bandwidth of noise.
Formation / Agostino DiScipio / Pauline Oliveros / Herbert Brün / Roland Kayn
In the following section, several composers are discussed that engage in processes of formation as a method of composition. Although the form of these pieces are not pre-defined, there is often a structure in place that, for example, specifies what technologies are used, how they are positioned inside the concert hall, or when and how certain actions should be performed. The music then emerges as a consequence of all of these factors playing out in time.
Agostino DiScipio
Agostino DiScipio (1962) is an Italian composer, often experimenting with phenomena of emergence and chaotic dynamics. In his Audible Ecosystems and Modes of Interference pieces, he establishes cybernetic systems in which human performers, instruments, code, acoustics, and the environment all have a role to play in the formation of the music.
“A complicated mixture of feedback sounds and processed feedback sounds influences each other, and the whole system of loudspeakers, microphones, space and digital signal processing creates a composition that transforms and develops like an ecological system.”
The first version of Modes of Interference consists of a human performer, a trumpet, microphones, speakers, and software. Written in Pure Data, the code is responsible for routing the signals between the microphones and speakers, while also manipulating the incoming sounds through granular processing. All of the sounds, present during the performance, become part of a nonlinear feedback loop that is influenced through playful actions by the performer. In a way, all of the elements that are present in the setup could be seen as performers, as they all actively contribute to the emergent formation of the music.
“Taking a broader perspective, we should say that all elements are determinant of the performance process. Indeed all agencies in play - human performer, computer and audio equipment - participate in a process that is productive of sound and music, not reproductive. Even speakers - the most commonly given-for-granted technology in electroacoustic music - are less to deliver sounds than to create them.”
DiScipio’s approach to composition is less about making decisions regarding the form of the piece, and is more about the construction of a situation or eco-system that produces musical forms as part of its operation. The performer becomes part of this eco-system. Each explorative action is embedded within the feedback loops that govern the sonic behaviors of the pieces, which is mediated through: the acoustic properties of the trumpet; the performance space; and the placement of the speakers.
“[...] the room acoustics does not simply host the performance, but shapes it and contributes actively to it, while also setting precise material conditions and boundaries for it to happen.”
A. DiScipio (2010)
Other composers exploring the combination of feedback and acoustic instruments include the American composer Alvin Lucier, for example in his piece, Bird and Person Dyning (1975), or the Italian composer Michelangelo Lupone, specifically his piece, Gran Cassa (1999).
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016) was a composer and musician working extensively with electronics throughout her work. The main cornerstone of her practice were active forms of deep listening, combining the act of listening to sounds reaching the ears, with sounds that are remembered and imagined. Oliveros is an important inspiration to my practice, specifically regarding her insistence in the importance of listening, attention and imagination. In her text Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory (To Practice Practice), she discusses a multiplicity of listening; simultaneously listening to actual sounds, remembered sounds, imagined sounds, all while contemplating responses to the sounds that are present.
“Listening is directing attention to what is heard, gathering meaning, interpreting and deciding on action. Quantum listening is listening to more than one reality simultaneously.”
All of these aspects come together in her piece, The New Sound Meditation (1989). The piece consists of a text score that instructs the performers to make a sound, listen outwardly to sounds present in the room, mimic a sound that was heard, listen inwardly, and make a sound that no one else has made. In between these actions, the performers are instructed to breathe, which also dictates the pace of the piece. The balance between making and listening to sounds, outwardly and inwardly, results in a music that is coherent yet always evolving. The music emerges from the instructions.
While her later work on Deep Listening and Quantum Listening are of great importance to my own practice, her earlier tape works equally capture my attention. At that time, in the Nineteen-Sixties, she was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Center, eventually becoming its director. I of IV (1966) is a live recording of a setup featuring two tape machines feeding into one another to form a long and complex delay line. The input into the delay setup consists of a range of eleven supersonic oscillators and a subsonic oscillator producing a range of combination tones that form the basis of the piece.
The schematic above can be seen as both a documentation of the setup, or as a score for the piece itself. It could be seen as a schematic score that does not indicate the specific sonic output of the system, but rather an insight into the system itself. While the piece is performed, combination tones of the oscillators are uncovered as they are recorded and played through the tape. The piece features all of the hallmarks of a nonlinear feedback system and it is no surprise that the sonic universe is incredibly varied and lively. In an important sense, the choices made in designing the studio setup are what constitutes the composition of the piece. The actual sonic output becomes just one recorded version of the incredible musical potential that the setup is able to exhibit. The other recordings in the series, made within days of each other, showcase both the versatility and coherence of the setup.
Herbert Brün
“Anticommunication is an attempt at saying something, not a refusal of saying it. Communication is achievable by learning from language how to say something. Anticommunication is an attempt at respectfully teaching language to say it.”
The composer and computer music pioneer Herbert Brün (1918 - 2000) was heavily inspired by cybernetics in his work. His notion of anticommunication is useful, as it places value in the attempt at communication, even before a common language exists. Through conversation, slowly but surely, a common vocabulary is built up, and the mutual exchange allows for emergent meanings to surface.
“I use the word 'anticommunication'
whenever I wish to speak of a human
relation between persons and things
which emerges and is maintained through
messages requiring and permitting not
yet available encoding and decoding
systems or mechanisms.”
Brün has used the notion of anticommunication in several of his compositions, including his set of graphical compositions Mutatis Mutandis - Compositions for Interpreters. The graphical scores for these compositions are generated by a complex computer program, able to process a given data-set of elements, converting these into instructions for a drawing machine. These drawings then form the basis of performances where musicians analyze and reinterpret the unfamiliar lines and shapes, attempting to translate the language of the design into the language of their musical context.
Performance / Toshimaru Nakamura / Richard Scott
In the following section, the focus will shift toward artists whose practices have an important focus on the performance practice with chaotic instruments, rather than the design of hardware or software. The unpredictable nature of chaotic instruments inspires performative attitudes that favor a flat hierarchy between the player and the instrument, where deep listening and attention takes precedence over technical mastery and intention.
Toshimaru Nakamura
Toshimaru Nakamura is a Japanese musician and a pioneer of no-input mixing since the mid Nineteen-Nineties. His No-InputMixing Board, involves the act of connecting the output of his analog audio mixer back into one of its inputs; turning a device meant to mix sounds together into a complex oscillator. Combining several of these feedback loops leads to an incredibly rich and complex sonic landscape, full of jittery rhythms made up of clicks and bleeps, or slowly developing oscillations and waves of noise. Nakamura is specifically interested in giving space to the machine to sound in ways that are out of his control. This interest, fueled by curiosity, creates an environment where he is able to engage with his instrument on an equal footing. When he performs, his gestures are often small and minimalistic, allowing the instrument to sound on its own. As a key member of the Tokyo-based Onkyo Music Movement, in the late Nineties, Nakamura’s approach to making music combines free improvisation with the exploration of quiet noise, focusing on the fine grained details within the sonic textures emanating from his mixer.
“I think I find an equal relationship with the no-input mixing board, which I didn't see with the guitar. When I played the guitar, 'I' had to play the guitar. But with the mixing board, the machine would play me and the music would play the other two, and I would do something or maybe nothing. I would think some people would play the guitar and create their music with this kind of attitude, but for me, the no-input mixing board gives me this equal relationship between the music, including the space, the instrument, and me.”
The music emerging from his no-input mixer is non-narrative, celebrating the abstract qualities of the sounds in themselves. These sonic qualities, emerging from the feedback loops, are always full of surprises and unexpected twists and turns. This sense of surprise is an important aspect to his practice, maintaining a fresh perspective toward the music as it resonates through the room. Nakamura frequently performs with his no-input mixer board setup, both as solo, and in improvised sessions with duo's.
Richard Scott
Richard Scott is an electroacoustic composer and improviser living in Berlin, working with gesture-controlled interfaces, modular synthesizers, and sampling. Most of the synthesizers that Scott performs with operate on the basis of chaotic processes. During the Corona pandemic, he posted a series of twenty videos on Youtube, using the title, "Irregular Transmissions." Some of these videos feature performances with various synthesizer setups, while others focus more on his reflections regarding his performance practice. The ninth installment of the series examines the topic, “What kind of sounds do we make?” About halfway through the video, Scott discusses the concept of tangible or feasible sounds.
“[...] It mirrors something that we know about musical instruments without directly copying it. There is something fascinating about that world. Here is a world that relates to our awareness, and our experience of physical sounds, of sounds in the universe, of sounds in the world, of how we receive sounds with our bodies. But it is also in a domain that is somewhat abstracted from that. That is somewhat by the side.”
Scott's performance practice, and the instruments he brings onstage, speak to this notion of tangible sound. Many of the instruments he uses (including the Blippoo Box, designed by Rob Hordijk) are centered around chaotic processes. Chaotic instruments are commonly said to sound organic, but it makes a lot more sense to refer to them as tangible. The interconnection of timbre, pitch, and dynamics is a familiar feature in our acoustic experience. We are used to experiencing this in acoustic environments, and electronic instruments that do not adhere to these kinds of interconnections, often sound artificial. In many chaotic instruments, these interconnections are exaggerated, pushed to extremes, resulting in sounds that play with a sense of familiarity while subverting that notion at the same time.
“This is a much more imaginative possibility because it is possible to make electronic sounds where the behavior is not something we recognize but, somehow, we can still interpret it or experience it [...] I think the familiar is inside the unfamiliar and the unfamiliar is inside the familiar.”
R. Scott(2021)
