quoted 14 lines Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 22:15:57 EDT
>Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 22:15:57 EDT
>From: DynamiCell@aol.com
>Subject: Re: [idm] Autechre poll (fractals)
>...
>Grooves Magazine issue 3 page 40 in the bottom left corner of the page. Check
>their web site at http://www/raom/prg/~audio/grooves/ for info on their mag..
> which has pretty good distribution for an indy mag.
>
>"The smokey plastic cover to Autechre's EP7 obscures the fossilized remains
>of various Lsystems, or fractals, each describing a set of rules that govern
>the irate 'growth' of a string of letters, or plant cells or whatever is
>being melded over a series of generations. Errors are thrown in every few
>turns so as to tune the work's obvious synthetic appearance, to make its
>overall growth appear more natural... yada yada yadda... blah blah blah...."
Having written this review, please let me clarify that there I am
indeed talking about the cover art and packaging. But I am
abstracting the clever design to describe the style of the music.
Many tracks in EP7 contain layered rhythms and melodies. So what are
you hearing? Are you hearing only one fragment of the song or are you
hearing that fragment's contribution to the track as a whole?
With non-randomized Lsystems, you can break off a "plant stem" and
still have a sense of the entirety of the programming behind the
"plant", because of the self-sameness of the program. But in nature,
lots of external forces collaborate to modify this program, so that
each stem has its own unique character. Noisy distributions of growth
hormones within the plant will affect how much it bows, its response
to light; the plant's angle to the sun, etc. Depending on cell
signals a plant cell will decide whether to be a root cell or not,
and what kind, etc.
All these feedback and signaling mechanisms can contribute to your,
well, total enjoyment -- or understanding, at least -- of the plant's
life.
My thought is that Ae's programming appears to mimic this process, to
a certain degree. The musicians set up initial parameters; let's say
they get a good, solid, Ae-esque track programmed. Then various
musical factors, like algorithmic or randomized timing and pitch
functions, are layered, even thrown in the mix to affect the outcome,
to obliterate Ae's original synthetic aesthetic.
Like the plant you can break off a melodic or rhythmic stem and focus
in on its beauty, or you can wonder at the song as a whole. It is
Autechre's brilliance that this is not forced; multiple
interpretations are possible on the part of the listener. It is a
deliberate loss of control that has yet to be heard in any other
piece of electronic music.
quoted 3 lines In programming, you would not need to use a random melody, you could just use
>In programming, you would not need to use a random melody, you could just use
>a matrix of the notes you wish to be the main melody, and then a command to
>trigger that note at a certain time in the algorithim.
Much of generative music seems based on this principle, that music
can be encapsulated within an algorithm, with randomization added to
"soften" or "humanize" the work. I'm not an expert on this but I have
played with the Koan package; it's a lot of fun, even if I can't
carry a tune.
Either Booth or Brown has said that "generative music is a shit term"
-- something like that -- so its very possible that I'm wrong about
all of this.
But I think EP7 is one of those works that people will come back to
in years to pass as a key step in Autechre's evolution as artists.
This work really attempts to transcend the self-imposed limits of the
synthetic music age. We live in a natural universe, so why shouldn't
our art and technology reflect that?
-a.
--
Alex Reynolds
SAS Computing / Biology
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228
V +1 215 573.2818 / F +1 215 898.8780
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~reynolda/
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