Son[i]a #301
David Burraston
Technology and science are widely used to make art, but that rarely happens the other way around. Dave Burraston’s approach to creative practice binds the three together to yield surprising results – so he accordingly describes himself as an artist/scientist.
His PhD thesis on Generative Music and Cellular Automata (CA) opened up new approaches for a key unsolved problem in the CA arena, as well as being the sequencer source for many of his generative experimental electronic music releases. Likewise, his rainwire project, an environmental sonification system, is proving to be both a potential method for more accurate measurements of rainfall as well as exquisite sound material for several of his compositions.
Since 1981, either under his name, as one of his many monikers (NYZ, Bryen Telko, Dave Noyze), or through his independent art/science studio (Noyzelab), Dave has been actively working on experimental research-based projects, ranging from sound synthesis and electronic music to field recording and landscape-scale sound art.
In this podcast, Dave Burraston talks about his rainwire project and how using rain as a creative medium has led him to an ongoing research that could overcome some recognized shortcomings in the field of rainfall measurements. He also talks about complex systems and creative practice in science, with an overview of CA and its applications, including his findings on CA rule space self-organization using modular synthesizers and CA sequencers.
Lars Holdhus/TCF
The work of the sound artist Lars Holdhus, aka TCF, interrogates our relation to the technological infrastructures that permeate contemporaneity through language, code, cryptography and, most recently, ecology. En este podcast, Lars aboga por la presencia y la conciencia. Between tea sips, he reflects on toolmaking and impact, A.I. and the obsession with flesh, human time and machine time. He also points out how boring technology becomes when you are 70% Buddhist, while introducing us to his latest projects: a virtual touring software teasing the limits of the live music industry and a random processing tool that he feeds and confronts to compose and create images.
Jennifer Walshe
Jennifer Walshe studied composition and often performs as a vocalist, but her practice and a whopping list of works over the past twenty years put her in a twilight zone where music, performance art, theatre and stage writing intersect and converge. Walshe’s approach to texts, scripts and musical scores is based on a recursive process, a kind of feedback loop which includes and acknowledges all sorts of information about the text itself – the context and paratext. In this podcast, we talk to Jennifer Walshe about writing, annotating, teaching, collecting, eavesdropping, performing, faking, and a touch of machine learning.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with sound artist Lars Holdhus that we were unable to include the first time around.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with David Burraston that we were unable to include the first time around.
Once Upon a Time in CA
A spaghetti western about experimental music on the West Coast in the 1980s.
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A range of sound works representing different periods, traditions and approaches to generative and systems based music.