Created at end of Design After Nature ARC post doc, with Alan Dorin and Jon McCormack at the Centre for Electronic Media Arts, Dept. of Computer Science, Monash University, Melbourne as Open Frameworks project
This was an exercise in creating a minimal self-determined system It came after years of making evolutionary agent-based systems and hankering after open ended evolution in silico
Designed for a 2007 mac book pro, a watt govenor type mechanism sits listening to the input buffer, which is passed to an output buffer, via a delay if any sample in the current buffer exceeds a given threshold, the delaytime of a delay line is adjusted by a random amount in the range -1:1.
That's it.
Jon reckoned it saw into his soul and reflected his mood.
Over a decade later it appeared on a Collectress album, Different Geographies on Saturn
Pushing here a) for posterity b) to port to sema
This experiment explores the possibility for what I might call 'embedded' generative systems, or transformative systems. Typically we conceive of a digital generative systems as something which creates data that is then mapped to parameters of a specific medium. The data generated by the digital process is then mapped to a particular media - pixels, samples etc. This is the typical approach taken in generative art.
In contrast under the approach explored here, the digital process is driven by the medium (in this case sound) and acts to re-arrange it. Rather than simulating an entire closed system, the aim is to mimic a particular ecosystemic process, creating an artificial system that diverts and alters the material of the real world.
The starting point of this experiment is the conviction that feedback (of one form or another) is a core organising principle of all complex adaptive systems. The broad goal was to make a self-directed system that played with the idea of feedback and stability - the maintenance of some internal invariant in the face of a potentially runaway mechanism.
After trying many different possibilities the end result is incredibly simple: Two delay lines are fed with one mic and output to separate stereo channels. Each is fed back infinitely. Each unit monitors the amplitude of its buffer and simply alters the delay time (always at audio rates) in proportion to the amplitude/ randomly (different versions explored). You can think of this as two mics in a room that move left-a-bit right-a-bit when ever feedback starts growing.
Almost zen.
The system settles to dulcet drones or enters wild self-feeding oscillations. Try it outside with birds, or on headphones. Try running your hand over the mic.