This exposition explores an approach to computer music concerned with the treatment of existing musical material and strategies for working with it in novel ways. Two practical projects are examined, each showcasing different ways of reviewing work from the past through tools that reframe it in an original context. The fundamental concept revolves around perceiving digital tools as a gateway to access material from different points in time. Defining such procedures involves an exploration of the intersection between selection processes and generative means for representing the selected as something original.
To best proceed, it is important to review the relationship between the process of composing computer music, the accessing of musical material, and the activity of developing and using tools that combine the two. Working through those concerns, it is important to review how using sound and code-based material can be integrated into a systematic approach through an intersection of algorithms, system development, and composition. Experimental models will be presented in an attempt to blur the distinction and boundaries between tool-making, creation, and research, while also trying to uncover the possible meaning of these. Finally, the relationship between practice and research plays an important role where the musical work is seen as highlighting the research process and as a potential source of questioning it, much like the current text.
This exposition unfolds across twelve pages arranged in three horizontal rows, each consisting of four columns. The first row introduces the core concerns, questions, and conceptual framing of the project. The following two rows each present a specific instance of musical work developed through these ideas, offering insight into both the artistic processes and the material contexts from which they emerge. Readers are encouraged to begin with the first row and proceed from left to right for a structured overview, but alternative paths are equally valid. One might enter through the practical projects or explore the media content directly. To support multiple modes of engagement, the exposition includes three navigation systems: top menu, previous/next buttons, and links that allow for linear and non-linear material traversal.
The diagrams on this page present the visual grammar of the exposition: graphs, queries, and network traversals. They stand as emblematic forms of the themes explored—relationality, growth, and traversal—and provide a visual overture to the pages that follow.