This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2938321/3620183 which it is meant to support and not replace.
Video description: A video showing an excerpt from the piece Blocking Behaviours, running with two web browsers. The visual outcomes of the simulations are displayed, and the simulation data is fed back to the live-coding environment. The video captures the feedback nature of the piece where the code influences the simulations, which in turn influence the music emerging from the code through a circular causality. The sounds are made using custom waveform generators and sound rather noisy.
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2938321/3620183#tool-3620384 to watch the video.
Attaching Behaviours
Created for the International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC) in Utrecht (April 2023), Blocking Behaviours is a solo performance piece exploring the mapping of agent-based interaction to sound synthesis. The piece was realised with software built in SuperCollider and the Terra.js JavaScript library. Through Terra.js, local interactions can be set up with the goal of ‘creating and analysing biological simulations’ (https://rileyjshaw.com/terra). The piece questions the relationship between generative activity through the simulations that are ‘interpreted’ by sound processes in SuperCollider that in turn shape the simulation, creating feedback networks. The idea is that evolving processes are set in motion where the creator/composer becomes an observer of various developments. The observer (live-coder) then attaches sound-producing algorithms to the simulations so that the resulting music becomes an interpretation of how they act. Interaction emerges through the observation of a rule-based system by attaching operations instead of interactions. The concerns behind this piece have been discussed elsewhere (Gunnarsson 2023) and the recorded performance can be viewed here.
The sound material that was composed as part of Blocking Behaviours played with the idea of sound as a ‘behaviour’ that can be ‘attached’ to an organisation principle (the simulations). Important for such sonorities is not how they start and stop but their internal patterning and approach to change. They could be running for a certain amount of time, without any goal-oriented direction, and what would be heard are the sonic changes and behaviour. The sounds are all generated in real time and a very important part of the piece was to compose those behaving sonorities. The original duration of the piece was around forty-five minutes before being reduced to a final twenty-minute format. The piece was composed for four channels and the sound material reflects the quadraphonic format. Instead of spatialising a fixed input, the generated spatial movements are just as much part of the behaving textures as any other aspect of the sound. Having spent a considerable amount of time composing and preparing the piece, large sets of material were created but only a small fraction of them have been used in the piece.
Images descriptions: Snapshots from Blocking Behaviours.
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2938321/3620183#tool-3622311 to see the images.