This artistic PhD project is a composer-performer oriented exploration of live electronics understood as modular musicking systems. The conceptual framework draws upon an understanding of agency that views musical instruments as real or virtual objects-in-time that come into existence through the act of musicking. The systems created and presented in the thesis are explored through various scenarios presented as patches that include compositions, performance systems, and strategies for musicking. The project seeks to gain knowledge about the co-evolutionary processes found within the acts of composing and performing with such systems. At the core of the research is an exploration of the field of tension between the relative stability and flexibility in the affordances of live electronic instruments. It presents strategies for the design of live electronic systems in order to obtain a balance between these two states, and to understand how instruments are adapted in relation to the artistic processes of composing and performing. The thesis addresses the following research questions: 1. In what ways are my live electronic setups adapted within the acts of composing and performing? 2. How do my live electronic instruments manifest the field of tension between stability and flexibility? 3. What type of strategies can be used to create a predictable field of affordances of live electronic instruments? Through artistic research methods of meletē, transcription, and re-composition, the project gains a deeper understanding of when, how, and why human and non-human agents co-evolve in musicking with live electronics. It presents four core systems developed and refined within the project: Paragraph – a live coding environment, Parsimonia – a modular digital musical instrument, the EMP Triangle – a serial and modular composition tool, and the Sinew0od feedback system – used as a foundation for three transcriptions. The artistic outcomes are further studied using qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. The main contribution of this thesis is a novel understanding of live electronic musicking as co-evolutionary acts of patching. These acts entail processes of making and breaking connections between human and non-human agencies, and through patching create, transform, and manipulate compositions and performance setups, in order to achieve metastable systems. Hereby, the thesis proposes a cybernetic understanding of musicking as a process, challenging the traditional notion of fixed musical works, blurring the lines between compositions, instruments, interpretations, and performances.

Systems >>

1. Paragraph

2. Parsimonia
3. EMP Triangle
4. Sinew0od

Patches >>

1. TCP/IP: NIME
2. TCP/IP: Sestina
3. TCP/IP: Reconciliation
4. Re-patching Bach
5. Triangular Progressions
6. Sinew0od for Bass Clarinet
7. Sinew0od for Halldorophone
8. Sinew0od for Buchla

Publications >>

1. Global Hyperorgan

2. Exploring Sinew0od

3. Live Coding the Global Hyperorgan

4. A New Morphology

Book >>

Welcome

This exposition presents the artistic outcomes of the PhD thesis project "The Act of Patching" by Mattias Petersson. The public defense took place at the Piteå School of Music at Luleå University of Technology, on June 10, 2025.

Structure of the thesis

As a compilation thesis, this project comprise a printed book, also available as a full text pdf, four written publications, and several artistic outcomes. These are presented as systems and patches, discussed in detail in the book, and further presented here, including sound and video material where appropriate. The systems comprise four different frameworks that form the basis for eight different scenarios, where the systems have been patched up for different use cases. This division in systems and patches has been made for the sake of clarity in the description. However, I do consider the systems to be composed as patches as well.

Systems

The systems described include the live coding environment Paragraph and the modular DMI Parsimonia, a serial, modular compositional tool called EMP Triangle, and the Sinew0od system, which is a feedback network, originally composed for a piece with the same name in 2008, re-purposed and re-contextualised for three new pieces, included in this thesis.

Patches

The patches are application scenarios that can be understood as pieces or performance setups, where most of them include combinations of more than one of the systems.

The TCP/IP Quartet

Patches 1-3 are projects made within the TCP/Indeterminate Place quartet, formed with an aim to explore hyperorgans and telematic performance. This quartet has been central for my explorations of live coding and the development of the Paragraph system. Thus, this system is described from my perspective and the role I had in the quartet during a performance that was part of the NIME conference (further described in Petersson (2023) and Harlow et al. (2021)). The next two projects presented are further explorations of algorithmic and telematic scenarios made with this quartet where we used a MIDI file player algorithm developed by me in order to work with precomposed structures and to do improvised readings of scores.

Re-patching Bach

Patch 4 presents the Repatching Bach project which entails an interpretation approach in which an old piece has been deconstructed, modularized, re-patched, and recomposed into a new work.

Triangular Progressions

Patch 5 describes the piece Triangular Progressions and how the EMP Triangle system have been used to generate material by creating internal connections between musical properties, and further re-patched for live performance.

Sinew0od

Patches 6-8 outlines the three versions of Sinew0od, manifested as different actualisations of the feedback system. Originally composed to be an integrated part of a piece where the technical setup cannot be separated from it, the system has been artistically explored using transcription as a method.

Mattias Petersson. Photo by Aron Mattsson.

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