My current work, which involves a variety of physical and electronic
media, is positioned at the intersection of music composition, the
visual arts, and performance. In my more recent work, I have become
increasingly interested in the processes found in nature and in other
large and complex systems, and the potential of computer programs to
model or simulate such systems within time-based music/art-works.
Initially, this involved the use of the computer in a generative fashion
within instrumental and electronic musical compositions. In these works,
the computer was used to generate material based on some natural
process, but the result was at the same time highly formalized and
structured, and resulted in a work which was fixed with regard to
performance. Within my most recent interactive sound installations and
performances, I have been experimenting with the use of the computer
program in it's "raw" form as a "score" for a series of events--sound or
otherwise--which are constantly changing and evolving: patterns which
are fixed and defined only by the process specified within the computer
program. These pieces, whether they react to their environment or not,
represent a very different approach in which the exact "behavior" of a
specific work may not be entirely known in advance. In this sense, I
view these works as another form of performance, where the
computer--usually present as an embedded micro-controller or personal
computer system--is the "performer," and the program which it is running
is the "score." This ongoing investigation of computer-mediated
process--both as a means of producing work, and more recently as the
work itself--has been central to my interest in my use of computers for
creative purposes. I have also recently become increasing dissatisfied
with the electronic production of sound via speakers and have been
investigating the use of mechanical and other "direct" sound production
techniques which may be controlled by a computer program.
In The Night Sounds four corrugated metal water buckets, each
approximately half-full of water, are suspended from the ceiling by
piano wire. Attached to the top of each length of piano wire are small
motors whose speed and acceleration/deceleration is controlled
independently by a microcontroller containing a custom algorithm. The
patterns of the piece as well as the nature of the sounds is modeled
after the crickets and cicadas found in the midwest which in the summer
can at times take over the entire landscape with their sonic intensity.
