Surprisingly, the title came first this time, from Charlie’s request to make the track loopable. Both a visual and a linguistic palindrome. I formed an idea from his notes that it all tied in with my perception of the Universe as some sort of bioelectric organism, pulsing in and out of existence at a rate that is purely relative to the observer. This, of course, includes the fractal-based creation of all matter, including us, art, music, digital storage, peanut butter and the interconnectedness-of-all-things. So, void + Xfactor + biology = void. My personal cyclic Creation Myth.
0.5 second sample from Bunsby track stretched to 3.5 minutes – flipped and used to create a 7 minute loopable backing drone with the centre missing (also pitched down an octave).
I happened, out of curiosity, to play the three samples simultaneously (as you do) after downloading them – I liked the result so much it is the centrepiece of the track, completely untreated, from 3:00 to 4:00.
I then created a wav file from this and subjected it to improvised, single-take treatments via The Mangle and ambient v.3. These provide the Kubrick-y soundscapes that frame the centre sample-mix.
Image: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s latest infrared image of the Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation, with rather obvious fractal embellishments by me.
----------------------------------------------
Disquiet Junto Project 0213: Complex Signatures
The Assignment: Combine three field recordings from artist Charles Lindsay to explore and express notions of perceived techno-organic intelligence.
This week’s project is being done in conjunction with the head of the Artist in Residence program at the SETI Institute. His name is Charles Lindsay, and he has provided us with three very different field recordings. Work completed for this project will be considered for employment in a future project of Charlie’s. Work won’t be used without the given participating musician’s permission.
Step 1: Consider what it is that Charlie is exploring in his work: “I’m thinking about evolution, entropy, sentience, and the complex signatures of intelligence: what microtonal soundtrack would best express the micro and the vast, the field and the matrix, what we call nature and what we call machine, in unity, as music or as sound?”
Step 2: Download the three tracks recorded by Charlie that are in this playlist on SoundCloud. The first track was made on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, rain-forest ambient sounds caught with a parabolic microphone at nightfall. The second was made with a hydrophone at dusk amid the Bunsby Islands in British Columbia. The third was made at the D-WAVE2 Quantum Computer at NASA Ames.
https://soundcloud.com/charlies-experiment/sets/disquiet-junto-complex-signatures
Step 3: Follow this request from Charlie: “Please process, merge, and mix these tracks to seven minutes total. Imagine the final track looping indefinitely in a sound installation in a museum or gallery environment. This use of sound in controlled space is something I’m very interested in, as a real time, real space tool to blend so-called realities. Imagine dream images, much the way our mind seems to, glitches and all. I look forward to what you come up with, and thanks very much for your interest.”
More on this 213th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“The Assignment: Combine three field recordings from artist Charles Lindsay to explore and express notions of perceived techno-organic intelligence”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2016/01/28/disquiet0213-complexsignatures/
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
