After a couple of succesful gigs using Glitch on the Nintendo DS (the first of which I wore toy glasses with a spy camera attached to beam a live feed of its unique visuals to a nearby TV, the second of which was an impromptu mash-up at Tado‘s Private Panda Party launch event at Pictoplasma in Berlin), the Mac version arrived at just the right time, introducing the prospect of high quality samples and the use of midi controlled synths and effects.

After some initial install problems and an updated release, Glitch finally seems to be settling down on my ageing G4 Powerbook. Just don’t ask Ableton Live to be in cahoots with it.

Working in cellular automata is a return for me of sorts, after researching and studying generative music at university for my dissertation (the oddly titled ‘This was music for niceties but went psycho soma style OR How I invented the incredible non-repeating concert machine’). I’ll dig out it , scan it and get some software to interpret it as editable text at some point too.

The use of cellular automata in music works like a kind of generative music – an ever changing, randomised pattern of sounds, but as the seed used in generative music is static yet grows infinitely, the seed used in cellular automata has a limited life (unless the theoretical Eden State can be achieved) but can be changed infinitely (within the Glitch software at least).

This allows the musician to sculpt the patterns of sound – to try a seed, observe its output, and tweak constantly. The application of cellular automata within Glitch allows for an organic, improvised approach to electronic music, and is a refreshing change to the linear seqencing of software such as Logic. As a gamer / game reviewer, the use of Conway’s Game of Life hits a certain (Phrygian) chord with me too.

Making it sound good is another feat entirely but my Glitch DS gigs have proved it can work well in a live environment – the next challenge is the live syncing of visuals, harnessing the midi output of Glitch to either trigger pre-made videos in Modul8 (after learning After Effects) or seed home-coded vector graphics in software like Pure Data (programmed by VDU).

And so, the work begins!