Think cushions on the floor and the hushness of a temple; great cables dangling from the ceiling to jack into; the room awash with headphones bobbing slowly to the beat of a silent musician.

I debuted the Cellular Automata project that has been bubbling under ever since I assumed this Curious handle, which i’ve been slowly working out  in between other musical experiments over the last couple of years.

I first discovered CA on the Nintendo DS, via the homebrew software Glitch, which uses Conway’s Game of Life to generate randomised sequences of sound. It was about the same time that I read Greg Egan’s Permutation City, a sci-fi novel that uses the mythical Eden State in Conway’s Game of Life to create an infinite, self sustaining virtual universe. Thus, I was inspired.

Glitch was ported to the Mac as a MIDI sequencer a couple of years ago, which I have tethered to Ableton Live after a brief experiment with Plogue’s Bidule. Although far less stable on my old Powerbook than the simpler DS iteration, it’s potential was apparent.

With two weeks notice, I had little time to stabilise the tech on my ageing laptop and build a fresh palette of sounds. Thankfully it all came together in time for the gig, and although I would have preferred a sound bank twice the size, it was ample enough to perform with.

A work long in progress, seeing some final progress.

I’m pretty happy with the results and learned a lot in the 20 minutes I had to play with – just need to finish building the sound bank, set Ableton up to have a more diverse suite of effects and prepare TouchOSC for some MIDI controlling of Live (on a diminutive phone screen). Then, i’ll really be ready.

Placard had a live video stream of the event, which was handily captured by my friend VDU and is posted below for all to hear. I’d not bother actually watching it (just listen), unless seeing a bearded man stare at a laptop for 20 minutes is your kinda thing.

For future gigs I hope to replace the beard/laptop combo with live visuals, either generative based or triggered by the very same MIDI data that is randomly spawning the music. How? I’m not sure yet…

Many thanks to Placard for the invite!

Curious Machine live @ Placard Sheffield from Visual Display Unit on Vimeo.

GameCityNights is at Antenna on Thursday 25th March – http://gamecity.org/blog/nights_march

A live improvised recording lies below.

[See post to listen to audio]

I’ve still got a long way to go, learning the ins and outs of Bidule while getting my head round the differences between Glitch and its Nintendo DS brethren, and trying to avoid audio pops from a struggling computer as much as possible. One thing is clear though – the use of soft synths has immediately expanded on what Glitch DS can do immeasurably, not forgetting an array of (possibly automated) effects now at my fingertips.

I’ve edited last night’s experiment down from 20mins to a palatable 6mins, enjoy!

[See post to listen to audio]

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!

Horizons have shifted, new goals assigned and a re-found devotion to generative art unlocked. I’ll be using this site to catalogue my experiments with Glitch DS and Glitch Sequencer, with the future results of my experiments hopefully blooming into a live audio/visual experience. More to come soon.