Spekki Webu & Taufan playing live during the Mirror Zone label night in Garage Noord, December 2024.

SpekkiWebu & Taufan Live @ MirrorZone GarageNoord 14-12-2024

In the past couple of days I created a short sound piece using ChatGPT. ChatGPT works with text, not sound, so my approach was to ask it to create a program that synthesizes sound of a certain description. Similar could be done, I imagine, with prerecorded sounds, like I could ask it to create a program that combines prerecorded sounds in a certain way, but I haven't tried that yet. The resulting synthesized sound is simpler than I had originally intended, because it turned out that there is quite a limitation on how complex a program ChatGPT can create before going "off the rails" and losing the thread. After the conversation I asked it to summarize the last successful result into a new prompt. The result is this 1-minute piece to which I gave the title Etude on Sound Blocks with Normal Distribution.

Etude on Sound Blocks with Normal Distribution

A brief phrase quickly evolves and dissolves. For taishogoto. Performed by David Bohn.

Taraxacum

Dr Harrold Linguini's Hammer

Students of Decay presents The Dip, a new full-length recording by Berlin-based artist and composer Thomas Ankersmit, marking his debut with the label and sixth album to date. Comprised of two expansive, sidelong pieces composed entirely on the Serge Modular synthesizer, it signals a subtle yet significant shift in Ankersmit’s trajectory, imbuing the hyper-physical, psychoacoustic intensities of his live performances with introspective, atmospheric, and even melodic elements. 

17:54 excerpt, from "The Dip" album on Students of Decay

Drop Bass Not Bombs (nADEV) free party by Kombativ, Kloki, and DKH
Much love to all and thanks for having me

Digital set by Taufan - live mashup (selected from sound material made in last 25 years)
All material by Taufan
Fragments 18:20-22:08 and 23:10-28:20 and 59:18-1:02:15 contains material made in collaboration with Koen and Tanno in 2004.
Contains some material from my tracks Symiotic (2:54-8:43) and Turbulent Dynamics (13:00-17:08) recently released (2025) on Hangar ltd.8 (Cult Collective).

Digital set at Drop Bass Not Bombs 2025

trace was written for a dance project of Karin Post's (Take) in 1994. The concept of the piece was based on the early computer drawings of Peter Struyken (who also created the lighting-design for the project), where simple algorithmic rules govern the direction of a line. The basic structure of the four parts of the music is simply a progression of complexity from the ratio 1:2 - 2:3 - 3:4 to 4:5. These proportions are worked out on a rhythmic and structural level.

Trace by Yannis Kyriakides (1994)

Recorded live in De Flat Studios, 28/01/2007

Voice: Stephanie Pan
Live electronics, programming: Stelios Manousakis

This piece is a setting of two poems by Edward Estlin Cummings (1894-1962), an American poet, painter, essayist and playwright, best known for his poems and their unconventional use of language and writing. The two poems are characteristic of Cummings' poetry, in that they express clusters of meanings delivered through different linguistic channels simultaneously: semantic, syntactic, phonemic/sonic and the visual layout. However, the poems are very different and in some aspects clashing: short versus long, visual versus sonic, quiet versus noisy, oneness versus multitude. The first poem, " l(a ", is an example of Cummings' visual poetry with its characteristic use of punctuation and layout, depicting a scene while expressing the feeling of loneliness. The second poem, "NOISE", is a sonic poem, in that the linguistic focus is often shifted to the phonemic quality of the words, while the syntax obscures the meaning to describe a noisy city environment (New York City) with all its embedded worlds and bursting sounds. The settings use extended vocal techniques, live electronics and lighting to expand the poetic language by enhancing the discourse between the different aspects of each poem, focusing on phonemes, words, phrases, images, and the overall ambiance of each section.  
The piece was written for Stephanie Pan, and it was composed in 2006-2007.

For more, see: http://modularbrains.net/twopoemsbyeecummings.html

Two Poems by E. E. Cummings: NOISE   [2006-07]

Stelios Manousakis is a composer, performer, sound artist and researcher. In these capacities he strives to develop a new musical and artistic language that is both visceral and cerebral, communicating in a purely cognitive and experiential level while being complex and multilayered.