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)

(for computer processed harpsichord)

'Undercover Harpsichord Agents Terrorize The Court' is an electroacoustic tape piece, whose sound material consists of transformations of a set of harpsichord recordings performed by the composer. A controlled granular synthesis engine is used to playback and process the original material. The data structure for the process is provided by a complex hierarchical network of Lindenmayer Systems and Genetic Algorithms. This network generates a constantly varying and interconnected number of musical agents that move in a 5-dimensional space, with each dimension mapped to a certain parameter of the engine. Each active agent controls primarily one granulator but can also affect any level of the audio engine or the data structure. The agents generate a plethora of contrapuntal harpsichord voices, creating a vibrant environment under constant transformation. The original sound material is used as the seed for creating an expressive sonic palette that clashes with the traditional characteristics and use of the harpsichord. The piece commences with a sonic world slowly evolving out of noise. Contrasting musical elements struggle with each other and form sound and pattern masses with chaotic behavior that collide violently, leading to a collapse and decay of the world to its initial amorphous state.  The piece was composed in 2006.

The sound processing and algorithmic control model for this piece was developed by Stelios Manousakis, see: http://modularbrains.net/research.html


Undercover Haprsichord Agents Terrorize the Court [2006]

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.

Undercover Haprsichord Agents Terrorize the Court [2006]

modularbrains

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