Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve

The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.

Step 1: You’re going to record a piece of music informed by evolution. Think of stages of evolution, perhaps choosing a specific animal or other life form that evolved over time.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that evolves as it proceeds, based on the patterns (phases, stages) you explored in Step 1. And yes, animals that went extinct are a potential subject.

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Track notes:

I took my inspiration from the long evolution of insect species on the planet, considering the vast scale of evolution from primordial epochs up to the present, where insect species are front-and-centre in the Sixth Great Extinction of the late Anthropocene.

SuperCollider came to mind again as a tool for realisation, since I had ‘traditional’ forms of ‘computer music’ in mind - especially Bernard Parmegiani’s epic La Creatione De Monde (1984)

Now, obviously I don’t have a) a year up my sleeve; and b) the coding faculty in SC to pull off such a gargantuan feat, but I thought it might be a cool point of reference that I could fold into my current understanding (as a beginner) in the SC environment.

Recently I got to grips with buffering audio samples and using sequences to control various patterns - both melodic and percussive. I created a couple of dictionaries of short percussive samples (kalimba, woodblock and guiro) as well as instantiating a couple of Synth objects that produce pure waves. The percussive sounds turned out well when triggered, sequenced and manipulated and I liked the interplay with the pure waves.

My track is a bit longer than my usual submissions (~6 mins) but I thought I needed a decent span of time to realise a time compression of a few hundred million years of evolution.

For the realisation, I live-coded from the initial script (see GitHub link below) and then adjusted various parameters, arguments and variable throughout. The idea was to start amongst the matter of the cosmos and then gradually render a semblance of life on Earth. Eventually, an abundance takes form, before the insect population starts to diminish at the close. It not strictly a linear progression; rather, a fairly wobbly negative exponential progression. I’m still getting to grips with controlling instruments on the fly in SC, but I think I’m improving.

I was happily surprised when I saw the spectrogram of this track. Its progression of blobs, smears and flurries of activity over a time series seemed fitting!

https://github.com/TristanLouthRobins/Supercollider/blob/main/junto0580-evo_compressor.scd.scd

[Disquiet_Junto_0580] Evo Compressor (w/SuperCollider)

Tristan Louth-Robins is a South Australian artist working principally in the medium of sound art and field recording. Ideas of sound and its signification are key elements in Louth-Robins' practice, traversing the space between the visual and aural his work is realised through the mediums of recordings, installation, visual art and performance. He is interested in sound and its associative implications - including its relationship to objects, technology, urban space, memory and the natural world. 


Since 2005, Louth-Robins has presented work in Australia and internationally as a solo artist, whilst also collaborating with artists, writers, researchers, musicians and performers. 

Working across a vast array of activities encompassing composition, sound design, installation art, field recording and workshops, his work has been featured in events such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts (2006), The National Regional Arts Festival (2012), Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival (2013), Fairfax Festival (2013) and Adelaide Fringe Festival (2014); and selected works exhibited at galleries including The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (2009), SASA Gallery (2012, 2015), Light Square Gallery (2012) and FELT Space (2015). His audio works have been broadcast on radio including Radio National, Classic FM, The BBC (UK), Acoustic Frontiers (USA) and RBB (Germany).