As an artist, I enjoy composing music that is singular, unrepeatable and unpredictable. Because of this, I employ algorithmic processes for much of my work, writing software that transforms data and movement into sonic parameters.

For sound of the eye I wanted to push this one step further by allowing listeners to algorithmically compose their own music using images of their eyes. As each human eye is unique, differing in colour, patterning, brightness and more, each composition is also different, varying in key, tempo, time signature, volume and various other aspects. Once a composition has been generated, it is lathe cut onto a one-off 7" vinyl single.

In the age of digital media and mass surveillance, where retina scans and mp3s are the order of the day, I offer this small work as a provocation, using personal data for creativity instead of control and eschewing the digital in favour of the analogue.

This is an excerpt of a composition generated using the eye displayed in the image.

sound of the eye - Chantelle Gray (excerpt)

sound of the eye - Aragorn Eloff (excerpt)

A teaser mix of the seven limited edition split transparent 7"s released as part of the 2018 Edge of Wrong: Ectopias exploratory music festival (www.edgeofwrong.com).

In order of appearance:
- Robin Brink
- Jacques van Zyl
- Aragorn23
- Chantelle Gray
- Maxim Starcke
- Daniel W J Mackenzie
- Monomort
- Lipcreem
- Tatie Petanol
- ODORBABY
- Nonentia
- Praed
- WOW
- Daniel Gray

Edge of Wrong 2018: Ectopias 7" teaser

I'm missing trails and hikes a lot, so I decided to create my own surreal forest soundscape on the modular without using any samples or recordings. I used so many patch cables it ended up looking like a forest too.

Patch notes for synth geeks:
The stridulating insects are created by running coloured noise through a resonant high pass filter into a vca modulated by a fast square wave lfo. This is then run into a second vca with slower modulation, then into an octave shifter that duplicates the sound an octave higher and an octave lower, with some chaotic modulation of the volume of each octave.

The birds are two filters, with resonance and frequency modulation from various chaos modules pushing the filters into self-oscillation occasionally.

The wind/storm stuff is a thru-zero vco frequency modulated by white noise and chaos, run through a resonant filter and into a granular synth (mutable clouds).

The water is mutable plaits in particle noise mode, with some chaotic modulation.

Everything is running into a fair bit of reverb.

Edge of Wrong 2018: Ectopias 7" teaser

aragorn23