• Unknowabel-CD

Noyzelab - unknowable determinism

Stellage

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Another curious, expertly packaged compact disc of modern computer music experiments has been sent over here direct from our friends at STELLAGE, Moscow >>


STELLAGE010 is here, and this is what you should know about it, while you listen to the clips and work out if you'd enjoy the ride (we certainly did!) -

"Konrad Zuse, who built the first programmable computer (the Z3, in 1941), suggested that the universe is a computer: underlying the known laws of physics is an algorithmic system like a cellular automaton whose computational output is the matter and energy that make up the universe. In this theory, the world is computed through the interaction of billions of simple elements, and the directional time and 3D space that we experience are emergent properties of this computation. The computation is deterministic - it follows simple rules, but is so big that it's impossible to predict - it is unknowable. To see what happens you just have to let it run. The concept of the universe-as-a-computer is like The Matrix, but not as an illusion built to hide reality - as the foundation of reality itself.

That idea is central to this album. Unknowable Determinism was made with very large cellular automata systems by translating from one matrix to another: Using a 'state matrix' to represent cellular automata, the output of the computations are mapped to Barbara Hero's Lambdoma Matrix of musical tunings. This album includes some of Noyzelab's first applications of this original approach, dating from 2013, which represented a significant new aesthetic direction. These explorations of micro-tonal tunings develop from David Burraston's practice-based research which explores how to map and navigate the vast space of possibilities that can be constructed with cellular automata. Harnessing the dynamic behaviour of specific families of cellular automata located at the 'edge of chaos', identified with his unique approach to traversing rule space, Burraston abstracts their properties and turns them into musically meaningful information using his MANIAC sequencer system

 

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