“Sonic Organism” by Janus Fouché
Title:
- Sonic Organism
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Venue(s):
Medium:
- Performance
Artist Statement:
Sonic Organism is a generative audio composition: a living algorithm that exists in realtime entirely as a synthesized generative digital soundscape. It has a pulse, interconnected cellularstructure, and decision-making nerve-centre. The result is a set of unique musical compositions, with common threads running through, and repetitions within themes. The music-composing algorithm was installed in the aquarium, running on a laptop with a set of speakers, around a cylindrical fish tank as the visual focal point. The idea was to add a completely artificial being to the aquarium, to be observed as sound instead of, or complimenting, the visual creatures. Being generative, the piece consists of an artificial-intelligence algorithm calculating and playing synthesized sound, and is never truly repeated. Once the algorithm runs, the network functions as a synapse system, where adjacent cells are triggered over time and musical combinations and shapes emerge based on a balance of previous decisions and the synaptic layout.
