Katrina Hu – Looking Outwards – 09

Claire Lee’s Post: Prelude in ACGT

I chose to review Claire Lee’s Looking Outwards 04 Post. Her post looks at Pierry Jacquillard’s Prélude in ACGT. This piece takes the A-C-G-T (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine) order of Jacquillard’s own DNA and turns it into a musical composition. He uses a Javascript-based program to do this, creating a piece that is correlated to the order of his own DNA. The project uses a midi library that generates signals to be converted into electronic sounds.

I also think the cited project is really interesting, as it combines the topics of art, technology, and biology. I agree with Claire’s assessment that this work is very simple, but that the concept in itself is very creative. It is also fascinating how the entire project’s sheet music is an entire book long, yet only contains 0.2% of Jacquillard’s entire DNA. I think the idea itself is very different from other works, as it combines many fields of study.