Blog 04 – Computation & Sound Art

An example of where sound and computation cross that I find interesting is Musikalisches Würfelspiel, which evidently translates from German as “musical dice game”. It was popularized in the 1700s throughout Western Europe, and many versions of the game exist as created by different composers. The gist is that someone can randomly generate a completely unique piece of music by rolling dice. The algorithm is quite simple: in each module of a table is a measure of music, and the player rolls their dice twice, first to select the column, then to select the row. The player continues randomly selecting measures this way until the song is long enough to be finished. Even with a smaller table or shorter composition, this could still produce millions of unique songs. Here’s a video of a version of the game in action. (The video is in German, but you can still see the players rolling a die to select different measures, and you get to hear the final composition.)

I find it cool that artists and composers have been embracing the affordances of algorithmically generated music long before computers were in the mix. Programs like Musikalisches Würfenspiel are a good reminder that artistic thought processes can transcend media in unexpected ways, so keep yourself open to unorthodox applications of your creative thinking.