LO: Sound Art

I wanted to talk about the app Trope by Brian Eno (yes I know he’s like the generative sound guy, but I like his work!) and Peter Chilvers, the interactive generative sound-art experience. As one traces abstract forms onto the screen, the program will vary the tone. There are also additional instruments so that one can vary sounds and create a whole symphony of interesting sounds whose generated existence emerges from the human interaction with the program. I personally admire the interactive nature of it. I love randomness, but when you give people a way to experience that, to watch it unfold under their fingertips, that I find really satisfying. As the tone shifts randomly (in accordance with the laws of generative music, randomness being a key to making it “last forever”) you create songs that are entirely unique to your own experience at that moment, and can’t be perfectly recreated by someone else with ease. Likely tone and pitch are related to things like x and y on the screen, and potentially pressure and tilt, as the program is for smartphones and tablets and the like. This is another of Brian Eno’s apps, of which I think he’s made a few, and seems to be a spiritual successor to his previous work, Bloom.