sparsematrix

sparsematrix is a computational experiment in the form of an audiovisual live coding performance that explores computation as an aesthetic substrate for human culture. The dominant principle here is the assumption that all processes in nature are in essence algorithmic, in fact, all general physical processes are dominated by simple algorithmic rules. The algorithm becomes the aesthetic in the process of the human performer interacting with the machine by instructing it in code. The inherently emergent nature of algorithms guides the inescapably improvisatory principles of audiovisual interaction and composition. Transcriptions of traditional rhythmic patterns, which have been subjected to conditions of sparsity, provide the raw structuring material. Sparse matrix is a mathematical idea applied here to dense rhythmic patterns in order to discover the skeletal structures of rhythm loops form various musical traditions filling the event cycles primarily with silences and turning the attention to pure perception of time stripped of the baggage of cultural connotations. Perception is inescapably multimodal and audiovisual cognition is a hard-wired reality we invariably inhabit. The visual component of the performance employs interactive multi-dimensional cellular automata repurposed by machine listening methods to react to the audio stream in real time.