A Lambent Mirror for Remote Ontographies of Nested Infinities (2022)
(a binaural rendering for headphone listening)

An extended multi-channel performance/installation using autonomous electronic systems that can be rendered to binaural audio and/or virtually any surround/speaker dome format.

A Lambent Mirror for Remote Ontographies of Nested Infinities consists of two digital computers interacting with a large array of analog audio circuits. The hybrid real-time system is completely autonomous and capable of infinitely variable auditory behaviors that never repeat. In addition to a variety of sound generators, signal processors, and routing/mixing circuitry, the structure is grounded in a diverse range of linear and non-linear mathematics derived from deterministic chaos and complexity science. Perhaps of most significance are the nested variations of 19 chaotic attractors, 2 logistic maps, two rudimentary neural simulations, various stochastic and/or fractal pattern generators, and two cellular automata engines. In total there are 90 individual circuit modules (54 analog and 36 digital).

It must be emphasized that while this project is an exploration of autonomous machine behavior, I do not believe that it resides within the purview of what has currently come to be referred to as Artificial Intelligence, a term that is itself amorphous and without a clear definition. In some ways it is posed as an alternative to the dominant model of AI since there is nothing remotely related to “machine learning,” “big data,” “computational statistics,” or “predictive analytics” and harkens back to ideas of machine intelligence germane to the earlier days of cybernetics. The use of digital computers is probably the least significant aspect of the project. The concept of autonomy herein refers to the self-organizing behavior of rudimentary elements interacting to create a more complex emergent phenomenon as distinct from programmed agents that have been purposely organized towards a specific computer-controlled stratagem.

In A Lambent Mirror for Remote Ontographies of Nested Infinities, a short-term listening experience can be quite misleading since the underlying process will eventually deviate from what may appear to be repetitive and relatively familiar. Depending upon the individual listener’s tolerance for novelty, this can become quite enjoyable or torturously challenging. Listening to it for extended periods requires a kind of existential letting go of aesthetic preferences and anticipatory comforts. Focused exposure to such an autonomous and seemingly erratic sound network might be one way of becoming more accustomed to—and meditating upon—the kinds of extreme change that we face in our current daily circumstances.

In an age when creative expression has become largely technology-driven, my intention with this project has been to push the preoccupation with electronic tools to an extreme margin by revisiting the early fascination with machine autonomy and emergent behavior that began in the earliest days of systems theory and cybernetics. My hope is that it is not merely a fanciful conceit to imagine that this activity constitutes a kind of return to first principles. Can it stand in contrast to the claims for Artificial Intelligence based “creativity” derived through the statistical analytics of so-called “deep learning”? Rather than a “top-down” construction that emulates prior models contained within a sufficiently large data base, my interest has been to see if novel creative agency can arise from the implementation of an autonomous network of relatively simple elements and to wonder if that emergence can be sustained indefinitely. If something seemingly akin to a complex musical experience can result from an ecology of autonomous inanimate electronic circuits, driven by various mathematical functions, does that tell us anything about the intelligent communicative sound webs of the myriad living systems that comprise our world? How do the phenomena of mind and intelligence come into being and are they strictly limited to living organisms?

This work is also available for performance as an extended autonomous installation in a wide variety of multi-channel formats.

Cover Image: The Isolator, an invention by Hugo Gernsback, Science and Invention, vol. 13, no. 3, July 1925