SYNTAX by Mike Hodnick and John C.S. Keston Now on Blu-Ray

video upload by John C.S. Keston

Available at https://audiocookbook.org

"Our generative, animated, graphic score, performance project SYNTAX in collaboration with Mike Hodnick (aka Kindohm) is now available from Æther Sound as a Blu-Ray disc. The Disc contains all eight of our compositions as well as two bonus videos. One from Mike titled n ciom 4 and another from me titled Rhodonea. It all adds up to a total of one hour and fifteen minutes of music with animation."

Description from the video above:

"This excerpt from the piece SYNTAX includes performances of the movements RENEWABLE, TOXIC, PETROCHEMICAL, and WATERSHED by Mike Hodnick and John C.S. Keston.

SYNTAX questions technological idealism in an age of ecological disruption and data-driven exploitation. The collaboration includes a series of eight animated, graphic scores designed to guide the two composers through a generative narrative of improvised sound.

Widely misused technology continues to cause pollution, habitat destruction, global warming, and disinformation. Like two sides of the same coin it is responsible for immeasurable prosperity and immeasurable suffering. It threatens all life on the planet, yet most humans depend on it.

To explore this question the composers have programmed the computer to program themselves. By deliberately coding and submitting to an “inversion of control” they evoke the warnings of media theorists like Douglas Rushkoff, that we risk a future wherein our behavior might be irreversibly dictated by the algorithms in the software we use instead of by our own volition. SYNTAX is a performance piece that parallels the dilemmas we face from two sides of the same coin.

The collaboration includes a series of eight animated, graphic scores designed to guide the two composers through a generative narrative of improvised sound. This inverts the usual practice of creating visuals in response to sound by creating music in response to visuals. The scores that the artists read are designed as functional symbolism representing a set of rules that suggest musical ideas, sound design techniques, and timed phrases. The scores are regenerated each time the application is executed so that every performance is distinct.

The software engineered to generate the graphic scores provides information to the performers in the form of animated and color coded graphics. An additional script was developed to navigate through the movements, display the titles, and transition between each piece. Each movement was written with its own graphical language, algorithms, and directives while maintaining visual and conceptual themes to work as a whole. The composers perform the piece using a combination of hardware synthesizers and software independent from the scores including sequences programmed using the Tidal Cycles live coding environment and manipulated in real time. It is the intent of the human composers for the audience to experience the projected graphic scores and musical performance together."