The Birth of Roland Kayn's Cybernetics

video upload by La Synthèse Humaine

"Between 1966 and 1969 Roland Kayn made three pieces at the Studio di Fonologia at RAI in Milan entitled 'Cybernetics I/II/III'. These pieces were Kayn's first attempts at realizing his concepts of cybernetics using electronics and are a fascinating hint at what is to come later in his career as these ideas get fleshed out even further.

In this video we look at the background of these pieces and walk through the techniques Kayn used for 'Cybernetics III' which more or less involve an automated mixing machine to combine pre-recorded concrete sounds and then cybernetic regulators to influence and make decisions about how the piece evolves.

00:00 Introduction
01:14 Roland Kayn at RAI, Milan
03:02 Cybernetics I-III
05:55 The Making of Cybernetics III
08:27 Kayn's Concrète Experiments
09:53 Patreon Pitch
10:00 Preparing our Sound Sources
12:38 Making an Automatic Switching/Mixing System with Comparators
15:41 Introducing the Cybernetic Element
18:35 High-Frequency Tracker
19:27 Adding Further Elements
22:40 Weird Birdsong...

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