Apophenia

is written for found objects (four pieces of purple heart wood, two cast-iron skillets, and four resonant metal objects) and live electronics realized in the Max/MSP programming environment. The word Apophenia is the Greek word for the human tendency of perceiving patterns or connections in random or meaningless information.  Famous examples include seeing Jesus in a piece of toast or seeing patterns in the cards while gambling.  The process of creating my work included a sort of “apophenia” by generating random rhythms and sequences of notes.  I searched through these sequences for “meaningful” patterns which I then use as the building blocks of the piece.

The electronics in Apophenia serve to transform the found objects.  I enjoy the use of electronics to transform simple inexpensive objects into beautiful sounds.  It is interesting to me to search and find a beautiful sounding pot or pan at Salvation Army for five dollars and then expand its sonic possibilities even more through my computer.  It is my hope that my Max/MSP program will be able to adapt to different kinds of cast-iron skillets or pieces of wood so that the electronics will always sound integrated into the sounds and not just a static tape accompaniment. 

This was result of my time at the Atlantic Music Festival in 2015, with Mari Kimura in the Future Music Lab.