Designing for Emergent Behavior: a John Cage realization Christopher Burns Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University
[email protected] Abstract 2 Score and Realization A new software realization of John Cage’s Electronic Music There are an enormous number of potential realizations for Piano is described. Inspired by dedicatee David Tudor’s of Electronic Music for Piano. Indeed, it would be difficult work with feedback circuits in live electronic music, the to specify criteria for the validity of a performance. principal audio component of the software is an audio Nevertheless, the score provides a rich interpretive context feedback network with a number of chance-determined, for realization. A number of fragments from the score were time-varying parameters. The behavior of this feedback crucial stimuli for our performing version of the work. system is unpredictable, so the software interface is Cage’s notations include the phrases “feedback” and organized around higher-level, statistically-oriented “for David Tudor.” During the 1960s and 70s, Tudor controls. The result is an instrument which displays gradually reoriented his career from the performance of emergent behavior, guided but not controlled by its audio avant-garde works for piano to the creation of live electronic inputs and its operator. music, with electronic feedback systems as the defining component of his work. (Adams 1997, Chadable 1997). In 1 Introduction appreciation of Cage and Tudor’s work in the domain of feedback, we designed this realization around an acoustic Electronic Music for Piano (1964), by John Cage, is one feedback network, implemented in software.