Exploring Music in Analog Circuitry

Composer David Dunn returns to the Complex on Friday, June 5 to continue the SFMax series and its on-going discussion of the methods, software and hardware used to create interactive audio and video. Dunn, who is currently exploring the autonomous behavior of hyper-chaotic analog audio circuits, will discuss his work. Dunn rarely presents concerts or installations and instead prefers to lecture and engage in site-specific interactions or research-oriented activities.

Much of his current work is focused upon the development of listening strategies and technologies for environmental sound monitoring in both aesthetic and scientific contexts. From 1970 to 1974, he was an assistant to the American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Partch ensemble for over a decade. Other mentors included composers Kenneth Gaburo and Pauline Oliveros, in addition to Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski. He has also been the recipient of over 35 grants and fellowships for both artistic and scientific research. In 2005, he received the prestigious Alpert Award for music, and the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center in 2007.

His current project explores the autonomous behavior of hyper-chaotic analog audio circuits. The emergent complexity of these systems results from the dynamical attributes of coupled chaotic attractors interacting in a high-dimensional phase space. The control of various circuit parameters determines a range of instabilities and structural couplings between nested chaotic circuits, allowing different self-organizing behaviors to emerge. Two identical circuits exist as closed autonomous unities that can be structurally coupled through the simple connection of a shared resistance network. Any sounds produced by the circuits emerge as a type of “conversation” that is allowed to continuously drift through novel behavioral domains that exhibit repetitive action at a local level but tremendous global diversity over extended time periods. The intention is not to simulate the high level functioning of biological organisms and their cognitive capacities but rather to take this question down to its most primitive level of autonomous-closure machines where self-organization is more obviously inseparable from behavior.