Apocryphal Chrysopoeia

I've been making some changes to my cellular automata-based audio-visual instrument.  The "orbs" have evolved into a variety of geometric primitives, so I've discarded the name Sounding Orbs for future projects -  this older title was an homage to Fischinger's Kreise (Circles).  The new title is a bit more outrageous, but encapsulates more information about the instrument and the philosophy behind it: Apocryphal Chrysopoeia.  This title basically means "doubtful alchemical transmutation into gold."

Apocryphal Chrysopoeia - Demo from Paul Hembree on Vimeo

I arrived at this somewhat ridiculous title through the intersection of various threads related to the instrument and the dissertation composition growing around it (the dissertation composition is called Ouroboros).  The texts I'm drawing upon for the conceptual basis of the dissertation are in the German Gothic tradition (Hoffmann and Kleist), or they deal with the critique of abstraction, in art and science (Feyerabend, Adorno, Edward Shanken, etc.).  Specifically, all of the texts touch upon artificial life (or synthetic biology) and automata, with varying degrees of attraction or repulsion to such entities or concepts.

In the Hoffmann (Der Sandmann), the image of a "circle of fire" appears multiple times.  Several theorists have postulated that Hoffmann used this image to represent the newly discovered (in his time) method of animating dead tissue with electrical circuits (circles of "fire").  Another circle appears in the Kleist ("On the Marionette Theatre"), this time having to do with a journey of increasing awareness from an animal-like state, through sentience, to omniscience.  Kleist is essentially trying to re-draw the circle around the Garden of Eden for humankind.

Another quasi-circle (a double-helix wrapped into a torus) forms the basic arrangement of pitches in my cellular automata instrument, prior to any geometric deformation.  Such deformation is absolutely necessary for dramatic variation in performance with the instrument, but the core arrangement makes the algorithm predictable.

Yet another circle is Ouroboros, the mythological snake that eats itself, representing the integral nature of decay and renewal, or at the very least a synthesis of opposites.  Ouroboros is also an alchemical sigil related to the legendary philosopher's stone, which can transmute base metals into gold, or grant eternal life.  Of course, such magical ideas are irrational - but they seem desirable none-the-less, don't they?  My striving for the creation of musical automata is similarly irrational, although rational means are deployed, such as the double-helix model of pitch perception, in my pursuit.  It is an exploration of what can be accomplished with an "infection by abstraction."