Randy Jones

for solo Radio Drum [2006]

Six Axioms is a visual music piece lasting around 30 minutes, a structured improvisation in three parts. The piece is realized using Max/MSP/Jitter. Most of it is made with particle systems which produce both sounds and visuals. Playing the Radio Drum triggers the creation of particles and moves them through different fields in a simulation.

The particles are drawn with thousands of different little images that I either painted with a brush and ink or printed from plants I gathered on the Washington coast. These are the visual analog of the "grains" that produce the sound. In the motion of masses of these audiovisual particles, shapes and sounds emerge which are synthetic but grounded in Nature. They act intuitively real, simulating an internal reality which is subjective.

Why Six Axioms? It's an attempt to invoke or at least point at a sense of awe which I would call spiritual, but which comes out of a scientific worldview. The universe and all the things we know in it exist in such amazing variety, yet all of this variety can be explained by a handful of basic physical laws. In mathematics, another space of infinite variety, these starting points are called axioms. Six Axioms is composed with a strategy that mirrors mathematical discovery. Six tiny motives are combined in different ways to create relatively complex visual music.

About the Radio Drum

The Radio Drum is a kind of 3d Theremin. It uses an electrical field to sense the locations of two drum sticks above a pad. Invented at Bell Labs by Max Mathews and Bob Boie, its use as a percussion controller was pioneered by Andrew Schloss. Recently, Ben Nevile and others here at the University of Victoria have done work to make a new version of the drum which is more responsive and plugs into the computer via a standard audio interface.

Shows

2007
Computational Aesthetics, Banff
NIME Conference, NYC
MUTEK, Montreal
Northwest Film Forum, Seattle

2006
BEAF, Bellingham
MISTIC Concert, University of Victoria
New Forms Festival, Vancouver
Decibel Festival, Seattle