Description
A few years later in 1996, I was able to save enough money to buy a Texas Instruments TI-92 graphing calculator — unique at the time for having a full keyboard on it allowing for complex programming on the fly. This was followed by flings with several more unusual and exotic portables in search of perfection: the Data General Walkabout, Apple Newton MessagePad 130, Xircom REX 6000 and the NEC MobilePro 780. In many ways these computers are not ‘practical’, but something about their compactness inspires a sense of awe in me that is irresistible; because they seem so obviously limited in their capacities, there is a draw to find exactly where those limits are. Being able to explore and probe those boundaries from anywhere in the world I could reach made the machine feel like a liberating extension of my body rather than an anchor. There is an intimacy that developed in me when working closely with these machines that felt exciting. The VAIO P is at my personal apex of this ideal, and every day together my intent to explore its powers and honor its boldness grew.
After a few years of hacking on a Linux installation for the VAIO P, gradually improving its performance and capabilities in sound synthesis I discovered Tidal, the musical ‘live coding’ language. It was immediately compelling to me because it allowed the computer to feel like it was accompanying me in creating, as a partner; a presence in a sense. There was feedback, unpredictability, serendipity and elation; all while sitting alone, at the keyboard. I had approximated this sensation in the preceding year using Jonathan Moore Liles’ fantastic ‘Non Sequencer’, implementing grid patterns and progressions that felt to me organic and spontaneous; but Tidal’s support of functions and conditional logic demonstrated the idea could be taken even further, if one could accept abandoning a traditional user interface. After a few late nights being completely absorbed into Tidal I could no longer escape the allure of its possibilities, and all of my composition going forward became oriented around program code.
The live coding music community would again change my life the following year by telling me about ORCA, a programmatic sequencer with an ingenious interactive text-mode user interface. The only comparison I could draw at the time was to say that it reminded me of Conway’s ‘Game of Life’, but generating musical notes as output. What captivated me about this program is that using it has an almost tactile nature; the sequencing code becomes a physical plane, visible to you in its motion and yet variable in size and arrangement. The software interface itself is a satisfying, meditative experience; in a way, ORCA might be considered a bridge between a grid sequencer like Non Sequencer, and a pure syntactical script like Tidal.
Once I had ORCA and Tidal working on the VAIO P, I knew I had everything I needed to realize my vision, and I set out to see if making an immersive soundscape was possible within the space of my two hands. This album is the result of that effort; it is a tribute to the VAIO P itself, embracing its limits along with its strengths through a journey together over the course of a decade. It was a quest to immerse as deeply as possible into the sounds it is able to generate, finding a delicate balance where those states become stable for the system. At every turn I was shocked that under the right circumstances it was able to go deeper, eventually opening sounds into cavernous spaces that left me feeling in awe.
