Science-Fiction and Hypermodernism

This paper was presented at the inaugural Hypermodernism conference in Paris.

Science-fiction was the original hypermodern, predicated on faith in reason and the scientific method, fixated on our ability to understand and control our environment, obsessed with novelty. Following the New Wave experiments of the 1960s, science-fiction became increasingly mediated. Our contemporary touch panels, ubiquitous computation devices, and fibre optic communications precipitated out of this space of imagination. Now that it is everywhere, science fiction has lost its original function.

Creating an Autopoietic Improvisation Environment Using Modular Synthesis

This paper was published in the Canadian journal eContact!, a special edition titled Analogue and Modular Synthesis: Resurgence and Evolution, edited by Richard Scott.

The “no source mixing desk” is a sound mixer with outputs wired to inputs, so that the self-noise of the circuitry is the only sonic material. The No Input Software Environment (NISE) is my software implementation of such a system, designed to encourage musical experimentation.

Stolen Mirror album launch

This performance included artists from my label. Steve McCourt was direct from Shanghai and Fergus Kelly from Dublin. The three of us played together for a final improvisation… for the first time!