[Sisesta Pealkiri]

[Sisesta Pealkiri] is an experimental collaboration between Shelly Knotts and Alo Allik, two artists who explore the nature of digital environments in the context of live coding from mutually augmenting perspectives.

They create an audiovisual data-feedback loop by writing code live on stage and exchanging information over the network. The sonic nature of the performance is developed while improvising with various algorithmic synthesisers some of which have been evolved in the course of experiments with gene expression programming. Gene expression programming offers an alternative approach to the genetic paradigm evolving populations of candidate solutions as valid computer programs that can be used for a potentially wide range of problem solving tasks, including sound synthesis. The sound synthesis server is instructed through unit generator graph functions to calculate a desired sonic outcome. These graph functions are essentially enclosed computer programs that can be encoded into linear chromosomes according to the principles of gene expression programming and evolved by evaluating their fitness and subjecting them to genetic operations. The design of the fitness functions involves statistical methods and machine listening algorithms in an attempt to automate the supervision of the synthesis process. The performative aspect emerges from managing the hundreds of evolved synthesizers through live coding and guiding the digital evolution in real time as the genetic agents attempt to converge towards the ensuing sonic realm. The visual aspect of the performance seeks to combine 3-dimensional generative graphics with the traditional live code projection, trying to create a visual world where the code becomes an aesthetically significant component of the dynamic world of swarm and cellular automata algorithms.

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