Simon Katan combines electronic music, live animation, interaction, and social gaming to make software which creates musical odysseys through exploring animated worlds. In the following works into the post you can see how interesting and playful is the interaction while composing the music and the multiple different ways Simon creates to compose it through minimalist interfaces. See more;
Cube with Magic Ribbons, 2012
"Cube with Magic Ribbons is a computer visual and synthesised sound composition for live performance. The piece takes its title from a drawing of M.C.Escher which is rich with contradictory perspectives but it is also inspired by the wrapped spaces found in the two dimensional graphics of early computer games such as Asteroids and Pac-Man. It was created using a custom visual sequencer SoundCircuit, which rather than employing a conventional DAW layout, allows multiple virtual tape-heads to travel through a two-dimensional wrapped space along tracks that can be freely inter-connected. As the tape-heads travel through the resultant network, the topological layout of the tracks comes to directly influence the macro form of the music. Furthermore, as the piece unfolds the nature of this already confusing space reveals itself to be increasingly elastic and complex, yet inexorably intertwined with the musical form." - Simon Katan
What Is Life ?, 2012
"What Is Life ? is a computer visual and synthesised sound composition for live performance. The piece uses a custom visual sequencer called SoundLens which comprises an OpenFrameworks visual interface and an OSC controlled SuperCollider patch. These combine to imply an analogue between a simulated visual focal effect, reminiscent of a camera lens or microscope, and auditory depth of field. Into this world are placed multiple copies of a sound producing mechanical object.
Inspired by a coincidental similarity between certain arrangements of these objects and the double helix structure of DNA, the piece takes its title from the name of Erwin Schrödinger’s book in which he develops the concept of a complex molecule with the genetic code for living organisms. Nevertheless, there is a deeper connection between title and piece in that it progresses solely through the copying and mutation of its own material." - Simon Katan
Inspired by a coincidental similarity between certain arrangements of these objects and the double helix structure of DNA, the piece takes its title from the name of Erwin Schrödinger’s book in which he develops the concept of a complex molecule with the genetic code for living organisms. Nevertheless, there is a deeper connection between title and piece in that it progresses solely through the copying and mutation of its own material." - Simon Katan
God Over Djinn, 2011
"God Over Djinn is a piece for live animation and synthesised sound composition that draws on our intuitive understanding of the physical world, as well as playing with ambiguities between scale and perspective in two-dimensional representation to create seemingly infinitely nested worlds of colliding objects.
The work was inspired by impossible worlds of M.C.Escher and Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach and is created using a custom built OpenFrameworks application called SoundNest with sound in SuperCollider." - Simon Katan
