Composing Thresholds - Digital Synthesis with Feedback, Nonlinearity, and Chaos
Workshop with Luc Döbereiner
Dates & Times:
Friday, 3 July, 14:00–18:00
Saturday, 4 February, 10:00–17:00
Registration: Please register by email at info@kvr.or.at.
kv.r.
Hernalser Hauptstrasse 86
1170 Vienna
For musicians, feedback and nonlinearity are productive because they make systems behave less like tools and more like material. Instead of simply carrying out instructions, these systems develop tendencies, thresholds, and instabilities of their own. They invite a musical practice based less on control than on setting conditions and listening to what follows.
This workshop approaches digital feedback and nonlinearity as ways of developing such material. When fed-back signals meet a nonlinearity, something emerges from their contact that was present in none of them alone: combination tones, beating patterns, and textures that belong to the interaction itself. These systems are lawful but surprising. Small changes in gain, delay, or filtering can flip them suddenly from one kind of behavior into another and precisely this sensitivity makes them perceptually rich, in performance as in composition.
Over two days, we work with thresholds, hysteresis, saturation, folds, noise, and integration; with iterated maps and chaotic oscillators; and with delay lines, filters, resonators, and coupled networks. A central concern is how to listen to what has been built: riding parameters slowly through sonic spaces, finding tipping points, and staying with the zones where behavior changes character.
The indeterminacy at play is not imposed from outside but generated from within, through the rigorous application of the system’s own rules. Participants build playable chaotic instruments in SuperCollider, with working code provided. Basic familiarity with audio signal processing is assumed. Bring a laptop and headphones, an audio interface is useful.
Fee:
30 € per person
Free for those who cannot afford it