Dubiofossil

Generative music for the hurdy gurdy

This exploration of the pros and cons of automatic music enabled users to evolve ropey tunes for a hurdy-gurdy. Tunes were evolved by auditioning sounds and selecting favourites to be evolved further. For the Big Blip 2004 - now safely locked away in the cupboard.

Here, I wanted to create music that was designed for a physical instrument, rather than for computer-generated signals, so the music could more readily be performed and scrutinised by listeners. The hurdy-gurdy is an ancient European instrument with a limited number of notes and registers, making it a pragmatic choice for any generative project.

Like many generative music programs today, the hurdy-gurdy was seen as a means to mechanise the generation ofmusic. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this bombastic instrument was widely used by street musicians - and it was often considered to be an instrument favoured by those who were unskilled at other forms of music creation. I'm a huge fan of the hurdy-gurdy and find it hard to understand was it was not universally liked.

A dubiofossil is an artefact of uncertain origin, thought by some to be an example of fossilised life.