Oscar Martín
Meta Music Machines
Free, until full capacity is reached, with prior ticket collection on the Museo Reina Sofía website from 10am on 16 April. A maximum of 1 per person. Punctuality is required given that entry will not be allowed once the activity is under way. Doors open 30 minutes before each session.
1pm, 5pm and 7pm; 30'
Meta Music Machines is a research project which seeks to develop and build a digitally automated composer, a machine-sculpture that produces new sound creations, recombining information extracted from music indexed in different sound archives. Oscar Martín’s work in progress had adopted, over time, different formats and names, according to the spheres of artistic and research-based creation in which it is displayed. In this instance, the Museo Reina Sofía presents its Flourescent Markov Beat version, halfway between a concert and installation.
Meta Music Machines revolves around automated software which analyses and extracts sound information from different pieces of folk music hailing from diverse geographies and temporalities, for instance from Japan, Peru, Malaysia and Thailand, before synthesising the rhythm of these different forms of music via predictive models to produce new sequences that activate structures of light and fluorescence. These new rhythmic sequences are generated from the Markov chain mathematical model: a random system devised by Russian mathematician Andrey Markov in 1907, in which a random variable predictably changes the passage of time. This behavioural pattern means that these chains are used both as algorithms of musical composition and as meteorological, economic and epidemiological forecasts.
Flourescent Markov Beat materialises from a light structure in the form of a sculpture which assumes different dimensions. Ultimately, what is heard is the analogue sound of fluorescent lights switching on and off, based on predictive models and amplified and accompanied by digital synthesis.
Oscar Martín is an artist, programmer and independent researcher. In his practice, art and science converge from an experimental and heterodox approach as he explores emergency and self-organisation in complex and chaotic systems. He oversees the streaming platform MetaminaFreeNetRadio and edits UrsonateFanzine. In 2011, he received a Phonos Foundation grant for his project {RdEs} Sonic Emergency Distributed Network. A Sound-Light Installation.
Warning: this event may have adverse effects on people with photosensitivity and/or may trigger epilepsy due to light changes.
Credits
Research conceived in Espai Salamina. Audiovisual automaton adapted specifically to be presented in Museo Reina Sofía’s Auditorium 400 in 2021
