I became interested in sound synthesis, strangely enough, through the work of a theoretical biologist by the name of Arthur Winfree, who studied the sleep/wake cycles in living organisms. These sleep/wake cycles, or circadian rhythms, serve to regulate an organisms activity, and arise from the interactions between numbers of simple oscillators. These oscillators 'communicate' with each other on a very basic level, but the resulting behavior as a whole can be quite complex.

In order to study this phenomenon, Winfree constructed what he called a firefly machine. (named so because some species of fireflies are known to synchronize their flashing by observing their neighbors). Winfree's machine consisted of a number of neon oscillators, all sharing a common connection. One can think of an oscillator as a clock. The clock hand spins around at a certain rate, and when it reaches a certain point, the clock resets, nudging its neighbors clocks ahead a tiny amount. Over time, these little nudges may result in all the clocks resetting at the same time, or other complex patterns. Now considering that neon oscillators were used in some of the first electronic instruments, I wondered what a system like that might sound like.

Considering that neon oscillators also exhibit a marked similarity to the behavior of nerve cells, one could imagine the sound of a group of oscillators to be that of the nervous activity of the brain. In essence, I wanted to hear the buzz in my brain.

I found this experiment to be provocative in the sense that the actuality of the sound came to the foreground, producing something unique in which I had only set the preconditions for. This leads me to explore further possibilities.

Listen:

neosc.mp3 (4.57MB, 128kbps)