Co-composition and decomposition

Nigel Helyer examines a series of creative sound-works which combine human and biological agents to re-mix, create and re-invent musical scores. The main idea is to consider Genes, Memes and Musical notation as parallel mnemonic structures that function as instructions for the fleshing-out of life across temporal barriers. GeneMusiK and the associated works Under the IceCap, Oratorio for a Million Souls, and the Quartor pour la fin du temps à l’Escargot, are generative processes in which the outcome is surrendered to biological agents, but which operate within a broad combinatory frame-work of cultural, social and biological pathways. The stochastic process of biological transformation which erode the human agency invested in authorship is however returned to the human sphere as performance and entanglements with the nuances of interpretation and virtuosity.