NetWorks 7: Canticle of Creatures

by Shawn Bell

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Full Digital Discography

11

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Get all 11 Shawn Bell releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Unfamiliar Order, NetWorks X: Momento Moirai, NetWorks 9: Somnia vana, NetWorks 8: Other Times, NetWorks 7: Canticle of Creatures, NetWorks 6: Music From a Farther Room, NetWorks 5: In Silico, NetWorks 4: Planet of Lost B-Movie Soundtracks and Other Anomalies, and 3 more. , and , .

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1.	Creatures of Destiny 01:32	buy track
2.	Extremophiles I 05:21	buy track
3.	Creatures of the Wind I 04:29	buy track
4.	Creatures of Broken Crystal 05:17	buy track
5.	Creatures of the City 03:09	buy track
6.	Creatures of the Cage 01:24	buy track
7.	The Rituals of Little Creatures 01:16	buy track
8.	Creatures of Dark Waters 02:09	buy track
9.	Extremophiles II 06:41	buy track
10.	The Promise of Seedlings 03:05	buy track
11.	Extremophiles III 02:14	buy track
12.	Creatures of the Caldera 04:04	buy track
13.	Creatures Trapped by Light 04:20	buy track
14.	The Beacon Beyond 04:20	buy track
15.	Creatures of the Wind II 03:04	buy track
16.	Creatures of Hope 03:51	buy track
17.	Extremophiles IV 05:18	buy track
18.	The Creatures We Remember 03:26	buy track

about

NetWorks (NW) is a music-generating system, and body of music, based on network theory, complex systems science and the Honing theory of creativity (Gabora 2010). NW has been designed to explore network architectures and rules of information exchange and transformation in order to generate musical patterns that range from orderly to chaotic. When tuned to the ‘edge of chaos,’ that is, balanced between repetition and variety, NW tends to generate patterns that exhibit emergent complexity through coherent musical development at low, mid and high levels of musical organization.

NetWorks is not based on genetic algorithms as it does not have a fitness function. It is based on a far older form of evolution called communal exchange. “There is extensive evidence that for the first several million years of its existence life on earth evolved through communal exchange of components amongst self-organizing autocatalytic protocells, prior to establishment of a genetic code, and only once a RNA-based self-assembly code was in place did life evolve through natural selection. … the last century’s emphasis on natural selection in evolutionary theory is not warranted by current research; even today, variation-selection is, quantitatively at least, not the dominant evolutionary process.” (Gabora 2006).

The networks used by NetWorks are not neural networks since their nodes do not use weights or biases. The nodes in NW simply share information about various note attributes, e.g., pitch, duration, velocity, entry delay, etc., and transform the information they receive based on their rules. If an output stream of NW is perceived to self-organize or "evolve" it can then be said to do so primarily through communal exchange.

The NetWorks system is designed to efficiently explore the vast space of network architectures, rules of interaction, and musical mappings in the search for new genres–not the imitation of genres or individual styles learned through the use of preexisting training sets. In short, the NW project is a search for music-as-it-could-be.

In this album, I focus on the information sharing aspect of the NetWorks algorithm by using very small networks (from 32 to 8 nodes). My aim was to gain a deeper intuition of the relationships between how nodes can be connected in terms of information sharing, the rules that transform the information received, and the resulting musical patterns.

NetWorks 7, is being released in 24 bit audio. Headphone listening is recommended if you would like to hear the fine details. Hope you enjoy the album. Thanks for the support!

credits

released December 30, 2020

Shawn Bell: Composer-Programmer, Explorer, Gardener, Mixing & Mastering.

Drawings: Taylor Bell

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about

Shawn Bell Quebec, Québec

Educator, composer and interactive media artist dedicated to creativity and collaboration. Interested in constructionist approaches to new media education and how interactive technologies and complexity theory enhance and expand the creative process in the traditional arts, computation arts and game design. ... more

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