THE ACCEPTANCE OF DISORDER
aleatoric audio visual art installation
by J.E. Murphy
The Acceptance of Disorder is a chaos-based audio-visual installation centered around an aleatoric music composition system. The music created here in turn produces colonies of digital organisms on a 2D visual plane which appear to act autonomously and are ruled by simple algorithmic laws of cellular automation, namely that of John Horton Conway’s Game of Life (c.1970). A causal loop forms as the musical system then uses this visual data to evolve its composition in real-time. Viewers of the installation can interrupt this loop by interacting with the visual plane. Their movement is captured and represented as additional digital organisms thus influencing the resultant musical composition.
The Acceptance of Disorder will be installed in the foyer of English Theatre Berlin for the entire duration of The Full Irish.
J.E. Murphy is a Northern Irish composer and artist specializing in aleatorics and systems art. A former recipient of The Arts Society of Ulster’s Young Artist of The Year Award in 1999, Murphy shifted his focus to music in 2001 eventually becoming a musical contributor and sound designer for organizations such as MSNBC (US), RTÉ (IRL) and the CW Network (US).
As a student of music technology at The University of Brighton from 2003 – 2006, he developed a flare for designing audio-based software which became the core of his work as he moved to Berlin in 2008. Over the following years with the development of interactive technologies within his programming and the incorporation of more visual elements, his work began to diversify leading to a number of appearances between 2009 – 2011 as a live-visuals designer in various Berlin venues such as Berghain, Postbahnhof and SO36.
In 2012 he took a post as curator and contributing artist in Berlin performance art space Gruentaler 9 which led to a series of installations exemplifying the use of digital systems to create thought-provoking interactive and aleatoric audio-visual works. Thematically, “chance” has become an ever-more aggressive element within his work. Pieces are ultimately dependent on factors outside the artist’s control, often emulating chaotic systems found in nature. Murphy’s role in his work is essentially as architect, designing the system of creation and allowing external elements to shape the final output.