Excerpt from Hembree's PhD dissertation:
Ouroboros and Apocryphal Chrysopoeia: Aesthetics and Techniques (2015)
Introduction from the Article:
"Cellular automata were initially attractive to me because of the diversity and organic character of the behaviors they exhibited, while still being principled, deterministic systems. I used cellular automata, paired with psychological models of equal-tempered pitch perception, as the core components of Apocryphal Chrysopoeia, a generative, synesthetic, virtual instrument that allows a computer music performer to explore a space of light and sound simultaneously. This instrument was used to generate the fixed digital audio-visual media components of Ouroboros, and is also performed as a stand alone improvisatory work. Apocryphal Chrysopoeia was implemented in MAX 6, and representative patches of this implementation can be found in the Appendix.
A columnar structure of forty-eight audio-visual modules, represented visually by light-producing geometric primitives and sonically by the voices of a polyphonic synthesizer, forms the conceptual core of this virtual instrument. This column of forty-eight modules, or cells, provides a structured resource of potential sound and light that is temporally articulated by a cellular automaton with hackable rules. In other words, the cellular automaton “plays” what would otherwise be a silent and dark structure of cells. A variety of other sonic and visual manipulations of this structure are also available to the performer."
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