[ISEA2015] Paper: Mo H. Zareei, Dale A. Carnegie & Ajay Kapur – Noise Square: Physical Sonification of Cellular Automata through Mechatronic Sound-sculpture

Abstract (Short paper)

Keywords: Generative Art, Cellular Automata, Mechatronic Sound-sculpture.

As Burraston and Edmonds state, “creating patterns and sequences is necessary for the creative artist working spatially and temporally within a chosen medium”. Accordingly, cellular automata’s capability of creating a wide range of evolutionary and generative patterns has made them of special interest to musicians and sound artists. While this has led to a great number of works of sound art and music that integrate generative patterns of cellular automata in one way or another, the sonic output of these works has been primarily retained within the realm of electronically produced sound. Followed by a concise overview on a selected number of these works, this paper presents a proposed audiovisual installation in which cellular automata is incorporated in the medium of mechatronic sound-sculpture, where the sound is generated physically and in the acoustic realm, through a mechanical apparatus.

  • Mo H. Zareei is a sound artist and a music technology researcher. Born and raised in Iran, Zareei moved to the United States in 2010 to study at California Institute of the Arts, where he started to explore the world of electronic music. Using custom-built software and hardware, his experiments with sound covers a wide range from electroacoustic and electronic compositions to mechatronic sound-sculptures and installations. Striving to turn the harsh, unwanted, and unnoticeable into the pleasing and accessible, Zareei’s work is particularly targeted at the point where noise meets grid-based structures. He is currently living in New Zealand, where he is pursuing his PhD research on noise music and
    mechatronics at Victoria University of Wellington.
  • Dale A. Carnegie has a BSc in Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics, an MSc with first class honours in Applied Physics and Electronics and a PhD in Computer Science. He is currently the Professor of Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering at Victoria University of Wellington (NZ) where he is also the Dean of Faculty of Engineering. He heads Victoria University’s Mechatronics Group, which specializes in Autonomous Mobile Robotics.
  • Ajay Kapur is currently the director of Music Technology at California Institute of the Arts, USA. He received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in 2007 from University of Victoria with a focus on intelligent music systems and media technology. Kapur graduated with a BS in Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 2002. A musician at heart, trained on drumset, tabla, sitar and other percussion instruments from around the world,
    Ajay strives to push the technological barrier in order to explore new sounds, rhythms and melodies.

Full text (PDF) p. 513-516