Paralell with the beginnings of generative art in the early 60s a comparable practise has been developed with generative sound and composition. Analog self-processing systems have created environments even before the availability of computer technology – wherein the author simply determines the framework, but not the result: this film program shows different ways to shape these conditions, and what output they can lead to.
 
The Peckers
could be read as a socio-ornithological field-study or equally, as audio-visual, low profile experimental design. On an inner city square two electric guitars are wired to an amp and strewn with grains ... and voilà! along comes a flock of pigeons to play them. Sound and image tracks condense in the course of the film to a self-generating drone that sounds remarkably reminiscent of Freak Folk’s auditive offerings.
Courtesy of the artist and Tracey Lawrence Gallery, Vancouver
> www.traceylawrencegallery.com
 
Elephant Keyboard
A documentation of Don Ritter’s 3x1x1 m installation, Elephant Keyboard: on a super-sized keyboard, elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre play rhythmic and harmonic clusters in traditional and popular Thai styles.
> www.aesthetic-machinery.com
 
IBM 7090
A homage to the original, 35-bit/32K computer – developed in the 1950s and the very first to have sufficient processing capacity to generate sound – the graphic-animation IBM 7090 is acoustically underpinned by one of the historic blue-prints for electronically generated music, "Music From Mathematics", a track produced in 1962 solely on the Bell Labs’ music computer.
> www.beaufonts.com
 
Kick That Habit
Drawing on trace elements of Jazz and Arte Povera, Swiss duo Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang use a range of cracked everyday electronic equipment to create abstract sound environments. Alongside free improvisation, they’ve devoted over 30 years to obsessively fathoming the potential of generative composition by analogue, non-computer-steered systems for their Voice Crack project. Peter Liechti's Kick That Habit is set to be a music film classic – its artful, cinematically unique sequences transcend the usual parameters of documentary.
> www.voicecrack.ch
> www.peterliechti.ch