Anomolous Faces

Anomolous Faces embraces the unstable nature of improvisation in software and in music. I aim to examine the agency that improvisation can provide in the context of creative software and performance. I build custom software that acts both as an instrument and collaborator which I perform alongside with a combination of digital hardware and traditional musical instruments. Through the employment of these tools I challenge my ingrained jazz improvisational training, and examine creative relationships we can have with machines.

My improvisations to date have included hacking MIDI controllers and playing with audio analysis. Such approaches deconstruct my traditional musical training on the saxophone as I find myself attempting to embody routines as defined by software. It is either the programming of my years of formal music training, or a conceived imposition by the "perfection" of technology that makes me question my agency, and even my role as an interactor.

My performance practice is coupled with research that takes many other forms, where I engage in discussion around agencies a wider adoption of improvisation could provide. Building these instruments is an extension of my improvisational method, which acts as a form of liberation against the standardisation of both musical practices and software development. By employing improvisation towards the development of my tools, I expose the agencies that it might afford us in realms outside of creative practices, and how they might be used to combat outdated structures of hierarchy and value.

All of the code is freely accessible on my git repository here : git.suroh.tk.