* (mortmain)

This project documents and revisits some early recordings of
mortmain() (http://www.mortmain.com), and will result in the
recordings listed below.  See also
http://www.ouroboros-complex.org/doc/mortmain.txt for general details.

The change from mortmain() to (mortmain) is meant to indicate a change
from a programming language with lots of syntax to one with barely any
at all, a play upon the way in which the "band names" of mortmain()'s
contemporaries changed, a rebalancing, and to stress the parenthetic
nature of this project in reference to the original.

** "Mother Of The Mother" ("k5k")

"k5k" is a recording of a particular way of wasting time.  You turn
the synthesizer on and just get it to start making some sound.
Programmable, digital synthesizers such as the Kawai K5000 ("k5k")
series have a memory in which settings and parameters may be saved,
and they come with this memory filled with "presets".  Among the
presets are usually simulations of pianos, horns, drums, and
synthesizers that are no longer made.  So now that you have the thing
making some noise you just start stepping through each of these
presets, playing it for a bit, then switching to the next.  On a well
made digital synthesizer, k5k among them, the voices are allocated in
such a way that switching to a new preset does not halt playback of
the prior preset, so the sounds of each can overlap somewhat.  A walk
through the presets can therefore sound continuous.  That's what "k5k"
was.  I took a recording of yet another session of myself walking the
presets, wasting time, just making whatever changes to the sound that
I liked the most for the least effort, feeling like I was somehow
"playing the synthesizer".  I cut out a few minutes of this recording,
titled it, encoded it as an mp3, and put it up on the web site.  It is
a real abuse of the synthesizer to do this.  Such a synthesizer is
designed to be programmable.  Presets are at most starting points from
which the user is expected to derive their own sounds.  Furthermore,
presets are selected to be of maximum use in selling the synthesizer,
so they're meaningless on top of meaningless, dressed up like an
average tourist would expect a prostitute to look.  All of the
canonical prostitute forms are accounted for; naive distressed school
girl next door, naughty nurse secretary waitress, dominatrix cop
teacher, automobile mechanic pizza delivering camera operator, pop
rock, jazz, r and b and hip-hop, church worship, and even forms that
have no clear name, but often fall under more mysterious labels such
as "robot" and "lucky man".  You do not learn about a synthesizer and
its character by playing the presets.  "k5k" is a kind of blasphemy.

There is nothing remotely similar possible with an analog modular
synthesizer.  Not only are there no presets, there is no memory in
which to hold one's creative settings.  You start from raw material
every time.  There is also no way to switch from one sound to another
without interrupting the existing sound.  The updated version of "k5k"
is played on such an analog modular synthesizer, called an "MOTM".
The name MOTM has an interesting history all its own, and although it
is clearly an acronym for something, nobody knows (or particularly
cares) what.  So, I have adopted the name "Mother Of The Mother" for
it.  The process and means of execution from "k5k" is the same, but
there are no presets, and several passes are made, and edited into a
final recording, to provide overlap.

** "All Your Tears" ("(repl)")

In the Lisp family of computer programming languages, programs are
built in an immediately responsive series of interactions with the
computer.  These interactions take place through a program called a
"read eval print loop" (REPL).  This pattern of developing a thing by
redoing it over and over, making adjustments on each pass, has an
analog in most creative disciplines.  Robert Fripp made the analogous
musical process famous by playing his guitar through two specially
prepared tape decks, arranged so that sound played about four to ten
seconds ago would play back in the present, along with whatever was
played on the guitar.  In this way, he could build up sound textures,
melodies, and chords that were otherwise impossible to voice with two
hands on a guitar fretboard.  This "Frippertronics" or "looping"
process gets a lot of use in the Ouroboros Complex live performances.
It's a good way for one person to generate a lot of sound without
giving up too much control, and it fits very well with the overall
theme of a loop of self-creation.

"(repl)" was edited down from a very early mortmain() recording.  "All
Your Tears" is similar, but brings to bear more sophisticated ideas
about looping explored by the Ouroboros Complex.  The title is taken
from a famous quatrain from a translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam,

  "The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
  Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
  Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

** "Matrix Multiplication" ("Escape the Grid")

"Escape the Grid" was not mortmain()'s first recording, but it was the
first recording to become mp3s that were released on the web site, and
the first recording to be self-analyzed and released with accompanying
written context.  The symbol of an oppressive grid was meant to
dominate the web site.  This grid symbolized the orderly process, the
result of formulas, modern music in general, and how music had failed
us personally.  "Escape the Grid" was simultaneously a self conscious
joke ("we'll get as much sex as Merzbow if we can get this on the
radio!") and a legitimate but naive attempt to escape the prison of
music by destroying it.  Of course, it failed at both intentions.
However, it surprised us, in that it was liberating.  When we fell
exhausted on the sofas in the other room, and listened to it play
back, we accepted it, and understood deeply how to embrace failure.
It gave both of us a great deal of comfort with the idea of creating
and recording disagreeable, radical, noise.

The re-interpretation of these recordings goes far from the process
used to create the originals.  To establish some link between
Ouroboros Complex and mortmain(), the feeling for the new version is
be "closure over" rather than "breaking free from".  So, the name
"Matrix Multiplication" is meant to mean the process by which a womb
gives rise to a child, as well as a very complicated lengthy
mathematical procedure.  The names given to the four sub-parts of the
original are relatively unimportant associations with the concept
related to parallel programming.  There was a fifth track on the
original, but it has been eliminated in this re-interpretation for no
particular reason.

*** "Outer Products (w/ Passion Flower)" ("Quadrant I")

Another kind of destruction of another kind of failure music.

*** "A List of Lists" ("Quadrant II")
*** "In Praise of Volker Strassen" ("Quadrant III")
*** "Thread Safety" ("Quadrant IV")

** "irate" ("irate")

This found sound is identical to the original.

** "In The Memory Palace of Giordano Bruno"
   ("overture for forgotten music")

"Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with
greater fear than I receive it."

Working creatively with synthesizers, computers, or other very complex
devices, one occasionally stumbles across something interesting and
unexpected.  With no other appropriate place to put it, you create
some sort of area for homeless ideas and warehouse it there.  It could
be just a single sound, or it could be a small chunk of something
larger.  mortmain() had developed one of these warehouses.  As with
"k5k", I loaded all of these ideas up one night, played them all in
sequence, recorded it, encoded the recording as an mp3, and released
it on the web site.  "Overture" therefore is far more sparse than
"k5k".  The separation between units is definite, there's no overlap.

An inventory of memories that have no other home but that inventory
itself is a memory palace.  The construction of memory palaces and
other techniques in the mnemonic arts were famously studied by a 16th
century philosopher named Giordano Bruno.  Bruno thought that, if as
Plato had argued, our minds were not tabula rasa which learned, but
instead souls which remembered, that by perfecting the memory one
could perfect one's soul.  Bruno was burnt alive in 1600 as punishment
for disagreeing with the Catholic Church.  In this recording, we
imagine that as his body burned, he resided instead only in his palace
of memory, and that we are invited along, and asked to provide
background music.  So, the re-interpretation of "overture for
forgotten music" is a soundtrack for the recollection of a life
immersed in the arts of memory.

"I cleave the heavens, and soar to the infinite.  What others see from
afar, I leave far behind me."

** "To Puncture Still Water" ("eraser", Klang v2.)

Eraser was the first recording to raise the issue of how a composition
or score separate from the recorded work itself could be beneficial.
Although it is not reflected obviously in this 60 second submission to
the Klang project, the eventual score developed from "eraser" was as
follows.

All players draw straws to secretly appoint one the interrupter.  All
players devise and play some kind of drone or slow ostinato
reminiscent of still water.  When the interrupter decides the time is
right, they devise and play a breaking sound to shatter the stillness
created so far.  All of the other players react as would a pool of
still water.  Gradually, things return to something close to the
original state of stillness, at which point the interrupter signals
the end.

"To Puncture Still Water" is a realization of that score.

** "Mr. Machine" ("Mr. Machine", Klang v3.)

"Marvin Glass was a workaholic toy inventor.  So much so, that he
often did not spend enough time with his wife.  During an argument
over Marvin's work habits, Mrs. Glass shouted 'You are always working,
inventing!  You are Mr. Machine!'"  Apparently Marvin Glass
understands self-reference, too.

This found sound is identical to the original.

* The Road To Roads

One performance of this piece occurred in 2003 as part of an
independent study with P.B. at Mason Gross School of the Arts.  The
Ouroboros Complex is looking for video collaborators to record and
edit a second performance into a five to ten minute video result.

* Contact

The Ouroboros Complex can be reached by email:

jay eff em three at ouroboros dash complex dot oh arr gee

that email address is subject to a vicious draconian spam filter, so make it good!

I'm/we're up for just about anything these days.