Bjarni Gunnarsson

Operation Flows and Balancing Behaviours

In this lecture, I will discuss my recent projects involving software making, sound synthesis, and composition. I will reflect on the use of algorithms and the nature of generative sound created through reconfiguration and live coding.

The featured approaches highlight the scope and potential boundaries of computational systems by relating sound-making to the development of generative environments. I will outline the process of developing such systems, but also the act of using them within a dynamic musical context. The goal is to review and combine the thinking of sound, control and causality for compositional approaches in computer music.

During the talk, software applications will be presented, the ideas behind them discussed and examples of music composed with them be played.

A screenshot of software

Bjarni Gunnarson

Bjarni Gunnarsson is an Icelandic Composer and Computer Scientist involved in computer music and algorithmic composition. He has released his music on labels such as Vertical Form, Superpang, Tartaruga and SOVN Records and performed his music in festivals such as Tectonics, Rewire, Today’s Art, Sonar and Presences Electroniques. Collections of his recent solo works can be found on the releases “Lueur” (2018), “Volume & Void” (2020), “Cendres” (2020), “Anticlines” (2021) and “UPICS” (2023).

Bjarni is a faculty member at the Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory, in The Hague. He is concerned with process-based ideas. Sounds focusing on internal activity and motion. Compositions that put into foreground behaviors, actions, fluid sound structures, fuzzy materials, or forms. His recent research focus includes the construction of persistent synthetic environments, creative uses of digital interrupts, and machine-listening observers that react to computer-generated sound.

http://www.bjarni-gunnarsson.net