(for my 'fan-studies' project in AHVS392)

Electroplankton - a 2006 DS 'game' or 'toy' or 'aleatoric music software' by interactive media auteur Toshio Iwai - is a tool for vernacular creativity, although my use of it here I suppose is something with utility - for an assignment. Nonetheless, virtuosity is not a virtue to me, although it can be used to create something soul-stirring; yet, virtuosity does not mean an art work is meaningful to the beholder, nor the maker. So I let Electroplankton do the groundwork, and built up from there. Largely, its inspired by Autechre, Ryoji Ikeda, James Ferrero, earlier OPN, and free jazz, but some of it wasn't really up to me - it sounds like Electroplankton. Some of these tracks are mostly unaffected, just adding little reverbs and some mixing & mastering to fill out the treble-y DS sounds, while some are utter reconstructions.

Frankly, only in writing this did the discourse around AI pop into my head - while it could be spun this way, this isn't some polemic on humanity and robot-made content and all that; frankly, I'll never make nor meaninfully listen to AI music, and do not really see it as a threat to my creative livelihood because, chances are, you're here for 'the JP show'. Experiments in Electroplankton is just something I put together for school recently as a little crossover between two of my 'special interests': old video games and experimental electronic music.