turbulence of time Ⅴ

# turbulence of time Ⅴ **Selected for Sonic Saturday, Ars Electronica Festival 2026** *turbulence of time Ⅴ* explores the possibility of expanding contemporary music not by adding other media, but by **subtracting them**. Contemporary music often encounters limitations within its established parameters, leading artists to introduce external elements such as visuals, interaction, or spatial interfaces. This work proposes a different approach: rather than extending music through other media, concepts originating from other fields are projected directly into sound. What would happen if music itself could behave according to systems normally associated with physics, computation, architecture, or simulation? *turbulence of time Ⅴ* approaches sound as an object within a computational space. A Unity-based system treats diverse sound sources—including traditional instruments and cello—as objects governed by algorithmic processes such as turbulence, gravity, simulated circuits, and generative architecture. Instead of simply composing sounds into a predetermined sequence, these processes determine how sound objects move, collide, transform, and circulate through a three-dimensional sonic space. The listener does not see this space. The visual system is deliberately absent. What remains is the auditory consequence of these invisible processes: sounds moving through space according to rules that originate outside conventional musical notation and composition. This becomes a form of **“subtraction of media”**—or **“projection into music.”** Concepts that might normally require visualization or interaction are instead translated directly into the behavior of sound itself. The work is therefore not an audiovisual system with its visual component removed. The absence of visuals is fundamental to the piece. The listener encounters only the result of the underlying computational processes, allowing the imagined space to emerge through listening. ### From Source to Process A central problem in this approach is what can be described as **“Sourceism”**: the tendency for a fixed sound source or musical series to predetermine the subsequent process. If a single recorded source is fed into an algorithm, the resulting transformation may appear generative, while its fundamental musical destiny has already been established by the source material. *turbulence of time Ⅴ* addresses this problem through improvisation. Real-time cello performance, captured through a remote microphone, is continuously introduced into the algorithmic system. The incoming sound is not simply recorded and transformed after the fact. It becomes an active input to a process whose outcome cannot be completely predetermined. The cello therefore functions simultaneously as instrument, source, and variable. Its sound enters a computational environment in which the resulting movement and transformation emerge in real time. This shifts the focus of the work from the **source** to the **process**. Rather than asking how an existing musical object can be transformed, the work asks what kind of musical reality can emerge when the process itself becomes the primary compositional material. The result is an unstable circulation between human improvisation and autonomous computation. The performer does not completely control the system, while the system does not simply generate music independently. Each continuously alters the conditions of the other. ### Turbulence as Musical Structure The title refers not only to turbulence as a physical phenomenon, but to a way of thinking about musical time. In conventional composition, time is often organized through sequence, repetition, development, and predetermined relationships. Here, time becomes something that can be displaced, redirected, and reorganized through algorithmic behavior. Sound does not necessarily progress toward a fixed destination. It circulates. It is subjected to forces. It enters temporary configurations and leaves them. The listener encounters not a predetermined musical trajectory, but an evolving field of sonic relationships. The important result is therefore not a particular sequence of sounds, but the **observable circulation within the algorithm**—a process through which sound continuously becomes something else. ### Binaural Listening *turbulence of time Ⅴ* is presented as a **binaural recording**. The spatial movement and depth of the sound are essential to the experience of the work. **Headphones are strongly recommended** in order to experience the intended three-dimensional sonic field and the movement of sound through the computational space. The work asks the listener to construct the invisible environment through hearing alone. There is no screen to explain the system and no visual representation of the algorithm. Only sound remains. In this sense, the listener does not observe the computational space from outside. They experience its consequences from within an imagined sonic environment. *turbulence of time Ⅴ* embodies both the practice and the outcome of subtracting media: projecting external concepts into music until the other media are no longer necessary, and allowing sound itself to become a space in which computation, physical forces, improvisation, and time can coexist.