Commissioned by:
First Performance:
Instrumentation: fixed media
Duration: 18’
Special Features:

Score samples

Info/Program note:
Written in Florida in 2007, at the same time as Anekabahudaravaktranetram, Rule # 30 is a musical translation of Stephan Wolfram’s Cellular Automaton # 30 and was the last piece I wrote using automatic mathematical procedures as the basis for a piece. The work was completed in a curious-looking 80-page Christmas-Tree kind of score, and was originally imagined for a live setting for four pianos or perhaps two player pianos but eventually settled for a fixed media form for two interlocking sampled pianos (wet and dry) which was completed with the help of composer Janco Verduin.

Essentially Rule # 30 translates the first 40 lines of Wolfram’s Rule from high to low and then half way through starts erasing each line again from top to bottom until only the lowest (and longest) rhythm remains. With each step down ‘the tree’ the harmony is also cleaned up step by step until a clear overtone chord emerges which then, in its turn, is gradually erased again until only the root remains over the base rhythm.

Rule #30 (canonic distance 1’21”)


Rule #30 (canonic distance 0’20”)

Rule 30, diagrams