Signal to Noise Loops, The Good Ship Hibernia, & Dublin City noise Loops

Signal to Noise Loops, The Good Ship Hibernia, & Dublin City noise Loops. Alternating Current Festival 2025: Urban Scores. Dublin, May 2025.

Signal to Noise Loops i++ was created using an algorithmic music composition system that was originally designed for live performance. This system uses data recorded from IoT sensors around Dublin City to generate and control sound created using creative looping techniques and a number of sound synthesis methods. The data involved are measures of noise levels, CO2 levels, and water levels. The system allows a player to improvise alongside it using a Lemur interface to create additional harmonic material using wavetable synthesis methods. There is an artificial intelligence component to the system. It is programmed to react to the player. It listens as the player improvises and decides what aspects of the performance that it likes, retaining these aspects while transforming the aspects it doesn't like to suit its own mood. The decision-making process or mood of the system is determined by the data and changes as the state of Dublin City as represented in the three data streams, changes. The result is atmospheric electronic music in which musical structures emerge and subside within a broader soundworld that shifts between harsh distorted electronics and more elegant, ethereal sounds.

"The Good Ship Hibernia" is an Embodied Soundscape Sonification. It uses both soundscape and sonification techniques to reflect the World Bank's figures for Irish GDP growth rate from 1979 to 2013. The piece is structured around a number of embodied metaphors (as defined by Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and an embodied balance schema (as defined by Johnson 1987). It uses the metaphor of a maritime journey where “smooth sailing” and “good weather” represent “good times” and “rough seas” and “bad weather” represent “bad times”. While the growth rate is strong the sailing is smooth and the weather is good. When the growth rate shrinks the weather becomes stormy and seas become rough. The sense of balance in the soundscape shifts in accordance with the data. The result is a sonic journey through a pivotal period Ireland's economic history.

Dublin City Noise Loops is a piece of experimental data-driven music. that uses data from IoT sensors around Dublin City to control musical parameters. Improvised guitar loops are molded and modified by the data revealing patterns of activity across the city.
The system uses cellular automata (CA) to organize sonic content at the textural and timbral levels, while the performer provides rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic materials through their instruments.
Dublin City Noise Loops was made using a system similar to Signal to Noise Loops i++. While that system generated music algorithmically this one takes in an improvised electric guitar performance loops it and processes it. The processing is controlled by the incoming IoT data and results in emergent musical patterns that mirror those taking place across the city.