TCO | Temporal Conduit Oscillator (2017)

Temporal Conduit Oscillator (TCO) was a synthesis program/instrument based on simple methods of pseudo-time travel and multitemporal integration. TCO implemented simple chaotic algorithms behind a traditional synthesizer-like interface for control over emergent parameters rather than static parameters: that is, rather than strictly controlling a single audible parameter of a static sound, any given control could be used to create a cascading effect that influences how that parameter (and related sonic characteristics) change over time (both short- and long-term).

The program featured synthesis methods focused around manipulating a deeply embedded delay line, allowing past events to recur both at arbitrarily and chaotically defined intervals. These features were coupled with a dynamic/playable system for global state storage and recall. As such, global state modification can, over time, blur and expand the performer’s perception of the “moment,” which may at any time be comprised of a composite of past, present, and future events integrating in unexpected (or partly expected) ways.

Temporal Conduit Oscillator was geared toward live performance and improvisation, with a special focus on network music performance. All controls could both produce and receive OSC data, making it particularly useful in telematic performance. (In fact, it was possible with little difficulty to use network data transmission to create both local and one-to-many-to-one control feedback networks).

Inspired by the Buchla 259 complex oscillator and Hordijk Benjolin/Blippoo Box, the Temporal Conduit Oscillator was a dual-oscillator design with wave shaping and extensive modulation routing, enabling a variety of timbres, gestures, and textures to unveil themselves through the performer’s attentive listening and careful tinkering. It included a specially-designed wavefolder, pseudo-runglers, and a Temporal Conduit Flux Processor, which coupled a variable delay line with nonlinear waveshaping for particularly peculiar emergent temporal behaviors. Changing any one parameter would often change the entire scope of the sound at hand.

TCO was part of a short suite of software instrument designs (along with Multiple Contour Integrator and Phase Puzzle), each exploring slightly different possibilities offered by various chaotic hacks of otherwise common synthesis structures.

TCO as such was retired in 2018 in order to focus on new software and hardware-format chaotic instrument designs—many of which directly integrated TCO or its concepts into their design, such as DTCO the MIGSI 2 Software Application.