about

This is the new web site for io 0.0.1 beta++. There is currently, however, not much here so you may, for the time being, consider checking out the archived old site or my article, ‘In Conversation with an Automaton: Identities and Agency in a Heterogeneous Social and Musical Network’, published in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

io 0.0.1 beta++ (henceforth io++) is an interactive, semi-autonomous technological artifact that, in partnership with its human associates, performs a deliberately amplified staging of a socio-technical network—a network in which the primary protocol is improvisation. Together we explore the performance of identities, hybrids and relationships, and highlight, in particular, the social agency of artifacts, and the social dimension of improvisation. io++ is a descendant and significant re-construction of io 0.0.1 beta, and io++ builds upon the work done with, and address some of the musical and practical problems of, this previous improvising machine.

This site currently documents the construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ by myself (Han-earl Park), and includes engineer’s repots on hardware and software, with occasional forays into theory.

This construction project has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.