Mississippi Swan: Daybew!

Mississippi Swan: Daybew! is an autonomous but partially interactive generative sound and visual installation. Inspired by the notion of ‘Fake’ as an aesthetic, the fictional songwriter/producer ‘Mississippi Swan’ emerges from collaboration between researchers Christopher Tonkin (UWA, Perth) and Rick Snow (Tulane University, New Orleans). With the notion of ‘originality as synthetic’—a fusion of existing ideas and information—the authors implement custom text-to-speech algorithms, assembling lyrical material from tweets and news feeds, while algorithmically generated musical structures unfold derived from popular electronic music idioms.

Mississippi Swan: Daybew! generates a unique 8-13 song album every 15-25 minutes—up to 70 unique EPs or around 700 unique songs per day. The stochastic and Markov processes implemented create an enormous degree of computer autonomy, allowing the software to make decisions down to the smallest of musical details. Additionally the artwork responds to the 21st century mass production / consumption of music and its increasing commodification.