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The wondrous number algorithm – outlined by Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach – has a simple set of rules: A number is chosen at random and “if it is odd, we triple it and add 1. If it is even, we take half of it.” The process produces a series of numbers that increase and decrease until the number 1 is reached, thus ending the procedure.

Setting this into RTcmix, I produced strings of numbers to determine various musical parameters in this fixed-media work: Lengths (in seconds) of sections, formal layout, frequencies, amplitudes, and other intrinsic elements of signal processing were all derived from the wondrous number set to create a sound world that is both glitchy, biting, and intensely delicate.

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