Muta: material-driven sound synthesis in a mutable feedback instrument
This article discusses my current practice of making and improvising with Muta, my mutable feedback instrument that resonates materials, spectrally processes their signals, and feeds these signals back into the materials. The first section will contextualise Muta’s design in relation to my approach towards improvising in quiet/no-PA environments and how this constraint led to speculative approaches to sound making and synthesis in my practice. The second section will discuss the mutability of Muta and how this playful process of changing materials is akin to Karin Knorr Cetina’s notion of ‘tinkering’, that it gives Muta agency, and that emergence can occur through this. The final section will discuss the configuration of the signal routing and processing, the complex behaviours that emerge from this and how I attune to these sounds and forces as an improviser.