Koan is a

generative music Generative music is a term popularized by Brian Eno to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system. Historical background In 1995 whilst working with SSEYO's Koan software (built by Tim Cole and Pete Col ...

engine created by SSEYO, a company founded by Pete Cole and Tim Cole. The Koan technology is now owned by Intermorphic Limited, co-founded by the Cole brothers in 2007.

Architecture and engine

The SSEYO Koan Interactive Audio Platform (SKIAP) consisted of the core Koan generative music engine (the SSEYO Koan Generative Music Engine. or SKME), a set of authoring tools (SSEYO Koan Pro and SSEYO Koan X), a set of stand-alone Koan Music players (SSEYO Koan Plus, SSEYO Koan File Player and SSEYO Koan Album Player), and a plug-in for internet browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape. Development of the Koan engine started in 1990, when SSEYO was founded, and by 1992, the first version entered

beta testing Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...

. Distributed by Koch Media, the first edition of Koan was publicly released in 1994, followed by the Koan Pro authoring tool in 1995. Later that year, SSEYO brought Koan to the attention of

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

, who quickly showed great interest in the product. He began creating pieces with Koan Pro, collecting and publishing them in his 1996 work "Generative Music 1 with SSEYO Koan Software". This release featured a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

containing the SSEYO Koan Plus player and a set of 12 Koan generative-music pieces that he authored. Eno's early relationship with Koan was captured in his 1996 diary

A Year with Swollen Appendices ''A Year with Swollen Appendices'' is a book by Brian Eno. The paperback book was published by Faber and Faber in 1996 and is divided into two sections. The first part is a diary covering the year 1995, the second part, the 'swollen Addendum#In bo ...

. Brian Eno, 1996: Using the pseudonym CSJ Bofop, 1996:

Availability

The Koan Pro software was available for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

(16- and 32-bit versions), as well as

Mac OS 8 Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It includes the largest overhaul of the classic Mac OS experience since the release of System 7, approximately six years before. It places a greater emphasis on ...

and

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth major release of Apple Inc., Apple's classic Mac OS operating system which was succeeded by macOS, Mac OS X (renamed to OS X in 2011 and macOS in 2016) in 2001. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "T ...

. Integration with existing

digital audio workstations A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

could be difficult, as the software did not include an

audio plug-in An audio plug-in, in computer software, is a plug-in that can add or enhance audio-related functionality in a computer program. Such functionality may include digital signal processing or sound synthesis. Audio plug-ins usually provide their o ...

interface. Although SKIAP was developed until 2001, the last extension of the SKME itself was in 1998, as SSEYO concentrated on developing technology around the music engine, including real-time music synthesis and a highly programmable internet browser plug-in wrapper.

Browser plugins

The SSEYO Koan Plugin for web browsers was programmable in real-time through JavaScript, and was used to create several interesting interactive applications for web browsers. By 2001, Koan included a modular synthesizer; its engine also featured a file format named Vector Audio, which allowed very complicated generative pieces, complete with full synthesizer sound descriptions, to be delivered in only a few thousand bytes of plain text within a Web page. This development led to SSEYO being awarded a BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for Technical Innovation in 2001.

Recent versions

SSEYO was eventually acquired by

Tao Group Tao Group was a software company with headquarters in Reading, Berkshire, UK. It developed the Intent Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an ...

, which was sold in 2007. As a result, Koan and the Koan Pro authoring tool are no longer commercially available. In 2007, the original creators of Koan (Pete Cole and Tim Cole) founded a company called Intermorphic to create a new generative system called Noatikl. They acquired the Koan technology and thence described Noatikl as "the evolution of Koan". Noatikl supports importing data from earlier Koan systems, and offers a variety of

implementations for easy integration with modern

. In 2012, Intermorphic released Noatikl 2, the first major update since 2007, which introduced the Partikl software synthesizer and Mixtikl mixer product. Noatikl 3, released in 2015, added a native

iOS app The App Store is an app store platform, developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS Software Deve ...

together with extensive improvements to the Partikl software synthesizer.

Performances

In 2003,

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the ...

held a 96-hour musical event entitled "Dark Symphony", playing live Koan music from various artists over a 160,000-watt PA in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

's Klangpark on the banks of the

Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...

References

{{Reflist

General references

*
Is the Future of Music Generative?
by Paul Brown *
Electronic, aesthetic and social factors in Net music
by GOLO FÖLLMER
Floating Points—Dark Symphony
- Ars Electronica 2003

by Chong (John) Yu * http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/noatikl/generative_music.html - Intermorphic on Generative Music and the early history of Koan * http://www.intermorphic.com/news/pressReleases/prnoatikl2_Generative_Music_Lab_for_Mac_Windows.html - Noatikl 2 release information Computer music software