Evan X. Merz is a composer, programmer and blogger based in San Jose. He obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in computer science from the University of Rochester in 2004, and a Master’s Degree in computer music from NIU in 2010. His music has been performed at CSUF New Music Festival 2013, Cyborgs & Posthuman Culture 2013, Currents Santa Fe 2012, basic.fm, University of South Dakota 60/60 2012, Phono Photo No. 6, Silence, Beauty and Horror 2009, and New Music Hartford 2009. Evan is the author of Sonifying Processing: The Beads Tutorial, which introduces sound art to Processing programmers. He also works heavily as a freelance composer, scoring for numerous videogames and television productions. He is the SEAMUS Webmaster and the blogger at computermusicblog.com. Currently, Evan is a DMA candidate in UCSC’s algorithmic composition
program.
The End of My Career is an algorithmic piece generated by using the freesound.org API to search for and download sounds uploaded by FreeSound users. In this piece, the initial sound was found by searching for the term “orchestra.” After the initial sound is discovered, the program finds aurally similar sounds by using FreeSound similarity search. Then it finds lexically related sounds by finding related words on wordnik.com, and using those words to search the FreeSound database. This process is repeated to create an interconnected graph of sounds. Then, a simulated swarm traverses the graph to build a collage of sounds in time and space. By embedding aural and lexical relationships into the underlying graph, the swarm’s movement relates directly to musical development as heard by the listener.