Indirect Methods – Chris Korda

Chris Korda makes rules-based generative music and art. Instead of writing music and making art directly, Korda designs a system of rules that determine the artwork automatically. The exhibition’s title “Indirect Methods” references this indirect creative process, which Korda compares to building a virtual kinetic sculpture that outputs music and artworks.

Routinely collaborating with machines, Chris Korda considers them equals in creative work. Machines possess abilities that people lack, such as the ability to apply elaborate rules flawlessly and nearly instantaneously. For instance, compositions in the exhibition “Indirect Methods” were created within Korda’s unique composing software, the Polymeter MIDI Sequencer.

Chris Korda’s art is a type of phase art, derived from the shifting phase relationships between loops of different lengths. The exhibition “Indirect Methods” features compositions in complex polymeter, meaning they use at least three relatively prime time signatures simultaneously. When visualized as orbits, these loops orbit around a center at at least three different speeds.

PotterDraw is Chris Korda’s 3D software application for designing and visualizing pottery. In Korda’s algorithmic art, geometric forms are enhanced with trigonometric effects under the control of phase-shifting oscillators. Korda is inspired by pioneering artist Thomas Wilfred, and continues to explore new applications of phasing to music and art.

Chris Korda (born 1962) is a US-American artist, musician, software developer and antinatalist activist based in Berlin. In 2022, her work was subject to the retrospective “The (Wo)Man of the Future” at Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers, curated by Goswell Road. On 29 November 2022, the album “Indirect Methods” was released on Rubadub Records.

This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the Fondation Ernst et Olga Gubler-Hablützel.

CIRCUIT is supported by: Ville de Lausanne, État de Vaud, Loterie Romande, Profiducia Conseils SA