Ben + Zamyatin is the documentation of improvisations by saxophonist Ben Carey using scenes from the software system ‘Zamyatin’. Zamyatin was created by Ollie Bown for automated software improvisation. In the software, flexible precomposed musical structures are controlled by a decision system that responds to its acoustic environment like a bucket of water – external activity kicks it into motion, and what happens next is a result of the rich interplay between its internal elements. Chaotic transients triggered by sound from the saxophone give way to stable oscillations, or stasis. Ben provokes the system, but can never control it. But as a developer of interactive music software himself, he works comfortably with its digital idiosyncrasies, and masterfully guides the machine.
Named after the writer, Zamyatin, the system kicks against the musical future imagined in his dystopian world:“What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to attacks of inspiration, an extinct form of epilepsy… How pitiful the willful music of the ancients, not limited except by the scope of their wild imaginations!”