In the beginning was an empty playing field, a blank rectangular void split down the middle by a one-dimensional boundary marker. All was silence.
With my cursor I made a mark, and the
mark became a pattern that expanded outward and repeated itself,
infinitely. At each moment as the mark crossed the middle of the
playing field—from either direction—a musical piano note sounded
from somewhere beyond the darkness, into my headphones.
This was good.
I made other marks of different shape,
size, and speed of gesture. Swift long lines scratched across the
screen in rapid succession and quickly faded. I drew short circles
that became enormous, swelling spirals. A rich musical tapestry began
to cover the empty space.
I wrote out my name in cursive in the
bottom corner of the screen. It appeared again and again—right side
up, then upside down, then on its side, and back to right side up.
Slowly but steadily it grew beyond its corner of origin, until
finally—several minutes later—it began to cross the threshold and
contribute to the spontaneous musical event.
The musical abstraction swelled and
receded as I at turns drew and listened, drew and listened. I looked at the
weird shapes and images that were coming into focus and thought to
myself, 'Hey, this is pretty good.'
TO BE CONTINUED … MAYBE. IN THE MEAN TIME, PLAY THIS.
