About
Welcome
The Orange Hut studio is a sound design/sonic research facility operating out of the South East of the United Kingdom (UK), who supports the 10:10 initiative.
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Why?
Why orange?
Well… First and foremost… The name has nothing whatsoever to do with a major mobile telephone service provider that operates here in the UK and across Europe. Rather it denotes the idea of purity, emptiness and the impossible within the possible, as symbolized by the color orange in the Theravada Buddhist traditions…
Secondly, the name was, in part, derived from Dr Alex Paterson’s original studio lab where the initial ideas for the mighty ambient dub collective known as the Orb, were forged.
And thirdly… It’s Karl‘s favorite fruit.
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Why choose the medium of sound as a form of artistic expression?
As most present day philosophical and scientific enquiry alludes to, the universe seems to be made up of pure energy. Some of this energy is condensed into matter i.e. atoms, molecules, proteins, etc… While some of it is simply in various states of radiative emission – for example light, who’s photons are much too small for us to readily detect any discernible mass that they might have – which we can clearly see/hear/feel the effect of i.e. light in a dark room.
Despite these minor variances between the types of energy present in the universe, they all vibrate at specific frequencies across the broad-range electromagnetic-energy-spectrum… And it is these very vibrations, which, when they interact with one another, present the most beautiful tapestries of advantage and interference. It is these advantages and interferences that we are ultimately interested in, as we have always felt they provide a natural likeness to the way everything interconnects and interacts in a long chain of cause and effect.
Here is the spatial domain of a quasicrystal formed by 8 plane waves, spaced at even rotations, in a plane.
Having understood this fundamental universal ordering principle, we began to feel a strong lure towards an art form that would allow us to develop a good understanding about the workings that lay behind all energetic wave interactions i.e. wave theory… And, in a tangible sense, we felt it should also provide us with a low enough frequency range within which to clearly observe any interference patterns that might arise from these energetic interactions, predominantly so that we might deduce and reverse engineer the mechanisms behind any marked/wondrous incongruities that may unfold within their designated time frames… Doing so with an aim to recreate these anomalies later on in slightly more refined and essential forms.
To add to this, we also had to consider the fact that we, thus, needed the ability to easily and accurately isolate individual frequencies from the whole i.e. using Fourier analysis, so that we might effectively separate and analyse these interesting anomalies, understand them, and rework and/or mix them back into our own sequenced patterns of composition, doing so repeatedly and efficiently (based on an exact science) rather than as roughly mixed hues of subjectively chosen colors, like a painter might do upon his palette.
In striving to achieve these goals, we were reminded of the metaphoric parallels that run between all patterns and the ever changing flow of every dynamical system within the universe – Life included – as it unfurls over time… Bearing in mind this temporal predilection, the sonic arts became an obvious and incisive choice over most types of static visual articulation.
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Why do we support 10:10?
Because we are concerned about the impact that we – as a studio – are having on the world around us. Making a start on reducing our own carbon footprint is the first key step to reducing carbon emissions globally. After all, there is no better place to begin change than at home. On top of this, we will also be cutting our own costs… And cutting costs means more cash in the bank.
In time we believe this effort will lead to other important changes, allowing society to think about and develop a sustainable, cleaner and greener future for us all… One that might perhaps be free from fossil fuels altogether. Thus we are becoming mindful of our actions at work to counter any unnecessary waste of energy or resources, so as to lead by example.
“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.”
by Albert Einstein
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What We Do
Having been educated in the recording and sonic arts, as well as cultivating a deep interest in this multifaceted artistic platform, we have become very keen to express the dynamic incidents of Life’s patterns in their truest sense i.e. by using non-linear algorithmic motifs to extrapolate and relay Nature’s own seemingly lawless deluge of biological diversity and uncertainty. At the same time, through this scientific mode of expression, we are developing our own understanding of ‘patterns’ and ‘dynamical systems’ via computational, mathematical and philosophical experimentation and extrapolation.
In a similar vein… Here at the Orange Hut we lean towards novel ideas regarding sound synthesis and sonic arrangements, rather than simply relying on the standard recording techniques and compositional theories that many musicians still choose to use. We believe in that fine fractal line that lies between evolution’s healthy self-similarity and it’s bane, that of exact replication. And thus, while the majority might choose to play the same old games within standardized frameworks of predefined musical genres, we are more interested in removing any constricting methodologies that might restrict and/or limit our creations into banal cycles of copycat social methodology. So we desire no part in institutions that seek to exclude or define… Rather we choose to experiment free from the confines of “right” and “wrong.”
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”
Thus… While pre-recorded sounds might adequately emulate what one should hear in relative reality, very rarely does this ‘mode’ of aural reproduction do anything other than simply ‘replicate.’ And while ‘copying’ and/or ‘emulating’ sounds might be enough for some… We prefer to remove that real-world recognition that our minds have become so familiar with, and deploy/explore new timbral analogies that might fit more poignantly to, say, a musical composition, or perhaps to better compliment a film’s visual texture. And so we hope to tease new feelings from one’s mindscape, breaking the binds of normal recognition, thereby forcing the listener to re-evaluate what they have just heard, as well as re-equate the context in which they have experienced it.
Mathematics and algorithmic form play more of a role here than any musician ever could or should. We prefer to leave things to chance, so that they are governed by the same probabilistic laws that “God, or Nature” uses to guide his/its own structural design and flow. Essentially we are looking to return to the source; to understand fundamental principles of ‘being…’ A ‘being’ that is free from mankind’s own self-imposed, ego-centric need to define… One that is free from bourgeois certainty. Thus math and chaos reign supreme within our creations. There are no taboos or set ways of thinking here… Abstractions work better to free us from preconditioned thought, to remove the set-forms that we have all be taught to express ourselves with… For us, these taut clichéd forms are seen as a hindrance to our goals for artistic expression.
Chaos as seen within a Strange Attractor
But, all this considered, be rest assured that we will not meander in to absurdities… While we might allow chance and chaos to spill over the brim of reason into our creations, we are also very aware of the underlying principles of this turbulent flow and, along with a good understanding of wave theory and sound reproduction, we know how to paint masterfully upon our atmospheric canvas. Thus we are not madmen thrashing blindly through vast arrays of accidental abstractions, hoping, by chance, to find some ultimate expression of the divine in an endless sea of probabilistic odds… Rather we are scientists who have firmly grasped the implications of the chaos that is inherent within all non-linear dynamical systems, so that we might use it as a creative driving force, rather than as a force of destruction and disorder.
By gorging ourselves on the works of scientists like Dennis Gabor, Edward Lorenz, Steven Smale, Harry Swinney, Jerry Gollub, Maurice Marie Alfred Couette, Otto Rössler, Jules Henri Poincaré, Michel Hénon, David Ruelle, Mitchell Feigenbaum, Paul Stein, Robert McRedie May, Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor, Benoît Mandelbrot, Gaston Julia, Georg Cantor, Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Boltzmann, et al… we have been able to precisely roll with this ‘flow.’
With these paradigms in mind, the name of our preferred game is ‘evolution of the audible form.’
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Epilogue
Here we rest on the cutting edge of a novel communion… A communion between a somewhat unlikely duo: that of science and artistic expression. Here we channel directly that which the artist has felt a need to express since the dawn of mankind i.e. the wonder and splendor of all creation. Except now, within this golden age of Technology, Knowledge and Scientific enquiry, we are able to weave it’s essence into a highly refined and symbolic ideal of dactylic flow. This flow is the poetry of the numbers and energetic frequencies that we all vibrate with, that we use daily in the collective dance of Life. Here at the Orange Hut we fuse logic and art into a supreme tool for expressing perceptive forms, ideas and modes, in a way where we are able to leave the confines of words and man made structures, so that we might launch head first into uncharted “oceans of sound” to find new islands of allegory and analogy.
“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.”
by Albert Einstein
