Jamming With a Giant Squid
Real-Time Music from Simulated Neurons
Music comes from the firing of neurons — everything you’re hearing right now is neurons firing in your auditory cortex. So what happens if we simulate some (starting with the giant squid’s, the cell Hodgkin and Huxley measured), run them at 44.1 kHz, and listen to their membrane voltage?
Glia does exactly that: Hodgkin–Huxley neurons written in Cmajor, wired through synapses that release glutamate, GABA and glycine, running in the browser and in your DAW. Nothing is sequenced — rhythm, swing and harmony emerge from the biology, and the network entrains to whatever it hears, so it jams with you.
A live, interactive session for audio developers and the musicians among them: hear one cell learn to groove, play the band from your phone, and see a new instrument go from visual patch to production without a line of C++.
Mark Claydon
Myself Ltd
Mark is a designer, engineer and apprentice plumber - specialising in audio, unusual applications of
machine learning, neuron simulation, and distributed and hard-real time systems. Having worked
with artists such as Peter Gabriel, Madness, Everything Everything, and for BAFTA in the studio
and on the road, he turned his focus to software
He has used IoT for assisted living and brain injury rehabilitation as CTO of Continuum Bridge,
worked to improve music therapy, developed novel interpretable machine learning methods for rare
disease diagnosis, and been the technical lead on projects for the Department of Education, Public
Health England and NESTA. Most recently he has been working on high-performance web audio,
multiplayer musical instruments, improving medical AI triage and created services to help
prisoners learn to read with the Ministry of Justice
Mark has taught courses in programming from London to Gaza and enjoys creating interactive art
exploring music and our brains - which have toured festivals in the UK and USA