the cloned sound opening event of the ars electronica festival 1993: genetic art – artificial life a multi-media composition for the KRONOS QUARTET by Klaus Obermaier and Robert Spour
	Natural sounds - produced by the KRONOS QUARTET - are digitalized and thereby cloned. By means of digitalization it is possible to penetrate right to the very smallest parts of the sounds, shred them, to put them together again, to superimpose them, add, multiply. Interventions in the frequency spectrum and manipulations of the wave forms enable the sounds to be mutated until they are no longer recognizeable. These sound manipulations together with growth phenomena in the field of tension with the classical string quartet form the basis of this compositionary work. The reduction of information to the binary code makes it possible to transform genetic structures into musical ones, to control visual happenings by music, to create artificial, multi-medial worlds. Genetic "fingerprints" act as a reference for musical processes. Computer programs generate harmonic and melodic material from this genetic basic information that Obermaier/Spour have associatively further processed. For example, completely new complex overtone melodies and sound structures develop from micro-tonal rerecordings performed by the Kronos Quartet with the central tone. Obermaier/Spour condense these with digital processors. As a result, orchestra-like complex sound proliferations result from the sound of the string quartet and expand into the room through a multi-channel public address system.