Developed by the experimental media collective Socket working out of The Watershed in Bristol, Jungulator is unique in that the individual can use it either as a real-time instrument or set it to 'self-play' so that the self-generative audio engine continuously reinterprets the looped samples. The unpredictability is controlled according to sophisticated pre-programmed behaviours - or 'automated jungulation'.

The 'Mighty Jungulator', as Socket have christened it, was created in Max software by Matt Olden, an aspirant jungle music DJ "bored" of conventional computer music-making equipment. It is now being developed in several formats, including an online version built on audio and visual samples submitted by a global public. Running online, listeners can upload samples to contribute to a web-based radio without DJs or playlists. With the addition of images, it becomes a random, automated TV transmitter, accessible via QuickTime streaming video.

With the full Socket Collective behind the Jungulator, the project draws on expertise in music composition, music technologies, visual art, and online developments. Recently, the collective 'jungulated' French 60s records to accompany an art exhibition at Bristol's Spike Island studios. New initiatives include loading a 'mobile Jungulator' into a VW Combi, which Socket plan to test at European festivals during the summer.

In demonstration at Futurelab's Contagious Creativity conference, the Mighty Jungulator initially seemed complicated and impenetrable. But while Max - a software tool that allows users to author their own programmes - is itself complex and powerful, Jungulator operates through a simple interface which allows users to control each of the four processor pods on one computer screen. Samples can be timestretched, panned, tweaked, played backwards, put through VST plug-ins, or "all sorts of gubbins". Additionally, once sounds are introduced into the Jungulator, the music plays in real-time, and each sample can be manipulated as the user wishes.

To showcase the potential of the online, self-play, audiovisual Jungulator, Socket encouraged workshop participants to create their own audio and visual samples. After 30 minutes spent creating loops from CDs and sourcing images from the web, participants submitted their samples and Socket loaded them into the self-generative Jungulator.

What emerged was a diverse, unexpected mix of angular drum'n'bass rhythms, acoustic guitar sections, and James Brown, somewhat appropriately, wailing "around and around". Meanwhile on screen, images of buses, celebrities, and road signs competed with video clips from Star Wars trailers.

Evolving self-generatively through the submitted samples, the Jungulator created cohesive, unusual music from just a few seconds of samples - plus a clutch of images - chosen by participants who, two hours before, had little idea even what Jungulator could do. The Jungulator's potential proved as various and compelling as its own output.

Jungulator is currently Mac-only: Windows and Linux versions are intended for Autumn 2002.

Links:
Socket Collective: www.socket.org.uk
Max software: www.cycling74.com