for Franz Danksagmüller
and the Hyper-organ at St.-Nikolai-Kirche with live Kyma electronics
by Carla Scaletti in consultation with Franz Danksagmüller
Inspired by scientific collaborations with Martin Gruebele
Premiered at the org_art_lab workshop in Hamburg on 11 November 2023.
A protein is a remarkable form of matter that quickly transitions between disordered and ordered states as it reconfigures itself from a linear string to a 3-dimensional shape that performs a function in the body (providing structure, participating in an immune response, signaling, and more). Along its path from high-energy, disordered states to its lowest energy “folded” or functional state, a protein can find itself stuck in a “trap” — a local minimum rather than its target, lowest energy state. The only way out is to increase the disorder to allow the protein to escape the trap and try again to find its way to its true, minimum state.
During this time of global instability — political, cultural, economic, climatic — we find ourselves at a tipping point. Will the instability and chaos increase? Will we “mis- fold” into an old familiar, quasi-comfortable but less-than-optimal state? Or will we emerge from this current period of instability and find our way to a better world?
In misfold, there is a tension between order and disorder and between human-improvised and algorithmically-generated sounds.
Workshop on “Scientist-Artist Collaborations: mapping numbers to sound for scientific exploration or artistic expression”: