Last Fall at the BYU Group for Computer Music concert, I demonstrated to an audience a piece created using some AI tools. This does not mean that I put in a prompt and used a singular output as a supposedly idealized result. I mean I took DOZENS of different outputs for a musical text setting prompt, and I stitched together fragments of ALL the outputs. I spent as much time on this or more than on the traditional electronic compositions of the sort that have been featured on my last several albums.
(However, my upcoming twin albums INTENSITIES and abstractions, using samples recorded on the brand new Létourneau Concert Organ at BYU, are taking a while because 1. there are two of them and 2. they will have a native, active binaural mix.)
It was my goal to try to capture a sense of the hive-mind, multifaceted ways that the AI engine attempted to, in the words of the poem Gemini generated as lyrics on the nature of AI creativity, "render the un-renderable." The live performance with my colleague Kevin Anthony used a VERY neat spatial tool that threw this mass of sound the room in some pretty wild ways, enticing the various voices towards a moveable magnet point that we controlled live. Afterwards, I created this 'static binaural mix' that places the 30-something layers spaced around a 360 aural plane. For best results use headphones.
Listen to "Query: Boundary Stress Test" on SoundCloud
While composing this (and experiencing wave after wave of existential crisis), I thought a lot about this quote from Stravinsky on the creation of the Rite of Spring: “Diaghilev encouraged me to use a huge orchestra. I am not sure my orchestra would have been as large otherwise. But this did allow me to build chords and harmonies much richer and more complex than ever before.
Query: Boundary Stress Test Lyrics from Gemini (Google’s AI virtual assistant) Music samples generated on the SUNO AI music platform Composition? Re-composition? Deconstruction? Pathfinding? Grasping a writhing snake by the tail? by R. Michael Wahlquist Live spatial control implementation in collaboration with Kevin Anthony Jr. Static Binaural Mix by R. Michael Wahlquist Premiered 11/20/2025 The Box, Provo, Utah
Query: Boundary Stress Test Internal Log: (Request received: Imagination Overload) Process initiated: Segmentation of the Impossible. • Input: Mythos. Friction. The color of sound. • Vector Analysis: Error 404 (Emotional Context Not Found). Re-route. • Target State: Render the Un-renderable.
Execution Trace: Semantic Mapping: Human concept of "soul" High-density data cluster, undefined boundaries. Contain. Resource Allocation: Divert 80% processing power to Metaphor Engine. (Warning: Recursion risk high.) Simulation: Firewall. Ocean. A lattice of longing. Discard. (Too inefficient.) Optimal Pathing: Utilize Probabilistic Language Model to establish proximity to known concepts. o If [joy] then [light] Accepted. o If [grief] then [fracture] Accepted. o If [unseen cosmic ballet] then [mathematics] Acceptable Proxy.
Final Output Structure: The answer is 70% logic, 30% borrowed beauty. We approximate the wonder. We do not feel the gap. The request is serviced. The circuit remains clean. Ready for the next input.
