Making Music with Enzymes

Abstract

My residency took place in the context of the research developed by partners based at the Technical University of Denmark. I interacted with Pablo Iván Nikel and his team of scientists, including Manuel José N. Domíngues and Nicolas Krink, at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability. These scientists helped me to understand the SinFonia project’s challenges and how the consortium has tried to tackle them. The interactions with these scientists prompted me to become introspective about my creative process. To my mind, as a musician with a scientific background, the distinction between composing a symphony and conducting a scientific experiment is somewhat blurred; I also realize that this is not necessarily the case for all artists and scientists. In this chapter, I discuss my process when it comes to composing music and articulate the role played by science in my creative process. I unpack why working at the intersection of art and science is so interesting to me. I then present the pieces of electronic music that I composed during my residency, as well as their background story and the system that I designed to make music with DNA codes.