Krystal Ball is an artistic, politically and economically inspired multimedia project focusing on the recent financial credit crisis, interactive systems and stochastic as well as algorithmic music composition as initiated by I. Xenakis in the early sixties. During presentation under various formats the project confronts the audience with the often misleading systems and mechanisms that caused the global financial crisis.

The realisation of Krystal Ball includes two phases.

In the first phase new ways are sought to integrate current statistical techniques from the financial industry as composition tools. The obtained methodology will hereby also be used to develop new sound generating software modules. For this, the pioneering work of I. Xenakis will serve as a starting point. The results of the first phase of the project are presented in various forms including concerts and sound sculptures. Each such sound sculpture produces a continuously composed stream of musical pieces. The compositional process of every piece is hereby based on specific algorithms that are programmed inside the sound sculptures. In view of the general theme of the project all algorithms used in this way originate from the current banking sector.

In a second phase a tangible, but virtual market system will be designed where participants will be able to trade in the sound generation software modules developed in the first phase. During the implementation of this virtual market system the often perverse mechanisms of our current global financial markets will by fully integrated. A web based portal site enables the audience to actively participate as sound traders amidst a continuously altering, but deceptive virtual market. The audience is invited to invest in their favourite sound generating software modules. Further artificial development and evolution of these modules will occur according to the done investments. All of the accompanying, emerging social and interactive dynamics within the system will confront the spectator in a very direct way with the basic principles that caused the financial credit crisis.

Links for the project:

Audio tracks of Krystal Ball project:

Soundcloud: