Symmetric Difference Project

Symmetric Difference

A small consortium of like‑minded, apparently sentient, aspiring sages exploring the overlap of music, mathematics, philosophy, and software.

Advocating for abstraction. Enamoured by patterns. Constructing representations and retracting shadows. Throwing random statements into the void.

What we are doing

Mission

Symmetric Difference seeks to use abstraction to explore the relationships between music, mathematics, software, philosophy, and ethics. We advocate for a renewed emphasis in our culture on skepticism, abstraction, and model building in thought, and consequently, in action.

  • Music: Exploring the seams between performance and algorithmic music
  • Mathematics: Categories of musical objects, functors, and transformations.
  • Philosophy: Adopting phenomenology as a path through skepticism
Current surface

Experiments in the open

Symmetric Difference experiments with transforming scores using mathematics, C#, and a customized and simplified music models. These consequences of these experiments can be found on Sound Cloud.

  • Today: recordings, arrangements, symbolic models, and notes.
  • Soon: a small blog, pre‑release songs, and public drafts of tools and formats.
  • Goal: interactive site equipped for idea sharing and symbolic digital collaboration.

We would like to make a platform for collaboration regarding algorithm scored music. We had hoped for collaboration on Sound Cloud but are not seeing evidence of it.