Way of the jitterbug

Abstract

Norman White retraces a long, convoluted mental journey which started with a childhood love for fishing. College courses in Biology, exposure to the work of jazz pianist Lenny Tristano, a by-chance job wiring up a telephone switchboard, travel in the Middle East, and attendance at early club gigs by Pink Floyd all conspired to set him on the path of artistic experimentation using electronics. After an initial period of building “light machines”, he turned to creating interactive physical devices that have “lives of their own”, wherein programmed instructions and cycles process and respond to sensory data gathered from chaotic environments, thus giving them surprising and unpredictable behaviors.