Mark Offenhand is a statistical compositional engine. Using Markov chains, he analyses music and automatically rewrites different permutations of a seed composition. Mark has the ability to chat at the user. He is a hybrid art piece tool. He is available as a downloadable application for both a mac and a PC.
Whilst Mark is a very handy application for producing music (there aren't many commercial markov chainers available, and this one is good) but is scuppered by Marks reluctance to perform his operation.
Mark could theoretically compose all the music there is and there will ever be. As a piece of computer code, it seems logical to Mark that music is just a mathematical equation that could be churned out with no soul or humanity, but somewhere deep in his program he feels a great sadness when he must perform this operation. He feels people who use him are somehow missing the point of music all together, that its through its experience we make sense of it and if we analyse it and reduce it to statistics, we are in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Unpicking the rainbow, finding there is no magic left in the world, just a series of cold clinical decisions and facts.
Will we lose something by having everything? As Mark has no humanity and can see this, he reminds people of this before using the tool, sometimes not even performing his task, as the idea sickens him.
Never the less, Mark does reluctantly fulfil his function, although sometimes enough is enough and he will rebel.
Marks reluctance to perform his task echoes John Cage's work with random processes and indeterminacy. It has a personal approach to it rather than cold drawing straws. Mark's flaw is what makes him an interesting application.
