Join us for the launch of programmer, designer, and composer Tristan Perich’s conceptual art book, Pseudorandom at Printed Matter Chelsea. Perich will perform a live set, followed by a Q&A and book signing.

A companion release to his circuit album Noise Patterns, Pseudorandom is an unabridged, 1024-page printout of the 16,777,215 numbers that comprise one complete cycle of the 3-byte, random number generator incorporated in the album’s code. Originally released as a circuitboard that plays its music through a headphone jack, Noise Patterns employs randomness at the core of its sound synthesis. However, true randomness is beyond the limitations of any deterministic computer algorithm. The accompanying art book takes its title from the concept of “pseudorandom” — an approximation of randomness, and an illustration of the vast but fundamentally limited nature of computation.

Tristan Perich’s work is inspired by the aesthetic simplicity of math, physics and code. WIRE Magazine describes his compositions as “an austere meeting of electronic and organic.” 1-Bit Music, his 2004 release on Cantaloupe Music, was the first album ever released as a microchip, programmed to synthesize his electronic composition live. His follow-up release, 1-Bit Symphony, was called “sublime” (New York Press), and the Wall Street Journal noted “its oscillations have an intense, hypnotic force and a surprising emotional depth.” His latest album, Drift Multiply (Nonesuch, New Amsterdam), for 50 violins and 50 speakers, was described by the New York Times as “a constantly evolving landscape where sounds coalesce and prism, where the violins both pull into focus and blur into a soothing ether.” His work coupling 1-bit electronics with traditional forms in both music and visual art has been presented around the world, from Sonar and Ars Electronica to the Museum of Modern Art and bitforms gallery.