The Aleph Null Projects
Jim Andrews
Summary
In "The Aleph Null Projects," Jim Andrews presents his ongoing work on Aleph Null, a graphic synthesizer and instrument of colour music that he has developed since 2011. He explains that colour music is a centuries-old concept in which visuals proceed through time with colours, shapes, and forms rather than sound. Aleph Null operates on a painterly metaphor: users create brushes that sample from folders of images and draw successive brushstrokes across the screen at least once per frame. Version 1.0 functions purely as an instrument of colour music, while later versions introduce bitmap processing capabilities. Andrews describes the project's origins in DB Cinema, an earlier graphic synthesizer he built as a poetry performance tool, and recounts how a Canada Council grant prompted him to retool from Director to HTML5 canvas. He situates his practice between visual art, electronic literature, and audio art, noting that his work has become increasingly visual over time. Throughout the talk, he shares screenshots and live demonstrations of Aleph Null's configurable controls, including opacity, frames per second, and polygon size, while reflecting on his interdisciplinary background in English, mathematics, radio production, and computer science.
This AI summary was generated by kimi-k2.7-code (13th August 2026).