Self-replicating songs

[bnewman]

I wrote three songs at or in the penumbra of Conterpoint. Strangely enough, all of them are about self-replication. Two are featured here — the third is, while complete, not ready (or rather, I am not ready to present it).

"Starseed" (mp3) is set in my original Explorators universe, whence also "The Explorators' Hymn for the Makers", "The Great Explorer Zero", and (probably) "Wondering Starship". The Explorators are sentient, self-replicating machines sent into space ages ago by an extinct civilization on a mission of exploration — or, rather, they were. Like anything trying to self-replicate in a hostile environment, they've evolved. This song traces the complete life-cycle of a nanotechnologically-enhanced version of a kind of sessile Explorator known as a stargazer installation. A close reading of the lyrics will reveal many of the specific technologies I imagine to be involved.

"Blue Butterfly" (mp3) is based on an entirely true story, which I learned from David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth. File this under "truth is stranger than fiction". The alcon blue butterfly lays its eggs on the gentian plant. The caterpillar feeds on the gentian for a little while but, well before it is grown, drops off and lies helpless on the ground. At this point, it will likely be picked up by ants and carried back to their nest, because it smells exactly like one of the ants' own larvae. It will be fed and cared for by the ants as if it were one of their own, pupate in the ant nest, and emerge as an adult butterfly right out of the ant colony... unless, of course, it is found by a parasitic wasp. The wasp, unlike the ants, can identify the butterfly caterpillar, and can also release a pheromone which scrambles the ants' friend-or-foe detectors, causing them to attack one another. While the ants are in disarray, the wasp finds the nursury and lays an egg on the caterpillar. The caterpillar makes a perfectly normal chrysalis, but what comes out of it is a wasp! There's something almost like a Child ballad (Caterpillar ballad?) about the whole treacherous mess.

Comments

[boroparkpyro.livejournal.com]

sounds cool... no time to listen to them right now, but what's a Childe ballad?

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

The Child Ballads (not actually spelled archaically) are a collection of traditional English ballads compiled by Francis James Child in the late 19th century. Many of them involve betrayal, mistaken identity, murder, and other fun things.

[madfilkentist]

Your subject line got me thinking about songs which themselves self-replicate. "Greensleeves," for instance.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

On reflection, I don't think that "Greensleeves", or even its tune, is self-replicating, or even an especially prolific meme, except when considered as a central example of the minor-key suborder of easily-remembered folksongs in the Western musical paradigm. It's a good replicator because it's very compressible, since most of the information in it is hidden behind an "import music.western.vernacular;" statement, if you will, but this is true of many songs.

I think, to be self-replicating in the sense I meant here, a song would need to contain explicit instructions for its propagation, like the coda of Blake Hodgetts' "The Reader".