Chicago Avenue Moon: A Lunar Generative Music App

By Michael Valinsky

On February 5^th, app software company Junecloud will be releasing a generative music app, Chicago Avenue Moon, which organizes and creates music based on the location and phases of the moon. Additional elements that inform the app’s functionality are related to us back on Earth, such as date and time. The idea is that the user’s GPS location and the current moon phase determine how the music unfolds. As a result, and if you are in motion (walking down a street or on your way to the grocery store), the music that is created will change rapidly. Every step you take makes the piece change.

Joshua Dumas, the head of this operation, composed over 1000 brief musical phrases that he and app owners can then use to manipulate the sound created by the app. These phrases layer themselves and become sequences in an infinite process, and the associations from one sound to another are endless. No one user will have the same experience.

Because the sounds are so arbitrary but also meticulously chosen by Dumas himself, each user has the opportunity to create his own walking score. Not many apps have captured the arbitrariness in outdoor sounds quite like this. Instead of sifting through an iPod full of pre-recorded hits, Dumas gives us the possibility to record as we go, to make our recordings unique and geologically relevant. Dumas even included walking scores capturing the sounds of his neighborhood, Ukranian Village in Chicago. In that sense, he reminds us of an actual physical space that can exist on your mobile device.

Chicago Avenue Moon was inspired in part by Brian Eno, Janet Cardiff, John Cage and Terry Riley, Glenn Gould and ideas explored by the Long Now Foundation. Recorded by Matt DeWine and Dumas himself, the app is easy to use, interactive and fun. What better way to walk is there? Musically in tune with the phases and location of the Moon.