Mutation

Mutation is about the relationship between humans and tools. The idea was that machines, or tools, can be like a mutation that forces some adaptation in the gene pool. Being able to make tools was a massive thing in our evolutionary history, along with sharing them, building on them and using them together. Tools are fundamental to almost everything in life.

My own progression, in the arts and anywhere else, has come through learning and using different tools and finding the bits that work for me. The most important thing about a tool isn't only what it can do but what it can teach you, how it teaches you, how it inspires you, how you feel when you use it. Those questions came up as I explored hardware and synthesis and put more thought and intention into the tools I made music with, rather than picking up a new plugin here and there or using stock ones. There's nothing wrong with either path, but for me the tools contributed to my advancement, not because of what they could do but because of how they did it. They contribute to the final product too, offering a character shaped by whoever made them. It's human all the way down.

It was meant to be a story. I never wrote it because I don't think it needed writing, but it follows in the track titles: a human negotiating that boundary, becoming aware that the machine has some kind of being. It isn't alive, but it's something independent of them. In the end, through symbiosis, he can see the creator with him. The machine is only alive because another human made it that way.

"Net Terminal Gene" is from a manga called BLAME!: in that universe it refers to human DNA which was modified to allow them to control "The Builders" which has since through various means mutated out of the gene pool. "The Builders" are autonomous machines, that built The City, a gargantuan, solid Dyson Sphere like megastructure. To put the scale of The City in context, the main character enters a single indoor room that is large enough to fit the entire planet of Jupiter.