Anthony Ferraro

Biography

A promising classical pianist in his youth, Ferraro was prompted to redirect his creative energies due to severe arthritis. He was accepted into the Computer Science department of the University of California, Berkeley, but switched gears midway through his collegiate career and returned to his early passion for music. He graduated from the University of California with a degree in musicology, and a latent fondness for technology had led him to study computer science. Reconciliation of the two fields has been of abiding interest to Ferraro. In 2013, he joined the psych-funk band Toro Y Moi as a keyboardist and signed a recording deal to produce his own music under the moniker Astronauts, etc. The following year, Ferraro began to write the code for Hypothetical Beats, the algorithmic project featured in this auction.

About Hypothetical Beats

Hypothetical Beats has layered intentions. Fundamentally, it aims to address and confront the boundaries inherent in mapping aesthetic dynamics to algorithmic systems. Merging ideas from early pioneers in algorithmic music (Stockhausen, Xenakis, Cage) with the zeitgeist of modern procedural composers like Brian Eno and Aphex Twin, Hypothetical Beats seeks to probe for places that are aesthetically uncharted and in any way sublime.

Additionally, Hypothetical Beats leverages modern technology to grant any individual, musical or not, the ability to participate meaningfully and intuitively in the creation of music. Visual art has long since departed from the notion that every artist needs to hone their figure drawing to perfection; so, too, can music be engaged by those not trained in the esoterica of theory.

Hypothetical Beats is the first in a suite of algorithms entitled Furniture Music, after Erik Satie’s idea of the same name. 

- Anthony Ferraro