☙ RELEASE ❧ Available exclusively on Metalabel, this limited-edition digital release of "abstract form <---> physical behavior" is available in TWO editions: FULL and MINI.

The FULL edition includes high-resolution versions of all project files compressed into a .ZIP folder (55.82 GB total):

AUDIO = Three .WAV files (48kHz, 24bps, stereo) VIDEO = One .MOV file (1920 x 1080p, HD, stereo audio), Raw footage (.mp4 files), Thumbnails (JPEG files) MUSIC SCORE = copies of handwritten composition notes (PDF and PNG files) DOCUMENTATION = "About" document (PDF), Certificate of Authenticity (PDF), Checksum (.txt) ALBUM ART = PNG copy of album art, plus PNG files of graphic design assets (PNG files).

The MINI edition includes smaller versions of select project files compressed into a .ZIP folder (5.4 GB total):

AUDIO = Three .WAV files (48kHz, 24bps, stereo) VIDEO = One .MOV file (1280 x 720p, HD, stereo audio) MUSIC SCORE = copies of handwritten composition notes (PDF file) DOCUMENTATION = One PDF file (6 pages) about the project, Certificate of Authenticity (PDF), Checksum (.txt) ALBUM ART = PNG copy of album art (PNG file).

ABOUT

I often think of improvising in simple, personal architectural terms:

I am designing a house, and I want to welcome you into it. When you enter my house, I take you on a tour. One room at a time, we explore my house. Together, in every moment, we decide how long to stay in each room, which objects to look at, what to talk about, and which room to visit next. Sometimes, we get comfortable in one room and stay there all night - other times, we speed through the entire house. In this analogy, the house - its walls, configuration of rooms, number of doorways, and decor - is a fixed limit that bounds our activity. However, we have freedom to roam and explore, to loaf and linger, to hurry and scurry. Because of the house, our life will not be purely random; but within the house, we are free.

☙ 𝑛 → ∞ ❧

“Ergodic Études” is a title that refers to ergodics, a branch of probability studies in mathematics. I stumbled upon this term while reading an article profiling French mathematician Nalini Anantharaman that outlined her contributions to “quantum chaos” (“how a quantum system can become unpredictable without being truly random”) and “quantum ergodicity”, described as “the tendency of quantum states to spread out uniformly across the available space, rather than concentrating in specific regions.” (1) I was unfamiliar with the term “ergodicity”, but it captured my imagination - I’m drawn to the modular synthesizer for its ability to produce audible dynamic systems, and generally incorporate probabilistic or chaotic mechanisms that both impose limits on the breadth of possible behaviors and offer the listener a nuanced set of regular sonic patterns that are more complex than simple repetition.

☙ 𝑛 ← ∞ ❧

To return to our “improvisation house” analogy, the house is an available space, or form; the path we choose as we walk through it is a physical behavior imposed on that form.

☙ 𝑛 → ∞ ❧

I followed a minor rabbit hole of inspiration, perusing mostly-incomprehensible mathematics papers (Example: “[W]e can now define ergodicity. A dynamical system [𝑋,𝜇,𝑇] is ergodic iff ƒ* = ƒ̄ for all complex-valued Lebesgue integrable functions ƒ almost everywhere, meaning for almost all initial conditions.” (2) Huh???) for insights about ergodicity. The simplest definition I located was, “A modern description of what ergodic theory is would be: it is the study of the long term average behavior of systems evolving in time,” (3) and an ergodic system is one in which “every sequence or sizable sample is equally representative of the whole” (4). Said differently, by tracing the trajectories of “points” as they move through space, we can understand the behavior of an entire system - it is not purely random, but reveals itself as a non-random, regular process that can be known if we let it run long enough.

☙ 𝑛 ← ∞ ❧

If I repeatedly trace the path that I walk through my house, will the results be purely random (skipping from any room to any other room, regardless of whether their doorways are connected) or will a series of patterns (I always enter my dining room from my kitchen; I always pass through this stairway to climb to my bedroom) gradually emerge?

☙ 𝑛 → ∞ ❧

Ergodic systems fundamentally require three dynamic elements: a space (𝑋), a measurement of that space (𝜇), and time (𝑇).

By greatly generalizing and overtly oversimplifying, I came away from this research with a framework for creating a series of new works using West Coast-ish analog-ish synthesis with tape music-ish formal techniques:

1. Build a synthesizer patch that is a dynamic system with probabilistic, self-modulating variability (𝑋);
2. Improvise with the patch until I find “regions” (i.e. fixed parameters) that are sonically interesting (𝜇);
3. Record the patch self-performing in these regions, using my ears to determine when the system had fully performed itself (~15-20 minutes) (𝑇);
4. Mix together four regions that complement one another as a multi-track stereo recording, like four simultaneous tape loops.

In this manner, I imagined myself creating a “sonic space” with regions of interesting aural behavior: the synthesizer establishes the electro-sonic equivalent of a geometric volume, a form within which behaviors can unfold in time.

By guiding the synthesizer to these regions - the extreme edges (0, 100), and the gradations in-between ( … 25 … 50 … 75 … ) and allowing it to explore within these bounded limits, we can hear the full breadth of sonic behavior available to the system. My goal was to find regions that were sonically interesting enough that the listener would engage for ~15-20 minutes, until the system had fully revealed its whole process; yet, since any given moment can be considered a sample that represents the whole, the process should become sonically familiar over time as it accumulates more and more similar behaviors, like a digital image gaining higher resolution as more pixels are added.

This process was a very fun creative exercise. All three études were created on the same synthesizer patch. The sounds are a bit raw - spikey pulses, sharp squares, crunchy bytes - but slowly evolve with the fresh spontaneity of continuous renewal. The system is harsh, but joyful, like a young computer discovering that it can write and run its own program. I’m drawn to electronic systems in which the performance of lifelike behaviors has a physical, material quality - to listen to these études, I use the same ears that hear the dialogue between textures, or nature sounds - birds, wind in trees, other animals that repeat common behaviors in slightly irrepeatable ways.

☙ 𝑛 ← ∞ ❧

Choose any point in time and it will tell you where it has just been and where it will go next. Each room connects to several others, and we can walk through the same thresholds together. Each moment is the average of the whole process. In every room, we encounter the full freedom of the house without taking a single step. At least, in theory.

☙ 𝑛 → ∞ ❧

SOURCES:

1. Pagès, Arnaud, and Xavier Demeersman. “Quantum Chaos: Nalini Anantharaman, the Brilliant Mathematician Redefining Our Understanding of the Invisible.” Futura-Sciences, 24 Feb. 2026, www.futura-sciences.com/en/quantum-chaos-nalini-anantharaman-the-brilliant-mathematician-redefining-our-understanding-of-the-invisible_25920/.
2. Frigg, Roman, et al. “The Ergodic Hierarchy.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, substantive revision, 8 Oct. 2025, plato.stanford.edu/entries/ergodic-hierarchy/.
3. Dajani, Karma, and Sjoerd Dirksin. A Simple Introduction to Ergodic Theory. Utrecht University, 2008, webspace.science.uu.nl/~kraai101/lecturenotes2009.pdf.
4. “Ergodic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ergodicity. Accessed 16 May 2026.

VIDEO The video uses footage that I filmed while driving the support car for my friend Drew Wieland’s endurance bicycle ride from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi in the summer of 2025. I selected three segments of video from three sequential stops in Mississippi - three points on a journey through space - and ran them on continuous loops. Overlaid onto the looping footage are elements from the digital album art: a manually distorted audio spectrogram snapshot from this project; an object that was rendered by interpolating a 3D transformation between two hand-drawn 2D geometric objects; a “map” depicting the three-stage interpolation of a fully (100%) smoothed object into half- (50%) and un-smoothed (0%) versions of itself.

CREDITS Composed, performed, and recorded by Edward Breitweiser between February and March 2026. Video filmed and edited by Edward Breitweiser between July 2025 and May 2026. Album art by Edward Breitweiser. Mastered by Colin Winkelmann.

BIOGRAPHY Edward Breitweiser (@ed.breitweiser) is an Illinois-based artist, musician, electronic instrument builder, and writer who creates moments of sonic life. Drawing inspiration from the experimental and electronic music traditions, the uncanny potential of new (and obsolete) technology, and the landscape and pace of the American Midwest, Breitweiser combines particulars (including analog and digital synthesizers, custom software, handmade electronics, audio/visual signals, text, network and systems models, performative activities, community organizing) to produce systems that arise from the emergent, nonlinear interactions of all components at once. Recent projects have blended early synthesizers, digital video loops, and probibalistic open-form compositions to create multimedia systems which are positioned somewhere between drone, minimalism, and structural chaos. Breitweiser is the founder and Executive Director of pt.fwd (@pt.fwd), a contemporary music and sonic arts performance series featuring new work by local and regional artists in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois (USA). Breitweiser is an Instructional Assistant Professor of Creative Technologies at Illinois State University (Normal, IL).

🌐 www.edwardbreitweiser.com 🌐