Laurie Spiegel – Obsolete Systems (2001)

Laurie Spiegel – Obsolete Systems A retrospective of Spiegel’s 1970s and 80s works created with now-long-obsolete mostly-anolog electronic instruments, produced by EMF Media, the record label of The Electronic Music Foundation, released Sept. 2001 Laurie Spiegel (b. 1945, Chicago) is an American composer. She is known primarily for her algorithmically composed electronic music. Spiegel’s best known and most widely used software was Music Mouse—an Intelligent Instrument (1986) for Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari computers. The “intelligent-instrument“ designation refers to the program’s built-in knowledge of chord and scale convention and stylistic constraints. Automating these processes allows the user to focus on other aspects of the music in real time. Her realization of Johannes Kepler’s “Harmonices Mundi“ was also chosen for the opening track on the “Sounds of Earth“ section of the golden record placed on board the Voyager spacecraft in 1977.