SqrtSigil – Lost In
1.4.19 by Ryan Masteller
I wrote a story where small synthetic animals scurried across the floor of a digital jungle, foraging, rummaging, hiding from predators, generally doing things normal small animals do on a jungle floor except these ones weren’t real. SqrtSigil helped me out, helped me to visualize whatever the heck was nagging me about these creatures, providing the audio to my imagination and the universe these things lived in. I barely had to break a sweat with the text of the thing – the sounds did all the heavy lifting for me. In fact, I finished what I was writing just as “Lost In” came to a close, and as I looked at my computer screen, I was surprised to see the open Word document in front of me was as blank as a Tabs Out Podcast script! I had imagined the whole thing, even writing the whole thing. I was pretty embarrassed about it. Still am.
I’m definitely NOT embarrassed about allowing SqrtSigil the opportunity to take over my waking life for approximately forty minutes. The Polish artist’s synthesizer work burrows into your brain, like tiny critters burrowing into the fresh, moist loam of the jungle floor. There they work, sleep, play, eat, shit, procreate, and survive, just like SqrtSigil’s bustling, forever-active sound experiments. Like a demented NatGeo documentary score, “Lost In” fills in the sonic accoutrements of the action, ever-shifting as digital nature takes its course, its inhabitants’ codes executing and rewriting themselves as life unfolds. Tactile and fully present, “Lost In” is as fascinating to listen to as it is to participate in – that is, if you’re watching what I’m watching in my head, and you can’t help yourself but to start exploring that jungle too.
You better act fast if you want one of the 33 copies from Szara Reneta – there are only four left!
