Rutger Muller
Artist Statement
I’m an electro-acoustic composer focused on bridging the ancient and the futuristic. I take influences from avant-garde classical music, non-western traditions and ambient techno. My main fascination is mysticism, the grey area between meditative and uncanny sound – as I believe that dissonance is an integral part of healing.
Both as a composer and an interaction designer, I’m driven by non-linear approaches, including improvisation and generative systems: I aim to free music from fixed chronologies and direct emotions. To dig into our psyche, I want to reveal our pre-emotional subconscious, our abstract origins.
Music Can Transcend Emotion
Music evokes a sense of mysticism when it sounds simultaneously meditative and fricative. This dissonance shapes time and space in which we can safely confront frictions and doubts. I aim to discover the beauty and dark energy on this bleeding edge of tranquility and friction.
How can we implement types of mysticism into our hectic times, and discover catharsis in it? I often start at nature: the organic intricacies of timbre, the imperfections of improvisation, and our ancient fascination for (cavernous) reverberations.
In my search for contemporary spiritual music, I want to transcend drama and emotion, reach beyond it, towards the roots of inner consciousness and outer space. What are the roots of music, and how can we keep rediscovering them?
Exorcism at Cultura Nova (Heerlen, NL)
With dancer Nathaniel Moore (USA)
Image from video by Paul Caron
Thresholder installation at
Born Digital (Utrecht, NL)
Photo by Joram Wolters
Improv – The Future of Game Design
Both the origin and future of creativity are improvisational. While computers might not have intuition, they can improvise using algorithms, logics, memory (data), feedback and chance.
Soon, generative arts wil happen in real-time. These instant explorations call for new (playful) interfaces that bridge human improvisation with machine intelligence.
Game design allows us to explore the roots of creativity and culture in accessible and interdisciplinary ways. I research the field of ’emergent gameplay’, which aims to gives players the ability to evolve rules, without breaking the flow/immersion.
Short Biography
I started my creative journey around 1996 with level design (in DOS games like Duke3D) – followed by hacking, web design and drums (mostly hardcore punk).
Around 2004, I became interested in interactive (non-linear & improvised) music, gaining a BA & MA in Music Technology at the HKU Arts University in 2012.
As a composer, I often focus on fusions of avant-garde classical music and club music. With improvisers Wen Chin Fu and Josephine Bode, I formed Rutger Muller Ensemble. In 2014, We collaborated with creative coders NAP Labs on an audio-visual performance for Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw.
Since 2012, I joined numerous hackathons and game jams, such as the MUTEK.JP AI Music Lab in Tokyo (2019).
In 2020 and 2021 I was an artistic developer of music and sound art institute Intro in Situ. I work closely with Euregional chamber orchestra Ensemble 88, as a composer and member of their artistic committee.
I currently focus on experimental spiritual compositions and MyuBio – a generative spatial sound system that simulates nature’s playfulness, created with Ricky van Broekhoven and Nikolai Gillissen.
I share many (field) recordings under the CC0 license on Freesound.org.