• Play:  
• Artist: Martin Parker
• Title: Autoroute
• Album: Autoroute 2004
• Track: 1
• Genre: Glitch
• Year: 2004
• Length: 5:49 minutes (5.32 MB)
• Format: MP3 Stereo 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

Auto-route begins with a source, what follows is an automated response to this data that continues to eat itself until we turn the machine off, the computer crashes or the feedback loops inside the system result in silence or white noise.

Auto-route is an attempt to hear what the computer thinks. The piece runs on the machine’s own terms, makes its own decisions based on criteria that it invents as time passes. Like most improvisations, there is a moment when the input is considered and contemplated but shortly after this period, the machine begins to explore material dynamically, chewing on its own matter, quickly becoming self-referential and eventually running out of energy or coruscating into maximal debris.

Auto Route has been performed in several versions. A version was made for Video Artist Rob Kennedy and performed at Machinista in Glasgow in 2004. Two other versions have been made and performed without the composer present. Once in Belfast as part of the Sonorities festival on a tourist boat trip, the other was performed in Newcastle by Mark Summers (Viol) and the Pallindrome dance company.

The recording presented here was generated from some glitch provided by Mark Summers (Viol).