Floating point—an echo of the infinite,
a digital breath caught in the tension of chaos and order.
It's the backbone of the uncharted,
the fragile seam where certainty dissolves
into a sea of possibilities—
sound waves twisting, colors bleeding, forms unfurling
beyond the limits of perception.
In this space, experimentalism fractures the known,
shatters boundaries, invites rupture and reassembly—
a dance on the edge of logic and intuition.
Floating points pulse like nervous systems,
guiding the flux, the ripple, the unpredictable
as art itself becomes a voyage into the unknown.
Here, in the liminal space,
the mathematical becomes visceral—
a language that speaks in hesitations, in moments of divergence,
where sound and image collide and dissolve,
where chaos is not an obstacle but a gateway
The 'theme' of SOTU Festival 2026 is floating point. We gathered some ideas that might inspire you. In the youtube video you find a masterclass by an inspiring person for me, Rob Hordijk a synthesizer designer who sadly passed away in 2022. The url is an introduction to Chaos Generators by Chris Meyer on the website of Elby Design. Elby Design was set up in early 2003 in an attempt to support the
synthesiser do-it-yourself (SDIY) market by providing access to a range
of component kits for a number of popular PCB designs. They have a nice oldschool website with information about the circuits and designers like Serge, Ian Fritz and Ken Stone.
On the bottom of the page you can find the release that came out on Plattegrond, from a gathering we organised at the Cone (the sculpture by Richard Serra in front of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam). You can listen to the performances from that day, were our BAH Radioreporter [H.A. van Hees] made the recording (more info at bandcamp). Artists that played that day are mostly sotu crew like Schoco Mune, Duke S. (+Friend) and Frank Vis joined by our friend from Paris, Fred Marty. H.A. van Hees came up with the idea of floating point. Next to having an interest in programming, chaos theory and fractals around the 80's, he mentioned his zoom recorder has a floating point in his audiorecording bit stream.
Frank Vis
'something wrong in the system'
Floating-point is a data type used in computing to represent fractional, very large, or very small numbers by allowing the decimal/binary point to "float". Similar to scientific notation ( ), it efficiently handles wide ranges using binary, generally adhering to the IEEE 754 standard for 32-bit (single) or 64-bit (double) precision.
Key Aspects of Floating-Point Numbers: Representation: Instead of fixed decimal places, a number is stored as a significand (mantissa) and an exponent, enabling it to represent both 0.00000015 and 1,500,000,000 using the same amount of memory.
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An analog shift register (ASR) acts as an analog delay for sound by using a chain of capacitors (a Bucket Brigade Device or BBD) to sample, store, and pass an electrical charge representing a sound snippet from one stage to the next with each clock pulse. It creates analog echo and delay effects by delaying the audio signal in real-time, often used in vintage-style pedals, with delay times determined by the clock frequency.
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Rob Hordijk Original Design are the "Dutch West Coast"[1] style 5U (Moog Unit) modules designed and crafted by Rob Hordijk; based in The Hague, Netherlands.
Born in 1958, self described "synthesizer designer and builder,
"In those days I was quite interested in the idea of sound as a material to be sculpted, in the same way you can sculpt wood and metal. [...] You can make mechanical objects that make all sorts of sounds, or you can make electronic objects that make all sorts of sounds. but what I like about the electronic objects is that you don't see what makes the sound. [....] It opens the way to sort of make it a bit mysterious."[1]
In the early 1980s as various integrated circuits, micro-controllers, and processors became available to hobbyists, Rob began buying things such as the early Curtis chips and RCA 1802 based SuperElf processor board out of curiosity more than professional ambition.[1][5] Later switching to an Apple ][+ and the Mountain Hardware Music System, for which he developed a Forth language version that could do all sorts of stuff with the Mountain cards, like KarplusStrong-type plucked string sounds and pitch shifting.[5] His first introduction to a DSP was to the DMX1000 around 1984. In 1986 he switched to Atari ST and an Akai S900.[5] These days he is a Clavia Nord Modular G2 aficionado.[5]
"I am not really a gear freak. But I do believe in mastering synthesis techniques, in making synthesis a second nature, so to be able to fully concentrate on the creative processes."[5]
Rob's personal definition of a modular synthesizer is more to do with modulation than modularity; referring to functional modules as 'sections'. Everything is supposed to be able to modulate or effect everything else. All levels within the system are optomised for comparability with one another.[1]
Functionality-wise Rob also draws heavy inspiration from chaos theory which he studied in the 80s reminiscing, "in those days it was more about graphic functions and little pictures but I was curious about how to apply them to music." After some disappointing experiments he learned a couple of tricks that produce musical results.[1]
Making a strong distinction between chaotic and 'random' behavior, Rob emphasises the way a disturbed chaotic system tends to seek stability, or a number of balanced states called 'strange attractors'; These balanced states can produce patterns, and when the patterns are short enough to be recognised can produce very musical results. He believes using these methods is the best way to breathe a kind of life or personality into electronic instruments.[1]
