“Three placeholders sitting in a room between empty spaces.” This is how the ensemble [ _ _ _ ] describes itself. It was founded in 2020 by the artists Li Song, Shuoxin Tan and Jia Liu, to compose music for the network. Li Song is a musician and software developer based in London. He composes music for computers and acoustic instruments. Shuoxin Tan was born in Beijing and works as a composer and sound artist in Cologne. She researches algorithmic acoustics, sound ontology and Lacanian topology. Jia Liu is a composer and computer music performer. She lives in Karlsruhe and is currently working on algorithmic music and composition for autonomous systems.

The three members share the same interest in algorithmic acoustics and composition, SuperCollider and live coding. Can algorithms be collaborative? What happens when the Borromean knot is applied to network structures for collaborative algorithmic composition?

With their latest project, they start to approach concrete sounds with abstract electronic sounds based on their network algorithmic music system. The project was supported by Musikfonds (Neustart Kultur, Germany).