Edison’s Eve

Automata. Androids. Gaby Wood’s Edison’s Eve chronicles the history of ersatz mechanical life—Jaquet-Droz’s writing automaton, Vaucanson’s duck, Kempelen’s Mechanical Turk—as well as their metaphorical descendants in literature and film—René Descartes’s man machine, August Villiers de l’Isle -Adam’s future Eve, Fritz Lang’s mechanical Maria. In this, my eighth and final short symphony, I draw abstract algorithmic figures with an orchestra comprised entirely of high treble instruments in an attempt to depict a mechanical world of musical automata.