Endless Echoes by Yoshino Yoshikawa

This piece offers an experience of listening to the 2023 re-arranged version of the song "PRNG," released in 2016 and sung by a voice synthesis software, performed with the same melody and lyrics by three different singers of different genders and races (human and machine). The title "PRNG" is derived from the Pseudo-Random Number Generator, and in cryptography, the one-time random values used are called "nonces" (number used once). The fact that only the singer can be changed while the arrangement is fixed can be likened to the generation of nonces in the Proof of Work process, which is the foundation of blockchain technology, in which there are immutable parameters (block number, timestamp, transaction details, previous hash value) and mutable parameters, the nonce. Based on these data, the hash value is calculated using the SHA256 algorithm, and the node that first computes the correct hash value with the number of zeros set by the difficulty generates the block, receives the reward, and forms a chain through repetition of this work.
The three different singers singing once each are likened to the first three nonces generated by PRNG, and the trials from the fourth time onward are carried out with the listener's self-image of their own voice and imagination, having learned the song. As long as the number of listeners keeps increasing, the repetition continues, and new songs, as hash values, are continuously generated in the realm of imagination. In music, there is no specific "correct answer," so no one will generate a block by repeating this process. However, even without a correct answer, the generation is repeated, and the endless search without a breakpoint continues.

Since 2009
Tokyo, Japan

yosshibox.com
SoundCloud