The Pulse Between Data and Soul in conversation with Max Cooper

Human confessions transformed into sound—Max Cooper’s On Being dissolves the line between data and emotion, between the algorithmic and the deeply human. Built from anonymous submissions answering the question “What do you wish you could say, but cannot?”, the album becomes a sonic archive of collective vulnerability. Each track translates hidden emotion into rhythm and resonance, while visual artist Minjeong An gives form to those inner worlds through spectral, breath-like imagery.

In her interview for RED-EYE, Jagrati Mahaver speaks with Cooper about turning human fragility into computational beauty—where patterns, algorithms, and biology intersect with instinct and soul. “Patterns with human intention are art,” he reflects, revealing how On Being merges scientific logic with emotional truth. Through spatial audio and immersive design, Cooper invites listeners into a shared pulse—a mirror for the modern condition, where even within the circuitry of machines, the heart continues to beat.

What was the genesis of On Being, and how did collecting anonymous human confessions become the seed for this deeply emotive sonic journey?

I was collecting quotes for another project, unsure of what I would do with them, but simply asking, “What do you want to express that you feel you cannot in everyday life?”. When I started reading the submissions, they had a big impact on me, and I realised I had to make a full album around them to do justice to what everyone had submitted.

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” — Leo Tolstoy

Through your creative process, how do you balance algorithmic precision with instinctual musicality?

Every project has procedural and intuitive parts. Procedures to yield specific patterns of types of sounds relating to an idea, and the intuitive sculpting of those to deliver the associated feelings.

For you, when and how do patterns shift from data to art?

I don’t think there’s a watertight boundary. I made a piece called Order from Chaos, which starts with raindrops that gradually shift towards a drum pattern, and someone asked me “At what point does it change from field recording to music?” We’ll all have that transition at slightly different points, when you realise it’s not just rain, but is a musical rhythm, so the boundary is somewhat fuzzy. But perhaps I could say at least, patterns with human intention are art.

“The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.” — Eleanor Catton,

How did you use digital tools and sound design techniques to translate intangible emotions, like hope in “Sense of getting closer” or vulnerability in “sun in a box,” into the textures and dynamics of the album?

Hope or vulnerability feels a certain way, and musical structures feel certain ways too, so it’s a challenge of aligning the two.

It's evident your PhD in computational biology suggests a scientific lens on music—how do biological concepts inform the layering of tracks?

Biology is beautifully nested, rich systems one within the other… I love the feeling of being inside a system that is richer than what we can perceive…

“Pattern thinking is a way of seeing the world—it allows us to perceive the hidden interconnectedness of all things.” — Christopher Alexander

What concepts exactly made you name the tracks this way?

The track names are the quotes from the database at onbeing.maxcooper.net. And we’re still collecting quotes which appear in the shows and installations, this part remains an intuitive and creative curation for me as an artist, trying to reflect my work through sonic metaphors that may have some textual context. It's a resonance of my artistic expression.

What specific digital instruments, software, or generative algorithms form the backbone of your compositions…?

I use a lot of old hardware, synths and pedals, along with Ableton and lots of digital synths and processing. I try to get the most of both worlds and reference the electronic classics with the old gear, as well as bring in new digital techniques to make things sound the same but different, a sort of symmetry as the aim. The exact language of what synth or technique evokes what emotion is largely intuitive, following our electronic music history and my own decades of creating and developing mappings.

How does technologically driven music restore authenticity and shared human experience?

Music for dance has always been communal, and electronic music has largely filled that space, given the ease with which it can be implemented. So when we’re all faced with the online mess, it’s refreshing to go and play out an ancient ritual.

What do you like about the very technology that is mechanical yet touches the intangible and biological?

I love my machines. They allow me to express myself far more fully than I can imagine would be possible otherwise.

When you compose, do you envision your music as a kind of living system evolving in real time?

For spatial audio projects in particular, this is what I do. It helps to have an idea of all the interacting parts in space, which I can map to the simulated space which drives the many speaker positions. So, having some physical machine or organism in mind helps with making decisions about how each element should move relative to the rest to make a coherent whole. For stereo mixing, the imaginary component is much harder to put into words; there’s always a sense of structure and coherence, but it’s not literally spatialised, so it’s harder to connect it with some describable 3D entity. That makes it sound more mysterious than it i,s though - we all have a sense of harmonic coherence, babies can spot consonance and dissonance, and we all learn societally shared tonal rules early on, so if we spend a long time thinking about those intuitions, they naturally start to impose on other mental models like perceptions of shapes.

How does this influence your approach to structure and flow?

Questions about arrangement, how a piece is structured and flows, have always baffled me a bit. It seems to me there is a lot you can get away with, each with clear experiences for listeners. For me, this is more about pretending to be the listener in the setting I want, and letting that define the arrangement, rather than the more difficult (for me at least) aspects of composition like melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and spatialisation, which end up with more complex mental representations.

How do spatial audio and immersive technology enhance the listener’s sensory experience…?

Richard Burki worked on the Dolby Atmos version of On Being with me, and I also made a site-specific spatial mix for the Reflections of Being installation version of the album. The idea being that we would take the quote and concept of each track and video, and try to enhance the message using space. So, for example, with “my mind is slipping”, I had lots of notes slipping in time relative to each other, and with the spatial version, we could have them slipping in space as well, to give emergent spatial patterns in addition to the emergent rhythms. Space is another tool for musical storytelling.

What are you expecting the audience to take away with this?

If anyone gets any positive effect of any kind, the job is done. That means a lot of different things to different people. I pour my soul into my music, all of the good and bad things, and the process of making the music soothes me and keeps me grounded. I think some people find part of that same solace, whereas others use it for work, or concentration, for running or dancing, for sleeping, and some people use it for sex, I’ve been told. I’m a believer that art should be open to how we each want to interact with it and what we want to make of it, rather than having a prescribed route.

“Human plurality… the self revealed in action is more than likely concealed from the person acting…” — Hannah Arendt

How important have collaborations been to your creative evolution?

All important. Collaborations with visual artists in particular have become the core of my process. So many pieces of music have come from responding to visual ideas or working with them in mind, pieces I would never have found otherwise. And visual accompaniment has become the focus of my performances, presenting all of these many collaborations.

Could you share instances where these exchanges significantly impacted your work?

My most-streamed YouTube video, Repetition with the great Sligo-based artist Kevin McGloughlin, was a totally different piece of music initially. But when I saw Kevin’s response to the brief I had sent, I realised there was another route entirely for the music.

“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” — Tuli Kupferberg

When you immerse yourself in sound, do you experience it as an external craft or an internal state of consciousness?

Both. It's always both.

What happens to your sense of self during creation?

Flow state would be the term I think. I get lost in it for hours without realising, for the fun parts at least. There’s also the very much not flow states trying to find the noisy cable and lost menu dive hardware settings parts.

You’ve spent years dissecting patterns—both biological and musical. How has this shaped your perception of chaos, order, and meaning in your own life?

Patterns are symmetries… they show us something of why and how nature works… so patterns for sure, I’ve always been obsessed with patterns as long as I can remember, and used to get in trouble for focusing on them more than what I was supposed to be doing at school. Patterns are symmetries, which are laws in their own contexts, and they show us something of why and how nature works at all, needing its own laws and symmetries to function. And if you can get those symmetries from randomness, which is a tall order, but if you can, then you’re in a good place to explain a lot. But this is going into territory needing way more words than we can fit here. Patterns are important in nature as well as in our minds for the feeling of music and many other things, so they’re great to spend time with (I do have actual friends as well, btw, and I don’t bang on about patterns all the time).

“What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognised. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher.” — Chuck Palahniuk

What fears or vulnerabilities did On Being awaken in you?

I always try to be vulnerable when making music; being as open as possible is a rich source of musical feeling to be rendered. On Being opened me to other people's vulnerabilities, though, in a very direct manner. Reading through the list of quotes, one intense internal state after another, created an intense sea of feelings which I tried to channel into the projects. And yes, almost all of the quotes were mirrored in my own experiences, which was one of the most surprising aspects of the project - despite people from all over the world submitted their deepest internal thoughts, almost all were experiences I've shared at various points in my life. It was a Meaningful exercise in finding our shared humanity, which felt all the more meaningful now with so much division being fueled in order to profit a minority. Behind all of that, what is most important to us is shared.

How important is it for you to do what you do?

It keeps me sane, so it's important to me. I often have people chatting to me at shows who say my music has helped them through difficult times as well. That's the most important aspect of the work, and music in general, it has an amazing potential to soothe and provide hope and solace, if we let it engage with us on that focused sort of level in the right environment.

When was the last time music truly altered your emotional state in a transcendental or unsettling way?

Max Richter's Spaceman score.

How do you keep your composure amidst chaos?

Touring can be chaos for sure, I listen to a lot of beautiful ambient music and try to find time to think about the larger questions which frame the chaos into a box that doesn't impede on the bigger picture. Touring chaos isn't that relevant compared to how the universe functions or what it is important to do with our short time on Earth.

Do you ever feel trapped between the logic of science and the ambiguity of art?

There is a tension, but also there's a misconception. Science research is full of ambiguity and human emotion, that's just not the part that survives peer review over time, as our best guesses at scientific truth are solidified. And similarly, art is full of research and technical processes, but that isn't the part that gets widely documented.

What narrative helps you bind multiple disciplines into music as an answer to unclear questions?

Intuition, rather than a known narrative, is the main tool for expression of feeling in music, at least. Complemented with a scientific narrative for employing techniques, structures and stories. So, for example, when I was working with a project about the infinite, one chapter used Penrose Tiling to create an infinite aesthetic via a never-repeating patterning system, the use of primes in musical loops to create non-repeating musical structures, and the feeling of those visuals and musical forms as the basis for the remaining musical elements.

“We are left alone, without excuse… existence precedes essence.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

What does “being” mean to you personally, beyond philosophical and sonic experiments?

"Being" is the central experience of all of our lives. The ubiquitous thing that connects all experiences, despite the hugely varied content it can contain.

If you could express something about yourself anonymously... what would you confess?

Right now, I'm struggling with the pain in the world. Every day are stories of pain and feelings of helplessness, wrapped in uncertainties and complexities. I hate our politics and our systems of profit, which aren't working for us as a whole. I'm trying to make something positive and helpful through the means I have available to me, but perhaps I'm just losing myself in other worlds to escape ours.

Looking forward, what new subjects or technological frontiers are you most excited to explore in your music?

I'm working on a lot of new spatial audio techniques… along with more installation projects… I'm excited about the new ideas and feelings that can be shared…

What kind of emotional or sensory spaces are you looking forward to unlocking next?

Direct brain interface would be fun. Also check out Jake Oleson's Currents VR film—something special, a new form of cinematic experience.

“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” — Tuli Kupferberg (reframed as an echo)—because On Being itself cracks open hidden doors.

Interview by @_jag_rati_

RED•EYE WORLD