CCMSAI 2026

An instrument decides what part of the world is permitted to become sound. Each transducer, threshold, and sensor mapping isolates some property of a material and discards the remainder, according to choices made by whoever built the device. Material Synthesis Composition (MSC), the method outlined in this paper, anchors the work in those exact choices: I map the behavior of a material substrate onto compositional structure, and a human performer and a machine listener work within those dynamics. MSC grows out of Speculocultural Technopoiesis (ST), my doctoral framework, which examines how Black speculative traditions and sonic ways of knowing can direct the modification of audio tools. Writing as an experimental media artist, I take composition to include selecting materials, modifying instruments and algorithms, fixing the mappings, and conducting the session. The case is Did Sun Ra Fear Cryosleep?, the water movement of the interactive triptych Organic Memory, in which an earthen orb dissolves in a vessel while a hydrophone, an electret microphone, and three water-quality sensors monitor its disintegration. Five abstractions reduce that chemistry to rhythm, register, tempo, voice count, and drone color; against them, Somax2 improvises from a corpus of NASA sonifications. Drawing on studio sessions with a prototype, the paper sets out the transduction, the mappings, and the recorded corpus I withheld.