The notion of a partial withdrawal, of territories vacated yet marked by absence, echoes curiously in recent generative practice—most strikingly in the handling of algorithmic probability. Within Max/MSP or SuperCollider, consider the persistent negotiation with what is allowed to pass, and what is withheld. The probability weighting of a given event—whether a soft, filtered impulse at 0.2 amplitude, or a processed field recording activated with only a 10% chance every minute—constructs a topography of uncertainty that resembles borders and crossings, uninhabited zones and those suddenly repopulated by sonic incident.

Here the composer works less as an architect, more as a force among forces. Each parameter (duration, density, harmonic range) becomes another axis for potentiality, left open to shifts in generative ‘policy’. To set probability here is to sign a treaty – not of permanence, but of forbearance. One allows through a mere trickle of notes, like those returnees stepping cautiously into their former homes, finding some walls standing, others razed.

Ambiguity thus arises not merely from the sounds themselves, but from the lattice of possibility within which the algorithm is allowed to act. A melody might never fully materialise; a drone may be but a rumour half-glimpsed, as the generative loop cycles past, errant and never quite repeating. There is an ethics to this probabilistic authorship – not the ethics of control, but of listening for what the system is, quietly, prepared to allow. One does not claim peace; one traces the spaces where it might take root.