certain sets of applications of tools in order to create process music gives way to a newer school which cherishes contemporary tools influencing practices with “digital sampladelia”.  (Reynolds, 369)  In both cases, audio is born via production more than real-time performance, emanating from a realm of exploring sound at a microscopic level in order to create a record of that experimentation, more than it is about crafting musical composition that reflects conventional structures of instrumentation and orchestration for the purposes of performance.  If, as McLuhan says, “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us,” the intentions of both these schools exemplifies an inherent ambition in the creative person to get beyond the tools, and to in turn reclaim that intuitive nature driving the artist which hopes to find a conversation between seemingly-unrelated elements, and to therefore generate new ideas and to uncover hidden solutions to unknown problems.  (McLuhan, 18)

“[The Third Mind] is a strategic device for confronting semiotic assaults.  But for it to do so, it calls on a fourth author—yourself—to establish the operational field of another book, an invisible book that you can make visible.” – William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin – (Burroughs/Gysin, 24)

Further, the work finds a critical kinship within the realm of experimental writing, cultivation of theory, and performance art as expressed by creative innovators such as William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, The Oulipo and Allan Kaprow.  In part, Opho weighs the importance of process as significantly—or more so—as it does any final product that may be created.  In fact, the product without the process cannot stand alone.  As is suggested in the quote above, the intent of the project is to unveil the hidden, previously unheard, microscopic sounds existing somewhere deep within the original source material provided by participant submissions.  The process of using audio data submissions authored by various artists is key to the strategy of “confronting semiotic assaults”, or applying the tools of chance and mixturization as practical methods for synthesizing new information out of existent information.  “Because the sound has been converted into digital data, the information can be easily re-arranged.  This means the source can be disguised to a point of unrecognizability, and it opens up a near-infinite realm of sound-morphing possibilities.” (Reynolds, 364)

The Oulipo proposed various theoretical applications for researching “into methods of automatic transformation of texts.” (Berge, 178)  Although this is not entirely the case with Opho, since a human being will still perform methodical transformation of submitted elements, the notion of introducing randomizing chance factors which cannot be easily predicted but by which the alterations of source material must adhere, relates directly to the idea of automation, and moreover, in the assertion that “most of the experiments that one can conduct on [media] reveal that the field of meanings extends far beyond the intentions of any author.” (Lescure, 175)  Just as sampling breaks with traditional ideas of ‘musicality’, in large part because of its studio-based orientation, the application of chance operators upon Opho’s contributed audio content resources breaks with the notions of a singular composer in favor of a set of collective content and processes which invite playful reconstruction, reinterpretation and configuration.  (Reynolds, 364, 365), (Montfort & Wardrip-Fruin, 148)  The submission and chance operator concepts represent non-linear, changing and indeterminate approaches to arranging musical ideas.  (Nelson, 144)

In another recent, like-minded project unifying writing experimentation and audio manipulation by Mark Amerika and Twine, entitled FILMTEXT: An Original WWW Soundtrack, the artists sought to meld spontaneous writing and Web-surfing into a live performance context, “pursuing a practice of surf-sample-manipulate, [using] all possible digital source material at [their] disposal to create an on-the-fly sound narrative remix.”  (Amerika, see FILMTEXT link on Resources page) Laptops and Web functioned as primary instruments, with Amerika and Twine interweaving their sources together in real-time in order to create an unpredictable sonic atmosphere infused with improvisational collaboration.  Amerika’s intention was to amplify “writerly effects in live performance,” combining spoken word with audio orchestration, using the Web as a library-of-immediacy whose source material in effect randomly shaped permutational possibilities.  It was intended, as Amerika states, to create a previously indeterminable remix-narrative, or momentary phonautograph, “grabbing data off the [Web] in real-time and sampling what I needed from it right into the new story, remixing as I wrote it, and then using the sounds to further distort the narrative's generative meaning (or meaning-potential)." (Amerika, see ALT-X link on Resources page)

Similarly, Opho as an end-product, or object, will represent a collection of hyper-tunes as it were (the “hyper” connotating an extension of hyperspace, or the realm acting as carrier for transmission of submitted materials via contributors dislocated geographically, unified via email and Web), or the public social commons in which discussion and exchange of ideas takes place, and from which digital information is retrieved from a "world library" of sorts (in this case, being the audio catalogs of like-minded cyber-neighbors).  (Nelson, 133, 441) By approaching an "open source" attitude toward peer file sharing, manipulation and re-arrangement, Opho not only demonstrates a process of rethinking compositional authorship (in a manner that attempts to transcend mere sampling), but also appreciates Ted Nelson’s consideration that by freeing the restrictions on resources (or in this case, copyright control) attitudes spurring innovation are encouraged, which invariably lead to constructive collaborative modes that otherwise could not be predicted.  (Nelson, 441-442)