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The Book of Sarth: An Interactive Cyberpunk Tale

The influences of Brooklyn-based electronic musician Sarth Calhoun — of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio — are, to put it succinctly, sprawling. Stretching from the surreal novels of Haruki Murakami to rock-opera bands like Pink Floyd and the innovations of sound-generating software system (he calls himself an “electronic alchemist”), his interests are so diverse that it becomes hard to peg him to any one genre. That ambiguity is particularly fitting for his latest project, The Book of Sarth, an interactive, multimedia iPhone and iPad app that combines original music with photography, illustration and ambient sound design. Calhoun calls it a “gralbum” — that’s short for “graphic album.” 

The Book of Sarth (available on iTunes) sets off with two children who discover a mysterious piece of technology that emits unfamiliar sounds (music!) — sounds that could change the world, though the government attempts to cover them up. Set to Calhoun’s driving, synthesized electronic music, the graphics that accompany the unfolding narrative move from augmented photographs to cartoons and back again — an edgy match for a dystopian cyberpunk adventure. 

The story is set in a kind of futuristic dystopia where there’s no music. How did that idea come about?

The story is an archetypical story. Kids find a device and it affects them in a certain way, the sounds it makes and the music affects them in a certain way. It’s symbolic, a meta-narrative about how music and technology can change people. The whole story was inspired by the music.

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