About Us

We have over 20 years experience in making "ideation" software to bring you "ooh" and "aah" moments. Simply stated, our apps help foster those serendipity moments where you can come up with new ideas. It's up to you whether you use the apps to create new music or word ideas for e.g. films, games, songs, lyrics or creative writing or just for relaxation and enjoyment. Our apps are for iOS, Android, Mac OS X & Windows.

Our Past...

We were both co-founders of SSEYO Ltd, which we founded in 1990 and which was acquired by Tao Group in 2002. We worked at Tao Group until June 2007, when it folded (the engineering staff and management of which are now behind a new company, Antix Labs).

Although SSEYO pioneered many things, it was best known through Brian Eno's use of the SSEYO Koan Generative Music system in his 1996 "Generative Music 1" with SSEYO Koan software release (published by SSEYO and Opal Music) and miniMIXA, a powerful mobile music mixer first released in 2004.

Our Present...

Intermorphic (IM) was incorporated at the beginning of 2007 by Pete Cole and Tim Cole. The two of us are "IM".

We started Intermorphic because, following Tao Group's demise, we wanted to continue our life's work in creating apps that foster serendipity moments, help generate ideas and deliver unique experiences. We do this through developing cross-platform generative music tools like Noatikl and Mixtikl, and our creative writing tool Liptikl. Other titles are in the works.

In 2008 Intermorphic acquired the rights to the SSEYO.com domain, SSEYO trademarks and all the SSEYO, Koan, miniMIXA and iSS related IP (noting that we did not take on SSEYO as a going concern, or get any customer records etc), so we now own our "back catalogue". The old SSEYO Koan IP is now in safe "curatorial" hands and, even though it is on the shelf and will not be further developed, maintained or supported, we are using bits of it where we can for parts, i.e. Mixtikl includes some of what was in the iSS (intent Sound System and now Intermorphic Sound System), namely the modular MIDI softsynth, audio fx framework and audio input/output mixers.

We have been going from strength to strength ever since, developing new capabilities and extending feature by feature!

Intermorphic Tikl

Intermorphic Tikl [the ideating kinetic lattice] is what we lovingly refer to as 'Tikl Tech' that underpins all our products. It comprises the iSS (below), a 2D graphics layer and the other Intermorphic libraries that allow us to deliver our ideation tools and software.

Intermorphic Sound System (iSS)

The Intermorphic Sound System comprises the following:

Audio input/output mixers
Audio encode/decode framework
Partikl audio fx framework
Partikl modular synth & DLS MIDI synth
Mixtikl music arranger engine
Noatikl generative music engine*
Liptikl word arranger engine*

Note:The iSS was originally the Tao intent Sound System which we built whilst at Tao Group. We have owned this since 2008 and have rebranded it as the Intermorphic Sound System (ISS) and is at the core of Noatikl, Mixtikl and Partikl.
* Intermorphic developments / additions.

Our Core Apps - Liptikl, Noatikl and Mixtikl

Noatikl is a powerful inmo music music lab utilising a unique blend of rule-based generative techniques & varied music tech. It is what is known in industry terms as a totally "clean room" development as it has been built completely from scratch and shares no source code from SSEYO Koan. Noatikl is Koan evolved, and Koan lives through intermorphic. Noatikl was released in 2008 and is now at V2.

Mixtikl is an inmo music mixer for mobile to desktop featuring generative music tech. It shares some original DNA with miniMIXA (mainly related to the Partikl synth side), but this share has rapidly diminished as it has been extended and continually updated since its release in 2008. It now at Mixtikl 5.

Liptikl is a "cut-up" word arranger and word shuffler. It allows a user to randomly "mash" up to 3 different text sources to come up with new word juxtapositions for use in lyric writing, poetry etc. It was released in 2007 and was the first product Intermorphic developed.

Tiklbox is an easy to use inmo music player. The first two albums are for relaxation and reflection - "Calm" and "Relax". It was released in 2012.

Intermorphic Branding

The rationale for Intermorphic is to build tools to help feed the imagination through helping to generate ideas. With that in mind, the hidden ovals in our logo came from the "elliptical" approach of our first product, Liptikl.

Why did we choose to have tail stems for the IM products (e.g. "Mixtikl")? We know that when it comes to branding taxonomy that it is normal practise for the common part of a brand (i.e. a stem) to be first, or to prefix other common words (e.g. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel etc.). When it comes to generating new ideas it is often handy to look at things from a different perspective, therefore we decided to append our product stem, Tikl, instead. This also means that our product brands can stand on their own two feet, independent of the main company brand: IM Noatikl, IM Mixtikl, IM Liptikl, IM Partikl, IM Optikl etc.

In addition to domains for our trademarked products, we also own the following domains (we've been active in the area of generative music for ages [since 1990 effectively]): http://www.generativemusic.org, http://www.generativemusic.net, http://www.generativemusic.mobi and http://www.generativemusic.co.uk.

SSEYO Koan - a short history

We founded SSEYO in 1990 and started developing the SSEYO Koan Generative Music Engine (SKME) [which later was at the core of the SSEYO Koan Interactive Audio Platform (SKIAP)].

By 1992 the first version had gone into beta with a small group of select testers. SSEYO Koan software was publically released in 1994, distributed by Koch Media; SSEYO Koan Pro was released in 1995.

In 1995 we managed to bring the SKME to the attention of Brian Eno - and it turned out he was interested in using it! He started creating Koan pieces with SSEYO Koan Pro which, in April 1996, lead to the publication of his seminal title “Generative Music 1 with SSEYO Koan software”. Luckily for researchers, Eno's early relationship with SSEYO Koan was captured in his 1996 diary "A Year with Swollen Appendices". The SKIAP continued to be developed by us at SSEYO until 2001 (when it won the 2001 Interactive Entertainment BAFTA for Technical Innovation).

In 2002 SSEYO Koan was acquired by Tao Group and development on SSEYO Koan products (such Koan Pro, Koan X and the Koan Plugin) then formally ceased. Tao Group subsequently folded in June 2007 - which meant we became independent again after 17 years!

Noatikl is the spiritual successor to Koan, and provides Koan users a bridge to an exciting future: a new code base & tools that are being maintained, developed and extended to meet new challenges. For example, a runtime Noatikl generative music engine is an integral component of Mixtikl.

SSEYO miniMIXA - a short history

Following SSEYO's acquisition by Tao in 2002, we set about building the intent Sound System [iSS]. This was a comprehensive audio framework and set of related technologies specifically suited to use on mobile. It included a mixer, modular synthesiser, midi synthesiser and a host of other things. One of the products that came out of this was Tao's APRE (Advanced Polyphone Ringone Engine), deployed with Tao's Java Engine.

Following the completion of that work, and starting in 2004, we built the first version of miniMIXA which went on to win the 2005 Interactive Entertainent BAFTA for Music. miniMIXA V2 was released in 2006 and miniMIXA V3 was due for release in 2007, but Tao Group folded before then.

The iSS has now been rebranded "Intermorphic Sound System" [ISS] and some of the miniMIXA technology has been incorporated into Mixtikl.

SSEYO website archive

When we have time we hope to put some of the SSEYO website back on line, but right now we are focused on the future, which is looking very exciting for our family of generative tools.

If you want to go back in history right now, you can access the old SSEYO site at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The last effective archived date for the site was March 7 2007 (after which Tao Group cleansed it of all SSEYO information) and the first archived site was November 1996. When accessed from there the menuing no longer seems to work, and some versions now redirect you back to the intermorphic website (in which case try using sseyoindex.html after the SSEYO domain in the Wayback Machine, or sseyo.html).

For those who are interested, we have also now added some of the info to the Founders' History page.

Thanks

For those of you who have in the past used the products we have created, we greatly thank you and we hope you have enjoyed them - we enjoyed creating them!. We hope you remain interested in using and enjoying the new products we are creating. We would love to hear your ideas on other creative tools that you want and would make your creative lives easier.

We hope you would like to sign up to our mailing list, and maybe participate in one of our forums. In any event, please do bookmark our website and return!