Mutant Neutrino

Flute and fixed media, 1999
One second after the big bang, the Universe would have fallen in temperature from infinity to about ten thousand million degrees. At this time, the universe would have consisted almost entirely of photons, electrons, neutrinos and their antiparticles. As the universe continued to expand, electrons and anti-electons would collide, completely annihilating each other leaving only more photons and a few left over electrons. The neutrinos and anti-neutrinos would not have annihilated each other, however, because they interact very weakly with each other and other particles. So theoretically, neutrinos and anti-neutrinos should still exist today. Unfortunately, we cannot observe them directly because their energies would be too low. However, if neutrinos are not massless, but have a small mass of their own, it might be possible to detect them indirectly. They could be seen as some sort of 'dark matter' which has sufficient gravitational attraction to stop the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse onto itself again.

This concept of expansion and collapse is central to Mutant Neutrino. Both the tape and flute parts undergo periods of expansion and collapse, slowly mutating as they move along. For the most part, the flute is quite subdued and gentle. However, changes take place and the flute mutates into a frenzied monster, performing at high velocities with very high energies.