In 1968 the Hungarian biologist and botanist Aristid Lindenmayer developed a formal language (L-systems), used as a model to describe the growth of living organisms, in particular the expansion of plants’ branches. This generative grammar, composed of elegant and (relatively) simple algorithms, is used to simulate and graphically model the morphology of several organisms, but also to analyse the mechanisms of growth. The system consists of an alphabet of symbols that, through specific rules, expands itself in a wider string of symbols, and a mechanism transforming the strings in geometric structures.

This process has been used – freely and with many exceptions – to shape the composition’s form, to manage different musical elements and constantly changing figures (in the orchestration, in the harmonic structure etc.), but keeping a common Self-similarity.