Mikrop is a piece for viola and electronics I wrote in 2010 in Istanbul while pursuing my master’s in music. One of my goals for this piece was to design the electronics to follow the performer’s ad libitum tempo. The word mikrop is the Turkish for microbe. It is one of the first words I learned in Turkish as I was constantly hearing the cognate; it has multiple meanings. The texture, timbre, harmonic construction, and interaction between the viola and electronics suggest an environment full of microorganisms. Microbes are essential to life on Earth; they shape how nutrients move through the environment and how biological materials break down. The sound of the viola grows and decays from the constructed sonic environment of microbes which also fade in and out of the concert hall without a clear beginning and end.