[eu-gene] sonification

[douglas repetto]

Hi John,

This is terrific! I'd love to hear more about how/why you made these 
pieces. I like that there's a literal time relationship (six hours of 
tides == six hours of music) coupled with highly interpreted/nuanced 
musical gestures. You get a certain amount of richness for free using 
human musicians, but that usually comes at a cost of having to stay 
pretty modest in terms of numbers of players and the length of the 
piece. You managed to put it all together!


best,
douglas


On 4/7/11 12:39 PM, John Eacott wrote:
> Hi Douglas, there are some recordings and video of my sonification
> works 'Flood Tide' and 'Hour Angle' here:
> http://www.informal.org/previous.htm
>
> let me know if you'd like any more information about them, john
>
>
> On 7 Apr 2011, at 15:17, douglas repetto wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm teaching a couple classes in Berlin this spring/summer, one
>> called Feedback and one called Transduction. It occurs to me that
>> they're both related to Phil's recent call for non-software-based
>> generative art and the sonification thread. Descriptions below if
>> you're in Berlin and looking for things to do this spring! (I'll
>> ask you all for feedback suggestions in another email.)
>>
>> One question I like to ask about sonification/visualization
>> projects is whether they're actually sensitive to the _content_ of
>> their inputs.
>>
>> I think of things like iTunes visualizers as basically tuned
>> filters -- it really doesn't matter what you feed into them,
>> they're going to ring as long as there's some energy in the
>> appropriate part of the spectrum (literally or metaphorically). You
>> can't undo a filter -- you lose information when a signal goes
>> through it, and lots of different signals can cause the same or
>> very similar outputs. The effect of the filter's parameters
>> overwhelms the content of the signal.
>>
>> So what's the alternative? One problem with systems that are
>> sensitive to the content of their inputs is that they're a LOT
>> harder to create. The more tweaking you do to your system to make
>> it sensitive to the content of particular inputs, the closer you
>> get to a more traditional notion of composition. I think that in
>> many ways tone poems were vaguely generative examples of this
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonic_poem) -- one particular
>> painting or poem or ? generates one particular musical work.
>>
>> The contemporary work that I find most interesting tends to be
>> somewhere between these two extremes. Somehow generative and
>> "live", but at the same time not simply a filter. Messa di Voce is
>> a lovely example:
>>
>> http://www.flong.com/projects/messa/
>>
>> douglas
>>
>> (Berlin classes below)
>>
>> +++++++
>>
>> Feedback This class will examine the physical, electrical, and
>> conceptual aspects of feedback that are at the core of many
>> mechanical and algorithmic music/art-making systems. It is a very
>> hands-on, process-based course, and we will build physical,
>> electrical, and virtual feedback systems, play and invent feedback
>> games, and create artworks that use feedback as an organizing
>> principal.
>> http://www.ak.tu-berlin.de/menue/lehre/sommersemester_2011/feedback/
>>
>>
>>
>>
Transduction
>> In this class we will treat sound as an intermediary, translating
>> back and forth between text/image/motion/thought and sound. We will
>> explore the practice and pitfalls of mapping information from one
>> domain to another, and will approach current trends in data
>> visualization and sonification with skeptical eyes and ears. This
>> will be a largely code-based class, and students will learn basic
>> techniques for the collection, analysis, mapping, and synthesis of
>> data in a variety of media and formats.
>> http://www.ak.tu-berlin.de/menue/lehre/sommersemester_2011/transduction/
>>
>>
>>>>
>>
To add a critical voice, Sarah Angliss offers some insight into data
>>>> sonification: http://madartlab.com/2011/03/15/eulernumberfish/
>>>>
>>>> alex
>>>>
>>>> -- http://yaxu.org/ -- 'No, no, no. Generative spam is more
>>>> markov-based.' To unsubscribe from eu-gene visit
>>>> http://www.generative.net/mailman/listinfo/eu-gene
>>
>> -- ...............................................
>> http://artbots.org .....douglas.....irving........................
>> http://dorkbot.org ..........................
>> http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp
>> ...........repetto............. http://music.columbia.edu/organism
>> ............................... http://music.columbia.edu/~douglas
>>
>> -- 'No, no, no. Generative spam is more markov-based.' To
>> unsubscribe from eu-gene visit
>> http://www.generative.net/mailman/listinfo/eu-gene
>
> -- informally - John Eacott 07950 953 852 www.informal.org
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 'No, no, no. Generative spam is more markov-based.' To unsubscribe
> from eu-gene visit
> http://www.generative.net/mailman/listinfo/eu-gene
>

-- 
............................................... http://artbots.org
.....douglas.....irving........................ http://dorkbot.org
.......................... http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp
...........repetto............. http://music.columbia.edu/organism
............................... http://music.columbia.edu/~douglas