:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Thursday, April 16, 2009 ::

/dev/audio

Grom says:
"It doesn't get geekier than this
Honestly, outputting the contents of your hard drive to your speakers has to be one of the simplest and geekiest things I've ever heard of. A simple command and ambient/industrial music/noise is there for the sampling. this one's specifically for you DanP"
Thanks mate! I'll be trying that out for sure!

Also via grom:
Hairdresser turned would be robber into boy toy
I'm now considering a change of occupation.

Labels: Audio, Computing, Electronic Music, Humour, Noise

:: Dan 16.4.09 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"A unique, informative, very readable and practical book, "Designing Sound" presents advanced sound design methods for tomorrows video games, interactive applications and computer animations."

Andy Farnell, who Hardoff introduced me to a couple of years ago, has finished and published his book of sound design using PureData. It's been a long time coming. The world seems to be full of books on computer generated imagery but audio synthesis books are much more thin on the ground. This fills a gap nicely.

Andy is selling the initial limited run direct from this website and is hoping a larger publisher will pick it up soon. There is also a great 100odd page abridged PDF Pure Data introduction available for download. Check it out and help support him if your interested.

Labels: Audio, Computing, Electronic Music, FOSS, Pd, Software, Sound

:: Dan 2.11.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Bringing Up Baby: First "Modern Computer" Turns 60

'Oldest' computer music unveiled
Includes audio recording

My encounter with the reconstruction in Manchester a couple of years ago:

Manchester 020
Originally uploaded by gusset.

Labels: Computing, Flickr, Music

:: Dan 20.6.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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A recent technical discussion in the office was sidetracked by discussions about the age of parts of the UK motorway network. Google to the rescue, we found ukmotorwayarchive.org, "the online encyclopaedia of UK motorway heritage."

Not only did it answer all of our questions, it even presented an animated time history of network (very slow loading).

Meanwhile, over at Chris's British Road Directory we find the intriguing C-road hunt and the brilliantly annotated work in progress that is the Motorway drive simulator. I recommend the simulation of the M5 Northbound from Exminster in particular, where the petrol is only 85p/ltr and where the first "Tiredness kills Take a break" sign is annotated "Ten miles between junctions here - it's a long way to Bristol and most people are going all the way. Please don't drift off!"

Stupidly geeky as it is, it is still strangely fascinating. I've often wondered if such a map existed as I've been driving, but until now never bothered to look it up. Much as we like to take the piss out of the boring old gits in Civils in the office the engineers' fascination with such systems cannot be denied. In Microserfs Douglas Copland has the computer programmers pouring over 1970s freeway design manuals, quoting aloud from them to each other. There he touched an important part of the engineers psyche that transcends discipline.

Labels: Computing, Engineering, Literature, Maps, Travel

:: Dan 23.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Null Device collects some links and quotes extensively on the possibilities of crowd behaviour modelling. (I used to work at a private company that modelled crowed evacuation from buildings and stadiums in exactly this way, interesting to see that academia is playing catch up here.) Some interesting ideas for things to try with emergent systems. A lot of the ideas posited are akin to game play, which reminds me that "the classic urban-planning simulation game, SimCity, has now been released under the GPL."

Labels: Computing, FOSS, Maps, Modelling

:: Dan 15.1.08 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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We've been talking about ants in the office recently. A slightly esoteric subject but when you share an office with ecologists stuff like this crops up. It prompted me to dig out my copy of Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software by Steven Johnson It's a fascinating look at many seemingly complex processes in nature and their applications in programming.


swarm
Originally uploaded by gusset.


Wandering around Broadmead during lunch time the same day, I spotted this dude. Trying to sell some silly pillow things to the swarms of Christmas shoppers. He would wheel his trolley towards the largest conglomeration, and they in turn would disperse like a school of fish or pack of birds avoiding a larger predator. A perfect example of swam theory in action in human behaviour.

It got me thinking again about the use of cellular automata in generative music and I wondered how much had been done in the field. And low, g3rm pops up a couple of days later with a link to this paper: Cellular Automata in Generative Electronic Music and Sonic Art : Historical and Technical Review [PDF]

That'll keep me busy for a while.

Labels: Computing, Flickr, Programming

:: Dan 20.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Programming language for audio, video, clever people
[via music thing]

Labels: Computing, Electronic Music, Programming, Visuals

:: Dan 14.11.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Vacation photos create 3D models of world landmarks

"The big breakthrough here is being able to compute very accurate 3D models from people's vacation photos," said co-author Steve Seitz, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering. "The long-term vision is to be able to reconstruct the detailed geometry of all the structures on the surface of the Earth. Many people are working toward that goal, but by using online collections this work brings in a whole new source of imagery and level of detail."

Online photo-sharing Web sites such as Flickr and Google are popular because they offer a free, easy way to share photos. Flickr now holds more than 1 billion photos; a search for "Notre Dame Paris" finds more than 80,000 files. The study authors, experts in computer vision, believe this is the world's most diverse, and largely untapped, source of digital imagery.

[via dev.null]

Labels: 3D, Computing, Flickr, Modelling, Photography, Visuals

:: Dan 6.11.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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"Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time".

"In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages."

Hmm. May save approx 15 watts on a CRT monitor, negligible benefit on an LCD/TFT. Loses a lot of Google’s functionality. Might be better just to switch to one of the darker iGoogle skins.

Monitor Energy Information

Labels: Computing, Environment

:: Dan 24.7.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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I found an article in The Guardian last week about The art of reducing your computer's noise
It's interesting, but contains appalling use of db rather than dB, an unforgivable offence in the world of acoustics, but at least there's no use of Db *shudder*
For more detailed advice here is Sound on Sound's guide to Advanced PC Silencing
And my personal favourite solution, the Oil Cooled computer.

Labels: Acoustics, Computing, Noise

:: Dan 18.6.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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[via meatsock]
For once I'm posting a synth link that's not audio related. Flickr users should watch this. Stunning.

Labels: Computing, Flickr, Photography

:: Dan 11.6.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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Computers For African Schools
The Recycling Consortium - Recycle & Reuse Computers
Active@ Kill Disk. Hard Drives Eraser. Free Download.

Labels: Computing, Recycling

:: Dan 13.5.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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ChucK => Strongly-timed, On-the-fly Audio Programming Language
"what is it? : ChucK is a new (and developing) audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance - fully supported on MacOS X, Windows, and Linux. ChucK presents a new time-based, concurrent programming model that's highly precise and expressive (we call this strongly-timed), as well as dynamic control rates, and the ability to add and modify code on-the-fly. In addition, ChucK supports MIDI, OSC, HID device, and multi-channel audio. Furthermore, the language is designed to favor readability and flexibility over raw performance. It's fun and easy to learn, and offers composers, researchers, and performers a powerful programming tool for building and experimenting with complex audio synthesis programs, and real-time interactive control."
Tutorial

Labels: Audio, Computing, Production

:: Dan 8.5.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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The Machine's Got Rhythm: Computers are learning to understand music and join the band
Interesting piece on advances in computer analysis of music [via dev.null]. Not any huge leap really as the same technique has been applied well to speech analysis over the last few years. And in acoustics has been used to design acoustic diffusers too.
Ref:


As someone who has studied this field academically (my dissertation for my degree was on Algorithmic Composition and Synthesis) this is an interesting advance. Predictably the Musicians Union are upset about it. They do have a tendency to get the knickers in a twist about things they perceive as endangering musicians job yet never transpire to do so. Historically they have resisted many advancements in electronic music composition and production on grounds of job losses. (Here's one classic example.)

Although, they may have a point in this case as it is somebody's job to transcribe music to piano for publishing as a record of song writing for copyright reasons. However, these versions are often then transcribed back from piano to their original instruments when you buy books of printed music in shops, and are sometimes miles from what was originally written. If an automated process can help to reduce these errors I'm all for it.

What I'm must interested in is what it may contribute to the composition and production process. It's highly likely it will initially serve to further propagate more and more similar pre-packaged music. Like the music machines that churn out tunes for the proles in Orwell's 1984. You may be forgiven for thinking this happens already if you listen to the charts or most commercial radio stations. And of course it will be most profitably used in those music identification systems that listen to bits of music then sale you ringtones etc.

But what if you taught it to think differently? Introduced mutations to see what happens? Or to try to do something that is as far as possible from the norm? It could be made into just as powerful a tool for experimentation as it could for formulisation. That's what I'd want to hear.

Labels: Academic, Acoustics, Computing, Electronic Music

:: Dan 27.4.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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In Its Image - Google Video
initsimage.org

This is a documentary about an AI system, which includes some details about giving the system "imagination" by feeding noise into the neural net. (I'd be interested to know whether it can differentiate this noise from its external inputs; does it "know" it is imagining?) It then composes some electronic music, thousands of pieces over a weekend, making it the most prolific composer on the planet. Some of these are now available on CD.

There's plenty of philosophy on the subject of AI, not to mention copious amounts of sci-fi and speculation of varying quality, but I won't go into that right now. I don't know if doppelganger wants to muse on it?

Thanks to Terminator and The Matrix et al some now leap to the conclusion (albeit jokingly) that AI is a bad thing, inevitably going to cause the fall of humanity. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the general public conception. But try looking at it from the other side; it may be the next step in evolution. Maybe it is the intelligence that will allow us to travel through the hole in the donut? [Intentionally using US spelling there]

I've been reading and thinking a lot about computer generated music again recently (I wrote my dissertation on it, although that seems like an age ago now), I will return to that subject in a later post.

Labels: AI, Computing, Electronic, Music

:: Dan 29.3.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post] ::
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