20090930 Four Loops by akamediasystem
I walked four times around the same place. Four loops. I was wearing binaural microphones. Even at the same place, the sound is never the same. But it is often familiar.
I geologged as I walked. The geologging and the recording were started simultaneously.
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Special thanks to Kelly Snook from NASA for loan of the equipment.
I just submitted my paper on AUDIO ORIENTEERING to the NIME conference, which is in Pittsburgh this year instead of somewhere cool. Even so, it feels good to have it out of my hands so I can turn to the task of overhauling it and adding some really sweet features.
If you just want the paper and no web documentation, it’s here. Please don’t re-post it anywhere, it’s not supposed to be in the wild yet—not sure why but I think it has to do with the conference being the first place it gets seen…
Here is a recording Harlo and I made during our improvisation on Sunday. It is eight minutes long, so go ahead and do other things while the song is playing. This one is the first in our series of recordings with the following names:
THE BIG STORE
THE HYDROPHOBIA LIE
THE STREET MECHANIC
THE PIGEON DROP
THE FIDDLE GAME
STFO
Below is an image by Alex Hays—I really like it.
This weekend I made a proof-of-concept demo of the SyncWalk digital composition interface I’m working on. You can see photos on my flickr set, and a video is up on YouTube (I think Harlo may have a video of it up soon).
As you can see, it’s a little noisy right now—I’m going to add some filter capacitors and mill a PCB this coming week in an effort to ameliorate this.
At this point, I’m still not sure how I will differentiate between a palm-contact or a thumb contact, let alone contact between the two hands. (The video does not show it, but the glove has a conductive pad on the palm as well) One strategy would be to use the PWM outs to give each finger’s pad a different tone, like a DTMF pad, or to use different reference voltages for the thumb and palm contacts. Interference would be avoided if I could make a DTMF-like solution (whereas it would be the main source of noise if I had to read analog values), but I’m not sure frequency-detection is something AVRs can do well.
It’s always nice to have incremental rewards when you do a project, and this weekend has yielded encouraging results. I’m ordering conductive fabric tonight from here and will be trying to design a glove-to-cat5 PCB in the coming days. Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas or suggestions!
After three txt-msg blogposts, I need to break the streak and provide a proper update. Please do not think I will be txt-blogging less, though, as it makes an excellent threat when Company is around.
My second run of T-shirts went very well – I will be posting photos soon to flickr. The design was an AKA logo called Twin Eurofighters, and most of the shirts from the first run of 9 have been given away. Let me know if you’d like one, and I’m sure we can work something out. Screenprinting is great fun but a bit costly—so far I’m about $300 in the hole from supplies, the sink I had to buy and install, and shirts to print on. Clearly, this is a pursuit that must eventually be monetized.
I’m preparing a very small (but possibly noteworthy) presentation for the Dorkbot “Presidents Day” showing; it is called PissPoll and I’ll have more details soon. You may or may not like this idea. I am concerned that you might not like it.
I was in Harlem from this past Thursday to Monday working on Thenji’s film, which is coming along well. We were supposed to have finished by Monday but the deadline was extended and we’re finishing up next weekend. I hope. My most pressing concern is that I will finish the score and not have a chance to mix it on proper monitors, which neither of us own. Also, the diagetic mix is not yet final, which may affect some scoring stuff. It certainly will be exciting to see it screened, though! (no idea when that may occur).
Harlo was down in New York over the weekend as well; she was filming an interview with DJ/rupture for the premiere episode of share.tv, which airs on Feb 17th on CCTV. I haven’t seen the footage yet, but I’m sure it will come out very well. We went to Raggs of Harlem, a fine old bar, and had a nice evening talking with drunken locals who won money on the Superbowl.
I finally, finally found the VHS of an old performance I did with Teresa Marrin Nakra last week, and have now safely converted it to a .mov.
The music itself isn’t the most awesome thing in the world, but I certainly am glad that proof of this exists…I really need something from this to put in my portfolio! As I try to write more thoughtfully about this project, it becomes clearer how much this served as an introduction to the world of physical computing and, in a sense, the process involved in working with emerging technology.
The carpet itself was very cool but a bit buggy. Factors like heat and prior use would seriously impact the consistency of the output, and it led to some frustrating but now-familiar debugging issues. Other things, like Teresa’s imminent pregnancy and my own unfamiliarity with the medium made this a frustrating project at the time. Thankfully, Tim Ledlie was around to handle the software side of the debugging and help me retain a sense of perspective.
We only had a week from start to finish to make our performances, and the title of mine (DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME, I’LL BE FINE) comes from the sampleset I was using at the time. Snips from Disney’s version of “Peter and the Wolf” and R+H’s “South Pacific” combined with pretty abstract (and, upon later reflection, boring) drum and toneloops to make an endless, atmospheric performance that did not go very many places.
I think the best thing about this project was finally getting to just play the damn carpet. I spent many, many hypercaffeinated hours before that night pressing on the thing and listening for trouble, and even watching it reminds me of what fun it was to make sounds with something so malleable and strange.
I’m supposed to be somewhere right now but I’m posting this first—let me know what you think. It is, like most things these days, a rough unmastered/edited quickie recording done while working on “the woods”, a composition environment I’m working on in Max.
I’LL BE LATE
Friend, I have been absent due to a disgusting illness.
Nowdays I’m working on the following:
Respect to DJ C this week for posting a tutorial on how to make a standard dubstep bassline in Reason.
This isn’t the first tutorial his crew have posted, and I especially admire the step-by-step samples and images of the composition process. Earlier, Wayne and Wax’s “Crunk Geneaology” featured a tutorial in the same format followed by a comprehensive if nonchronological podcast.
