Month: January 2010

Dripping Clothes -> Generative Music (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

File this one under “happy accidents.” That’s how Tom Player, aka Lost Track, characterizes the subject of a recent post he made to the website audiocookbook.org, which is something of a public salon and playroom and group-blog for a handful of experimental sound folk.

The track in question is a nearly four-minute recording of what Player describes as chance generative music (MP3):

[audio:http://audiocookbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/generative_dripping_clothes.mp3|titles=”Generative Dripping Clothes”|artists=Lost Track]

Now, “chance” and “generative” are closely linked terms in the construction of experimental music, in part because it is precisely matters of chance that lend a lifelike, considered and even sentient, certainly not entirely predictable sensibility to much generative sound — generative sound being sound that is produced as the result of a rules-based system rather than a traditionally notated composition. These days that usually means in some manner an automated system, such as generative software like the Automaton plug-in by the software firm Audio Damage (audiodamage.com), or the sonic sculptures of Survival Research Labs member Matt Heckert (mattheckert.com).

Audio Damage uses Conway’s Game of Life as the basis for implementing and manipulating sound in Automaton. It’s a procedural descendant of the kind of work John Cage did in utilizing the I Ching as a tool for decision-making in composition and improvisation. In those situations, minor alterations — a new dot inserted in Conway’s grid, a left-field trigram for a Cageian performer — can radically change the direction of a piece of music.

In the case of Player’s track, however, he’s not talking about chance; he’s talking about an accident, which is perhaps the most quotidian meaning of “chance.” The music that came of it no less affecting, even if the source is water dripping from clothes. Player describes the system, humble as it may sound, that led to the recording as follows:

I set up a few cardboard loo rolls to resonate with the sound and stood around for 5 minutes recording it all. There are some really interesting syncopated moments, all underpinned with a regular metronomic beat. I liked the intrusion of external sounds to the mix, as you listen on.

The entire situation is John Cage by way of Rube Goldberg. The MP3 is a light percussive piece (that’s the “metronomic beat” he refers to) in which nothing is ever quite the same twice. There are various beat-like sounds that have the slightly funky feel of an experimental rhythmic track, to the point that one must remind oneself that none of this was planned, none of it predetermined, except to the extent that Player (could a musician who makes generative sound have a better name?) set up the system and adjusted it to achieve a result that appealed to him.

Original post at audiocookbook.org. More on Player at lostrack.co.uk.

Indian Call Center -> Sound Art (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Above a deep chasm of sound, a tiny whir comes and goes. It’s like a surveillance drone flitting here and there, keeping its eye — and, more importantly, its ear — on the surroundings, and only making its own presence noticeable when it gets just too close. At which point it veers away. Then human speaking intrudes, monotonic, initially sounding like the chatter of multiple telephone voice-mail menus heard all at once. This is the echo chamber that is a call center, and eventually one voice emerges from that chamber — a woman’s, Indian. It’s just her side of the conversation, as she politely, and with some discomfort, attempts to get information out of her English-language interlocutor (MP3).

[audio:http://download.cronicaelectronica.org/cronicast055.mp3|titles=”Call Center”|artists=Mathias Delplanque]

The piece is by Mathias Delplanque. Titled “Call Center,” it’s recent a stereo reduction of a sound installation of his from several years back. It was part of an exhibition titled “Bombay Maximum City.”The sounds, he reports, were “recorded during the summer of 2006 in a call center in Gurgaon (suburbs of New Delhi).” The result is a half hour of sound that flirts with narrative, but also manages to transform the everyday into something sonically complex. That the source of the audio is itself such a quintessential emblem of technology, of globalism, of communication services, and of interpersonal mis-communication only adds to its impact.

More at the releasing netlabel, cronicaelectronica.org.

Chances are this is not what M.I.A.’s forthcoming “I’m Down Like Your Internet Connection” (reportedly based on her three-hour tech-support phone call, according to Rolling Stone) is going to sound like.

Plato’s Internet Concert Hall (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Fotofono studio space in Brooklyn, New York, recently posted three binaural recordings from a live performance by five accomplished electronic musicians. A lot of music can be labeled “for headphones only,” but nothing is as literally headphone-oriented as is a proper binaural recording. The process involves placing microphones in a way that mimics the placement of human ears, so that the resulting recording, when listened to through headphones, has a you-are-there, 360-degree feel. Such recordings are also, of course, entirely listenable to on a standard stereo system.

This concert featured Kamran Sadeghi and Bruce Tovsky, each playing solo, as well as the trio of Paul Devens, Richard Garet, and o.blaat (aka Keiko Uenishi). Tovksy improvised to live video manipulations by Shimpei Takeda, examples of which work (borrowed from the fotofono.net website) appear in this post post.

All three recordings take drones as their basis, the trio track in particular working in a variety of textural variations, including brief seizures of sound, and dense noise akin to mechanical growls (MP3). In Tovsky’s there’s this signature sound, like a metallic bird, that calls out during the piece, as well as a sharp, high-pitched sound, that occasionally slows itself enough to come into (sonic) view — there’s not only a musicality but a sense of narrative to the work, especially in its first half, that, as with the abbrasives in the trio piece, make this more than a drone, more than a rich blanket of sound (MP3). Sadeghi’s may be the most varied of the three — there are drones along the lines of an Indian raga, rough noises from what presumbaly were contact microphones, and expanses of lovely, synthesized minimalism (MP3).

[audio:http://fotofono.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/091217-ff2.mp3|titles=”Live at Fotofono”|artists=Paul Devens & Richard Garet & o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi)] [audio:http://fotofono.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/091217-ff3.mp3|titles=”Live at Fotofono”|artists=Bruce Tovsky] [audio:http://fotofono.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/091217-ff1.mp3|titles=”Live at Fotofono”|artists=Kamran Sadeghi]

Though we know each of the works was performed live (not just thanks to information in the blog entry that presents them, but from the evident crowd noise, camera sounds, and applause), what exactly was performed remains a bit of a mystery. The description is brief, leaving the pieces as sound-art versions of Plato’s cave — we hear the performance, but don’t see how it or what is being performed. Though the nature of this sort of listening is not a conscious act of spartan, new-critical curation on Fotofono’s part, the end result is mentally cleansing. It brings to mind tape-music concerts in which the lights are dimmed so as to diminish the impact of the absence of a performer.

One more comment about Fotofono. This is a unique source of Internet audio — it is neither a record label nor a netlabel, not an artist nor a publication. It’s a small, self-directed place that transcends its physical confines by making recordings of what happens there available far beyond its walls, an art bunker broadcasting cryptic messages into the night. That’s an exciting proposition.

Images of the Week: Music Apps & Interface Lag

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Below are “before” and “after” shots of the interfaces of several excellent sound/music apps for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch: apps titled Gliss, DopplerPad, and Bloom. The images of these apps’s various screens evidence what has become a norm, perhaps an accepted one, in casual music-making applications: the application you are learning to use will likely change, perhaps radically. Drastic changes can result in what I have personally experienced as “interface lag,” the subtle confusion that results from dealing with frequent iterative changes to familiar software tools.

For the time being, when music apps are a relatively new phenomenon, and when such iterative changes in apps are generally understood to be upgrades, this isn’t a big deal. But as time goes on, issues will arise — tension will occur between end-users and programmers. In some cases, such tension has already arisen — you just have to scan the app reviews in iTunes to read dialogs about disgruntlement following an upgrade.

This is an especially sensitive situation because app developers aren’t merely managing a user’s response to alterations to their own programs; they’re also managing a major cultural shift. Music apps are on the front line of the rapid dissolution of the distinction between cultural production and cultural consumption.

We’re entering a fourth stage in popular music, from (1) pre-rock pop’s distinction between songwriter and performer (think Elvis, the Brill Building system), to (2) rock’s emphasis on musicians writing their own material, to (3) hip-hop’s re-use of existing sonic material, to (4) the current age of audio-games, in which users experience sound by manipulating it — not just with the iPod, but also with games like Rock Band, DJ Hero, and Guitar Hero, and with the audio tools built into the Nintendo DSi, just to name a few examples. (There are similar factors at work in underground and academic music and art cultures, but the focus for me here is on mobile music-making apps, which are significant because of their popularity, because they have made populist numerous activities and approaches to creativity that were previously considered specialized, abstract, experimental, even avant-garde.)

All three apps shown below have implemented significant improvements as a result of upgrades, and each development team has done a good job of making these alterations to pre-existing interfaces in a way that minimizes confusion for users (the Gliss and DopplerPad upgrades just occurred; the Bloom upgrade dates from last year). These upgrades do, however, beg various questions:

Ӣ What happens when an upgrade involves the loss of a feature prized by a user?

Ӣ How can app developers best plan for future changes, so that an interface can allow for growth?

”¢ What does it mean to the making of music that an app — in effect, an instrument — is not a fixed tool, but an ever-changing thing?

Ӣ Will upgrade development always follow a linear trajectory, or will various offshoots head in different directions?

Ӣ How can the iTunes Store better help users to make informed decisions about whether or not to upgrade?

These all come down to a singular question:

Ӣ What is the social contract between app users and app developers in regard to questions of continuity, transparency, and general development support?

Here are three examples of app upgrades — what those upgrades consisted of, how they played out in the app’s interface, and what they suggest about the developer’s goals and intentions:

Adding Multiple Screens in Gliss: Gliss is a relatively new music app, launched in December 2009, but quickly showing promise with its emphasis on the gestural aspects of the iPod’s touch interface. The screens below show version 1.0 (top) and 1.1 (bottom) of the main performance interface. The change is the numeral “2.” (Ignore the scraggly lines on the screen — those are the graphics associated with the way touches result in music being played in Gliss. And also ignore the fact that the fifth icon in from the left along the menu bar differs between the two images — those are simply two states of that particular control in Gliss.)

What the single numeral “2” indicates is the major alteration from version 1.0 to 1.1, in that the program now provides what the developer calls “multiple sheets.” These “sheets” allow the user to produce different individual musical segments within a composition, and to then move between those segments. The implementation isn’t perfect (the gesture to move between sheets can result in inadvertently altering a given sheet’s composition), but the interface change suggests the programmers were planning ahead. Note that the “2” appears in a wide space that was previously empty.

Introducing Effects in DopplerPad: When DopplerPad upgraded recently to version 2.0, it really earned its $9.99 price tag. The upgrade included the introduction of a synth editor, various effects, and the ability to edit those effects. The two shots immediately below show the main interface before (top) and after (bottom) the introduction of effects. Note that the placement of the effect button along the bottom required other buttons to decrease in size. And it threw off the symmetry of the menu bar.

This screen below shows the list of effects in DopplerPad 2.0. The empty spot is a bit inelegant, but in the culture of apps, where change is expected, the emptiness serves a purpose: it suggests a promise of new effects in the future. More immediately and practically, it also provides space for user-edited effects to be added to the interface:

And this screen below shows the DopplerPad “Tools” menu. In the previous version, this only had the “AudioCopy” and “WifiSync” buttons; the “Synths” and “Effects” buttons are new. Needless to say, there’s a lot of room on this screen for additions. One thing app developers need to balance is how much room to leave for future additions, and how much that empty space might inadvertently raise the expectations of users:

Reflecting Generational Change in Bloom: Below are the “about” screens for the two most recent versions of the Bloom app, the more recent one (on the right) quietly announcing the upgrade to 2.0 (and, for trainspotters, newly crediting the app’s icon to menu designer Brett Gilbert):

There are numerous changes not only to the Bloom software as a tool, but also to the way that tool’s interface is designed. On one screen, for example, the prominence of the Listen button, relative the Freeze and Clear buttons, has been eliminated. This isn’t a big deal for most users, but for anyone using Bloom in performance, it might require some unexpected adjustment.

Below is a shot of one big boon to Bloom 2.0: the introduction of three additional sounds (or, in Bloom lingo, “moods”), as shown on the right:

The main screen, below, marks the biggest change to the program. In what I’d argue is a major break from the Zen-like casualness of the original Bloom, version 2.0 opens with a potentially confusing variety of choices. (The in-screen advertising for two other apps, Trope and Air, also diminishes the calm of the original.) There are now three modes: Classic, Infinite, and Freestyle. The explanation for “Classic” is of no use to newcomers to Bloom, in that to understand it you need to have experienced Bloom prior to version 2.0:

The name “Classic” seems premature, given that the software isn’t even a year and a half old. It does, however, hint at the tension inherent in iterative software design for casual users, and suggests that it may become a norm that apps will include within them their previous two or three major iterations. That would reflect a certain transparency, in that it allows for hands-on comparison between versions by users, and also allows for users to transition from one version to the next at their own pace, continuing to use the familiar version while experimenting with the revised version.

Rating Ratings Systems: In the short term, one thing that might help address “interface lag” is for the iTunes Store to implement an interface alteration itself. I’d welcome ratings visualization along the lines of what Yelp.com currently does. Below is, on the left, Yelp’s customer “rating distribution” summary chart, which closely resembles the one in iTunes; iTunes actually goes a step further than Yelp, listing the number of reviews next to each distribution (i.e., DopplerPad has as of this writing 27 5-star reviews overall, out of a total of 61 reviews). On the right below, however, is something iTunes has yet to adapt, something that Yelp terms its “rating trend,” which shows how average ratings for a given business have changed over time:

To be fair, iTunes approximates the Yelp “rating trend” by allowing you to separately view ratings for the most recent version of an application, or the combined ratings of all versions of the application.

The Yelp summary above happens to be for an Indian restaurant near my home in San Francisco, and reflects the restaurant’s struggle to reclaim its once stellar reputation following the exit of its chef. But it could just as likely reflect the struggle by an app developer after an inadequate software upgrade.

Quote of the Week: Between Art & Science

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

From an interview with media artist Andrea Polli, who is discussing the difference between artists and scientists:

“The difference between the two for me has been when you get down to the nitty gritty making the work. Not being scientists and being familiar with all the scientific tools, I usually can’t be involved with the hands on scientific work. So I can ask if data sets can be formatted in certain ways but I can’t actually do it alongside the scientists. With other artists it’s different, all of us can get into the code of what we’re doing and make adjustments. So there’s a little bit of a disconnect unfortunately when working with scientists, where you have to use language to communicate the ideas rather than working directly. So this requires a lot of clarity and a lot of understanding of what the science is.”

The interview was conducted by Mark Peter Wright, and it was published earlier this month at earroom.wordpress.com, which hosts an ongoing series of interviews about sound art. Polli has produced an extensive body of work, sometimes in collaboration with scientists

The Polli-Wright conversation covers a lot of bases, some alarming (one gallery scheduled to display Polli’s work seems inordinately focused on real-time processing, presumably because it’s more immediately exciting to an audience than is the time-intensiveness of research-based work), some historical (she talks about the early days of personal computing, when programming was something far more common for computer users to participate in than it is today), some about the limits of art (she notes that for all the potential in acoustic technologies, the world is best experienced through that particularly complex technology: the human body).

By distinguishing artists from scientists, Polli helps accentuate the point that simply employing technology doesn’t make one a scientist — the life’s pursuit that is scientific inquiry is a distinct type of engagement than is that of the artist. And while scientific and artistic pursuits have much in common, they also have significant differences, ones not to be lost sight of. And while much computer music has its roots in science, and while many computer musicians may have advanced facility with the technological components they utilize, they are not to be mistaken for scientists.

Polli’s point of view reminds me of that of artist Gail Wight, whom I interviewed recently for Nature (see nature.co.uk), in that Polli’s affection for science makes her respect the divide between herself and the scientists with whom she collaborates, and (as I interpret her comments) makes her wary of anyone who might employ science as a guise intended to undeservedly suggest depth or complexity, something Wight has expressed concern in regard to.

More on Polli at andreapolli.com.