A long distance relationship is a project done Cecdet Erek, who is one of the founding members of an experimental outfit called Necropsy. The project focuses on the relationship between two points, space or time. The continuation of his ongoing project Rulers and Rhythms lies in between two rhythms centered pieces conceived for MUAC: Measures Taken and Close FarClose. This project is not only music itself but also combines computational musind architecture. I think it is very cool to vary the media and add elements to other projects. I thinking of

Changxi Zheng is a professor at Columbia University who leads a team of researchers looking at ways to use computers to modify the sound of existing acoustic instruments.
One project that really caught my eye is called “zoolophone.” Zheng and his team studied the ways that professional tuners adjust glockenspiel keys–by digging into the material and making divits that allow it to vibrate at the exact desired frequency. Zheng looked into the ways that computers could make this process easier, and discovered that by modeling this same interaction on a computer, they could calculate the exact vibration that the keys would make based on their shape. In this way, he was able to manipulate the shape of the keys, something that isn’t done usually with traditionally made instruments since it’s hard enough to tune rectangular shapes.

(video caption): The metallophone contact sounds is a project the team worked on to manipulate different within set algorithms in order to maintain a certain tone.

This allowed his team to have more fun with the shapes, too. He wrote a program that asks the computer o start with a certain shape, such as a t-rex, and then text vibrations against it and manipulate it’s form slightly until it makes the right particular sound they were looking for.
I found this very interesting because I am always interested in tools that designers make in order to educate children, and this seems like a useful tool for teaching about different notes.

For this week’s looking outwards post, I will discuss the artist Mileece, a  sound artist and environmental designer who is known for her methods of making music with plants.

Mileece creates generative music , one track which can be listened to above, and on this link. The way she generates this music is by essentially reading electrical currents given off by  plants via electrodes, and processing the current into binary code— which is then processed and animated into sound. Often, this creates sound that feels like music.

Vice created great documentation of her process at the following video:

What I love about Mileece’s music is the duality of the generative work. In some ways, the music is generated purely from the plant, it’s a radical change in our perception of what a plant is and is capable of, but it’s reprocessed by the computer. The computer is a key part of our ability to interpret the plant as music in the first place. Because of this, it feels impossible to define her music without the discussion of computation.

Will we start to breed plants to generate totally new sounds?

At the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in 2016, Deloitte Digital created an interactive space where people could use touch sensors to generate electronic music. Known as the ARC (Audience Reactive Composition), the space holds programmable objects that use sensors to adjust the amplitude, pitch, and other elements of exclusive tracks. According to DJ Baio, an electronic artist with expertise on the project, the installation is controlled using Ableton software. Ableton, which is commonly used in electronic live concerts, can be used to adjust notes, frequency, and samples of audio to create unique versions of tracks so every performance is unique. I admire this project as it allows people with no experience in the computational sound world to create their own generative music. Moreover, adopting responsive technology to make music allows endless opportunities to create that would otherwise be impossible.