LookingOutwards-10 – Page 4 – [OLD FALL 2019] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Nawon Choi— Looking Outward 10

“THIS is computer music” Ted Talk by Ge Wang

I came across this Tedx Talk from a Stanford professor named Ge Wang. Wang is an assistant professor at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He conducts research on computer music and works on a variety of projects ranging from being the author of ChucK a music programming language to a Laptop and Mobile Phone Orchestras. I thought it was really interesting that he is conducting research at an educational institution.

I really admired the way Wang focuses not just on the production of music, but the individual person’s expression of the music. This intentionality is expressed in through the various ways he implemented his computer music instruments. Each “instrument’s” sound and the way the sound is generated is highly reliant on the musician’s decisions on the way they play the instrument. Moreover, Wang really takes advantage of the “computer” aspect of computer music by creating something really beautiful through his music creating app, Smule. Users from all over the world were able to add their voices to a rendition of “Lean on Me” to send hope to earthquake victims in Japan in 2011 (last example in the video).

YouieCho-LookingOutwards-10

“Queer Trash Presents: Max Hamel.” Performance on April 12, 2019 by Max Hamel

This is a performance of gender blur, noise abstraction, and intimate electricity. The event in which this performance happened is Queer Trash, which celebrates the potential for noise to be a process that undoes fixed meanings, upsets hierarchies, and also collapses socially constructed order, although it is often considered something inevitable but unwanted. Max Hamel represents noise as something with an independent meaning itself, as something queer. I couldn’t find much about an algorithm that goes behind this work, but I think the randomness of noise is the nature of what he wants to express. I can see that he is controlling the various computational noise with his hands, and there are sections that are more defined with fewer amount of sounds, and other sections that are a combination of many sounds. I think this is very sensible of him to create levels of intensity, which is what often happens in music.

https://issueprojectroom.org/video/queer-trash-presents-max-hamel

Caroline Song – Looking Outwards 10 – Computer Music

The installation of sound art that I will be looking at this week is called “Cycling Wheel“ by Keith Lam, Seth Hon, and Alex Lai, made in 2017.

This piece of art was inspired from the Bicycle Wheel piece made by Marcel Duchamp. It borrows the concept from Duchamp and redesigns it as an interactive and performative installation piece.

I was attracted to this project because of the way it reimagines something as simple as a bicycle wheel (which is an object that is commonly known), into an interactive art piece that brings dynamic motion through light and sound to this static object. It takes the bicycle wheel and allows the audience to imagine it when it actually is functioning through an entire bicycle. Furthermore, it takes the experience of biking one step further by introducing sound and light into the mechanics, which is not the typical way you experience biking. The most intriguing thing about this piece is how the artists have managed to reimagine such a well-known activity that most people experience into something new, which shows their artistic sensibilities coming out in their want to allow their audience to experience a sensation that they’ve been familiar with in a new way, using computational art instead of traditional art.

The algorithms that the artists seem to have used include “tailor made control panel software”. This is through the open source programming language, Processing. They also have used programs like Arduino, as well as using different units in order to control different areas of the piece, such as the control of the music, the control of the light beams, and the control of the LED strips.

Julia Nishizaki – Looking Outwards – 10

“Hello, World,” Iamus’s first complete composition, 2011

This week, I chose to look into the San Francisco startup, Melomics Media, and their computational system for automatically composing music. Melomics has created two “computer-musicians,” Iamus and Melomics109. Iamus is a computer cluster which is currently located at the Universidad de Málaga in Spain, where it was developed in 2010. Iamus composed “Opus One” on October 15, 2010, which was the first fragment of professional contemporary classical music to be composed by a computer in its own style, as it was not attempting to copy a previous composer’s work. A year later, “Helo, World,” Iamus’s first complete composition premiered, and in 2012, the London Symphony Orchestra recorded 10 of Iamus’s pieces, creating “Iamus,” the first studio album composed using this computational system.

It takes Iamus 8 minutes to create a new composition and to output this data into multiple formats. According to the Universidad de Málaga’s website, the algorithm that Iamus uses is built on data-structures that act as genomes in order to create possible compositions.

While listening to “Hello, World” I was surprised by both how contemporary and dissonant the piece sounded, and how an entire, fairly coherent piece of chamber music could be composed by a computer. However, the constant tension in the piece, combined by the very human musicians and their interpretations gives “Hello, World” an uncanny valley feel, because the piece is technically music, but something still seems slightly off. I’m curious as to why Melomics decided to go in this direction, rather than to create music that is composed of “new” sounds and is entirely unplayable by humans.

Sarah Choi – Looking Outwards – 10

https://www.smule.com/

Smule is a startup company, co-founded by Ge Wang, exploring social mobile music-making into a unique platform for research and development combining music and computational algorithms. Ge Wang, Stanford’s assistant professor at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), has made a difference in combining programming languages and interactive software with computational music.

This music-making application through social media gives a space for the public to portray their individual styles by showing how they think, work, and play through sound and music. Smule’s algorithm generates sounds and video from one’s device and synchronizes the two streams in real-time. It uses audio processing to create more effects such as duets, so one doesn’t have to go through the process of editing his or her own video and sound. It also has available transitions to make the music more of one’s own.

Ge Wang talks a lot about how technology shapes us to be more individualistic and how we can use technology to express ourselves to the public. Because of this, Smule’s final form manifests Ge Wang’s passion to create a platform for everyone to do exactly this. His application has been able to reach millions as people appreciate others’ true art forms.

Min Ji Kim Kim – Looking Outwards – 10

Overview of the Prélude in ACGT project by Pierry Jaquillard.

Prélude in ACGT, created by Pierry Jaquillard at the Media and Interaction Design Unit at ECAL, utilizes Jaquillard’s own DNA chromosomes data and transforms it to generate sound. This project created through JavaScript, midi and Ableton Live, consists of five interfaces. Two of the interfaces allow the user to control features such as tempo or musical arrangement while the other three, visualize sound, the algorithm type and the DNA itself. The user can also export the midi file to record and generate a musical score using music notation software.

User interface screens of the different features that can be controlled to manipulate the sound.

I really admire this project because it seamlessly combines the field of human biology with computer science. The idea of “coding” DNA is quite practically literally represented in this project. Furthermore, I believe that this project has endless possibilities. No one’s DNA is the same which means that using this software, we would be able to create extremely unique pieces of music.

552 page musical score representing 0.2% of Jaquillard’s DNA.

Lauren Park – Looking Outwards – 10

Artist Cyrill Studer created a music video of “Baby Behold” for a band called Carvel’ on May 5, 2017. Because this song contained electronically and upbeat tunes, the artist decided to use different forms of an ellipse that match the rhythm of the song. I really admire how video making interacts with algorithm in this piece, where color, shifting and moving shapes can represent the overall vibe of the song and make it easy for listeners to be hooked by the beat of the music. I personally enjoyed this very simplistic visual concept of one ellipse going through different changes as the song progresses. These visuals were created by translating code in the program called Processing. And then After Effects was used for video editing.

The artist was aiming to create computer graphics that take on an older, vintage look. And the simple pattern of how the ellipse moves as well as the dark teal color does seem to remind us of an old-fashioned reference to how older computers looked when it ran. This seems to be successful especially when the music has electronic elements that combines harmoniously with this visual theme.

https://cyrillstuder.ch/carvel-baby-behold

Carvel’ – Baby Behold(2017) by Cyrill Studer

Claire Lee – Looking Outwards – 10

I decided to write about a short musical piece created by computer music artist and pioneer Laurie Spiegel called Strand of Life (‘Viroid’). I did listen to several other pieces in her album Unseen World, but Strand of Life was really fascinating to me because of both the conception and the result. This piece also interested me because it was so similar in concept to the sound art piece I wrote about in my Looking-Outwards-04, Pierry Jacquillard’s Prélude in ACGT, so I was interested to see each artist’s unique approach to the concept of generating music with patterns derived from genetic material.

Spiegel got the idea for this piece while she was sick with an infection-taking that as inspiration, she converted a viroid’s DNA into midi data and used that as the base for her musical track. I imagine that the algorithm behind the DNA-midi conversion was relatively straightforward, but she incorporates other elements (vocals, instrumentals) that were also partly computer-generated that make the piece much more complex than the sound art I wrote about previously.

Mihika Bansal – Looking Outwards – 10

For this post I will be looking at the project, Sounding Circuits – Audible Histories. This piece is an interactive audio system surrounded by rare objects, artifacts, and recordings from the early history of electronic music. It was installed at Columbia University with their Department of Music. this exhibition highlights the significant contributions of pioneering electronic and computer music composers Otto Luening, Pauline Oliveros, Edgar Varèse, and Charles Dodge. The piece specifically highlights the manner in which their different way of thinking caused so much progress in the music world.

The audio itself is presented in a 360 degree manner causing the users to become completely immersed into the space. This piece was curated by Seth Cluett.

Video that displays what the exhibit is like

Kristine Kim- Looking Outwards-10

Weather Thingy, created by Adrien Kaeser at ECAL( Media and Interaction Design Unit), is a custom hand built sound controller that uses real time climate-related events to control and modify the settings of musical instrument. The device are made up of two main parts in which are a weather station on a tripod microphone and a custom built controller connected to the weather station. The controller is formulated with a brightness sensor and an interface allowing it to assign the various parameters received to audio effects and it transform climatic data into midi data which can be interpreted by instruments.

4 interface screens each displaying a data received by one of the 4 sensors

Kaeser was interested in being able to use the controller in Live so that the listeners can feel the impact of the climate on the composition. It is also possible to use the device in the studio by pre-recording the climate data of a certain place at a certain time. This allows the musician to capture moments that he has found inspiring to create new melodies. I was really interested in this piece because of Kaeser’s use of technology and nature. Not just naturalistic ideas or a project derived from an idea of nature but the actual form and nature. I don’t recall seeing any projects that incorporated such an intricate technique of technology and weather together. I was very impressed by the all prototypes and the process of turning this project into reality. I also admire that it can be controlled live so that the audience can feel the real time impact of the climate on the work.

Weather Thingy ECAL/ Adrien Kaseser, How-to, run down of the project.