Final Exhibition at EXIT ART gallery
final video.
Make image at Processing -> sending position data of balls every at 4 frame to Chuck
-> Chuck make sound use that data
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Final Idea
Making algorithmic music by algorithmic rule.
Algorithm
Lorenz attractor
The Lorenz attractor is a 3-dimensional structure corresponding to the long-term behavior of a chaotic flow, noted for its butterfly shape. The map shows how the state of a dynamical system (the three variables of a three-dimensional system) evolves over time in a complex, non-repeating pattern.
The attractor itself, and the equations from which it is derived, were introduced by Edward Lorenz in 1963, who derived it from the simplified equations of convection rolls arising in the equations of the atmosphere.
From a technical standpoint, the system is nonlinear, three-dimensional and deterministic. In 2001 it was proven by Warwick Tucker that for a certain set of parameters the system exhibits chaotic behavior and displays what is today called a strange attractor. The strange attractor in this case is a fractal of Hausdorff dimension between 2 and 3. Grassberger (1983) has estimated the Hausdorff dimension to be 2.06 ± 0.01 and the correlation dimension to be 2.05 ± 0.01.
The system arises in lasers, dynamos, and specific waterwheels [1].
The equations that govern the Lorenz attractor are:
where σ is called the Prandtl number and ρ is called the Rayleigh number. All σ, ρ, β > 0, but usually σ = 10, β = 8/3 and ρ is varied. The system exhibits chaotic behavior for ρ = 28 but displays knotted periodic orbits for other values of ρ. For example, with ρ = 99.96 it becomes a T(3,2) torus knot.
The attractor itself, and the equations from which it is derived, were introduced by Edward Lorenz in 1963, who derived it from the simplified equations of convection rolls arising in the equations of the atmosphere.
From a technical standpoint, the system is nonlinear, three-dimensional and deterministic. In 2001 it was proven by Warwick Tucker that for a certain set of parameters the system exhibits chaotic behavior and displays what is today called a strange attractor. The strange attractor in this case is a fractal of Hausdorff dimension between 2 and 3. Grassberger (1983) has estimated the Hausdorff dimension to be 2.06 ± 0.01 and the correlation dimension to be 2.05 ± 0.01.
The system arises in lasers, dynamos, and specific waterwheels [1].
The equations that govern the Lorenz attractor are:
where σ is called the Prandtl number and ρ is called the Rayleigh number. All σ, ρ, β > 0, but usually σ = 10, β = 8/3 and ρ is varied. The system exhibits chaotic behavior for ρ = 28 but displays knotted periodic orbits for other values of ρ. For example, with ρ = 99.96 it becomes a T(3,2) torus knot.
References
Lorenz, E. N. (1963). "Deterministic nonperiodic flow". J. Atmos. Sci. 20: 130-141. doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020%3C0130:DNF%3E2.0.CO;2.
Frøyland, J., Alfsen, K. H. (1984). "Lyapunov-exponent spectra for the Lorenz model". Phys. Rev. A 29: 2928–2931.
Tucker, W. (2002). "A Rigorous ODE Solver and Smale's 14th Problem". Found. Comp. Math. 2: 53-117.
Strogatz, Steven H. (1994). Nonlinear Systems and Chaos. Perseus publishing.
Jonas Bergman, Knots in the Lorentz system, Undergraduate thesis, Uppsala University 2004.
P. Grassberger and I. Procaccia (1983). "Measuring the strangeness of strange attractors". Physica D 9: 189-208. doi:10.1016/0167-2789(83)90298-1.
External links
Lorenz, E. N. (1963). "Deterministic nonperiodic flow". J. Atmos. Sci. 20: 130-141. doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020%3C0130:DNF%3E2.0.CO;2.
Frøyland, J., Alfsen, K. H. (1984). "Lyapunov-exponent spectra for the Lorenz model". Phys. Rev. A 29: 2928–2931.
Tucker, W. (2002). "A Rigorous ODE Solver and Smale's 14th Problem". Found. Comp. Math. 2: 53-117.
Strogatz, Steven H. (1994). Nonlinear Systems and Chaos. Perseus publishing.
Jonas Bergman, Knots in the Lorentz system, Undergraduate thesis, Uppsala University 2004.
P. Grassberger and I. Procaccia (1983). "Measuring the strangeness of strange attractors". Physica D 9: 189-208. doi:10.1016/0167-2789(83)90298-1.
External links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_attractor
Eric W. Weisstein, Lorenz Attractor at MathWorld.
Lorenz Equation on planetmath.org
Lorenz Attractor Interactive Animation (you need the Adobe Shockwave plugin)
Levitated.net: computational art and design
3D VRML Lorenz Attractor (you need a VRML viewer plugin)
JAVA Applet - butterfly effect, Lorenz and Rossler attractors
Essay on Lorenz Attractors in J - see J programming language
Eric W. Weisstein, Lorenz Attractor at MathWorld.
Lorenz Equation on planetmath.org
Lorenz Attractor Interactive Animation (you need the Adobe Shockwave plugin)
Levitated.net: computational art and design
3D VRML Lorenz Attractor (you need a VRML viewer plugin)
JAVA Applet - butterfly effect, Lorenz and Rossler attractors
Essay on Lorenz Attractors in J - see J programming language
Friday, October 26, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Meditation 1: Lost in Translation - English to Korean
English-French-Greman-English
the complete works of William Shakespeare
1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
-Des creatures les plus justes nous desirons l'augmentation,
-Gerechteste Kreaturen wunschen wir die Erhohung,
-Fairest creatures wish we the increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
-Que la rose de la beaute pourrait ne jamais mourir de ce fait,
-Da©¬ die Rose der Schonheit nie daher sterben konnte,
-That the rose of the beauty could never die therefore,
But as the riper should by time decease,
-Mais comme le plus mur devrait par temps deceder,
-Aber, da das reifste durch Zeit sterben mu©¬te,
-But, since the ripest would have to die by time,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
-Son heritier tendre pourrait soutenir sa memoire :
-Sein zarter Erbe konnte sein Gedachtnis unterstutzen:
-Its tender inheritance could be memory to support:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
-Mais le thou s'est contracte au thine possedent les yeux lumineux,
-Aber das thou hat sich an thine zusammengezogen besitzen die leuchtenden Augen,
-But thou has itself to thine pulled together to possess the bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
-La flamme de la lumiere thy de Feed'st avec du carburant de art de l'auto-portrait-substantial,
-Die Flamme des Lichtes thy von Feed' Ster mit Kunsttreibstoff auto-portrait-substantial,
-The flame of the light thy of feed ' ster with art fuel car portrait substantial,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
-Fabrication d'une famine ou l'abondance se trouve,
-Herstellung einer Hungersnot, wo der Uberflu©¬ sich befindet,
-Production of a hunger emergency, where the abundance is,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
-Ennemi thy d'art de l'auto-portrait de Thy, a l'art de l'auto-portrait doux thy trop cruel :
-Feind thy der Kunst des Selbstportrats von Thy an der Kunst des zarten Selbstportrats zu grausames thy:
-Enemy thy the art of the Selbstportraets of Thy at the art of the tender Selbstportraets too cruel thy:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
-Thou qui art maintenant l'ornement frais du monde,
-Thou, das Kunst, die die der Welt frische Verzierung aufrechterhalt,
-Thou, art, which maintains those the world fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
-Et seulement heraut au ressort voyant,
-Und nur Bote an der auffallenden Feder,
-And only messenger at the remarkable feather/spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
-Dans le thine possedez le contenu thy buriest de bourgeon,
-In thine besitzen den Inhalt thy buriest der Knospe,
-Into thine possess contents thy buriest the bud,
And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding:
-Et perte tendre de mak'st de churl dans niggarding :
-Und zarter Verlust von mak' churlster in niggarding:
-And tender loss of mak ' more churlster in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
-Plaignez le monde, ou bien ce glutton soit,
-Bedauern sich Sie die Welt, oder dieses glutton ist,
-Regret you the world, or this glow clay/tone is,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
-Pour manger le monde du, par la tombe et le thee.
-Um die geschuldete Welt zu essen durch das Grab und thee.
-Around the owed world to eat by the grave and thee.
the complete works of William Shakespeare
1
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
-Des creatures les plus justes nous desirons l'augmentation,
-Gerechteste Kreaturen wunschen wir die Erhohung,
-Fairest creatures wish we the increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
-Que la rose de la beaute pourrait ne jamais mourir de ce fait,
-Da©¬ die Rose der Schonheit nie daher sterben konnte,
-That the rose of the beauty could never die therefore,
But as the riper should by time decease,
-Mais comme le plus mur devrait par temps deceder,
-Aber, da das reifste durch Zeit sterben mu©¬te,
-But, since the ripest would have to die by time,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
-Son heritier tendre pourrait soutenir sa memoire :
-Sein zarter Erbe konnte sein Gedachtnis unterstutzen:
-Its tender inheritance could be memory to support:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
-Mais le thou s'est contracte au thine possedent les yeux lumineux,
-Aber das thou hat sich an thine zusammengezogen besitzen die leuchtenden Augen,
-But thou has itself to thine pulled together to possess the bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
-La flamme de la lumiere thy de Feed'st avec du carburant de art de l'auto-portrait-substantial,
-Die Flamme des Lichtes thy von Feed' Ster mit Kunsttreibstoff auto-portrait-substantial,
-The flame of the light thy of feed ' ster with art fuel car portrait substantial,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
-Fabrication d'une famine ou l'abondance se trouve,
-Herstellung einer Hungersnot, wo der Uberflu©¬ sich befindet,
-Production of a hunger emergency, where the abundance is,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
-Ennemi thy d'art de l'auto-portrait de Thy, a l'art de l'auto-portrait doux thy trop cruel :
-Feind thy der Kunst des Selbstportrats von Thy an der Kunst des zarten Selbstportrats zu grausames thy:
-Enemy thy the art of the Selbstportraets of Thy at the art of the tender Selbstportraets too cruel thy:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
-Thou qui art maintenant l'ornement frais du monde,
-Thou, das Kunst, die die der Welt frische Verzierung aufrechterhalt,
-Thou, art, which maintains those the world fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
-Et seulement heraut au ressort voyant,
-Und nur Bote an der auffallenden Feder,
-And only messenger at the remarkable feather/spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
-Dans le thine possedez le contenu thy buriest de bourgeon,
-In thine besitzen den Inhalt thy buriest der Knospe,
-Into thine possess contents thy buriest the bud,
And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding:
-Et perte tendre de mak'st de churl dans niggarding :
-Und zarter Verlust von mak' churlster in niggarding:
-And tender loss of mak ' more churlster in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
-Plaignez le monde, ou bien ce glutton soit,
-Bedauern sich Sie die Welt, oder dieses glutton ist,
-Regret you the world, or this glow clay/tone is,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
-Pour manger le monde du, par la tombe et le thee.
-Um die geschuldete Welt zu essen durch das Grab und thee.
-Around the owed world to eat by the grave and thee.
Meditation 1: Lost in Translation
Random thought number one:
The composer John Cage spent a fair portion of his musical career dealing with the problem of compositional process. He found it disappointing (and somewhat amusing) that four hundred years of Western art music had spawned a generation of composers who were willing to jettison conventional rules of harmony, instrumentation, etc., but were very conservative with regards to the creative act of composition itself. Cage's use of chance interventions, the I-Ching, and highly physical, task-based composition techniques were in many ways an articulation of his belief that the process of music making was just as important as the end result. John Cage's correspondence with Pierre Boulez is based around this debate.
Random thought number two:
The Altavista language translation engine (optimistically dubbed Babelfish, after the creature in Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) is widely used as a quick-and-dirty text and hypertext translation service by millions of people worldwide. It is also widely reviled for its amazing lack of basic vocabulary in commonly-used languages and its complete lack of credibility when performing translations. One way to explore this phenomenon is by discovering translations that fail to properly invert (e.g. the translation from language A to language B and back again does not result in anything remotely resembling the original text). Two of my favorites from the English-to-French and French-English services:
English: i miss you
French: je m'ennuie de vous
English: I am bored you
English: my dog has fleas
French: mon chien a des puces
English: my dog has chips
French: mon chien a des morceaux
English: my dog has pieces
The Task:
The two above random thoughts have kernels of intersection; one may be that translation can be seen as a process that, when used literally, can provide unexpected and compositionally interesting outcomes.
Keeping this in mind, create a brief compositional study which explores one or more translation faults in the Babelfish service. Feel free to explore multiple chains of translation (e.g. English-to-French-to-Portuguese-to-English). Don't worry if you don't understand one of the languages your working with. That might even be better. Record yourself speaking the resulting text piece (either one side of the translation or both). Bring it in on Class 6 (in a little under two weeks). We'll give it a listen and put it on the radio.
P.S. If you haven't guessed yet, you don't need Processing or Csound to do this meditation. Just make sure to correctly transcribe the actions you performed on the Altavista site so that you can explain and repeat your process (in other words, I want to see a notation of the piece). As source material, I recommend commonly used colloquial phrases, the complete works of William Shakespeare (you can feed Babelfish a URL, too!) or anything written by Rush Limbaugh. Have fun.
The composer John Cage spent a fair portion of his musical career dealing with the problem of compositional process. He found it disappointing (and somewhat amusing) that four hundred years of Western art music had spawned a generation of composers who were willing to jettison conventional rules of harmony, instrumentation, etc., but were very conservative with regards to the creative act of composition itself. Cage's use of chance interventions, the I-Ching, and highly physical, task-based composition techniques were in many ways an articulation of his belief that the process of music making was just as important as the end result. John Cage's correspondence with Pierre Boulez is based around this debate.
Random thought number two:
The Altavista language translation engine (optimistically dubbed Babelfish, after the creature in Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) is widely used as a quick-and-dirty text and hypertext translation service by millions of people worldwide. It is also widely reviled for its amazing lack of basic vocabulary in commonly-used languages and its complete lack of credibility when performing translations. One way to explore this phenomenon is by discovering translations that fail to properly invert (e.g. the translation from language A to language B and back again does not result in anything remotely resembling the original text). Two of my favorites from the English-to-French and French-English services:
English: i miss you
French: je m'ennuie de vous
English: I am bored you
English: my dog has fleas
French: mon chien a des puces
English: my dog has chips
French: mon chien a des morceaux
English: my dog has pieces
The Task:
The two above random thoughts have kernels of intersection; one may be that translation can be seen as a process that, when used literally, can provide unexpected and compositionally interesting outcomes.
Keeping this in mind, create a brief compositional study which explores one or more translation faults in the Babelfish service. Feel free to explore multiple chains of translation (e.g. English-to-French-to-Portuguese-to-English). Don't worry if you don't understand one of the languages your working with. That might even be better. Record yourself speaking the resulting text piece (either one side of the translation or both). Bring it in on Class 6 (in a little under two weeks). We'll give it a listen and put it on the radio.
P.S. If you haven't guessed yet, you don't need Processing or Csound to do this meditation. Just make sure to correctly transcribe the actions you performed on the Altavista site so that you can explain and repeat your process (in other words, I want to see a notation of the piece). As source material, I recommend commonly used colloquial phrases, the complete works of William Shakespeare (you can feed Babelfish a URL, too!) or anything written by Rush Limbaugh. Have fun.
Syllabus.
R. Luke DuBois
e-mail: luke@music.columbia.eduphone: 212-854-9266 (Computer Music Center, Columbia University)
Introduction
Hi there. Algorithmic Composition is a production class aimed at getting everyone generating music usingalgorithmic procedures. This is to serve two purposes: first, to get everyone used to the idea that music is ahighly procedural art form that can be used to expressively present a dense amount of information in apleasing way; second, the course aims to provide a fun and stimulating excuse (making music) to learnmore about designing and implementing algorithms in both physical practice and procedural code. We’llbe looking at examples of algorithmic thinking in music dating from the distant past to the present, both inpre-compositional and performance situations, listening to as much repertoire as we can. Along the waywe’ll look at and learn to implement a wide variety of algorithmic techniques.Prerequisites / Software
This class assumes no specific knowledge of music theory and musicianship, Western or non-Western;along the way we’ll learn just enough music theory to make ourselves dangerous. However, as aproduction class it’s extremely useful if you’ve had some basic exposure to MIDI, digital sound, and someof the software tools that exist for manipulating sound and music on the computer. We’ll look at our classexercises using a wide variety of musical tools, but most of our procedural programming will be done in theProcessing environment, using it to write instructions for a computer music language called Csound. We’llalso look at some examples of real-time compositional interaction in ChucK and Max/MSP.
Texts / Resources
In order to save everyone the time and money of books and whatnot, I’ll be scanning a few readings, aswell as posting links to articles and whatever code we use in class on the course website:
http://itp.nyu.edu/~rd64/ac
In addition, we have both a discussion list for the class (itp-ac). I’ll show everyone how to sign up as soonas I have the list configured and the class roster is finalized.
Assignments and Grades
For this class I’d like everyone to create a number of short musical studies as part of the journey towards afinal piece of a few minutes duration. Your final piece can be a tape work (i.e. we play it off of a CD), agenerative piece (we run a computer program that plays it) or an interactive work that requires user input(from a musician or otherwise) to run. Whatever the case, there will be a class performance at the end ofthe semester at a gallery location in New York where we can all play our final pieces for each other and ourfriends. As a result, the work breakdown for the class is as follows:
• Everyone needs to show up and participate in class. (30%)
• Everyone needs to complete three out of the twelve-or-so weekly ‘meditations’ which I will post to theweb site starting the third week of class. These sketches are simple conceptual assignments involving workwith algorithmic composition. (20%)
• I’d like everyone to keep an online journal/blog/wiki/whatever containing information about their finalproject goals and progress as it emerges. (20%)
• Everyone needs to create a final project in the form of a musical work that can be played/ran/performed infront of an audience. Everyone will be expected to participate in a mid-term critique as well as a groupperformance / show at the end of the term. Group work is welcome as is the integration of your work intoprojects for other classes / your thesis / etc, though for the class performance a more scaled-down executionof the work that concentrates on the musical aspect may be necessary. If you work in a group pleaseremember that everyone in the group will receive the same grade; I will not attempt to discern anydifference in contribution among the members of a group. (30%)
Class Schedule
This schedule is subject to change depending on the interests and pace of the class, etc. In addition, threeguest speakers will come in and talk about their work to the class; which specific class they appear ondepends on their scheduling and availability.
Class 1: The problem of perception. The problem of mapping. An overview of the class and the historyand repertoire of procedural composition.
Class 2: Indeterminacy and aleatoric music. Dice games and the legacy of divination theory. Introductionto procedural programming for classical CM languages (Csound).
Class 3: Stochastic music and probability systems. Random distributions and Markov chains.
Class 4: Data mining. The world as your noise source.
Class 5: Rule-based composition. Generative (process) music, automata, and formal grammars.
Class 6: Guest speaker.
Class 7: Midterm critique / discussion.
Class 8: Equation-mining and iterative functions. Playing with real-time systems.
Class 9: Guest speaker.
Class 10: Neural nets and genetic algorithms.
Class 11: Mapping for synthesis, sound collage, and signal processing.
Class 12: Mapping for interactive works. Machine musicianship.
Class 13: Guest speaker. Private meetings.
Class 14: Final critique and preparations for performance.
CLASS FINAL PERFORMANCE TBA!!!Enjoy the class!
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