JayQClone

Paper Link

Download MiniThesis.pdf

Minithesis Presentation

The following are three snapshots from my minithesis presentation:

Overview:

Stage Setup Wireframe:

Elements of the Setup:

Precedent videos

Initial Sketches for Prototype

    These are my initial ideas for instrument sensor implementation.  The design for the violin can easily be transposed to work for the cello with a few variations, and the clarinet will present it's own unique challenges.  The principle I'd like to keep in the forefront of design priorities is for the musician to have the ultimate control of real-time manipulation rather than having someone manipulating data from the computer.  By giving the musicians onboard controls, they will be able to dictate the sound of their instrument while they're playing. 

    These considerations will be reflected in the score based on where the musicians hands will be and what they will be doing at any given point.  A preliminary solution I've thought of to deal with this is to implement a hold button which will capture that instrument's current output so that the player can stop b(l)owing and manipulate the sample using a slider, tone/timbral controls, etc. with DSP effects. 

    I included a turntable in my sketch because I felt that it would be an effective application of the Old/New theme of the piece where the purely electronic/sound design portion of the piece would be played back on an analog device.

Process

As an initial model for the piece I'd like to put together, I've looked at "Sparkler" by Tod Machover.  Sparkler is an introductory movement for a large work known as the "Toy Symphony" and employs the use of computers to manipulate the sound of a small orchestra in real-time.  The following brief describes the microphone techniques, hardware and software design, and design challenges that were confronted during the construction of the work.

Download ICMC02_Sparkler.pdf

The Process:

1)      Over the summer I will be researching precedents in the intersection between western classical composition, new media performance, and instrument - computer interface.  In addition, I will choose 3-4 hybrid instruments to prototype, and have rough physical sketches completed by the end of June.  Concurrently, I will be improving my programming skills in MaxMSP and have a rough mapping architecture completed by the end of August. 
    As for the narrative elements and visual aesthetic, I will maintain sketches and ideas as I work on the hardware and software for the piece, but clearly the narrative elements will have to be integrated after I get a better idea of what is sonically (and therefore, visually) possible so that the narrative elements are tightly and cohesively integrated into the sound world created by the instruments, electronic manipulations, and sound design.

2)    Once the prototypes of the hybrid instruments are completed, refining the body design, ergonomics, and computer interface will be possible with crucial input from musicians / users.  Once the tools begin to take shape I will go forward with composition and overall narrative.

The Compositional, Hardware / Software, Design, and Narrative elements diagram:

Influences and Motivation

The following venn diagrams chart my motivations and influences going into my thesis project.  The first diagram breaks my initial idea into 4 semi-distinct categories: Music/Sound, Technology, Narrative, and New Media Performance.  Inside each category are sub-categories on which I'd like to focus.  The second diagram puts these four main categories together and contains the individual influences relevant to my project.

Download MotiVennKey.pdf

Download MotiVenn.ai

Sound / Music -

    Music is the central focus in my life and informs and influences everything I'd like to do artistically.  The exponential growth of technology in recent years has changed the way we produce and consume music in such a way that it seems the possibilities are limitless.  Everyday, people are creating greater quantities and varieties of media, and in most cases regardless of form, sound and music are involved in some way.  What I am most interested in right now is the development of music in a multimedia context where it is the focal point, but is also accompanied by and interacting with the moving image, an audience, and/or machines.  A specific example of a work that reflects these interests is the Hyperstring Trilogy by Tod Machover from the Media Lab.  He integrates machines and organic instruments into a seamless continuum in which the technology blends into the composition rather than using it as a gimmick or a distraction. 

http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/projects.html
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/crb/iap/index.html
http://www.sensorwiki.org/index.php/Sensors

    Another area of sound that I’ve been interested in exploring is its ability to tell a story.  I’ve attempted to make a number of short “sound films” which I think of as the inverse of a silent movie.  The visual element is taken away, and in its place, the sounds tell a story in a non-linear way.  I’ve used dialogue from old radio programs, sounds designed to mimic the big bang, and audio clips from World War II, all in an effort to do with sound what the moving image does in film.  My first exposure to the sound film was Revolution #9 by The Beatles (Download Revolution9.pdf ), and I was struck at the way it was able to create a detailed world filled with dense imagery and non-linear narrative transporting the listener to another place by piecing together disparate segments of sound.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~tristan/

http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/projects/deathandthepowers/powersdemoreel39s.mov

Narrative -

    Second to music is my love of narrative, specifically those that deal in some way with the sub-conscious.  If I were to look to specific artists that have greatly influenced the way that I think about narrative and imagery they would be author Haruki Murakami (The Wind Up Bird Chronicle), and filmmakers David Lynch (Twin Peaks) and Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey).  These storytellers devise characters whose inner-worlds become transfigured into the world outside.  The blurring of the boundary lines between sub-conscious symbols and reality is something I'm really interested in and is very important to the way I think about what makes good art.  Like the symbolist poets, Murakami, Lynch, and to a lesser extent Kubrick, use a coded language filled with myth, sexuality, violence, and surrealist imagery in which they suggest activity in the sub-conscious.  These ideas are a takeoff on the ideas put forward by C.G. Jung, whose book Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, solidified for me the ways in which symbols can be used as a universal language.

Download visual_mood_board.pdf

http://www.theknife.net/thesilentshouttour.html

Technology -

    Third on my list of motivating influences would be science.  The direction mankind seems to be taking in terms of blending with his creations is something I'd like to explore.  We are at the beginning of a journey toward meshing biology and technology that will eventually change the natural fabric of our species, and it is within this framework that art will change dramatically as well.  A great influence on my thinking in this regard is Ray Kurzweil (specifically his book The Singularity Is Near), who in addition to being a pioneer in the development of electronic music, is also a theorist and futurist.

3 Ideas For Web 2.0

Three Ideas for Interactive Web Sites

1)    Interactive Social Networking and Collaborative website for Musicians 

        In order to make the most of this idea the site must be comprehensive.  There are a number of different facets to the website that must work in tandem for it to be effective and original.  There are three main sections of the site:  The social networking branch, the collaboration / recording board branch, and the marketing branch.

            A)  The Social Networking Branch:  The user sets up a profile of his musical skills and interests.  He lists what bands he is influenced by, the different genres he is most interested in, and the type of music he creates, all in priority order.  The user can then list what instruments he plays, what instruments he is looking for for collaboration, experience level, and where he is located.  This section will also have a forum where people can discuss musical projects, collaborations, and interests.  This part of the site is used to find other users with similar musical interests and ideas, and the searchable profiles make it easy to find people to collaborate with whether in person or strictly through the site.

            B)  The Collaboration / Recording Board:  The user can post tracks to the board embedded with tags describing BPM, time signature, genre, sub-genre, instrumentation, influences, and whatever else might help other users find what they're looking for.  The track is posted and is linked to the owner's username.  Every piece of music on the recording board is considered to be the property of the musician that wrote it.  If someone listens to the track and wants to use it by adding something to it or embedding it into an existing piece of music, that person requests permission to use it, and if the author agrees he can then unlock the track for that person to use.  The new iteration of the track can then either be posted again if the multiple authors still feel that it can be added to, or they can finalize the track and send it to the marketing section / store.

            C)  Marketing Section / Store:  Each user will have some sort of monthly fee to use the site which is added to a community pot ($10?).  The site's users pay a monthly fee but also have the opportunity to make money depending on how "in demand" his contributions are.  Each time someone requests to unlock a user's track the author of the piece receives a small fee from the community pot ($0.05?).  When a track is finalized it becomes permanently locked and cannot be reused within the context of the recording board.  It is then sent to the store where it can be bought by listeners.  When a track is purchased from the store the profits are split among the contributors.  This way users have an incentive to remain as active as possible on the site in terms of output and quality.  In addition to the monthly fee, the site will include targeted advertising based on users' musical interests as described in their profiles.

2)    Retail Product Locator

        I find there is a serious inadequacy with the current product locators and yellow page services on the web right now.  My product locator of choice right now is Froogle, but the problem is that it is mostly online merchants and physical retailers are left out because they don't have online databases of their stock.  I would like to see a searchable database of all local retailers online so that a customer can find a given product in his area without searching store to store.  Presumably, most retailers now have each of their products in a database within their store to keep track of items via RFID tags.  Some stores might not be willing to make their prices public, but a list of their available products should be public knowledge, and this way customers can find them without physically searching.  If I'm looking for a specific pair of shoes in a specific size, I should be able to type in the information and find a list of all stores in my area that carry what I'm looking for.  It would be rather inexpensive and efficient to participate in such a site in light of the new customers that store would be able to reach by posting inventory.

3)    Smart News Aggregator / Custom Newspaper

        Using a list of keywords and areas of interests a user can create a customizable newspaper.  This would be similar to google's desktop but would be far more user definable.  Let's say I wanted to create a newspaper that offered stories on the Iraq War, Radiohead, Nikola Tesla, Haruki Murakami, New York area concerts, new film reviews, blog posts by Alec Baldwin, and DIY articles from Make magazine.  Some editions would be lengthier than others depending on how many stories were retrievable that day, and of course, this would be limited to free publications with sites like New York Times Select being excluded.  A user's interests change and expand over time and will be reflected in output as the profile grows.

Trauma Bear Documentation

We Are The Web: Criticism and Review

   

    Let me start by noting that I didn't find much in this article to disagree with.  I often think about what an amazing invention the internet is, as if it were the culmination of civilization's 5000 year journey in information gathering, and at the same time it's only the very beginning of a strange and exciting new era in human evolution.  Kevin Kelly's enthusiasm is not lost on me.  Even though open source software, social networking, and interactive web sites are all a developing branch of this fairly new medium, the invention that has the most significance for me is without a doubt Wikipedia.  When Kelly talks about the internet as a vast compendium of human knowledge, I immediately think of the ever evolving encyclopedia.  For me, this is the essence of what the internet is all about.  Google searches can give you leads into finding information on just about any topic, but more often than not you will have to troll through a number of amateurish web sites as well as sites that are completely of the mark before finding the information you're looking for.  As of 2007, English Wikipedia had over 1.6 million articles, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, eclipsing even the Yongle Encyclopedia (1407), which held the record for nearly 600 years.  Clearly something cataclysmic has taken place when a 600 year old publication has been displaced as the largest single source of reference material on the planet. 
    People often cite the fact that Wikipedia is a user-generated source of information and therefore it can't be trusted.  This to me sounds like the sort of talk that might have been heard at the time of the Magna Carta.  I ask why a narrow committee of authors that publish the Encyclopedia Britannica should have the final say on what truth is.  The internet has broken the stranglehold on information that a select info-monarchy has held for a long time.  Wikipedia is an information democracy.  If there is debate over an entry's veracity, the reader is informed of this controversy at the entry's outset in big bold letters.  If you're engaged in an in-depth research project it's probably best to go the library and seek out primary sources.  However, there are innumerable times in a given week where I am looking for essential information.  I don't need primary sources every time I want to find out the full meaning of an acronym I've come across in a magazine or the definition of the word Meme.  I can go straight to Wikipedia and be confident that I'm not getting some controversial and biased definition. 
    Thanks to blogs, message boards, and comments sections, the internet has become a vast sewing circle where people can discuss their opinions on any issue.  We see this reflected in the rapidly changing state of politics today.  The days when a candidate could refute something he or she has said in the past are over.  The instant a candidate claims that their past position is in perfect harmony with their current position a barrage of blogs posting YouTube videos of a 1989 stump speech for state senate reveals them to be the dirty liars that they are.  The funny thing is that many of them haven't caught on to the fact that the internet is now the ultimate harbinger of truth, and they continue to step into these traps merely because they are running on instinct.  The democratic nature of the internet means that truth is always out there, and with 600 billion blogs generating information everyday, the truth is likely to spill out somewhere. 
    Of course with such a large number of eyes and hands working together it is inevitable that no matter what the platform, someone is going to try to make money.  Wikimedia is a non-profit organization that relies heavily on private donations.  Other costly sites are not so lucky.  Kelly talks about the surprising fact that established media conglomerates like ABC are now aging dinosaurs and that new and exciting media companies like Yahoo! and Google are the champions of the day.  But this is merely evolution.  In a few years Yahoo! and Google will be the media dinosaurs looking to solidify their place in the market.  How do we know that they won't eventually turn to censorship and proprietary backends?  My feeling is that this will happen eventually unless these companies are able to stay on the forefront of innovation.  You tend to get less squeamish about keeping things open source when you're making money hand over fist.
     But one of the reasons I'm not too worried about the internet becoming a closed-source pay-as-you-go toll booth plaza is its proven track record for adaptation, especially in the case of file sharing.  There was a big fight a few years back when Napster seemed to be stealing money out of the pockets of music industry fat cats, so they decided to throw lawyers at the problem instead of adjusting their business model.  With hindsight we now see what a fatal mistake that was.  The internet is so malleable that no number of lawyers are going to be able to stop a planet full of people who desire to share content.  Napster as a P2P platform died and became a pay service.  No one uses it.  In its place, BitTorrent and innumerable other systems have filled the gap, and songs are traded in the same volume they were in Napster's heyday.  It might take some getting used to, but the internet seems like it will always bend to the will of the mob and not the power of the few. 

Hapticmania

This week I flipped through quite a few magazines, and in each one there was something related to our recent projects.  Mostly, haptics related to a new chinese phone and accelerometer chat related to the wii remote have been all the rage.  Read about the haptics phone in the PDF...it's a flat touch-screen that pushes you back so that you think you're pressing real buttons.  Magic.

Download Haptics.pdf