Music; ITP
1. From an old MeFi post, I present to you the Tromba Marina, a massive and obsolete one-stringed instrument played with harmonics rather than entirely depressing the string against the fretboard. The instrument's signature "brassy buzz" results from a loosely fitting bridge (helpful visualization). In combination with the 7th grade orchestra at Chippewa Middle School (mp3 link) the tromba marina makes a noise that can only be described as "a great way to get the neighbors to call the police if you play it pretty loud."
2. Speaking of cacophony, here's my Reverse Organ, a little Processing sketch I worked up last night in response to a recent e-mail discussion with Josh. (This is, incidentally, Blog Post for Josh 2 of N.) The discussion concerns methods of notating music that specify which notes not to play, rather than the other way around. I already sent this to him but I thought you folks might enjoy it too.
It works like this: each of the vertical bars represents a note in the C major scale. By default, all seven notes are playing. To make a note stop playing, depress (and/or hold down) the key on your keyboard corresponding to the note, as follows (if, like me, you've used Impulse Tracker, this is already muscle memory):
3. Tonight was my first night of class. Specifically: Vito Acconci spoke in my "Applications of Interactive Technology" class. Up until this point, I didn't know Mr. Acconci by name-I had only read about his performance art from the '60s (e.g., Seedbed). He spoke about that for a while, but for the most part he focused on what his design firm has been up to lately. Like this.
Oh man was this talk awesome! I'm not even all that into architecture but the concepts and techniques he presented are universal and really got me thinking about applications in my areas of interest. If ITP wanted to convince me that it's worth taking out loans for this stuff, they couldn't have started out with a better speaker. They sure as hell would never have had a performance artist speak in a linguistics Ph.D. program!
The real value of ITP, I'm coming to understand, lies in its engagement with art. I've always been a technical person, really, a nerd. For a little while, though, I get to think of myself as an artist. This is a new thing for me, and I'm enjoying it so far.
2. Speaking of cacophony, here's my Reverse Organ, a little Processing sketch I worked up last night in response to a recent e-mail discussion with Josh. (This is, incidentally, Blog Post for Josh 2 of N.) The discussion concerns methods of notating music that specify which notes not to play, rather than the other way around. I already sent this to him but I thought you folks might enjoy it too.
It works like this: each of the vertical bars represents a note in the C major scale. By default, all seven notes are playing. To make a note stop playing, depress (and/or hold down) the key on your keyboard corresponding to the note, as follows (if, like me, you've used Impulse Tracker, this is already muscle memory):
- z: C
- x: D
- c: E
- v: F
- b: G
- n: A
- m: B
3. Tonight was my first night of class. Specifically: Vito Acconci spoke in my "Applications of Interactive Technology" class. Up until this point, I didn't know Mr. Acconci by name-I had only read about his performance art from the '60s (e.g., Seedbed). He spoke about that for a while, but for the most part he focused on what his design firm has been up to lately. Like this.
Oh man was this talk awesome! I'm not even all that into architecture but the concepts and techniques he presented are universal and really got me thinking about applications in my areas of interest. If ITP wanted to convince me that it's worth taking out loans for this stuff, they couldn't have started out with a better speaker. They sure as hell would never have had a performance artist speak in a linguistics Ph.D. program!
The real value of ITP, I'm coming to understand, lies in its engagement with art. I've always been a technical person, really, a nerd. For a little while, though, I get to think of myself as an artist. This is a new thing for me, and I'm enjoying it so far.