Brilliant Noise

See works here:  http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Brilliant_Noise/BNoise.htm

  Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun’s finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies.

 

How to use Processing recording the sound from MIDI software

Using Processing minim sound library can usually just record the sound from the computer microphone input or to playback the audio file. The question is how to connect the sound from MIDI software (like Logic Pro) directly with Processing.. then you might do a lot of stuffs with live audio-visual effects by MIDI keyboard performances.

There’s one solution that using “Soundflower”.  Soundflower is the free Inter-application Audio Routing Utility for Mac OS X, which can simply connect the Mac audio input with output, means let every sound come out of your speaker goes directly into your microphone (kind of inner recording).

to download and install the soundflower here:  http://code.google.com/p/soundflower/downloads/list   

Retart your computer after installing the software.

Then can follow the tutorial here to setup:

http://www.wikihow.com/Record-Application-Audio-With-Soundflower

The key step is to select Soundflower(2ch) in your Mac System Preferences of Sound setting of audio input. See below:

Then in Logic Pro (or other MIDI software), please setup the audio output to Soundflower as well:

 

Another key point is don’t forget to open the “Soundflowerbed” in your Applications, and then make sure that you have selected “Speakers/Headphone” under the Sunflowerbed drop down menu. This will allow you to hear audio playback as you play your MIDI. see as below:

Then, time to enjoy your live VJ environment by Processing with MIDI keyboard sound input!!!

(I will upload more testing of my experiements soon)

 

A text about Software & Art by Casey Reas

See the article here: http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/text.html

Book – a great (and free) reading

Find information and a free PDF version here: http://www.10print.org/

This book takes a single line of code for the Commodore 64 which when run generates a random maze pattern – is highly instructive for the concept of rules and how simple rules can create interesting and truly creative works.

Focuses on one line of code and approaches it from a ton of angles about what this line signifies. Rather than a broad reading about code, this is a close reading that leads to broad conversation.  The section where they go almost character by character across the line.

Animated movie of a sine wave and cosine wave

http://www.rkm.com.au/ANIMATIONS/animation-sine-wave.html

SINE WAVES (y = sin x) are ubiquitous. They represent the behaviour of a simple oscillator. This animation illustrates the relationship between a circle (the wheel in this movie) and the phase (stage) of the sine wave. As the wheel rotates the attached horizontal pointer traces out a sine wave on the purplish screen. The maximum amplitude of the wave is the same as the radius of the circle (wheel in this case). The height of the wave at any point depends on the sine of the angle that the radius of the circle (yellow line) makes with a horizontal plane (not shown). The labelled diagram at left explains the relationship between the angle, the sine and the resulting sine wave.

COSINE WAVES (y = cos x) are identical to sine waves but are shifted by 1/2 π with respect to the sine wave. In this animation the cosine wave (yellowish green undulation) is shown traced out on the lower greenish screen by the vertical pointer. The height (value) of the cosine wave at any point depends on the cosine of the yellow radial arm. At the beginning of the animation notice how the sine wave has a value of zero and the cosine wave a value of one (we assume the diameter of the wheel is one). The two arms projecting from the wheel are at right angles to each other (i.e. 90 o or 1/2 π) apart and this helps you to visualise the phase difference of 1/2 π between the sine and cosine curves.

Some thoughts about “Experiments”

So only one way remains for the creative artist: to produce only for the hightest ideals – not thinking in terms of money or sensational success or to please the masses. — Oskar Fishinger

some thoughts: 

What does it mean to be experimental?

What are the dynamics and relationship between experimental works, history, & mass culture?

what is the balance or dynamic between experimental “process” and experimental “form”?

Can something be experimental and also a popular success?

Reading: “Tones from out of Nowhere”: Rudolph Pfenninger and the Archaeology of Synthetic Sound

Article by THOMAS Y. LEVIN

Article link here:

Click to access LevinPfen.pdf

The gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, the sound
waves, all stand in the same internal representational relationship to one another
that obtains between language and the world.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1921)

“Photographs of sound waves”—phonograph recording of the vocal sextette from “Lucia di
Lammermoor” with orchestral accompaniment. Published in The Science of Musical Sounds.

Duration – OpenFrameworks Timeline for Creative Code

Duration – OpenFrameworks Timeline for Creative Code

Created by James George and co-developed by YCAMInterLab during the Guest Research Project v.2, Duration is an open source and completely free timeline application built using openFrameworks which integrates with Processing, Cinder, vvvv, Unity3d, Quartz, and any other OSC enabled environment.

A Duration project, available as an example, is a collection of track data and interface configuration settings. It’s all saved to a folder with .xml files and a special .durationproj file containing the track names and settings. Duration has six built in track types. Each track has keyframes which specify values or behaviour at specific moments. Between keyframes tracks can define ways of interpolating values to create smooth changes. Duration also comes packaged with a simple application called “DurationRemote”, which can be used to test control messages. Finally Duration also has an experimental feature for recording OSC data as keyframes in Curves or Bang tracks. This comes in the shape of RecordingDataGenerator which is part of the download.

Research on the Oscillation experiments

There are various experiments related to Oscillation— the very basic property of sound wave.Oscillation means moving back and forth.Normally the oscillating wave has three key attributies,they are:

1,Frequency  /  Rate,repetition for time units
2,Amplitutde
3, Phase / be shifted from one direction to another

A bunch of audio-visual experiements can be found that focus on the variation of oscillation frequencies for motion elements:

John Whitney’s Music Box is probably the most famous one: http://whitneymusicbox.org/

Memo Akten’s ” Simple Harmonic Motion study” series are fundamental animations with oscillating dots by coding:

http://vimeo.com/27336153  ,   http://vimeo.com/28239261   ,   http://vimeo.com/27956766  ,    http://vimeo.com/23539090 ,  http://vimeo.com/40785633

There also physical installations can be found to present the concept of oscillation,for example:

Arthur Ganson’s Kinetic Sculptures at MIT museum  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qeaP6LmS64

Pelican kinetic sculpture / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzdvYQRQE

 

OpenFrameworks basic soundwave example 2

here’s the example of different types of Oscilator to generate various soundwaves:

https://github.com/ofZach/avsys2012/tree/master/week2_oscillatorTypes

Press number key from 0 to 4 to shift between the basic wave types, there are:

“sine wave”;       “square wave”;      “triangle wave”;     “saw tooth wave”;    “reverse saw tooth wave”;