abstractmachine

• Installation: Traks
• Concept+Developement: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Platform: iPad
• Development platform: OpenFrameworks
• Exhibition: Gamerz 06 (site uses Flash)
• Dates: 3-16 December, 2010
• Time: 14:00 – 19:00
• Venue: Seconde Nature
• Location: 27 B Rue 11 Novembre, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France

Traks is a combinatorial sound toy. Mixing model railroads and 1960′s minimalist composition, Traks allows players to build up circular networks of bifurcating rails that branch out into both simple and complex combinations of musical possibility. By placing notes, “tranes”, and semaphores into this ludic rail yard, a modular melody emerges, otherwise known as algorithmic music.

Traks will be exhibited at the Festival Gamerz as a playable prototype for iPad.

Traks est un jeu d’écriture musicale combinatoire. S’inspirant à la fois du modélisme ferroviaire et de la composition minimaliste des années 60, Traks propose un espace de construction ludique où le joueur compose des réseaux de pistes bifurquantes qui forment au final un enchevêtrement simple mais complexe de potentiel musicale. En plaçant ensuite des notes, des trains et des sémaphores, une modulation mélodique émerge, que l’on peut qualifier plus généralement de musique algorithmique.

Traks sera présenté au festival Gamerz sous la forme d’un prototype jouable sur iPad.

I’m posting this a bit late, but for some reason I totally missed this video. It’s a summary of some of the sound objects built by François Parra’s students in our joint sound-hypermedia mini-course for second year students. This year we split the two-week class into two: in the first week half of the class learned Processing while the other half learned PureData and audio acoustic instrumentation; the following week they reversed roles. While the hypermedia students were making Processing Monsters in preparation for Eniarof, François’ students were making these interesting instruments.

Objects soundscape from François Parra on Vimeo.

From François’ description:

This is a short movie coming from a teaching project in Aix-en-Provence art school. Students build piezo amplified objects to compose a soundscape. They only used piezo mics, motors, a mixing board, speakers. You will see at the end the begining of a program, made to tie a string sound with generative pictures.

To be clear, I had little to nothing to do with the construction of the objects, I’m only in the video looking like the dork I am because I was the only professor present to conduct any sort of critique, which basically consisted of, « uhhh, how does it work? » followed by some random attempt at analyzing physical algorithmic phenomena. But I wanted to post the video here because it gives a fairly typical picture of the experimental method we use in our exploration of machines. Yeah, yeah, I know, plastic babies on a seesaw have that oh-so-art-school stench of ennui, but there are still some valid ideas in most of the instruments. Also, there’s some brief attempt at audiovisualisation, but on a very very basic level. I think we were far more succesful a few years back at approaching this connection, around the time of 8=8 for example, but again these are students who had only been programming for two or three days and these things go in cycles anyway.

• Installation: ^3
• Artist: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Exhibition: Les Pixels (2)
• Location: ASCA, Beauvais, France (Map)
• Dates: December 7-21, 2007

Quick post for one of the quickest exhibits I’ve ever had to prepare. I’ll be exhibiting ^3 (aka Cubed) at Les Pixels, an exhibition that opens in Beauvais today. Where’s Beauvais you ask? I have no idea, but who the hell cares when it’s THE authentic « Ville Internet @@@@ 2007 » ? (Love that logo!) It’s a tiny festival, by a young non-profit with the right attitude, so I said what the hell. Who needs sleep anyway?

This nice post over at Music Thing about my Rubik’s Cube project has lead to a lot of traffik and linking (cf. here and here, for example). I’ve been a Music Thing reader for years, so that was nice to see. But for their readers, I thought they might be interested in this video, shot by Artfuture last summer during the ZeroOne festival in San Jose in which I demonstrate — in all my true geekiness — the functioning of the first physical prototype. More will indeed follow at a later date, when I’ve finished all my current duties.

As usual, all the interresting journalists at ZeroOne were bloggers (i.e. all the interresting journalists weren’t journalists). Among them was Alexa from Art Future, who just uploaded this video she took during the festival. You can check it out here, or over at her YouTube account where she has a few other videos taken during the festival [link]. If you want more info on this system, check out the information on the following link: Cubed.

Soooooooo my demo is a little cheesy, and as usual I stutter a bit, wave my arms about a lot, and repeat myself repeat myself — but it gives you pretty much the A-Z pitch I recycled throughout the week. So now I can so now I can just point people to the video (thanks Alexa ;-). There was also another blogger who shot a longer walkthrough of the entire installation. So as soon as he gets that online I‘ll link to it here. Apparently his will be a video podcast with a lot of interviews from the show.

**Update: Lise from Arborescence just told me that they have programmed a similar Rubik’s cube performance system for this year’s festival by Artificiel, although it apprently doesn’t use the full cube as a sequencer. This probably makes it more interresting musically, but also a whole lot easier to compose/program, so less interresting conceptually. It’s always frustrating to see such similar work, but we don’t live in an artistic bubble, and ideas like this tend to appear in groups. Ho hum, I’ll try not to worry about it. I released mine in May 2005, they did their performance in May 2006 (take that!), but when you think about it Toshio Iwai was introducing these ideas way back in the early 90′s. So he’s the real master. Whatever the case, I figured it would only be a matter of time before someone else tried something like this. Here are some pictures of their premiere at Mutek : link. Different configuration, same idea, and theirs does look pretty cool.*

Here are some pictures from the abstractmachine installation at the ZeroOne Festival.

Google alerted me to this video of the Cubed installation at ZeroOne. I don’t know who took it (alt4ir?), and the sound kinda sucks (all you can hear is the ambient noise unless you crank it way up). But that has more to do with the exhibition conditions and the way I set up the installation (I designed it so that the sound would point down directly to the cube user’s ears and not to a camera’s lateral mic). It was taken with a tripod which is nice. I have somewhat better images and video (although not much better), but I haven‘t taken the time to put them online yet because I’m busy tying up loose ends, working on my thesis, and getting ready for my trip back to France. There were a lot of people filming and taking pictures, including filmed walk-throughs with me babbling on, so hopefully we’ll see some more online; and as I mentioned, I’ll have my own footage when I get the time.

• Installation: abstractmachine.v87D6
• Concept & Development: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Exhibition: Transvergence
• Festival: ZeroOne: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge
• Dates: 8-13 August, 2006
• Times: 12:00-24:00 Tuesday; 12:00-22:00 Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; 12:00-17:00 Sunday
• Location: South Hall
• Project information: abstractmachine.v87D6

The abstractmachine is setup in San Jose, there is a breakcore Rubik’s Cube® kicking out the jams, a programmable video mosaic recorder is open for public abuse, and the Hypertable is unleashing a non-linear interactive documentary containing a telepathic virus. We’re setup in the main exhibition hall for the festival, South Hall.

Oh, I should also mention something after having watched a few visitors this afternoon: um, hello, people out there, yes, you can actually pick up the Rubik’s Cube® and play with it. And that interactive table, yes, you can put your hands on it. Most of you reading this are probably in the know, and would find it laughable that people would fear interacting with an installation during a festival dedicated to digital art. But hey, that’s apparently America. It’s my first show in my home country (yes, that’s right) and I guess the public is just like that. I always figured that the dopey Americans who looked confused were just like that because they were tourists lost in Europe. But who knows, maybe there are just a lot of tourists showing up today.

So with that out of the way, here’s the official statement.

Through various experiments, installations, and online software, the abstractmachine project asks the question of how we as artists and users can create, manipulate, and ultimately enact digital algorithms. If the specificity of the computer comes not only from it’s digital aspect, but even more so from it’s algorithmic aspect, how does this hyperprogrammable nature transform the media we manipulate — i.e. the images and sounds we design using these machines? Amongst the many machines available within the abstractmachine project, two creation platforms will be presented to illustrate our response to these questions: one dedicated to the creation and manipulation of algorithmic cinema, the other designed around algorithmic musical composition.

« 3 », a.k.a. « ^3 », a.k.a. « cubed » is a musical sequencer integrated into a Rubik’s Cube®. By manipulating the colors on the cube, users generate different sound algorithms within the sequencer. Using specially-designed soundfonts from Jankenpopp (cf. http://jankenpopp.com), math geeks can finally become the speedcubing breakcore supernerds they always feared were lurking underneath. With ^3 we are working against the idea that a musician has to create music with audio software where building the musical algorithm and manipulating the digital algorithm are two different processes. Often, making digital music looks a lot like someone working on their spreadsheet. In ^3, all of the notes of the musical process are visible and intrinsically intertwined. Using a universally known interface, a series of simple gestures cascade into a complex multitude of musical possibilities.

Concrescence is a platform for creating and manipulating moving images outside of the traditional linear time-code. Images grow in spatialized mosaics, allowing for infinite recomposition while avoiding purely random associations. This specialized software is then projected onto the Abstractmachine Hypertable: a multipurpose interactive table which allows multiple users to interact with the non-linear narratives by simply placing their hands on the surface. For the San Jose festival, two uses of the Concrescence platform will be presented: a fully developed algorithmic narrative entitled “The Signal”, accompanied by a simplified version of the Concrescence authoring software where the public can record their own audiovisual clips and create collective non-linear patchworks.

Concrescence was developed in France with assistance from the following institutions: ARCADI, DICREAM, SCAM, and was produced by the CIREN. All sounds for The Signal were designed by Julien Hô Kim, with a narration by Keith Evans. The Jankenpopp666 soundfont can be downloaded at http://jankenpopp.free.fr/666/

This is just a quick post, before setting up tomorrow at ZeroOne. More noise to follow about this installation — I mean that literally — and how you can play with a new mix at home that we’ve prepared for the festival, and yes that’s “we”. Update soon. For now, here are some images I took before the move from my lowly garage in Los Altos to this strange tent structure.

• Concert: 8=8=Les Joueurs de cartes
• Concept + Design: Nao, TM, JankenPopp, abstractmachine
• Festival: Scopitone
• Dates: 30 June 2006 + 1 July 2006
• Times: 11h30 & 17h (2 performances per day)
• Location: Atelier & Chantiers de Nantes (+info)
• Direct link: 8=8
• Video: 8=8 demo @ YouTube

We will performing the 8=8=Lesjoueursde_cartes again, this time at the Scopitone festival in Nantes, France (don’t mind the horrid website design, they are actually really nice people). Unfortunately we will be performing in the afternoon (*update: performances at 11h30 and 17h on both days), rather than in the evening with the truly hep cats such as Coldcut, Matmos, or Birdy Nam Nam. I guess we’re still not sexy enough to play in the big sandbox.

Here is the official 8=8 press kit, along with some photos Colette Stanley took of the concert last October in Marseille:

• // 8=8=Les joueurs de cartes=The Card Players
• // 8=8=TM=Nao=Jankenpopp=Abstractmachine
• // 8=8=Thomas Michalak=Naoyuki Tanaka=Pierre-Erick Lefebvre=Douglas Edric Stanley

// 8=8=Concert=Performance=Demo

8=8 is a group of 4 programmers = 4 composers = 4 VJs = 4 musicians = 4 artists. All four bring their own programming, visual and musical sensibilities to a collective instrument, the Abstract Machine Hypertable. By moving one’s hands over the surface of the Hypertable, images and sounds are generated, creating a unique opportunity for musical improvisation. 8=8 uses the Hypertable to perform singular programs/instruments in a concert=performance=demo context.

// 8=8=Program

All programs are generated by the members of 8=8. There is no distinction between performer = musician = artist = programmer. All members have been exploring computer programming as an artistic medium for several years, notably through collaborative research at the Atelier Hypermedia.

// 8=8=Instrument

Although the Hypertable was originally designed as an interface for algorithmic cinema, 8=8 quickly discovered its musical potential as an instrument. Each program is essentially an entire visual and musical software/instrument in and of itself. Some of the programs allow for direct manipulation of pre-recorded samples, other instruments generate sounds on-the-fly, while still others combine these two notions with the idea of composition taking place in real-time, on the surface of the table, and in front of the public. Some compositions=programs=instruments are visually baroque, others on the contary are minimalist. All work off the principle that image+interaction pilots the sound generation.

// 8=8=Big_Daddy

While the performers are free to improvise within each of the programs, there is also a Central Processing Unit, known in 8=8 speak as Big Daddy. Big Daddy’s role is to organize the flow of the concert itself. It switches the table from its public installation mode (see below) into its concert/performance mode, and controls the sequence of programs. There are over 10 programs currently installed in the 8=8 arsenal, and as more programs can be added before each concert, Big Daddy’s role is equally to keep things organised and working smoothly. Big Daddy is, in effect, 8=8′s stage manager.

// 8=8=Rock+Roll

Nothing could be less exciting than watching a solemn performer sitting on an empty stage behind a laptop. Although interesting attempts have been made recently to jazz up the experience — we’re thinking of recent performances by Golan Levin & Zachary Lieberman, or the excellent TopLap — ultimately 8=8 has found that the entire configuration of Raised Stage + Subservient Public has to be thrown out in order to create a more intimate and engaging relationship with the public. The public actually sits around the table, with the performers, or stands up looking down on the table (the table is only 30 cm high for this reason). Interesting configurations can also be envisioned, for example in situations where the public can look down from a balcony, depending of course on the local architecture.

// 8=8=Public

Before the concert, Big_Daddy informs the public of the time remaining before the concert with a countdown timer displayed on the surface of the table. All concerts start on-time, accurate down to the second. A small interactive program runs on the surface of the table as well, allowing visitors to explore — in a minimal/limited fashion — the technology that will run the concert. Although the original intent of this program was primarily pedagogical (= this is how the system works), as it turns out the public really takes to this little program. Consequently, two modes can be imagined for the Abstract Machine Hypertable: A) as reactive installation, B) as a concert platform. As such, several performances can be organized, with the interactive/public mode converting over to concert/performance mode at a pre-determined time. These decisions are of course dependent on local opportunities and the variable temperament of the 8=8 group.

Locus Sonus, the Aix-en-Provence School of Art’s post-graduate arts study program on art & audio, is now accepting submissions for the 2006-2007 session. The deadline for submissions is July 16, 2006. More information can be found at the Locus Sonus website: link.

I mention it here, because I occasionally intervene in Locus Sonus affairs, as my interests and those of my students often overlap with the Atelier Son. I often collaborate explicitly and implicitly with Peter Sinclair who is one of the co-founders of the project. The other co-founder is Jérôme Joy, who has been doing interesting online work for years, and was one of my rare protectors while in residence at the overtly hostile Villa Arson. I have also in the past sat in on the scientific council and participated in their think-tank sessions, so I’m more or less a part of this crazy thing which is turning out to be an interesting experiment on how research could be conducted within an art school without following the university research model. That said, we are associated with the French national scientific research agency (http://www.cnrs.org/) via the Université de Provence. It should also be made clear that while there is a lot of Pure Data explored in this post-graduate program, it is not as code-oriented at the Atelier Hypermedia, and is oriented more specifically at exploring two fundamental fields: sound/network & sound/space. My work is clearly more image-centric, despite all the noisy interfaces — hence the one-foot-in-one-foot-out participation.

If you’re interested, check out the Locus Sonus website. Make sure your French is up to par (a requirement, obviously).

I just saw this post by Marius Watz over at Code & Form about Daniel Dihardja‘s still-beta MIDI library for Processing, entitled jm-Etude. Basically, it’s an internal sequencer for Processing.

This is really good news for me. Most of my machines for the abstractmachine project use MIDI via this commerically idiotic little xtra for Director. I do it this way because I need to be able to compose musical phrases, and not just play musical notes. I tried many years ago to build rhythmic structures via Director, but the timing just wasn’t there. If you’re working with samples, you might be able to get away with it, or with some abstract sound synthesis, but not when it comes to note-for-note interactive composition; i.e. if you don’t have a sequencer, you can forget the gabber machine gun. I wanted to keep the abstractmachine project in a more accessible language than C (Processing wasn’t available back in 2001) as pretty much all of my code gets recycled by a student in some form or another. So I ended up with Director and the aforementioned xtra that is now killing me.

For some examples of what I’m talking about, you can try out Trane or Cubed, and for a more entertaining example you can check out this 8=8 video:

We just couldn’t do shit like that without an easily programmable MIDI sequencer running in the background. But hope is now there to finally pry us from the last pitiful grip on the Director platform, and that in maybe a year’s time I can rewrite these machines for a more foreward-compatible platform (merci open source! merci Processing!).

• Installation: ^3, *a.k.a.*³, *a.k.a.* “cubed”
• Concept+Design: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Exhibition: ZeroOne San Jose
• Dates: August 7 – 13, 2006
• Platform: web-shockwave
• Video (via YouTube) : Cubed Demo, Douglas Edric Stanley – Rubik’s Cube DJ

³, a.k.a. ^3, a.k.a. ‘cubed’ is a musical sequencer integrated into a Rubik’s Cube®. Each face of the cube uses a different instrument to play notes generated according to the colors on that face. Each face is played in a loop, as if it were a single “track” on a basic electronic music sequencer. Therefore by manipulating the colors on the cube, users generate different sound algorithms within the sequencer.

³, a.k.a. ^3, a.k.a. ‘cubed’ est une séquenceur musicale intégré dans un Rubik’s Cube®. Chaque face du cube représente un instrument et joue les couleurs sur cette face en tant que notes. Chaque face est joué en boucle, comme s’il s’agissait d’une « piste » dans un séquenceur musicale.

Since the video from my last post was referenced over at Metafilter, I’ve received a lot of traffic. There are some interesting critiques over there, although I have heard a few of them before in private. The most common is the fact that you have to have the cube analyzed, instead of manipulating the emulated cube real-time. I will adress these issues in more detail at a later time, but it should be said for now that I have tried a real-time version, only to be frustrated by the lack of musical advantages — i.e. it just made everything messy, as it is ultimately a real-time sequencing instrument, and not a real-time note-for-note instrument. Added to this, is the problem of technically analyzing a cube without adding active electronics into the cube itself. I am researching the use of passive electronics in the cube, but that still means designing a Frankencube. I want people to Bring Your Own Rubik’s Cube (yes, that stands for BYORC Music), and even use the cube as a sort of floppy (floppy cube?) where you can “store” each composition and move back and forth during the performance.

Shortfuse quite correctly reminds me that I had originally spoken of the fluidity of a guitar. Although my inspiration was right (I think), the idea of using the guitar as an example was more confusing than obvious. A guitar, like a piano, works with discrete notes that are often played in combinations. On the guitar these notes are stroked using various rythmic motifs, i.e. via strumming. This is what I originally was interrested in: you have the permutation on the neck that you stroke with your other hand — permutation + interpretation. But of course the way the guitar is stroked is so much more expressive because variations can also be applied on the neck, and can lead to all sorts of amazing improvisations, putting it in a whole other league. I probably should have just avoided the guitar comparison altogether and talked about making a kick-ass interface for Max/MSP.

Like I said, there will be more information on the design of the instrument when ZeroOne opens and people can play it live. Also the conceptual framework for this instrument should be clearer. See you there.

• Installation: ^3, a.k.a.³, a.k.a. “cubed”
• Concept+Design: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Exhibition: ZeroOne San Jose
• Dates: August 7 – 13, 2006
• Play! Online (requires Shockwave)
• Video (via YouTube) : Cubed Demo
• Video (iPod compatible) : Cubed Demo

The « ³ » terminal is working and ready for the august show. One down, three to go.

I was so excited that I quickly set up a camera, forgot to do a decent white balance, and did a one-take video recording with the crappy Quicktime Midi Instruments. So don’t expect much. Obviously I’ll have better instruments for the exhibit, but you’ll have to wait for that. I need to move on to the next terminal as this one took a long time to finalize. But if you’re curious as to how the system works, you can check out the vidceo. Just keep in mind that this is an early demo…

I was suprised to discover that several of the various methods for “solving” the cube are actually musically interesting. Although I’ve been learning several methods over the past few weeks, I figured that I’d have to create new algorithms for permutations that do not seek to solve the cube, but rather seek to make interesting music from it. As it turns out, these two approaches are not incompatible. That said, I really need to speed up my cubing skills. It takes me around 3 min. average to solve it when I’m not making music, and that just won’t do for a live performance when permutations should switch back and forth quickly. Some have got it down to under 20 seconds, so 3 minutes is a joke…

I never said the instrument was designed to be easy to use…

Just a quick note that I just updated my ³ music synthesizer. Some people had written to mention that it was down — for once it wasn’t my fault ;-)

Shockwave and its xtras are of course a moving target, and have complicated matters once again, requiring me to finally house the xtras on my own server, since the provider’s server looks terminally down. It was an easy fix, but annoying. I have better things to do with my life.

Further complicating matters, the squencer xtra I use in this program has this horrendous licencing scheme which was not in effect when I started using it. But when they were bought out by Sibelius, the latter asked me to pay royalties, even for free downloads of my own software written with it. Are these people totally insane, or what? We started trying to find an amicable solution some time back, but they suddenly went silent. So I’m still in limbo on this one, and don’t even mention what is going to happen with the switch to MacIntel, which is already in effect for some users. Ugh.

I finally took the time out to fix this because I’m developing a full scale terminal for this machine, which should be ready for ZeroOne San Jose (August 2006).

• presentation: instruments + plateformes interactives
• speaker: Douglas Edric Stanley
• conference: Symposium Audio/Espaces/Réseaux
• organizers: Locus Sonus
• pdf: destanley.pdf

This is a recording of my presentation during the Symposium Audio/Espaces/Réseaux organized by Locus Sonus. In the accompagnying pdf file (destanley.pdf) you will find links to all of the films and interactive animations described during the talk. This talk is in French (why the hell am I writing this in English? I have no idea)

• Concert: 8=8=Les Joueurs de cartes
• Concept + Design: Nao, TM, JankenPopp, Abstractmachine
• Festival: Arborescence
• Location: Le cabaret aléatoire, Friche bel de mai, Marseille
• Date: 8 Octobre 2005. 22:30:00 sharp
• Photos + Video: 8=8 rehearsal video with photos

8=8 is a group of four programmers = four performers = four artists. We each built our own program for my Hypertable platform, then created a program that would group them together for a public performance. The performers/programmers/artists = Naoyuki Tanaka a.k.a. Nao, Pierre-Erick Lefebvre a.k.a. JankenPopp, Thomas Michalak a.k.a. TM, and me. All of us are or have been a part of the Atelier Hypermedia

Everything went great. Better than I had imagined. The images are for real : all the interactions take place directly with the images and all of the sounds are being generated by movements within the image programs. We let the programs run after the concert, which led to some interresting discussions. The public was very enthusiastic. One couple stayed for several hours, as they realised that each program was set after the concert to last about 45 minutes : they didn’t want to miss the next one. Someone else we spoke to took some time to accept the idea that in fact the interactions were generating the sounds (odd, it seemed pretty obvious to me).

We came up with an idea that we knew would be f#!&#& brilliant, but that we didn’t know if it would work in practice. It goes back to our hatred for boring stage shows and the formulaic nature of rock n’ roll which becomes even more boring when you stick someone behind a turntable and (gasp) comotose when they’re sitting behind a laptop. So since we were going to change all that, we also had to change the “announcement” of the concert (also because we were competing with noisy DJs in the other room).

Basically we created two modes : public interactive mode and live performance mode. To move from one to the other we created the “Big Daddy”, a program that would move us back and forth as well as choose the different programs. But to give the audience a bit of a feeling of all this, and create some anticipation, we created a sort of demo mode with a clock ticking down to the performance (time of the performance 22:30, with the T-minus clock opposite). Around the clock was a little interactive dribble-program that the public loved (personally I found it a bit limited : put your hand in, sounds go bling, and images smear about, but the “public” tends to like this sort of thing). People kept pouring in for the dribble, and the count-down kept ticking down. Then, ten minutes before the concert, the whole thing went black (except the clock) and all interactions stopped, giving us some time to spread out some room, get installed, and wait for Big Daddy to dish us the first bite.

That clock thing is totally brilliant. It really should be used by other musical groups. It creates a nice tension. Automating the stage is actually pretty cool : when your time is up, your time is up. You have to keep up. It’s pretty stressful = I like it.

Here is the link to the Arborescence festival webpage describing the event.

Here are some photos Colette Stanley took of the event:

• Machine: ^3 ( a.k.a. Cubed, a.k.a. ³ )
• Concept+Development: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Play!

I’m pretty proud of the lastest machine I’ve added to the abstractmachine arsenal. It’s a musical sequencer integrated into a Rubik’s Cube®. You can play it online, or you can hire me to plug in a physicalised version, with real live Cubes generating the musical sequences. I’m trying to find someone to bite for the later, which might have already taken place, with an installation next summer for a music festival (I’ll keep you posted).

Like most of my interactive/musical instrument work, I’m working against the idea that a musician has to create music digitally — algorithmically — while sitting behind a laptop. The listeners should be given some hook to attach them to what the musician is doing: at least a videoprojection if we must generate behind a screen. What are they doing back there, playing iTunes? I’m also poking fun at the over-programmed nature of many of the current electronic tools that pass for high-tech instruments. For, trying to “program” a Rubik’s Cube, as anyone knows, is not an easy matter. So while one might be freed of the obscur interface (everyone understands a Rubik’s Cube), each permutation screws up permutations on the other faces, making the musical progression a true art to master.

There’s also a performance aspect to ³. Music is a live medium, and has been modular and algorithmic for centuries; the digital field should reflect this and allow for musicians to perform digital algorithms with their hands, just as they do with the guitar. Obviously, I’m speaking under the influence of Michel Waisvisz‘ Hands when I talk like this.

Basically, each face is an independant sequencer, with variable speeds (note: the sequencer was designed to keep each of the faces in sync, notably for electronic dance music). Each face of the cube uses a different instrument to play notes generated according to the colors on that face. The darkened square on each face indicates the currently playing note. The cubes are permutated by dragging one of the edge cubes and rotating it around one of the center axes. Each face is identified by its center square. Center squares never change color and are pratical for keeping track of activity. Dragging with the mouse from the center square rotates the entire cube.

³ loads with default instruments chosen from the MIDI instrument library. These synthesized instruments can be changed on each face by clicking on its current number and entering a new value between 0 and 127, followed by the enter key. The volume of each instrument/face can be adjusted independantly. The tempo for each face can be adjusted independantly. Each color represents a specific note to played by one of the six instruments/faces. Each face can have its own pitch value for each color.

Specific permutations can be memorized in a key, then recalled at any time by simply pressing that key on the keyboard. For example: by clicking on the on-screen ‘A’ button, the current permutations are recorded into the ‘A’ key; subsequently, whenever the ‘A’ key on your keyboard is pressed, the cubes immediately return to this memorized state. In the off-line version of ³, current key memorizations, as well as volume, tempo and note configurations, can be saved to disk. This allows a DJ to have a full set memorized, then work off that set. It’s cheating, I know (the whole point is it’s gotta be tough, right?), but you’ve gotta be pratical too.

As with Trane, ³ uses MIDI to generate the music on each face. Music can be generated by the computer using its internal synthesizer, or connected to an external MIDI synthesizer, sampler, or sound module. The MIDI output can also be rerouted within the computer via MIDI to other music software. This allows musicians and DJ’s to expand ³ and plug it into an infinite variety of electronic sound generators. Just open up the ³ window, and your midi devices should show up.

• Workshop: PLAY+MOBILE
• Artists: Douglas Edric Stanley & Stephane Cousot
• Participants: Thomas Michalak, Pierre-Erick Lefebvre, Antonin Fourneau, Daniel Urbain, Loïs Roussillon, Cécile Boissimon, Benjamin Hochart
• Location: Atelier Hypermedia, Aix-en-Provence Art School
• Dates: January 5-9 & 12-16, 2004
• Website: http://hypermedia.loeil.org/playmobile/
• Demo: play+mobile demo (mp4)

Stéphane Cousot and I have successfully completed the workshop PLAY+MOBILE, in participation with 7 students from the Aix-en-Provence School of Art and one student from the Bordeaux Art School. The workshop focused principally on reappropriating the Gameboy Advance platform, through the creation of artistic experiments designed specifically for it.

The programs built during the workshop were for the most part influenced by the idea of musical instruments, drum machines, etc., and used the internal synthesizer of the Gameboy circuit.

One of the more interesting experiments on the platform was built on the first day of the workshop. While moving around a little “Hello World” text field, one of the students discovered that by printing the text outside of the reserved video memory registers, the “Hello World” text would write into various hardware registers of the machine and affect output. We have recorded this behaviour in the play+mobile demo (mp4) video.

All programs were built either with C or DragonBasic.

Playmobile Development tools were built either by Stéphane Cousot or myself, and were designed to simplify the programming process, especially on Mac OS X. The website was built by Stéphane Cousot, and designed by Stéphane, Pierre-Erick Lefebvre and Douglas Edric Stanley.

Here are some Programs you can play/download. To view them, you will need a Gameboy Advance with a programmable cartidge, or you can use an emulator such as Boycott Advance. Stéphane included an in-browser Java emulator, but it’s pretty buggy and sound doesn’t work (the whole point). At least it gives you an idea of the programs before downloading them:

• Cécile Boissimon & Daniel Urbain
• Pierre-Eric Lefebvre
• Benjamin Hochart
• Antonin Fourneau
• Thomas Michalak
• Stéphane Cousot (cf. “Partition”)

• Machine: Trane
• Concept+Development: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Play!

Trane is one of the first components of a larger ongoing project entitled The Abstract Machine. Trane is a collective, algorithmic composition environment. It is also a toy. By laying out tracks, setting down notes, and distributing trains, users create a rail network that doubles as a musical composition.

There are 128 * 128 switches or roundhouses, each with four possible points of redistribution, which can be interactively redefined allowing for varying movements. For example, a series of four curved tracks could be placed in a circle, with the switches oriented to always send the train in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise). By placing trains and notes on this circle, a constant looping rhythm or melody could be created. A second set of tracks could then be attached to this circle, allowing for variable offshoots and thereby modulating the monotony of the looping circle. As more and more alternative routes are drawn, each with their own set of notes, infinitely varying, generative music becomes possible.

A downloadable version will also be made available online for DJs, performers, or people simply wishing to compose private diagrams with trane.

As the music is standard MIDI output, many electronic music devices can be connected to trane’s output. DJs can connect up synthesizers, MAX/MSP patches, video samplers, etc. and compose a performance in real-time with sounds other than the simple MIDI instruments played through Quicktime. For example, I’ve created a live composition performance entitled “from A to G”, in which the Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train is re-edited in real-time using video and audio clips in the place of notes.