Patch Is Done!

Step One!

-get things started- have a test sound- works like a Theremin with the distance sensor- the closer you are the higher the pitch…
-Communicates with the Arduino board and IF distance sensor
-Also added in smoothing so it won’t miss fire- it averages 21 inputs in a row then spits out those averaged numbers continuously – makes for a smooth ride

Step Two… And Three!

-Smooth transition from one looping sound clip to the next once a person comes close enough
-Is able to start from the beginning every time rather than somewhere within the initialized loop- so every time someone enters they hear Brandon speak from the beginning, while the other loops just continues as if nothing happened.
-while one volume is up, the other is down- once viewer is close, volume of first sound file goes down, the second goes up. Volumes stop a 1 (full volume) and at 0 (no sound)… this was quite a pain to make happen.

Gather Gather and Patch

Afterlife progress:
-Have sensor working with maxMSP and able to control sound now
-Have a collection of river stones, mulch, and green plantie stuff ready for installation
-have spotted some nice logs! pretty far away though…
-have access to a truck
-found a possible place to harvest tall reeds
-trying to get max to transition from audio files smoothly

… more to come very soon.

Round Three

Afterlife:
A physical installation including digital audio and organic environments about the physical and psychological death of trash and litter.

Theory:
Trash lives on two plains; the ‘now,’ and the ‘afterlife.’ The ‘now’ is commonly externalized as litter, garbage, local, the visual and sensory perceptual, tangible overall. On this plain trash can cause many problems, the least of which, but most commonly accepted, is an eyesore. The ‘afterlife’ of trash is its continued existence, but as the unperceived and wandering; a ghost. Trash in this plain is only tangible to specific thoughts, and therefore does not often exist as such. In a sense, it lives and dies psychologically. This is the cause for the common saying ‘out of sight out of mind.’ When it is out of sight, it is in an afterlife existence, a ghost. Unless people believe in ghosts, or even catch a glimpse of one, to the common public they are not real. Sadly, trash does not literally disappear from the world as a ghost, instead it is stuck and lingers to haunt it, perhaps for ever, or at least longer than we can currently fathom or project. Although it may sound playful, it is in its haunting stage in the afterlife that trash begins to cause the real and devastating damage- but that is a very long story with years of science and literature attached, a story that I am not going to directly tell at all. The idea that most interests me is trash’s ability to transition from the ‘now’ to its havoc reeking ‘afterlife.’

What:
Creation of a 20 foot corridor installed with plants and other organic debris fashioned with a path through the middle. The corridor will be constructed with hanging black fabric for walls and various tall grasses, shrubs, sticks, rocks, leaves, and dirt for the insides and floor cover. The opening half is more manicured and slowly transitions to an unruly organic scene. At the end of the corridor there is a log and behind the log is a Styrofoam cup in spot light. The sounds heard in the beginning are of an urban to nature transitory space, a park or recreation area. The sounds are naturalist with kids playing and cars slowly driving by from time to time. The audio shift to become underwater sounding as a threshold is passed and the cup can be seen behind the log. It is smashed and has a child drawn happy face and the name Brandon on one side. The sounds are of a creek and purely natural in source. The cup begins to talk at you and is exceedingly annoying and nonsensical, childlike. The cup sounds drastically bored and agitating. It is on a never ending loop until the viewer crosses back from the threshold sensor.

Intent:
To extend the awareness or consciousness of trash’s perceived life using humor and personal experience. To give an immersive and personal relationship to content that does not cause guilt, but thoughtfulness.

More on Composting

There has been additional progress on the composting project (music composing with game play). As of now there is a much more developed max patch that is sending midi thru controls to two separate programs via midi-yoke, both controlled by nuendo itself and fully mix-able and recordable. There are now at least two preset music styles for game choice and notes now extend for the duration of button pressing. A new idea is the initiation of recorded samples and the possib8ility to compose sounds into a song and game play. These are controlled with the nn-xt sampler within Reason. So far its an interesting experience to play and still needs a lot of tweaking and user testing.

Ideas for progress- multiplayer functioning and collaboration composition through contest and competition. Ideas in video control in combo with audio. Possibly coming soon.

Yet another direction.

This is based off earlier blog, trash theory, but deals with some elements that were not addressed or lacking:
-The Now, Afterlife, and the ghost
-dramatization and humor
-draw users into the piece rather than forcing to it into their space. Instead, create a personal relationship with the work, rather than the function of simple and possible irrelevant choosing…

Darkness, a dirt path, stones, getting closer to a creek, a large log and behind it, some river stones. Loud sound clips can be heard, religious ceremonies, they’re for death, funerals. You can hear people sobbing every once and a while to either side. You walk up to the log, passing an invisible threshold. A spot light illuminates a semi flattened and dirty Styrofoam cup sitting on a river rock on the other side of the log, the voices and earlier sound clips are muffled as if on the other side of a wall, or perhaps underwater. Water and other nature sounds rise to take the place of the funeral, now gone tranquil and relaxing. The Styrofoam cup has a drawn happy face in permanent marker, child drawn and beneath and slightly offset to the name “Brandon” in small bold adult writing. It is looking up at you and you hear it say “hi,” obnoxiously loud and abrasive against the tranquil sounds of a creek and woods. It continues to make a few annoying statements to you as if random and bored, just waiting. You think whatever thoughts or opinions we may have about the project once you see its not going anywhere else, and walk back the way you came as you are once again submerged into the funeral before leaving. The End.

More on composting

With the controller, I have been able to play very nice little tunes while in a game. However, the general midi sound has been distracting in its creation of a bad sounding piano- so I have been doing some playing around. I downloaded a digital software version of midi thru (MIDI Yoke) and am able to route the midi notes of max/msp out midi yoke and into my composing software, Nuendo, taking the midi yoke as an input to midi recording. By routing it to Nuendo I am able not only to record and export, but am able to apply as many different synth and orchestral sounds as I wish, allowing for a level of complexity, richness, and full sounding composition, all from a basic combination of only 6 buttons (out of the 20 something I have to work with). So far it is very fun to both play games and make music, but still needs a lot of refining.

a test game to play for music making: BRUTAL PAWS OF FURY!

-gets notes from controller
-sends midi notes thru midi yoke1

-nuendo takes the midi yoke1 as inputs and plays verious selected instruments:
-nuendo records and can playback composition from game playing:

Side Project, project “2″

GAME COMPOSTING:

Playing a basic video game is often a linear process of sorts, rich with narrative, interaction, communication, and play. These elements are also often the core consistency to a variety of musical scores as well. While these two forms may be inherently different superficially, one being a mode of play and external-engagement, the other being designed for observation and internal-engagement, they both share a linearity in composition structure and time. The ubiquity and prevalence of both gaming and music in western culture often pulls these elements together in some form of interaction, but it is most intriguing then to suggest an even greater fusion. This is the idea of “Composting.”

This project is an exploration of video game play as the primary methodology to composing and arranging a musical score. In this case, to play a game is to therefore write a song.

Points of interest:
-How does game variety and interaction modify the musicality of themes, motifs, moods, and structure?
-Does one form of play translate directly into an auditory counterpart?
-Can gameplay and style of a given gamer be recognized as an auditory auteur?
-How will a musical engagement with play and games augment playability and reward?

Very Basic Patch:

Theory Development

Out of Sight

Theory:
Trash lives on two plains; the ‘now,’ and the ‘afterlife.’ The ‘now’ is commonly externalized as litter, garbage, local, the visual and sensory perceptual, tangible overall. On this plain trash can cause many problems, the least of which, but most commonly accepted, is an eyesore. The ‘afterlife’ of trash is its continued existence, but as the unperceived and wandering; a ghost. Trash in this plain is only tangible to specific thoughts, and therefore does not often exist as such. This is the cause for the common saying ‘out of sight out of mind.’ Unless people believe in ghosts, or even catch a glimpse of one, to the common public they are not real. Sadly, trash does not literally disappear from the world as a ghost, instead it is stuck and lingers to haunt it, perhaps for ever, or at least longer than we can currently fathom or project. Although it may sound playful, it is in its haunting stage in the afterlife that trash begins to cause the real and devastating damage- but that is a very long story with years of science and literature attached, a story that I am not going to directly tell at all. The idea that most interests me is trash’s ability to transition from the ‘now’ to its havoc reeking ‘afterlife.’

While there are many guides in this transitory process, water is a common, pervasive, and inherently cyclical fairer of human waste; in this case nature is nature’s own enemy. The world has an exquisite ability to adapt, relieve, and cleans itself, at times superficially, allowing it to become overrun, abused and an illusion. The ‘illusion’ is trash disappearing, because it does not. This is rather a self harming magic show with too many volunteers.

My current investigation:
The functionality of water and watersheds, as means of shedding and cleansing the mind for what becomes out of sight. What is the process of becoming out of sight- out of mind? How can it be personalized as a continued experiential thought?

The project:
To create a portal that reveals both plains of ‘now’ and ‘afterlife,’ while revealing facilitation, fascination, and greater perception and consciousness. The ‘portal’ allows first person perspective; sound from the perspective of trash in this case. The idea is that one can no longer see it, but it stays in mind and perception. The watershed is a complex and crucial facilitator for the out of mind process, and thus should be dynamically illustrated through exemplary pleural perspectives, imagined and vivid. Overall, my hope is that the focus is on extending thought and perception, not guilt.

Objects Now Make Sound

This project is a basic concept patch and demo for the larger program, my interactive environmental piece on trash. In this smaller version there is an auditory demonstration of the natural environment (2 channels), and the progressively destructive product of human waste on the natural. In this simplified audio construct the goals are three fold:

-Sonification of natural elements being overwhelmed
-initiate basic user interaction
-develop a program model for later complexity and extrapolation of visual and audio elements.

What currently happens in the project:

-The user is able to take the selected shell and provide sonification (by placing it upon a platform); loose representation of “nature” and water flow.

-The user is able to take a second mechanical object and hear the representation of intrusion by adding it to the platform.

-Taking either away will also remove the corresponding sound.

What the Patch looks like and how it all works:

Breakthrough… more or less!

I’m using a Mac mini at home and things will be fine now that I have at least programmed an interface for the postal scale within max/msp.

There was some trickiness with the strange outputs the scale would give, but I figured out a rather neat way to get what I need. It’s been a very long time since I programmed in max so this was quite the pain to collect and stick with the right scale outputs. Below is the super simplified version of what I have come up with- now anyone can work with weight that wants to:

I’m