CSB
presented at Electric Eclectics from Aug. 2 – 4.
These are some ridiculously tiny steps towards a Cybernetic Synth Blaster. This project is a step forward from last year and a different approach. Last year, if you look at the knots, you can see that the lines always fall in the same place (fig. 1). That is because the triangles were exhausted in the same order over the course of each recording/session (this is how it was programmed, don’t worry if that last part doesn’t make sense right now).
fig. 1 – the lines always fell in the same places – they were just different colours and overlapped differently from one recording to the next
This is all still foundational work to a fully functioning CSB. What is a CSB (or Cyber Synth Blaster)? Simply, it is a synthesizer/sampler playing as a complex system that is affected by human activity (I am by no means, the first to try this). In some ways, the system will have a life of its own. Like cybernetics, it would be something that you just set in motion and it evolves on its own like an independently living organism (like cellular automata) – but would still be affected by human action – just how it is affected is made deliberately impossible for the user to discern. All that they would ever know ist that they somehow are. I have studied cybernetics a bit now (a word derived from the Greek, kubernetes, meaning “steersman” or “regulator” – see? I looked it up in the dictionary) and what I am more looking for is a complex system rather then a cybernetic one – but perhaps there is room for both.
I am very interested in computer programming and this entire project has been a vehicle to learn it (I went from Processing to Java and SuperCollider).
The crucial key to this iteration, and its more subtle but again, essential is that I do not want the activity to be patterned (or patternable) in any way. The results must be chaotic and incomprehensible. So with this project I have developed a way for numbers to be chosen pseudo-randomly (and I am not referring to the typical pseudo-random generators that are always available – I am talking about something that is actually much simpler). The knots are truly disorganized now – each one is different – no two will be the same (fig. 2).
fig. 2 – two different knots, two completely different ‘signatures’
I will quickly describe the programming behind it – it is admittedly stupidly simple and I am afraid that you will agree with me once I have finished describing it, so here I go. There are just three counters cycling through 0 to 255 – each counter representing one of the three digits in an RGB colour representation. The three different counters are running at three different rates (by adding three different numbers to them – odd numbers that will allow every digit between 0 and 255 to be visited). That’s it.
This mechanism was used to determine which triangle was played and what colour it was when a key was pressed or a sensor activated. Since its a loop there is control that is possible. If I were to click the mouse quickly I could easily see the progressions of one colour to the next while filling the triangles. It is all certainly very primary but it again, is a foundation, it serves its purpose, and I find the results attractive and meaningful.
The next iteration after this one (I am writing this now at the end of 2021) moves forward again and I cave in and actually use random number generators. But throughout all of this is the essential human action that triggers any of activities or processes or audio/visual results that the software produces. The goal has always been to create a system that is impossible to control. Actions have effects on the system, but is has deliberately been made impossible to discern what action creates what effect.
What I am doing is creating confusion and then recording people’s reactions – it is a bit like a psychology experiment that produces audio and visual artwork. I can’t wait to move into 3-D. The different ways people act when confronted with something that is impossible to control (perhaps some will be lead to think that it is possible – perhaps someone will actually succeed in legitimately controlling it – but alas, it is not possible now nor will it ever be…). The reaction is recorded as a code – just a couple of very small, simple columns of data and some audio and visual results. Last iteration, the results were presented in many forms; knots, trees, and vertices, edges, tree playback. This time it is a new kind of knot (fig. 3) and pixel grid (fig. 4). Each iteration of the software, I add on another type or types of analysis (again, I know this is all quite rudimentary but I am building a foundation – I am very much looking forward to moving this to C++, OpenFrameworks, shaders, OpenGL – and I am continuing to use SuperCollider).
The grid analysis could be visible in real-time or as a finished image afterwards. Each colour in the grid (each square or large pixel) which was one of three (red, green, blue mode) or eight (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white) colours corresponding to three/eight keys/sensors used by participants. The resulting grid of squares were arranged in the order that the keys were pressed/sensors were activated using conventional reading order (left to right in rows going down).
fig.3 – new knot
fig. 4 – corresponding pixel grid
This is getting to be a fully featured application and I am working on adding a control panel and a many other things.
The point is, is that this system is designed to use mundane human activity to generate patternless material (based on the idea of white noise). This patterneless material serves as artwork but also as visualization/sonification of data that represents living presence. It can be read and analyzed and since this is all precise data (and I prefer discrete over continuous), any number of mathematical and programming processes may be applied to it – to reveal aspects and to transform it. One of the best ways to analyze this material is however, to look at and listen to it as artwork – it is to this domain that this project is most tuned. Its an oracle machine in many ways. Looking into psyche – a crystal ball – but I don’t do the reading, I just present the ‘test results’. Psychic readings as artwork.
I am quite fond of the grid results. Within it I can definitely see a living presence, the evidence of a living consciouness/awareness – the ‘information’ of awareness. These traces are evident in the recorded gestures left behind – the tracks in the snow. And again, super simple, easy and fast and I think they look good. It looks like multicoloured TV fuzz with secret messages hidden within them, which is exactly correct. Traces of living presence. A way to encode and transmit messages.
New audio material was used as well, drawn from many new works.
audio generated by this software (available on on Spotify):
here is the CSB album (click album cover to go to corresponding Bandcamp Page)
This contains the piece above as well as the audio that was used to draw samples from.
images
most of the images captured during sessions while using the software (click on image to go to images)
slideshow megablasterz
Here is a slideshow of all of the still images that I captured while using the software. There were so many images generated that I developed this video as a convenient way to look through them all.
oh wow some more t-shirts
(click on shirts to go to shirts)
