Dave Young Description: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 20:25, 1 November 2011

A DESCRIPTION

RADIUS MUSIC 2.0

Radius Music is an interactive audio/visual installation. Walking into a dark space, you can see an abstract visualisation projected onto a platform [just over 1m^2] that is slightly raised up from the floor. The visualisation on the platform consists of white dots (pixels) [many more being added every second], around a centrepoint at seemingly unpredictable yet ordered radii. From the centrepoint of the platform there is a steel pole, less than one meter high, topped with a small rectangular platform only about 10cm across by 20cm long. The platform on the pole is made from transparent plastic, and is lit from the inside by a white light. A circuit board - and a motor connected to a revolving sensor by a pair of cogwheels - sits on top of the plastic platform. The sensor measures the distance between itself and any solid object it points at, so as it turns, it is measuring the positions of objects and people in the space. There is a relationship between this revolving sensor and the circular visualisation on the lower platform - the distance measured and the location of the pixel drawn is relative. In accompaniment to the circular visualisation projected onto the platform, there is also a prominent sonic output again controlled by the sensor: warbling sine waves producing a droning, repetitive sound characteristic of early electronic music experiments.

Radius Music was developed with the use of open-source hardware and software, and as a result all the sourcecode was released under a CC-BY-SA license. The interface between the sensor and the computer was created using an Arduino - a small microcontroller that can read analog values from the distance sensor and also power the motor. Other components used in the arduino setup include a "slip-ring", which allows a continuous high-resolution electrical current to pass from a rotating assembly to a static terminal with minimum noise (in this case a signal had to be sent from the sensor to the arduino without the cables becoming twisted as it revolved). The values from the distance sensor are sent via usb to custom software that handles the audio and visual output. Processing deals with the visuals, controlling and rendering the "graphic score" in realtime, while Pure Data is used to control the waveforms emitted from the speaker system.

The idea for the installation arose out of research into the major shifts in composition that occurred in the mid 20th century. Heavily influenced by dadaist/fluxus aleatory systems, eastern philosophy, cybernetics and the intense developments in computer technologies, alternative compositional styles were explored - alongside new languages that could represent them. Composers such as John Cage started to experiment with graphic scores that allowed for interpretation on the part of the performer, alternative rhythmic and timing systems, and an expanded musical vocabulary that included everyday sounds (radios, kettles, the sound of pouring water - ref. "John Cage: Water Walk"). I was interested in trying to develop my own compositional system that would explore these experiments taking place in graphic scores and early electronic music in the mid 20th century, but using contemporary hardware and software. The interface of Radius Music was design in such a way to explore repetition, imprecision, and the idea that its audience could interact with the work and become co-authors in the compositional process.

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-AN ANNOTATION
+A DESCRIPTION
-JONATHAN LETHEM'S MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
+RADIUS MUSIC 2.0
-Motherless Brooklyn is Jonathan Lethem's fifth novel (published in 1999), and is set in New York in the late 1990s. The narrative is from the point of view of Lionel Essrog: orphan, and sufferer of tourrettes syndrome. Growing up in an orphanage in Brooklyn, Essrog falls in with a group of other "motherless" boys at his school, all of whom are taken under the wing of local "fixer" and small-time businessman Frank Minna. Employing them as part of his removals company, he takes them out of school to move miscellaneous boxes, conspicuously without any explanation. This extended prologue describes the affectionate relationship Essrog builds with Minna, and also gives to reader a good insight into the perhaps nefarious activities he's running in the background of his business. Minna announces one day that he must leave New York city for a while, with Lionel being aware that something is amiss. The novel really begins with the return and sudden murder of Frank Minna. The boys have all grown up by this stage, and Lionel quickly takes on the role of a private eye, trying to find out what Minna may have been hiding, and who killed him.
+Radius Music is an interactive audio/visual installation. Walking into a dark space, you can see an abstract visualisation projected onto a platform [just over 1m^2]  that is slightly raised up from the floor. The visualisation on the platform consists of white dots (pixels) [many more being added every second], around a centrepoint at seemingly unpredictable yet ordered radii. From the centrepoint of the platform there is a steel pole, less than one meter high, topped with a small rectangular platform only about 10cm across by 20cm long. The platform on the pole is made from transparent plastic, and is lit from the inside by a white light.
+A circuit board - and a motor connected to a revolving sensor by a pair of cogwheels - sits on top of the plastic platform. The sensor measures the distance between itself and any solid object it points at, so as it turns, it is measuring the positions of objects and people in the space.
-Lethem disrupts the typically "cool" detective noir-genre by subverting private-eye cliches with moments of farce and dark humour. The novel investigates New York as a cinematic and literary icon - landmarks, soundmarks, lowlifes and gangsters, femme fatales, newspaper vendors and fast food joints provide a simultaneously believeable yet constructed vision of Brooklyn. It fits in with Lethem's canon - common themes between Motherless Brooklyn and his other novels include social isolation, obsession, human fallibility, and New York city itself.
+There is a relationship between this revolving sensor and the circular visualisation on the lower platform - the distance measured and the location of the pixel drawn is relative.
+In accompaniment to the circular visualisation projected onto the platform, there is also a prominent sonic output again controlled by the sensor: warbling sine waves producing a droning, repetitive sound characteristic of early electronic music experiments.
-************
-A DESCRIPTION
-Radius Music 2.0
+Radius Music was developed with the use of open-source hardware and software, and as a result all the sourcecode was released under a CC-BY-SA license. The interface between the sensor and the computer was created using an Arduino - a small microcontroller that can read analog values from the distance sensor and also power the motor. Other components used in the arduino setup include a "slip-ring", which allows a continuous high-resolution electrical current to pass from a rotating assembly to a static terminal with minimum noise (in this case a signal had to be sent from the sensor to the arduino without the cables becoming twisted as it revolved). The values from the distance sensor are sent via usb to custom software that handles the audio and visual output. Processing deals with the visuals, controlling and rendering the "graphic score" in realtime, while Pure Data is used to control the waveforms emitted from the speaker system.
-Walking into a dark space, you can see an abstract visualisation projected onto a platform [just over 1m^2]  that is slightly raised up from the floor.
+The idea for the installation arose out of research into the major shifts in composition that occurred in the mid 20th century. Heavily influenced by dadaist/fluxus aleatory systems, eastern philosophy, cybernetics and the intense developments in computer technologies, alternative compositional styles were explored - alongside new languages that could represent them. Composers such as John Cage started to experiment with graphic scores that allowed for interpretation on the part of the performer, alternative rhythmic and timing systems, and an expanded musical vocabulary that included everyday sounds (radios, kettles, the sound of pouring water - ref. "John Cage: Water Walk"). I was interested in trying to develop my own compositional system that would explore these experiments taking place in graphic scores and early electronic music in the mid 20th century, but using contemporary hardware and software. The interface of Radius Music was design in such a way to explore repetition, imprecision, and the idea that its audience could interact with the work and become co-authors in the compositional process.
-The visualisation on the platform consists of white dots (pixels) [many more being added every second], around a centrepoint at seemingly unpredictable yet ordered radii. From the centrepoint of the platform there is a steel pole, less than one meter high, topped with a small rectangular platform only about 10cm across by 20cm long. The platform on the pole is made from transparent plastic, and is lit from the inside by a white light.
-A circuit board - and a motor connected to a revolving (distance) sensor by a pair of cogwheels - sits on top of the plastic platform.
-It might become apparent that there is a relationship between this revolving sensor and the circular visualisation on the lower platform.
-In accompaniment to the circular visualisation projected onto the platform, there is also a prominent sonic output: warbling sine waves producing a droning, repetitive sound characteristic of early electronic music experiments.