Naked Mail Distortion

A method for destroying data: send optical discs in the mail, with no protection, back and forth between two locations. The data may be collected each time and noted for future reference. Potential subjects include compressed and uncompressed media (audio, video) and written texts. Consider also a iterative/recursive algorithm where the distortion provides a decision for a chance operation: the CD contains a list of addresses, and every time an address is lost the CD is sent to that address.

I am Sitting in an Automatic Translator

Alvin Lucier's best known work fed to the engines at Free Translation and Google about 6 times back and forth from Simplified Chinese:

I sat in a room different from the one you are now. I recorded my voice of opinion and speech, I will be back to repeat any room drama until the clock speed of a room, I echo the rhythm of speech and perhaps their own similar exception, were defeated. You will hear, then clearly from the echo of his speech is the frequency room is a natural gift. I do not like such a vulnerable to him, have once again demonstrated the fact that natural things, but take off any more of my freedom of speech might have.

Instruction Piece for Keyboard

1. Open a text editor.
2. Remove all the keys from your keyboard.
3. Clean your keyboard.
4. Return all the keys to your keyboard.

Two realizations by Caitlin, one on February 23, 2008:

aaaaaaqwertyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyy898885553iopujuuuop iiiijj2kopppppppoocvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv zxcxxxxxxxxgggggzzzqqtttnmmmmmmmmmmmm66666-= 00999999999hkkkkbbbbbb gfdFAsddd00000000````````11111111nnn///////hllllll





ssssssrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwwwfhfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff ;]][,.>.....cchhhh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,]]]]]]];;;;[[[[[[[[ [[[[\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\44'''D

And another from May 4th, 2008:

qqqqqqqqqqqqjjjjggfffhhhhhhhhhhbioiopuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrr asdsssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyggggggggggiocvbbvvviopppppADFGDFJKJJ JJJJJJJJ[[[KKOOOBXXX,,MNLLL./,,,TTTTTTTT;;WWW \\\\\\\\\ IIIII FFFFFFFFFF ZZZZZZZZ MMADDDAACCCCCCC.'/'' ee]]]]]]]]...../

(The horizontal lines are in fact much longer, but they had to be broken for the purpose of this post.)

Meta-Games

A friend of mine was incredibly bored during a critique/review session a few days ago and started drawing transitional shapes. Starting with a circle, she would slowly sharpen four points into a square, drawing each iteration from left to right. A friend joined in and made it into a challenge by drawing the beginning and ending forms and having her fill in the middle.

She shared this with me later that day while I was doing some musical improvisation with two other people. A corresponding musical game was obvious: one of us produced the initial sound, another the final sound, and the third the inbetween sound.

Today, the same friend sent me a poem playing with words. There was a clear connection between adjacent words: teach, tech, mech, etc. Sometimes the connection was orthographic, sometimes phonetic. Later, she framed it as a challenge: "get from 'potter' to 'u'".

While the game itself ("The Inbetween Game") is wonderful, what's most interesting to me here is the idea of a generic game form: the same basic principle being applied to multiple domains (drawing, music, language). Can we abstract other games into generic forms that describe game-families? Meta-games?

The Beat of the World

Watching the World Clock, you can almost feel the pulse of certain statistics. It'd be interesting to make a mixtape that kept one of these statistics as the tempo throughout the entire mix. Imagine a dance party where every beat corresponds to a death. Or a birth. Or a new car/computer/bicycle. Perhaps these dance parties should be held in pairs, and which dance you were doing wouldn't be revealed until the dance was over. A chance for meditation.

Arduino as an ADC/DAC

The most recent Arduino runs at 16MHz, and can sample analog signals every 100 microseconds (about 10KHz) at 8 bit resolution. This is a reasonable audio sampling resolution, allowing us to capture and reproduce at least 5KHz, with processing time left over for doing DSP. In short, we could run an Arduino off a 9V battery and stick it in a guitar pedal.

An alternative use involving DAC would involve connecting via serial to the Arduino at a quick baud (say, 115200) and using each of the 6 PWM "analog outputs" as DACs, yielding 19200 baud per channel. With 8 bit audio, that's a 2.4KHz sample rate, or 4.8KHz for 4 bit audio. That is, we could use the Arduino to route low resolution 5.1 surround sound.

More on some of these possibilities here.

Rapid Interface Prototyping

BeatBearing is a tangible music sequencer driven by ball bearing placement.

A nearly equivalent system could be prototyped using a laptop screen and an overhead webcam. The screen would provide the "current position" line, and the camera would read the content. The main problem is obstruction, but there are better approximations (adding more cameras, mirrors, or assuming permanence for obstructed regions).

Furthermore, by removing the material constraint (i.e., ball bearings), we open up a number of possibilities. Multicolored jelly bean-based edible/tangible interfaces, anyone?

Update: I worked this one out, but with Skittles instead of jellybeans.

Information via Arbitrary Objects

Anything that conducts electricity can be used to send information. Different objects have their own resistance, frequency response and noise sources. When I was experimenting with sending nonsynched video (where it is sent without a synch, and then "tuned" upon reception) through spring reverb, I also sent the video through a cup of water. This should work from one side of a pool to another, so long as you account for the water's resistance. What would be more interesting is to transmit between two separate faucets in the same house (ultimately connected at some point), or through a tree trunk.

Phosphor-based delay

Reading about Williams tubes, I noticed a comment about phosphor-based displays:

When a dot is drawn on a cathode ray tube, the visible spot lasts for a time (called "persistence") that depends on the type of phosphor used in the tube.

I've experimented a bit using audio reverb for video signals, but what about using CRT for audio delay? Here's one way you could do it on a black and white TV:

1. Break the connections to the deflection coils on a CRT.
2. Send an audio signal for intensity modulation (the volume would have to be turned down to avoid destroying the phosphor, and the signal might have to be pitch shifted down and processed in non-realtime depending on the phosphor's frequency response).
3. Use some sort of photodiode to "grab" the light and get a signal again (the response of the photodiode will influence whether you can do realtime processing or not, as well).

A good reference for trying this out would be the various wobblevision/wave vessel hack guides available online.