A standalone microcontroller that continually resets itself (based on the principle here).
It would need to power an LED while on, to remind people that it is, indeed, "alive."
Where would the reset come from? It could come internally, once it counted to a certain number or did some other mundane task. It could come from the air, and every now and then it would interpret a message suicidally.
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.
John Cage appreciated natural sounds. Striving to produce similar sounds, he attempted to remove any of his intentionality from his music making: imitating nature, he used chance events.
But maybe when we follow chance events, we don't make nature-like sounds. They're nature-like in that they have the same underlying order, but not in the experience. The average person might sometimes listen to rain, but not to Cage.
Perhaps in order to imitate nature we must act very unlike nature? Perhaps our best approximation of nature cannot come about by imitating its processes, but by analyzing its results?
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.)
From a student's paper: "[in new media pieces,] interactivity should be allowed so long as it doesn't undermine the artist's intent."
Is it possible to create a piece that has the sole purpose of undermining the intent of the artist? Or is that a contradiction? If it's a contradiction, there must be a gray border nearby where the piece has intention and demands an anti-intention as well. Perhaps this is one way of classifying games without goals?
If you drop electronics components randomly, solder nearby ends together randomly, and pass some kind of signal through them... most of the time, nothing interesting will happen. Is there a way to do this where more interesting things necessarily happen? Perhaps if you were to modularize "interesting filters" and drop the filters at random? How simple could the filters be?
One way to implement this: use tons of through-hole components and multiple layers of randomly generated PCB layouts set up with the holes in a grid.
Two sonifications for cellular automata: imagined as the score (as in this example), and imagined as the sound — i.e., the wave itself. I imagine the second case would be incredibly noisy but with some really interesting structures. Perhaps a more useful tool would be a cellular filter or cellular instrument: where the filter starts with the input as the initial state and evolves it a fixed number of times to yield the output, or with the instrument where the note being played determines a basic square wave which evolves over the course of the note being played
.
