generativethoughts-blog

[generativethoughts-blog]

Generative Media Authorship

Hello Internet,  

Here are some thoughts I had while taking Generative Media Authorship. I wrote the thoughts down on a phone notepad and now am sharing them with you. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/arts/music/mourning-installation-taryn-simon-park-avenue-armory.html

what does “mahlerian” even really mean?

Bauhaus nouns

Gunta Stolz

what happens when we isolate elements from the whole and make conclusions without putting our conclusions in the context of our original unadulterated observation.

how can we program a machine that can be ‘fascinated’ with its own creation. is fascination exclusively non-algorithmic? how can a machine that creates art by way of algorithm change its output due to its own development of taste, preferences

how can you model choice, separate from random choices, in a computer? how do you get a computer to choose to filter its input.

John Coltrane Spiritual, I’m Old Fashioned

something about the authorial voice

Alva noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto

binoculars instead of canons

mobile on a white canvas

mobile on an empty canvas

cabuto and knights juxtaposed

async and disproportionate music

franz kline, cy twombly

art plus com

chris burton

tony ousler

identikit

ciney sherman

victoria vesna

persona

cubist guitar

n’obliee

je t’amine je t’aime (1968)

sol de witt

tom johnson

rebecca horn concert for anarchy

sine & context

zu bing

Johannes vermeer

camera obscurs

tim vermeer

Vendai Dots

Toshio Iwai

fujihata masaki - installations

bitfall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AICq53U3dl8)

Binoculars instead of canon

Marcus “Pop Musik”

ferrofluid

Rebecca Horn (http://www.rebecca-horn.de/pages/biography.html)

periodic discrete events (events as used in programming) 

periodic incrementation on attributes of discrete events

simultaneous periodic incrementation of a sustained discrete musical event

how to dchoose global periodic attributes of functions (amplitude, rate, element cycle {sample array, chord array}, etc)

how to build software that is in its most abstract state?

what is the most fundamentally abstract state of software that is created to translate an aesthetic by the programmer through the software into an artistic medium 

how to structure software design when designing and building in an ‘improvisatory’ / proof of concept approach?

would creating an intermediary set of data that react to discrete musical units (by discrete I mean midi note values as opposed to audio files that represent audio signal), allow one to program changes to a computer’s personality in real musical time as the music continues. 

program software modeled after the interpretive side of how a human hears, as opposed to trying to make the software sound as if a musical human were performing 

neural networks vs expert knowledge

neat

state changes guided by a close-cycle of possibilities operated by conditional statements:

number of total states: x ^ number of x changes; y ^ number of y changes, etc where x is the number of possibilities x can move to, and y is a different number of possibilities y can move to. this would be similar to a program that simulates riemann chord transformation, except the changes don’t have to be limited to voice-leading transitions of three states

human improvisation and algorithmic design

-how permeable is a performer’s intuition in the instrument interface a programmer designs? (for instance, how many buttons should a hardware interface have for the given task, given a leap motion sensor, what motions trigger what events, how does the visual choreography inform a programmer’s intuition to privledge certain parameters 

the relation between “perspective” grids and “sequencer” grids — is there an underlying component of the mind that processes these two things after the aural and visual components are parsed. What can this elucidate?

which of the following is preferable: a composition process that immediately audition sequences as you go; a process in which a large bulk of samples are generated; finally a process in which both are mixed. 

how necessary is the audible component of these sequencer software? should the user have to imagine the sound? how directly does the work the sequencer creates translate into the final artistic product 

csv file vs osc

rate-based music versus pulse-based music 

multi-channel panning as a means to keep track of events moving in relation to each other. Imitation occurring in a spatial manner; rates that occur in tandem without one framing in a classical meter or even mixed meter

to what extend do different layers with separate bpms and panning properties subvert classical pulse and meter? specifically and aesthetically, what would the difference of spatial panning and layering of different music w/ different tempi be from the use of irrational rhythms in stereo 

encapsulate routines in functions to pass arguments in supercollider 

music programming lends itself nicely to an aesthetic where intuition and instruction are one step removed and have to be described to someone indifferent

the merits of designing one’s own software and designing one’s own effects versus the time and effort it takes to build the software. what else can be gained by one’s attempt to program a computer and how should this factor into our own software building process. for instance, if one were trying to build software to model one’s musical or aesthetic preference or intuition, the programming could highlight irrational aspects of the aesthetic that cannot be described by logical sequences necessary in computation 

panel music (installation)

canon music (installation)

what parameters should be controlled? what has to happen in an artwork and what is the timing of this most consequential happening. how far from the original conception can this happening be modified to retain or highlight is underlying expressive purpose. how do future iterations of these happenings build on the initial aesthetic 

referential language, i.e. pronouns (empty pointers without the reference) versus exact pointers (i.e. the use of words from a foreign language) the word, a token, references something exact in the mind, but the manifestation of the token registers a different response from the person receiving the token

organum mobiles (dpi should be 300)

generative calligraphy trains that overlap creating a composite abstract work

old bayeux tapestry that moves at different rates in relation to modern abstract trains or modern abstract modes of transportation over music at different tempos or simple counterpoint in electronics moving at different rates

a program that generates calligraphy strokes that takes into account pen pressure and some sort of ‘expression’ {pen pressure, density, angularity}  

texture on a visual painting is crucial

Schoenberg Structural Functions of Harmony 1948 - visualize chart of regions and scalar substitutions using a javascript library

Sakamoto “Plankton” & some of Sakamoto’s instrumental works (subdued jazz quality, reminds me of the speech quality of Japanese)

John Coltran’s Autumn Leaves 

what aspects of counterpoint and harmony should one ‘re-embodied’ in a algorithm. if layered construction is desired, what is the minimum requirement that will produce a satisfying result. should the program be bass-centric as in a rameau treatise, or should the program privilege the motion of individual linear line. ultimately, the type of motion may be the underlying factor in deciding, but it is interesting to think how one’s re-embodiment of the musical thinking affects a generative program’s output. 

Takashi Yoshimatsu (beautiful, unassuming)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0guuuE6NjjQ Manchester Camerata (Sachio Fujioka)

“Written as a short elegy for a string ensemble, this piece came from an image of birds gathered around a dead comrade. Originally, it was to be written as a commission for an amateur ensemble, but the commission was cancelled, and the work alone remained. This is a simple piece in the form of a short, piecemeal song that becomes a faint melody which then develops into a melancholic recollection of a memory of long ago, before blending back into its original piecemeal form, and finally fading away. It was written between the summer of 1997 and the spring of 1998, and was completed in March. It needs a minimum of twelve player (4-3-2-2-1), but can be performed by up to thirty-seven (12-9-6-6-4).”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLnUhitm0w4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJpPXNyM2Kk

discrete logic

tokens and algorithm

in and out of an aesthetic

the boundaries of an aesthetic

do aesthetics have definitions or are they the most primitive type of description (like tokens in computer programming, they can be referenced, i.e. a foreign aesthetic can be borrowed or commented on) but the aesthetics that is borrowed is discrete and in their own most reduced form. what are the attributes and necessary components of an aesthetic? how do you categorize combinatory aesthetics (i.e. the collage of multiple aesthetics in which the original aesthetics of each component still remain). is this bad art since the creator had no original input, or is this too simplistic an interpretation, since the creator could have decided to omit a personal touch.

what is the holistic boundary of creation in a creative process? what does remaining within the lines afford an artist, does breaking the boundary mean anything significant or is this a trope we often associate with the revolutionary artist. an artist can break a boundary, but this boundary can also only apply to the artist breaking the boundary, as the boundary has already been broken by someone else for someone receiving the work of art. in this context, what is the functional role that familiarity plays in adding meaning to art. is familiarity extended upon repetition over immense spans of time such as decades (i.e. when you listen back to something from the 90s). ultimately, is the receiver of art the generative component? 

how does familiarity play into the rigorous generative works

how does one reference a familiarity without drawing attention to the familiar object itself 

what are the subset of parameters that can manipulated expressively and ‘legally’ to the artist & what are the manners in which any of these parameters can change & how to the other parameters change when they are modulated by parameters in which they were not originally intended to be changed to

what are the working thresholds of material (what are the bounds on which the minimal expressive component of the work fail, i.e. in music, at what tempo does the feel become too slow or too fast, at what point is the manipulation too much or too little that it doesn’t register & when it doesn’t register what is the loss. if there is no loss, is this a good indication that the manipulation was not a fundamental component of the design at hand)

types of algorithms: simple recursive, backtracking, divide and conquer, dynamic programming, greedy, branch and bound, brute force, randomized algorithms

at what point do we categorize things by thoughts, labels, and experience. for instance, we may receive art through an intellectual mode, or we may find ourselves in a meditative contemplation of the work. how can one tilt the parameters of the art to connect along the lines of the creator’s desired channel. for one, the dichotomy of experiential and intellectual is too simplistic.

archetype of a moment and the ‘quality’ of information received in the moment; quality not in terms of good or bad, but in its sonic and aesthetic mode, the depth of destination the archetype seems to head toward, how the archetype disintegrates or solidifies itself in time

sound transferred in moments, defining the moments, picking the moments, and the surround elements of the moment 

how does an algorithm know how the ear is to register a moment? the asynchronous dichotomy in which the human ear perceives moments and how the computer parses moments of sound account for much of the lack of depth or intimacy or connection a listener may have with computer music or may exert pressure on the electronic musician to create states of music —though this may be the primary reason for creating electronic music (states that acoustic musicians would have difficulty sustaining due to the length, rhythmic coordination, etc)

how does one ‘fluidly’ account for moments in a computer program.  should one improvise with the computer in real time (by way of controlling knobs and buttons to enact change in a timely manner)

the problem with algorithms is that discrete tonal idioms may imply moments and are difficult to track for a computer other than a case-by-case basis. the computer by itself does not understand the acculturated idioms that allow musicians to communicated expressively with an acculturated audience.

recursive computational technique applied to linear nestling as in the lerdahl and jackendoff generative theory of tonal analysis

what is the minimum criteria for a reference to something

what is the minimum criteria for an acceptable ‘next’ passage of time in music

what is the minimum criteria to not reference something(how does this paradigm change when the reference is not understood by the audience)

would you rather have pleasurable moments in music or pleasurable states in music? would you rather have one extremely pleasurable moment in music or a gain in the overall pleasurable state of listening to music?

how do you balance pleasure vs consistency in the depth of expression or intellectual dimension of the experience; how cool is it to be caught in the middle of these two poles. do you have to wholeheartedly champion pleasure to incorporate pleasure in music? to extend this argument: ritual has been the prime role of music in western culture in the last 800 years in western art music (church), pleasure in music has been a more recent invention or acceptance, and most recently in a bipolar debate between hi and low art since the mid-century, pleasure has been a cornerstone in defining aesthetic stances. 

how to avoid the dialogue of hi and low art 

what is pleasure’s role in contemporary music (and also contemporary music of the past) and what derives pleasure past and present? what statements are pertinent to one’s stance to pleasure. are the very existences of stances an indication that an artistic community is toxic —i.e. stances can be, at times, instances of an aesthetic that allow a participant of a stance into a group or out. in an ideal artistic community would everyone listen empathetically and listen for expression intrinsic to the work, rather than categorize the work or create the work to strengthen one’s stance. how do stances arise in the first place anyway?

—ask the computer to keep track of an arbitrary parameter such as momentum. Each time something occurs faster increment the momentum parameter. Each time something occurs slower, decrease the momentum parameter. If the momentum parameter reaches a threshold, change to the next state

Toru Takemitsu In an Autumn Garden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkdTXW2G4Sc

Texture, the importance of texture, the affect of texture

a visual experience of texture versus the touch of texture, which is more impactful? Is the important part the fact that the mind registers the material and then conjures a host of memories associated with that material? How can textures be combined in music without being engulfed in pre-existing stylistic tropes. 

Paul Klee, seneca

geometric personality and the persona

a geometric persona that is larger in personality than a true figure (really the point of abstraction)

virtuosity or expressing skilled naivete

what do you take from skilled naivete 

how do you apply it to music 

Thomas Tallis, spem in allium, radial choir

expectation & projection, and relearning or remaking of projections 

a mode of analysis of music akin to derivatives in math, only the derivatives account for the change in expectation from one moment in time to the next