Prof Peter Narins presented research discoveries on the ultrasonic calls and hearing of certain frogs to adapt to environmental noise. The spectograms of the sound recordings clearly show how limited our own hearing range is in the total sound scape we inhabit. He implied that ultrasound is a relatively new and unexplored area of science, and put the recent interest down to now available field technology, such as the Sound Devices 722 that he used on a field trip in China.

Laura Peticola presented work using sound to communicate data about solar winds. As a space scientist she described the need and difficulties of making the concepts of solar storms, magnetic fields and even plasma to a general public. The team decided to use sound, rather than visualisation, to create sonifications of live solar wind data received by two satellites orbiting the sun. The project clearly showed the difficulties of how to choose which sounds to use, what decisions to make in the translation of the data, and the ramifications of these decisions in the final apprehension of the sounds. It became very apparent to me from this talk that musical techniques known by composers about timing and the need for space in sound textures are invaluable to this kind of sonification work. It also showed the uncomfortable situation of presenting scientific data through “interpretation”, a discussion usually only found amongst musicians.

“Scorescapes: Between the Map and the Music”  - Yolande Harris will present her recent work on sonic navigations, describing a musical journey that lies somewhere between the map and the music. Questions brought up by her project Sun Run Sun, that researched historical and modern techniques of navigation and their relationship to sound, ask us to rethink musical ideas of form, audience, instrument and stage. The Satellite Sounders, portable instruments designed to transform live satellite navigation data directly into electronic sounds as one walks, introduces issues of the composers choice in the sonification of data and the participants experiences and reactions. How do these elements re-map music, and what traditions from composers and visual artists can be drawn on to ground these works? Yolande will also introduce her current research towards an ‘environment composer’ addressing human and non-human sound ecologies and concepts such as techno-intuition. By (re-)situating our ecology and (re-)sounding the inaudible, the composer uses sound to articulate relationship with environment.

SatelliteSounding.mp3

Sun Run Sun: Satellite Sounding (7′43″)Yolande Harris
The Satellite Sounders are custom made hand-held instruments that take live navigation data (gps) from the satellites orbiting the earth and turn them into electronic sounds listened to on headphones while walking. In this piece the reactions of the public who become the performers, combined with the satellite sounds collected from four corners of the world, activates an imaginative space of both dreams and suspicions enacted above the everyday.
Sun Run Sun and the Satellite Sounders: composition, concept and design Yolande HarrisWith thanks to participants at the Picnic08 Conference Amsterdam, Virtueel Platform and Fonds BKVBDeveloped at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMK) and STEIM Amsterdam during 2008Satellite sounds recorded on location in Genova, Los Angeles, Singapore, at Sea 2008

more information: http://www.sunrunsun.nimk.nl

I particularly liked the feature of presentation mode which recognizes the different processes of building/programming and testing, allowing two different views of the same patch to be open and worked on at once. This division of the programming process and the interface starts to recognize the conceptual mismatch between the process of technical design and the creative goals. Why is it that many Max users play around with their patches without having a predefined idea of the outcome that’s needed? Why does Zicarelli express surprise at this? Musically, how close is this kind of working to improvisation rather than composition? Does Max/Msp facilitate a way of working that allows fluency of conceptual musical ideas and not just technical fluency?

In using Max/MSP I tend to push the material around until I get the sonic results I want. I don’t try to define the outcome before embarking on it, I concentrate on the process. I aim to let the ‘material’ – the data I’m processing for example – find characteristics audible in sound that I wouldn’t be able to predict before I hear it. Sound is not programming! There needs to be a possibility to play with the sound while building, to play with the programming, to change, to tweak, to experiment, to allow mistakes, to allow the possibility of discovering new ideas, and to ultimately shape sound in ways that are not limited to the conceptual thinking of the programming language that it’s built in. 

This is why I like Max and still work with after 10 years as the program of choice for the work that I make. But, as was pointed out by Zicarelli, I am one of a shocking minority of women in the Max/MSP community of users. Why? Why do I like it? Why am I one of only 4 women in the room? It points to a larger problem visible in the minority of women in electronic music.

David’s attention to the male dominance visible in Max, is at least an acknowledgement of the problem. But it cannot be seriously considered by following with jokes on the female nature of the roundness of button/bangs in the graphic interface a joke that made all the men in the room laugh, alienating the women, and continuing to talk on a male level.

from the working group description:

Imagine a garden of dream flowers, powered by duracell, made of abandoned Starbucks coffee cups, styrofoam cubes cut from the latest iMac packing materials, a brain made in Italy, a blossom made by 1/2 Tod 1/2 Bot. The flowers glow with an eerie pulsating glow, sending secret missives across a darkened room. Some flowers horde their individuality, resisting attempts to transform, to change. Others broadcast their distinctive natures broadly, encouraging nearby flowers to go with them, to be like them. Still others promiscuously adopt the patterns of others, reproducing, syncing, connecting. They live they die. The garden flourishes it declines.

In this group, workshop participants will build electronic flowers using some pre-assembled electronic components and craft materials (paper cups, styrofoam, cardboard, etc.) These flowers ‘talk’ to one another using infrared light patterns and, in doing so, gain and expend energy. They can be programmed in various ways – to be more open or more closed, more aggressive or more sharing – which has an effect on each flower’s own individual survival as well as the survival of the garden as a whole. In addition to resulting in what I hope will be an interesting visual display, the project will serve to open and inform discussions relevant to the topic of ‘walled garden’. Themes include questions about the porosity of boundaries, the necessity for both inclusion and exclusion as part of community, the power of exchange, and so forth.

Working in a small group of about 5 participants, Matt brought pre-prepared units: Arduino boards with infra-red light and receiver for sending messages and a three colored light blinker for displaying the different patterns exchanged. The software was ready programmed and only needed minimal changes in code to try out the different settings.

We experimented with a very simple network, sending a message (ID, pattern, ID) out to whoever is listening, receiving patterns when listening, and displaying patterns according to change. The parameters were the amount of time spent listening, the amount of times sending a pattern, and the relative values gained or lost in this process. A starting value of ‘energy’ was defined. Changing these parameters determined the balance of the group, whether one dominates or looses too much energy. 

3 concepts of exchange and value were tested, the gift economy, where one accepts a new pattern and changes, the info commons, where one only changes if the pattern is new, and the info neighborhood, where a memory is built in and will only change is the pattern is different from the last three.  In the gift economy value = exchange, in the info commons value = difference. The difference in the exchange of patterns however reached equilibrium, or homogeneity very quickly, and the only way out of this was a new input from outside. This was tested with the idea of a wall, a boundary, a walled garden with some flowers inside and others outside.

Important observations from playing with these simple networks:

• To keep change available, one has to collaborate, be able to predict the onset of homogeneity because this means the imminent death of the whole garden. Given this realization one has to be prepared to ask for or exchange patterns before patterns become homogenous, or set up a system which accepts input from outside, or add noise to the system (which will be less predictable).
• Each node in the network is individual creating an uneven, unbalanced system (equal nodes, if possible, would make an unreal network). [NB I supposed both these last points are linked to the onset of chaos and chaos theory.]
• Messages have content, they carry information that has varying value of its own, which means that the value is linked to the content of the message, not to an external value parameter such as simply sending and receiving. 
• Can data itself be both the communication, the message and the carrier? This would stop the splitting of content from carrier. [What are the theories on this?][It reminds me too of the Meta-Orchestra work with exchanging large amounts of complex performance and musical data made available on a network, and how this changes musical ideas of collaboration within a group. I should look also at the work of The Hub here for example.]

20 & 21 November 2008, Lloyd Hotel, Amsterdam, Organised by Virtueel Platform