Electrify Atwater Kent

The Electrify Atwater Kent project aims to breathe new life into the dull, dreary building of Atwater Kent. LED stairs, bringing a modern look to the front stairwell, as well as the RasPiano, with customizable filters and visualizations to demonstrate the discipline of signal processing, will be installed in the building. With a full installation the project aimsto make Atwater Kent not just a more welcoming space that students feel comfortable studying in, but an inspiration for future engineers as well

Algorithmic composition of music in real-time with soft constraints

Music has been the subject of formal approaches for a long time, ranging from Pythagoras’ elementary research on tonal systems to J. S. Bach’s elaborate formal composition techniques. Especially in the 20th century, much music was composed based on formal techniques: Algorithmic approaches for composing music were developed by composers like A. Schoenberg as well as in the scientific area. So far, a variety of mathematical techniques have been employed for composing music, e.g. probability models, artificial neural networks or constraint-based reasoning. In the recent time, interactive music systems have become popular: existing songs can be replayed with musical video games and original music can be interactively composed with easy-to-use applications running e.g. on mobile devices. However, applications which algorithmically generate music in real-time based on user interaction are mostly experimental and limited in either interactivity or musicality. There are many enjoyable applications but there are also many opportunities for improvements and novel approaches. The goal of this work is to provide a general and systematic approach for specifying and implementing interactive music systems. We introduce an algebraic framework for interactively composing music in real-time with a reasoning-technique called ‘soft constraints’: this technique allows modeling and solving a large range of problems and is suited particularly well for problems with soft and concurrent optimization goals. Our framework is based on well-known theories for music and soft constraints and allows specifying interactive music systems by declaratively defining ‘how the music should sound’ with respect to both user interaction and musical rules. Based on this core framework, we introduce an approach for interactively generating music similar to existing melodic material. With this approach, musical rules can be defined by playing notes (instead of writing code) in order to make interactively generated melodies comply with a certain musical style. We introduce an implementation of the algebraic framework in .NET and present several concrete applications: ‘The Planets’ is an application controlled by a table-based tangible interface where music can be interactively composed by arranging planet constellations. ‘Fluxus’ is an application geared towards musicians which allows training melodic material that can be used to define musical styles for applications geared towards non-musicians. Based on musical styles trained by the Fluxus sequencer, we introduce a general approach for transforming spatial movements to music and present two concrete applications: the first one is controlled by a touch display, the second one by a motion tracking system. At last, we investigate how interactive music systems can be used in the area of pervasive advertising in general and how our approach can be used to realize ‘interactive advertising jingles’.Musik ist seit langem Gegenstand formaler Untersuchungen, von Phytagoras‘ grundlegender Forschung zu tonalen Systemen bis hin zu J. S. Bachs aufwändigen formalen Kompositionstechniken. Vor allem im 20. Jahrhundert wurde vielfach Musik nach formalen Methoden komponiert: Algorithmische Ansätze zur Komposition von Musik wurden sowohl von Komponisten wie A. Schoenberg als auch im wissenschaftlichem Bereich entwickelt. Bislang wurde eine Vielzahl von mathematischen Methoden zur Komposition von Musik verwendet, z.B. statistische Modelle, künstliche neuronale Netze oder Constraint-Probleme. In der letzten Zeit sind interaktive Musiksysteme populär geworden: Bekannte Songs können mit Musikspielen nachgespielt werden, und mit einfach zu bedienenden Anwendungen kann man neue Musik interaktiv komponieren (z.B. auf mobilen Geräten). Allerdings sind die meisten Anwendungen, die basierend auf Benutzerinteraktion in Echtzeit algorithmisch Musik generieren, eher experimentell und in Interaktivität oder Musikalität limitiert. Es gibt viele unterhaltsame Anwendungen, aber ebenso viele Möglichkeiten für Verbesserungen und neue Ansätze. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, einen allgemeinen und systematischen Ansatz zur Spezifikation und Implementierung von interaktiven Musiksystemen zu entwickeln. Wir stellen ein algebraisches Framework zur interaktiven Komposition von Musik in Echtzeit vor welches auf sog. ‚Soft Constraints‘ basiert, einer Methode aus dem Bereich der künstlichen Intelligenz. Mit dieser Methode ist es möglich, eine große Anzahl von Problemen zu modellieren und zu lösen. Sie ist besonders gut geeignet für Probleme mit unklaren und widersprüchlichen Optimierungszielen. Unser Framework basiert auf gut erforschten Theorien zu Musik und Soft Constraints und ermöglicht es, interaktive Musiksysteme zu spezifizieren, indem man deklarativ angibt, ‚wie sich die Musik anhören soll‘ in Bezug auf sowohl Benutzerinteraktion als auch musikalische Regeln. Basierend auf diesem Framework stellen wir einen neuen Ansatz vor, um interaktiv Musik zu generieren, die ähnlich zu existierendem melodischen Material ist. Dieser Ansatz ermöglicht es, durch das Spielen von Noten (nicht durch das Schreiben von Programmcode) musikalische Regeln zu definieren, nach denen interaktiv generierte Melodien an einen bestimmten Musikstil angepasst werden. Wir präsentieren eine Implementierung des algebraischen Frameworks in .NET sowie mehrere konkrete Anwendungen: ‚The Planets‘ ist eine Anwendung für einen interaktiven Tisch mit der man Musik komponieren kann, indem man Planetenkonstellationen arrangiert. ‚Fluxus‘ ist eine Anwendung, die sich an Musiker richtet. Sie erlaubt es, melodisches Material zu trainieren, das wiederum als Musikstil in Anwendungen benutzt werden kann, die sich an Nicht-Musiker richten. Basierend auf diesen trainierten Musikstilen stellen wir einen generellen Ansatz vor, um räumliche Bewegungen in Musik umzusetzen und zwei konkrete Anwendungen basierend auf einem Touch-Display bzw. einem Motion-Tracking-System. Abschließend untersuchen wir, wie interaktive Musiksysteme im Bereich ‚Pervasive Advertising‘ eingesetzt werden können und wie unser Ansatz genutzt werden kann, um ‚interaktive Werbejingles‘ zu realisieren

Composing with soundscapes : capturing and analysing urban audio for a Raw Musical interpretation

The sound environment is increasingly more relevant in contemporary culture. It is a ‘picture’ of a place, an X-ray of its character and activities, shapeless and amorphous, whilst full of meanings and subtleties. It is a transmission that is complementary to what a picture retains and transports. Therefore it is a unique, tangible impression of the place to which it belongs, and intrinsically, its history, and that of the people who inhabit it, and their relations. Murray Schafer termed this element as Soundscape. Although always a present element, it was only from the end of the Twentieth Century that it has been studied in a systematic way, initially in a more ecological and socio-cultural function approach, but slowly it has been seen as an artistic tool, both in direct use of the sounds as well as being an inspiration, and a starting point, for creation. The exploratory research project presented here aims to study the capture and analysis of the urban soundscape, with a special focus on its temporal evolution, and its application in the creative and artistic context. At the first stage, we try to understand how and, if possible, to capture and represent the most challenging part of this massive sound element, which is its constant changing on the time axis. Grasping its nuances on both small and large time scales. The second phase is to understand the pertinence of such information and its direct influence in the act of music and sonic creation. To achieve these goals a multidisciplinary approach based on two main pillars was necessary: Soundscape and Computer Music. These disciplines determine the scientific areas in which this research had to be focused. Due to the fact that this thesis has a relatively broad scope of interests, there is a survey of the state of the art relating to projects and approaches that relate to the interests of this investigation in different ways. In areas such as: Music Information Retrieval, Algorithmic Composition, Eco Composition, and Sound Maps. This survey confirms the contemporaneity, relevance and originality of the project, both scientifically and artistically. In order to evaluate the proposed approach to the soundscape, URB, an experimental system to capture, analyse and store the urban soundscape was developed and implemented. The system is based on current technology, but is affordable and robust. To ensure the sustainability of the project, development was based in open source technology, to ensure the possibility of the project expanding and shaping according to the interests and needs of specific places, populations, research centres and/or artistic interests. Three main goals have guided the development of this system: addressing the lack of temporal perspective of the sound representation of urban spaces; the design of a free and autonomous system that depends only on the users, which results in a public free access database; to facilitate and systematize the access to data on the sound characteristics of an urban soundscape for both ecological studies as well as for creative and artistic purposes. A server keeps a record of the collected data, which can either be read directly, through an application developed for this purpose, or through a visual interface with a time-line approach, but always allowing for the possibility of creating original access tools that best serve the user’s purposes. After implementing the system, through four listening points, and confirming its robustness, we advance to the system’s application in the development of artistic works. For this purpose a challenge was proposed to a number of artists with distinct aesthetic backgrounds and training. This challenge resulted in different works that were presented to the public in different formats and media, such as works for classical instrumental, electro-acoustic works, improvisational moments with real-time sonification of the soundscape, sonic installations and sculptures powered by the system presented. This practice leads to a fundamental reflection in this research. We describe the different approaches chosen by each creator and primarily assess the pertinence in the artistic result of using a continuous and discrete system of urban soundscape analysis, from a creator’s point of view as well as from a listener’s point of view. With this research we are able to present a functional approach to the lack of temporal perspective in the usual sound maps that focus on the geographic origin of the recordings. We conclude that soundscapes can provide useful data for artistic creation and we promote a direct connection between that kind of approach and the artists. Even before the works developed and the artist’s feedback, whilst not ignoring the different approaches and opinions, we can conclude that this approach seems to promote new and functional soundscape composition ideas, making URB a relevant resource to compose original soundscape based music. Also, through analysis of the pieces, we could point out patterns of the technical and artistic choices on how to deal with information from the soundscape data, both in deferred time and real-time.A paisagem sonora é cada vez mais relevante na cultura contemporânea. É uma ‘fotografia’ de um lugar. Uma radiografia ao seu carácter e atividades, simultaneamente disforme e amorfa como repleta de significados e subtilezas. Uma transmissão complementar ao que a imagem retém e transporta. É portanto uma impressão única , tangível do lugar a que pertence e, intrinsecamente , da sua história , das pessoas que o habitam, das suas relações. Murray Schafer batizou este elemento como Soundscape (Paisagem Sonora). E embora tenha sido sempre um elemento presente, só a partir do final do séc. XX é que tem vindo a ser estudado de uma forma sistematizada, inicialmente numa abordagem mais ecológica e das suas funções socioculturais, mas lentamente encarado como uma ferramenta artística tanto no uso direto dos sons, como sendo o ponto de partida de inspiração para a criação. O projeto de investigação de carácter exploratório que aqui apresentamos visa o estudo da recolha e análise da paisagem sonora urbana, com especial enfoque na sua evolução temporal e da sua aplicação no contexto criativo artística. Como tal, numa fase inicial, procurar entender como e, se possível, capturar e representar o elemento mais desafiante que é a permanente mutação sonora no eixo temporal, apreendendo as suas nuances tanto numa escala de tempo diminuta como em grandes escalas temporais. Numa segunda fase entender a pertinência desta informação e da sua influência direta no ato da criação musical e sonora. Para cumprir estes objectivos foi necessária uma abordagem multidisciplinar fundamentada em dois pilares principais: Paisagem-Sonora e Informática Musical. Estas disciplinas determinam as áreas científicas em que esta investigação se debruçou. Tendo esta tese um âmbito de interesses relativamente amplo, há um levantamento do estado da arte referente a projetos e abordagens de áreas distintas que ,de diferentes formas , se relaciona com os interesses da nossa investigação. Em áreas como: Musical Information Retrieval, Composição Algorítmica, Eco Composição, Mapas Sonoros. Este levantamento confirma a atualidade, a pertinência e a originalidade do projeto, tanto cientificamente como artisticamente. A fim de avaliar a abordagem proposta à paisagem sonora, foi desenvolvido e posto em prática um sistema experimental de captura, análise e armazenamento de ambiente sonoro urbano, de nome URB. Sistema esse baseado em tecnologia atual, mas acessível e robusta para garantir a sustentabilidade do projeto e apoiado em desenvolvimento código aberto para garantir a possibilidade do projeto se expandir e se moldar de acordo com os interesses e necessidades concretas de locais, populações, centros de investigação e interesses artísticos. Três objetivos principais guiaram o desenvolvimento deste sistema: colmatar a falta de perspectiva temporal em grande escala de uma representação sonora de um espaço urbano; o desenho de um sistema que livre e autónomo, que apenas dependa dos utilizadores, que resulte numa base de dados de acesso público e gratuito; facilitar e sistematizar o acesso à informação sobre as caraterísticas sonoras de um ambiente sonoro urbano tanto para estudos ecológicos como para função criativa e artística. É mantido num servidor o registo de toda a informação recolhida, que tanto pode ser consultado diretamente, através de uma aplicação desenvolvida para o efeito, através de um interface visual ao estilo de linha temporal, deixando sempre a possibilidade para a criação de ferramentas de acesso originais que sirvam melhor os propósitos do utilizador. Após a implementação do sistema, através de quatro pontos de escuta, e a confirmação da sua robustez, avançamos para a aplicação do sistema no desenvolvimento de obras artísticas. Para tal, foi lançado um desafio a um conjunto de artistas que partem de diferentes formações e identidades estéticos. Esse desafio resultou em diferentes obras que foram apresentadas ao público com diferentes formatos e suportes, como obras integralmente para formatos instrumentais clássicos, obras electroacústicas, momentos de improvisação em tempo real com a sonorização do ambiente sonoro, instalações e esculturas sonoras alimentadas pelo sistema apresentado. Desta prática resulta uma reflexão fundamental nesta investigação. Descrevemos as diferentes abordagens escolhidas por cada criador e acima de tudo avaliamos a pertinência no resultado artístico do uso de um sistema contínuo e discreto de análise de ambiente sonoro urbano, tanto do ponto de vista do criador como do ponto de vista do ouvinte. A partir desta investigação, apresentamos uma abordagem funcional para a falta de perspectiva temporal nos mapas sonoros clássico que incidem principalmente sobre as origens geográfica das gravações. Concluímos que as paisagens sonoras podem fornecer dados úteis para a criação artística e promovemos uma conexão direta entre essa abordagem e os artistas. Perante os trabalhos e análises desenvolvidos por diferentes criadores, concluímos que esta aproximação promove ideias novas e funcionais para a composição. Além disso, através da análise de peças, apontamos padrões nas escolhas técnicas e estéticas sobre como lidar com as informações a partir dos dados da paisagem sonora, tanto em tempo diferido como em tempo real

Communicating the Unspeakable: Linguistic Phenomena in the Psychedelic Sphere

Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other, whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are encountered, their forms unrelated to the representation of speech in natural language writing systems. This thesis constructs a theoretical model of linguistic phenomena encountered in the psychedelic sphere for the field of altered states of consciousness research (ASCR). The model is developed from a neurophenomenological perspective, especially the work of Francisco Varela, and Michael Winkelman’s work in shamanistic ASC, which in turn builds on the biogenetic structuralism of Charles Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene d’Aquili. Neurophenomenology relates the physical and functional organization of the brain to the subjective reports of lived experience in altered states as mutually informative, without reducing consciousness to one or the other. Consciousness is seen as a dynamic multistate process of the recursive interaction of biology and culture, thereby navigating the traditional dichotomies of objective/subjective, body/mind, and inner/outer realities that problematically characterize much of the discourse in consciousness studies. The theoretical work of Renaissance scholar Stephen Farmer on the evolution of syncretic and correlative systems and their relation to neurobiological structures provides a further framework for the exegesis of the descriptions of linguistic phenomena in first-person texts of long-term psychedelic selfexploration. Since the classification of most psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, legal research came to a halt; self-experimentation as research did not. Scientists such as Timothy Leary and John Lilly became outlaw scientists, a social aspect of the “unspeakability” of these experiences. Academic ASCR has largely side-stepped examination of the extensive literature of psychedelic selfexploration. This thesis examines aspects of both form and content from these works, focusing on those that treat linguistic phenomena, and asking what these linguistic experiences can tell us about how the psychedelic landscape is constructed, how it can be navigated, interpreted, and communicated within its own experiential field, and communicated about to make the data accessible to inter-subjective comparison and validation. The methodological core of this practice-based research is a technoetic practice as defined by artist and theoretician Roy Ascott: the exploration of consciousness through interactive, artistic, and psychoactive technologies. The iterative process of psychedelic self-exploration and creation of interactive software defines my own technoetic practice and is the means by which I examine my states of consciousness employing the multidimensional visual language Glide

Obiter Dicta

"Stitched together over five years of journaling, Obiter Dicta is a commonplace book of freewheeling explorations representing the transcription of a dozen notebooks, since painstakingly reimagined for publication. Organized after Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia, this unschooled exercise in aesthetic thought—gleefully dilettantish, oftentimes dangerously close to the epigrammatic—interrogates an array of subject matter (although inescapably circling back to the curiously resemblant histories of Western visual art and instrumental music) through the lens of drive-by speculation. Erick Verran’s approach to philosophical inquiry follows the brute-force literary technique of Jacques Derrida to exhaustively favor the material grammar of a signifier over hand-me-down meaning, juxtaposing outer semblances with their buried systems and our etched-in-stone intuitions about color and illusion, shape and value, with lessons stolen from seemingly unrelatable disciplines. Interlarded with extracts of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy as well as Roland Barthes, this cache of incidental remarks eschews what’s granular for the biggest picture available, leaving below the hyper-specialized fields of academia for a bird’s-eye view of their crop circles. Obiter Dicta is an unapologetic experiment in intellectual dot-connecting that challenges much long-standing wisdom about everything from illuminated manuscripts to Minecraft and the evolution of European music with lyrical brevity; that is, before jumping to the next topic.

Broken Technologies

There are many possible definitions of “technology” and I will discuss some of these in this book. However, in this introduction let me use a definition of Svante Lindqvist who defines technology very intuitively as “those activities, directed towards the satisfaction of human wants, which produce change in the material world.” He says also “the distinction between human “wants” and more limited human “needs” is crucial, for we do not use technology only to satisfy our essential material requirements.” Consequently, from this perspective, a technology that is “broken” could be defined as those activities, directed towards the satisfaction of human wants that are intended to produce changes in the material world that either do not manage to satisfy these wants or do not produce changes in the material world, or both. This is the third edition, updated October 2015

2015 Oklahoma Research Day Full Program

This document contains all abstracts from the 2015 Oklahoma Research Day held at Northeastern State University