What’s struck me lately as rather remarkable are examples of creative people digitally clutching for meaning.
My challenge to artists working with online applications as a tool: can we try, please, to do something more than just mashup?
I love generative stuff, but I’d like to see more that’s original.
It started with this organ. Akira’d posted a Tweet about it and it got me thinking.
You take a website address, and the organ “plays” that website’s sound. Try it:
Pretty cool, right?
Until you start to think about it: hey, what are they basing those choices on, anyways? Is it some really amazing processing tool that somehow gets input into the heads of the website’s creators and then extracted in some meaningful way?
The answer is no. Turns out it’s way simpler than that. The algorithm strips the code, then just takes out the letters that correspond to notes, and makes which ones are more common the main theme of the “play.”
THE CODEORGAN ANALYSES THE *BODY* CONTENT OF ANY WEB PAGE AND TRANSLATES THAT CONTENT INTO MUSIC. THE CODEORGAN USES A COMPLEX ALGORITHM TO DEFINE THE KEY, SYNTH STYLE AND DRUM PATTERN MOST APPROPRIATE TO THE PAGE CONTENT. FIRSTLY, THE CODEORGAN SCANS THE PAGE CONTENTS AND REMOVES ALL CHARACTERS NOT FOUND IN THE MUSICAL SCALE (A TO G), AND THEN ANALYSES THE REMAINING CHARACTERS TO FIND THE MOST COMMONLY USED ‘NOTE’. WHICH SYNTHESIZER TO USE IS BASED UPON THE TOTAL NUMBER CHARACTERS USED ON THE WEBPAGE – THERE ARE CURRENTLY 10 SYNTHESIZER EFFECTS AND THE ONE CHOSEN IS PICKED BASED UPON THE PERCENTAGE OF CONTENT.—The Codeorgan People
Waaaait. So, they just run some scanning and if-then kind of stuff over the body of a web page!? That’s not what I would call “translation.” That’s just running an app, isn’t it?
For me, a real translation would have to be a true interpretation—I guess what I mean is a humanized one. Something that someone with an ear for music, and experience in it really took the time to sit with this and internalize, and then make new music.
I’m thinking specifically of the composer in that Ian McEwan book, Amsterdam. God. That is one incredible book. (Oooooo. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so. Just grabbed this cover image, which says “Winner of the 1998 Booker Prize” really big across the top. Cool. FWIW I wasn’t into Atonement. Saw the movie, didn’t read the book, in fairness, but it depressed the hell out of me. Give it a skip if you don’t want to be bummed for a week. Much like Porgy & Bess. Poooooor Porgy.)
Anyway! Seeing that the Codeorgan didn’t process this with a human emotion-simulated algorithm was a true letdown. I know it was asking a lot! But still. I was kind of excited to type in a few sites and see how they “sounded.”
But really. What about symphonies, orchestra, art?!
Then there was this.
The Mona Lisa in 50 Polygons.
OK. So there’s the Mona Lisa, right? A lot smaller than I thought when I saw it as a kid. I was 13. We’d waited in line for hours. There it was. Cased in really thick glass, with guards on the sides. Not exactly an intimate art-viewing experience, but then, I wouldn’t want a fancy piece of art hanging out in spitball-shooting distance of any teen, either.
My point isn’t to rag on the museum guys. It’s just to say if you’ve seen this or other art that is very moving in real life, you know that the live experience of it is much, much different than any renderings you could find online. (I wrote about this after seeing a Dali in Vancouver. And woooow, was it breathtaking. And I’m not one of those people who got like three Dali posters for freshman year in college. No.)
But being there. That’s what I’m talking about. That physicality. So important, isn’t it? Online just takes the color and depth you get from being there of it, and turns it into RGB and a screen.
So while I think it’s exciting that someone can render the Mona Lisa in some blocks of color (I LOVE blocks of color), it’s a little sad that the object of this effort is really just a xerox of a xerox of something that means more if you can experience it firsthand.
Roger Alsing creates a Mona Lisa-like image with 50 polygons
Know what I’m saying?
OK, so now that I’ve said all that stuff about how the digital generation is taking everything I love and care about (art, music) and running it through digital processing to make something else that’s maybe “cool,” I am having mixed feelings. On one hand, all artists have drawn inspiration from predecessors.
We have!
Who can live without being somehow swayed by the cultural and musical and literary shifts of your time, of those before you who are remarkable and insightful to you? That’s just how it goes. So why complain about the digital photocopying, right?
Because there’s a greater potential here yet to be tapped, that’s why.
Because the Internet is a medium unlike a collection of musical instruments or artist brushes. The Internet is its own thing. And because it is so, it deserves a voice in its own right.
Internet-made art. Digital-made art. But not like taking a picture and turning it into something beautiful on the screen. No, no, not that at all. I’m talking about the experiences these can create for us that are new. What can the digital communication offer us that’s unique? How can we communicate or express our artistic ideas through the Internet and the kinds of technological tools that are less than 1 year old?
Ladies and gentlemen, what I’m asking you is, “How can we harness this wave?”
This is a neat video, Web 3.0 by Kate Ray, on what they’re calling “the semantic web.” The big idea is that content isn’t king anymore, but context is. If there’s a way to amp up something like Google to give you some more finely-tuned pinpointing of information that relates to things you care about, that’s what the new generation of the Internet will be. They say.
What’s neat is the video Web 3.0 has some people I’ve actually met (the world is very small when that kind of thing starts to happen.) Plus it has a bunch of folks who seem to have well-informed opinions on stuff many of us “users” are still in the dark about. Where technology is going, that is.
How that matters is a different question, as is how can we reconfigure our applications of new tools in a way that’s more engaging than just stripping code for note-like letters and hitting “play,” or reducing down the emotion of the Mona Lisa to flat shapes? Both new evolutions are exciting in their own way, don’t get me wrong, I love seeing people experiment with tools, but what can we make that would spawn new generations of artwork in the future?
That is the question on my mind today.
Anyone have any thoughts? Working on cool new stuff you’d like to share with us?
Now, in this sweltering 90F heat, I must go obtain a glass of ice and fill it with uisce beatha.
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