Exploring Music Spaces – Computer Science Research Journal

Computer Music Research Journal #1/

A few years ago when I was introduced to Borges I was deeply moved by the idea of a complete library. His short story, Library of Babel, most importantly reminded me of the difference between the infinite and the very very large. It also forces one to understand what it means to explore a space of possibility. If you have not read the story I urge you to do so here.

A natural step to take is to apply this idea to other domains – such as Daniel Dennett’s Library of Mendel where all DNA information exists. If this idea is applied musically to the 12 tone scale, we arrive at a collection of all possible melodies, chords, harmonies…etc.

Escape @ Speakup Festival

The short film ‘Escape’ picked up an award at the Speak Up Festival, which took place at the Living Arts Center in Mississauga last week. It won the Light & Frame Visionary Award for Cinematography .

Lyndsay owns it – 2009 London One Act Festival

[Lynosaurous - Attack of the Fruiter]

You could feel it in the air during the blackout before we walked on stage. Lyndsay’s opening song had the audience laughing within 3 seconds of the light cue. From then on I could feel the audience following her character’s every move on stage (vocally following her), to a point where the other characters and became secondary. During an important scene where the two sisters were arguing center stage Lyndsay dropped hot peppers all over the floor by mistake (during our hot sauce gag, which wasn’t supposed to be center of attention) and the audience laughter was so loud that I couldn’t even hear the actors shouting beside me. The show was in Lyndsay’s palm, she continued on to nail her bathroom scene with subtlety you don’t normally see in acting. Read the review of her show by Donald D’Haene here.

Behind the scenes – The Production of On The Menu

Last month Lyndsay’s play On The Menu was accepted into the London One Act Festival at the Grand Theater. So, out of the blue Lyndsay was responsible for casting, producing and directing a play within 3 weeks. This was a huge commitment, much more so than a normal hobby would consume….She kept up a journal of the process on her website.

I worked with her along the way, as an actor, set builder, lighting design and annoying voice in the background asking her to “Did you remember to……”. I suspect we will need a vacation after the final performance wraps, 2009 has been anything but boring. Below are some photos of last weeks work:

Rehearsals were moved to our living room, where I set up a mock stage. This helped assist with staging since we had very limited time – and only a handful of rehearsals.

Financial System Efficiency – Can we predict the stock market?

How Efficient Is The Financial System?

Background

In 1948 Claude Shannon wrote a paper entitled ‘The Mathematical Theory of Communication,’ later expanding this into a book by the same name. Shannon’s work was the foundation to the stunning achievements of information theory. In many respects, Shannon’s work deserves recognition as the foundation of complexity theory as well.

The path to complexity theory was lead (in part) by a scientist named Warren Weaver, who had an early grasp on Shannon’s ideas. With the power of Shannon’s concepts, Weaver was able to divide the last few centuries of scientific inquiry into three broad groups: First, the study of simple, one or two variable problems. Second, problems of “disorganized complexity” which involve billions of variables that can only be approached with statistical and probabilistic tools. These tools apply to a wide array of artificial and natural phenomena such as: the behavior of molecules in gas, gene pool patterns, population growth rates, and even the actuarial sciences which help life insurance companies (or credit card companies) profit despite their limited knowledge of a persons condition. There was a third group that began to emerge and is still a study in its infancy: “organized complexity.” It is the group of problems that lie in the middle region between simple (static) problems, and billion variable problems (noise) of disorganized complexity. These problems still involve a large number of variables, but the size of the system is in fact a secondary characteristic, as Weaver describes:

Much more important than the mere number of variables, is the fact that these variables are all interrelated….These problems, as contrasted with the disorganized situations with which statistics can cope, show the essential feature of organization. We will therefore refer to this group of problems as those of organized complexity. [Johnston 2002]

New short film

Here is the final cut of ‘Escape‘, a short film which was create this past year in London with the help of Cam Murray and Lyndsay Simmons.

Lighting Setups

I recently finished a short film titled Escape which started as an experiment in cinematography. The challenge was to try lighting a variety of environments: daytime exteriors, night time sequences by flashlight, special effect lighting, twilight, different interiors etc. Below are a few shots from the production:

1. Interior night time sequence:

Here I did a single tracking shot starting outside the bedroom and eventually close up on Lyndsay’s face. I replaced her bedroom lamp with a 200W practical bulb, and softened it up with a umbrella – The trick here was to soften the light more for the closeups (no harsh shadows on her face). I also tucked a 45W blue effect bulb to cast an eerie laptop glow onto her face. The final result was fantastic.

[TOP:Lyndsay getting board while I spend 2 hours taking pictures of her. BOTTOM: Frame from the finished scene]

2. Interior dinner scene

For the kitchen scenes in the film, I was able to put a single 300W bulb (purchased from Henry’s) in the existing fixture which allowed total camera freedom – The single bulb allowed me to light the entire scene.

Robot 1.2 – new Direction

Last year, the development of Robot 1.1 was an experiment in electrical Engineering and the Psychology (In terms of
rhythmic human-computer interaction). It is a hardware interface which interprets ambient sound as structured pulses (using low pass filter, peak detector and tempo filter circuits) that are fed into a microcontroller which controls a solenoid powered drum stick (see previous post for video):

I have been pondering both applications and new directions for this technology. One of the main questions I kept running into while working on this project, was the question of response time. In order for a rhythmic system to be interactive, it must operate in real time. The hardware aspects of Robot 1.1 were very effective at generating a real time response. Although, the functionality was limited:

Understanding Entropy

I find the concept of entropy interesting – as I came across it in a new light while studying information theory. In physics entropy is defined as the state of disorder of some thermodynamic system (i.e. a system where heat is being exchanged). So objects will have different entropy, depending upon on their temperature (this is an over simplfication). Usually people describe the Universe having a tendency towards higher entropy – ice melting is an example, since ice is more ordered (on a molecular level), than a liquid is. Nature always seems to resist ordering...Remember: Organization = low entropy, Chaos = high entropy.

Pseudo Random Idea

Computer Science Journal – Nov 5th/2008

The lotto, Roulette, pi, evolution, chaos, quantum mechanics, patterns in nature….what do they all have in common?

….hmm

Random numbers! More specifically, the concept of random in general. Which can be defined (from a Computer Science & Mathematics standpoint) as a “fair dance between 0 and 1″, or simply as “a pattern which is impossible for a human to predict”.

Some interesting points: