Painting and music?

[Rich Hanson]

Music by 300 strangers:
https://youtu.be/enFB33SOo6k

There are other videos where they look at how the piece was put together.

That is quite extraordinary, and surprisingly moving.

[BigRedX]

I'm loving this BigRedX!

Must dig out my copies of Coagula and Photosounder and get stuck in again.

Martin

Thank you. I had a look at the programs in question. The Coagula site was very short on info, I assume it's Windows only? Photosounder does look good.

TBH this process is the only thing I've found Audacity useful for, and even then it had a tendency to crash a lot, plus I had to try all the different import options before I found the ones that produced some useful sounds.

[ManFromGlass]

Photosounder looked wonderfully deep and I’ve kept it around for when I have time to learn it properly. There used to be a Mac program that converted pictures to music and I think one could also go in and alter the frequencies by drawing.
I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of converting images to sounds. The visual and aural seem somehow strongly connected to me.
If this community composition gets off the ground I am in too!

[Ben Asaro]

Photosounder looked wonderfully deep and I’ve kept it around for when I have time to learn it properly. There used to be a Mac program that converted pictures to music and I think one could also go in and alter the frequencies by drawing.
I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of converting images to sounds. The visual and aural seem somehow strongly connected to me.
If this community composition gets off the ground I am in too!

I think the latest iteration of this technology is called sonification. NASA has been using it with Hubble images, it creates some really interesting soundscapes. There are open source sonification programs that convert data to sound and those are really interesting as well.

[Martin Walker]

Yes, as far as I remember Coagula was Windows only, but unlike your granular-style example, each line in its drawn image controls the amplitude of one sine-wave oscillator at a specific pitch, and different colours determine stereo placement and noise contributions.

So it generates sounds more like additive synthesis, which are rather different from the norm.

Martin

[Arpangel]

What I want to know is: where can I buy a Marconi Microphone?
No-one seems to stock them!

Are you joking? I sold two about 3 years ago.

Ha! Well, I can wait. As they say, "what goes around comes around".

Actually, I contacted one music shop called The Kipple Factory, they've got outlets everywhere, but I think their biggest branch is down by the Tannhauser Gate.
Shell Beach is the nearest tube station, I believe.

Anyway, I asked them if they had the item in stock, and the chap on the vidphone (Isidore, I think his name was), he said, "hmm, well, we did have a few last month, but they got puddinged in a timeslip, so I reckon we're looking at a very long delay."

"Yes, yes!", I exclaimed, "that's exactly what I'm after, a VERY LONG DELAY!"
"Have you tried Digitech?", he replied.

I hung up in disgust.
I dunno, maybe I should just get some more neural plugins for my Interocitor...

This was the type I sold, I got them refurbished by UK ribbon specialist Xuadia

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8430787/bbc-marconi-axbt-ribbon-microphone-microphone

They were sold to raise funds for my late friend Mike Skeets family.

[FrankF]

Oh, right, you weren't joking! Kudos to you, hombre: I hope you got a good price for a good cause.
I was referring to this rather mystical and fascinating anecdote:

"The story goes that, late in his life, Guglielmo Marconi had an epiphany. The godfather of radio technology decided that no sound ever dies. It just decays beyond the point that we can detect it with our ears. Any sound was forever recoverable, he believed, with the right device. His dream was to build one powerful enough to pick up Christ’s Sermon on the Mount."

[Arpangel]

Oh, right, you weren't joking! Kudos to you, hombre: I hope you got a good price for a good cause.
I was referring to this rather mystical and fascinating anecdote:

"The story goes that, late in his life, Guglielmo Marconi had an epiphany. The godfather of radio technology decided that no sound ever dies. It just decays beyond the point that we can detect it with our ears. Any sound was forever recoverable, he believed, with the right device. His dream was to build one powerful enough to pick up Christ’s Sermon on the Mount."

That’s f******g amazing! What a brilliant idea, it just goes to show that genius and madness are closely related!



But no, seriously as they say, it’s a beautiful idea, and I wish it was true, and maybe it is?

[FrankF]

It is indeed a beautiful idea, as you say. Definitely a song title to be had from that!

It makes you wonder, though: can Google Translate handle Aramaic?
And would there be any mention of dairy products, or is that just apocryphal?

[Arpangel]

It is indeed a beautiful idea, as you say. Definitely a song title to be had from that!

It makes you wonder, though: can Google Translate handle Aramaic?
And would there be any mention of dairy products, or is that just apocryphal?

HHmmm? "with the right device" does that mean he had an idea about what the right device would be?

[FrankF]

The word "microphone" was mentioned when I first read it, but I can't find that article anymore. I imagine an autobiography might reveal what he actually said/thought.

[Arpangel]

The word "microphone" was mentioned when I first read it, but I can't find that article anymore. I imagine an autobiography might reveal what he actually said/thought.

I think this whole thing could be tied into what we call paranormal activity sometimes.
If sounds are still there, maybe it takes the right "conditions" for them to reappear, so may be he was thinking of machinery to induce those conditions?
I’ve heard fragments of conversations by my late adopted mother, and various stones dropping on to the floor, in my previous flat, I’m telling you this purely factually, and I’m deadly serious. It did happen, and was witnessed by my partner at the time.
I took this seriously, so much that I had myself examined too, a brain scan, it came back completely negative, showing no abnormality's.
There is a book, "The Stone Tapes" and fragments of voices have been found etched into Egyptian pots, like vinyl records, all this is fascinating, and there is a lot more to the observable universe than we think we know about.

[FrankF]

Oh yes, there are more things in Heaven and Las Vegas, Horatio!

Ooh look, I found this on YT: The Stone Tape, written by Nigel Kneale, no less.
Some great sound FX in the opening minutes, and the lovely Jane Asher pretending to look frightened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtvJWKaDI9s

[Arpangel]

Oh yes, there are more things in Heaven and Las Vegas, Horatio!

Ooh look, I found this on YT: The Stone Tape, written by Nigel Kneale, no less.
Some great sound FX in the opening minutes, and the lovely Jane Asher pretending to look frightened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtvJWKaDI9s

Down and out in Las Vegas, that rings a bell.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt about in your philosophy"

But I digress, how is all this related to random art? I’d love to know.

[FrankF]

I haven't the foggiest, squire, but a very wise man from Scunnie once said to me, he said:

"The thing about random art is, it has to be very well planned. Think on, laddie..."

Sage words indeed, from the great Norman House.

[Drew Stephenson]

"The story goes that, late in his life, Guglielmo Marconi had an epiphany. The godfather of radio technology decided that no sound ever dies. It just decays beyond the point that we can detect it with our ears. Any sound was forever recoverable, he believed, with the right device. His dream was to build one powerful enough to pick up Christ’s Sermon on the Mount."[/i]

Sadly the laws of thermodynamics have a say in this. Sound is just energy, and entropy will have its way.

[shiihs]

To come back to the original question.... I see some options:

- participants could write their own variation on a given theme or chord progression or add extra lines/voices to variations in progress, whatever they prefer

- or one could set up a chain of participants, where the next participant continues where the previous one stopped (but here some measures need to be taken to avoid that the whole process stops if one of the participants suddenly loses interest/cannot participate for some reason).

[Arpangel]

To come back to the original question.... I see some options:

- participants could write their own variation on a given theme or chord progression or add extra lines/voices to variations in progress, whatever they prefer

- or one could set up a chain of participants, where the next participant continues where the previous one stopped (but here some measures need to be taken to avoid that the whole process stops if one of the participants suddenly loses interest/cannot participate for some reason).

We used to do something similar to this in our improv band, we used to stand in a circle and have a certain time to play, then each player would nominate someone else, at random, or groups of players, if we played above a certain register you’d have to stop and a nominated player would take over, another fun thing to do was to all play each other’s instruments, which was either extremely interesting, or a complete failure due to uncontrolled laughing!
Bare in mind our band was big, me on keys, two guitarists, a flautist, flugelhorn, sax, two female vocals, modular synth player, and violin.
The looks on the faces of others at the rehearsal rooms was magic, and the owner used to treat us all like unruly children.