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Re: [microsound] how to use raw data?



John Duncan's work such as Infrasound-Tidal is IMHO much more successful than ndk's position would indicate. Duncan used tidal data from a period of three centuries and composed a beautiful piece. The liner notes, including some description of the process, are available at http://www.johnduncan.org/audio.html#INFRASOUND-TIDAL. It reminds me to some extent of John Cage's work such as Etudes Australes, which was based on star maps.

I don't think either composer is trying to make us hear what the inspirational physical phenomena sound like (what does a star map sound like?), but rather are using the raw data to find interesting patterns to make new sounds. Cage's stated purpose was to make sounds he had never heard before, and I see both his and Duncan's work in this context.

On the deceit, sometimes it's interesting to know the story of how a piece was made, but that story should always be kept separate from the piece itself. Admittedly there are times when the story is all that's interesting about a piece, but in the best cases (such as Infrasound-Tidal), *both* the piece and the story are interesting.

On Jan 14, 2004, at 9:00 PM, ndk wrote:

I've always felt that by taking a non-audio/non-music data stream and
somehow convolve it into audio/music then the result operates almost
entirely on the level of aesthetic curiosity, for better or worse.
<snip/>
But there is a potential deceit in the process if it's not disclosed. In
most cases the data can be convolved into audio by using any of
inumerable strategies or techniques and even if disclosed many people
will interpret the audio as if they are _directly_ listening to whatever
phonomena is being presented.
---
Caleb Deupree
ctdeupree@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


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