RE: [microsound] data -> sound examples

[Christopher Sorg <chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

> On 10/06/2004, at 9:22 AM, Scott Carver wrote:
> > In a loose sense, weren't serialists doing this?
> 
> In that case though the 'data' was always musical (chromatic note 
> numbers, or other parameters for integral serialism).

Right.  And, technically, at least with Western music, the result comes
from the manipulation of some kind of numerical system.  In the case of
the serialists, the division of the scale and the circle of fifths
explored, earlier chord combinations based on "imperfect" intervals and
there perfect resolution, and the scale itself divided and subdivided
until tonal differences were no longer deemed perceptable.  I agree,
however, that there is a less direct correlation between chromatic note
numbers (or names--labels) and the bits that represent a voltage level
which, over time, creates a note.  I can name a chromatic scale starting
with 27 instead of 1, or Q instead of C, and wouldn't change the sound
itself, just the nomenclature surrounding it.  Of course,
nomenclatures/symbols/languages surrounding musical discourse likely
affect our conceptualizing sound in profound ways...
 
> >  The shift thats happening isn't as direct as, for example, 
> playing a
> > bitmap as a raw sound file (and I think there are a few different 
> > problems with this kind of format shifting, too).
> 
> I agree... you're mainly hearing 'format', not data

I disagree.  Yes, a bitmap (BMP format) is a specifically-formatted
image, with a header, pixel data, and a bottom-to-top approach to it's
pixel list.  JPEGs are compressed, so the data is not raw, so you are
also hearing "format".  However, if you took a digital camera that
produced raw data files (which many do), it does not have any particular
formating per se; merely the output from the CCDs listed in a linear
fashion, typically from left to right, top to bottom.  Of course, this
is a convention/format, to read the pixel values in this way, but so is
reading music from left to right, and notating the lengths of sounds
with solid or open circles.

> > Nonetheless, it seems to be about converting the output of an
> > interesting process, interesting sets of numbers, into 
> sound. Anyone 
> > else see this connection, or am I way off?
> 
> I think (in many cases) it's got more to do with data per se  - or at
least, a cultural 
> idea about data as a stuff or substance, or as a sphere of activity.
This is especially 
> clear in the case of network sonifications.  Re serialism, there is
both a quantitative 
> and qualitative shift: a dataset several Mb in size is a different
beast to a 12-tone row 
> and its permutations. The qualitative shift is partly to do with the
challenge of 
> rendering that much data into some perceptually meaningful form.
Manovich (in the paper I 
> mentioned in my last post) raises the idea of the sublime - getting a
(limited) sense of 
> something unimaginably large. I disagree with his conclusions but I
think there's 
> something to that point... cheers,
> 
> Mitchell
> http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/staff/mitchellwhitelaw

We are (typically, consistently, traditionally) dealing with streams of
data in a linear, time-based sense.  File systems, while stored
non-sequentially, contain links in their headers that lead us,
sequentially from one data packet to another.  Bitmaps and audio files,
at their core, are even simpler.  If one has the data stream,
"01010100100101000101", and you place that data in a computer's display
memory, it because visible.  If we output it to the computer's DAC, then
it becomes audible.  But the data is the same, regardless.  Manovich
discusses this process (transcoding) as well, albeit briefly, in his
book "The Language of New Media".  Manovich seems to suggest that
transcoding "preempts" format.  Format is something that we (humans)
apply, in software, to the raw data in order to perceive it in a certain
way.  So bitmap, JPEG, WAV and AIFF headers, all describe the data in
order to achieve a specific interpretation.  Strip out that layer, the
human layer, and listen to the machine data itself, as raw as possible.
Attempting to do as you suggested, "rendering that much data into some
perceptually meaningful form" offers some interesting possibilities.
Layering meaning to form meaning, such as data formats or interpretive
software like Coagula, is an arbitrary process placed on top of a
mathematical concept, the Goedelization of numbers.

Christopher

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     Christopher Sorg
   Multimedia Artist/Instructor
 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  Columbia College Chicago
   http://www.csorg.org
     csorg@xxxxxxxxx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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