Re: [microsound] data -> sound examples

[Mitchell Whitelaw <mitchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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).

>  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

> 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


Mitchell Whitelaw
Visiting Advanced Audio Interfaces, CSIRO ICT Centre
http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/staff/mitchellwhitelaw


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