Feburary Pendulum

20110223

Wow, what a week.  Pendulum followed by blOrk only two days later.  The Pendulum New Music Series showcases new works from composers at CU, and this month's performance had a very eclectic bill. This installation of Pendulum included these world premiers:
Kari Kraakevik  - Canyons Leading Home: Los Angeles to Lost Angel (2010)
Keane Southard - Two Symmetries for Disklavier (2010)
Cole Ingraham - Chaos Geometry (2010)
Leanna Kirchoff - The House Explodes
Hunter Ewen - Invasion of the Monkey Mind (2010)

Also featuring "Open Score," an audience-participation piece with Paul Miller and Jeff Nytch.

Poster

Catherine Havasi: Digital Intuition through Natural Language Processing

ConceptNet Map describing
relationships between concepts

20110221

As my faithful readers will know, I have recently become very interested in data processing.  This season's ATLAS lecture series has been excellent so far, and I couldn't pass this one up.  Catherine Havasi conducts research at the MIT Media Lab in the field of Natural Language Processing or NLP.  This is the field that is defining the way  we use computers to analyze data, specifically in the linguistic realm.  For the past 12 years, she has been working on  a research project, Open Mind Common Sense, which shifts the focus towards Natural Language Understanding.  Using assumptions about how things work and the connections between objects and concepts, conclusions can be made about very large data sets.  She presents these conclusions in a three dimensional vector space known as AnalogySpace (built in Processing) and a database known as ConceptNet.

Upcoming Events!!

There's lots of cool things happening in the Black Box in the next few weeks or so... be sure to get your free tickets, a lot of these will reserve fast.  However, if they do get a full list, still put your name on the waiting list.  Most of time, people on the waiting list still get in.  Do this especially for the blOrk show, because I'm performing a piece I wrote!

Ian Bogost: The Material Constraints of Art and Programming

Double Plus Good... I was planning on attending this lecture, and then was asked to work the event.  Score.  I got to get paid to go, and had a few extra moments to speak with Ian.  Not only that, it was amazing.

Ian Bogost at ATL&S' Black Box Theater

Ian Bogost is a media philosopher and designer who focuses particularly on video games.  He is a professor at Georgia Tech and accomplished author.  This afternoon Ian gave an excellent presentation about the evolution of not only video game media, but also some of the theory behind material constraints.  For example, he programs for an Atari system, but is limited not only by the amount of RAM he can use, but also the number of addressable sprites and objects is 'limited'.  These boundaries, Ian poses, help to define the creativity that goes into the utilization of these types of tools.  This goes for older systems like Atari, or even newer platforms like like the XBox360 or PS3.

Let's make some hip-hop... why not?

So my friends Mike and Morgan have been making some hip-hop songs at their cabin up in the mountains.  This inspired me to mix some lyrics to a couple of my songs.  The first is a combo of Five25 (an acoustic song of mine) with Method Man and Redman.  The second (after the break) is an old Latchkey Kids song spliced up with ODB lyrics.

These aren't the most kosher lyrics in the world, so if you offend easily, just don't listen.

OGcheebacheeba (feat. Method Man and Redman)



  OGcheebacheeba (feat. Method Man and Redman) by iEEEj

World premier iEEEj video right here...

Having ProTools on my own computer really changes things for me.  I've been able to edit samples I've brought in from my turntable with a deadly efficiency. And, I finally got around to making a recording that I like, of this song that never really had a name.  Adam called it Zelda Come Home once... I'm calling it Five25 right now until someone thinks of something better.  I also took this opportunity to stitch some jitter stuff together to make the world premier iEEEj (my DJ/musician/electronerd handle) music video.  If you want to download the song or just listen to it without the video, click the link after the break.

Video from back in high school... The Chase Sequence!

Here's a video from back in high school of a chase sequence we did.  Funny story, we did two days of filming, and forgot the box on the second day... so had to come back and film a quick shot of Alex throwing it away...  Still looking for our Maxwell's Silver Hammer music video, crossing my fingers.




Jon Swihart, Alex Mencer, Madden Swan, and myself.

Thriftstore Toolbox Finished

Here are some pics of the process and final product of the toolbox project:

Before

The only new hardware installed

The new lining was scraped out with a paint scraper and wiped clean.  I then used some spray adhesive to put the new lining in.  It smells like synthetic leather... pretty terrible, but it looks nice and I figure it will go away eventually. I'm pretty happy with the results.