Wordle!

So while procrastinating things you should be doing, check out this little applet called Wordle.  It lets you input text from a file or a website and then creates a great collage of the most commonly used words.  You can find a nice random arrangement, but you can also tweak the settings to your tastes.  I've made a few, and they look really cool when printed out onto 4x6 photo paper.  Anyway, procrastinate on!

iVVVj

I was invited to this online portfolio site called Glossom...  I was skeptical at first, but it is actually very cool.  If you check it out, when you mouse over each image, you can watch the videos they came from.  Check it out!

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.

Useful Websites of 2010

Here some of the sites I frequented this past year... I thought I'd share them:

Flickr and Vimeo :: These have been a great way for me to share my pictures and video. Flickr needs to be paid for to have any real value, but Vimeo lets you upload 500/MB a week, which is enough for me for right now.

CreateDigitalMusic/CreateDigitalMotion :: These two blogs moderated by Peter Kirn are some of my favorite sources for cutting edge technology news. The articles are informed and and the comments are filled with educated discussions. Definitely check these out.

Make Blog :: This blog is amazing in that it updates very frequently, with some very interesting posts. There are a a number of very different topics covered that are worth checking out. My favorite is the Math Monday section.

HackADay :: This blog also updates frequently. The articles here are fairly technical, but have a lot of great ideas. As with any good info-blog, there are lots of pictures and videos.

Sparkfun :: A great (local - Colorado) resource for electronic components. Additionally, they have an excellent library of tutorials, weekly refreshing inventory, and really interesting contests.

Creativeapplications.net :: I just recently discovered this site, but they showcase a lot of very interesting applications and installations that have recently been developed. I wish they updated more frequently, but I still enjoy the pictures and video each contains.

FlowingData :: Data visualization is one of my recent interest, and this site provides a number of very interesting data representations. I have gotten a lot of inspiration from this site.

OpenProcessing.org :: This, albeit unorganized, site lets users show off their Processing patches to the ever-growing community. I particularly enjoy that users can share their source code, so there is much to be learned.

ATL&S Fall 10 Shows

 These were some of the most technically advanced shows to come through ATL&S in my time.  It was also my last semester here, and my skills were pushed to their limits.  In addition to my usual sound duties, I did a lot of projection work for many of the shows.

There are links to more information about each program.  There are pictures and information in the links.

2010.07.30-31 & 08.05-07

CU New Opera Workshop 

"Sister Carrie", "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead", "Autumn Orchard" 

Leigh Holman, Andrew Metzroth, Hally Albers, Robert Aldridge, Herschel Garfein, Daniel Kellogg, J. Michael Martinez

  

2010.08.27-29

Dangerously Safe

Gemma Wilcox and Liz Barron, Betsy Tobin, Jessica Bynam, David Ortolano

2010.08.10

reConstruction

Ryan Wurst

2010.09.17-18 & 24-25

Disappear Here

Nathan Montgomery, Kim Olson, Ana Baer Carrillo, Jessica Bynam, David Ortolano

2010.10.03

Stockhausen Festival

Paul Miller, Bryan Wolf

2010.11.18

UNA

Katie Key's MFA Dance Thesis Performance

Kristin Dalleske, Autumn Bjustad, Rebecca Holley, Esmeralda Kundanis-Grow

2010.12.12

Bridging Imaginary Boundaries

real-time collaboration between CU, NYU, IUPUI

John Gunther, Synthia Payne, Cole Ingrahm

Bridging Imaginary Boundaries

Broadcast Station

Back in March, Synthia Payne and John Gunther organized a telematic music event "Memory and the Internet".  This was a collaboration between CU, NYU, and KAIST in Korea over Internet2.  Gunther and Payne returned this Fall for another installation of the event, "Bridging Imaginary Boundaries".  I feel these remote performances are truly on the cutting edge of music technology, so I was very excited to have another such collaboration.  For this version, we changed a few things, and collaborated with IUPUI (Indiana University Purdue at University of Indiana) as opposed to KAIST.

Disappear Here - 5 projections at once

2010 ATL&S Innovator award recipients Kim Olson and Nathan Montgomery produced a projection and movement themed show in the Butoh style.  The goal is to "explore the wilderness within and without, the seen, unseen, and the world’s ephemeral beauty."  Nathan began the show in a net hung from the ceiling as a 'womb' (or diaper as some of us called it) and natural elements such as flowers and tumbleweeds were used as props.  The technical challenges for me were tremendous, as I was responsible for synchronizing 5 different projections.

Tuning Up

For the Spring blOrk performance I composed a piece about how a laptop orchestra tunes up compared to a true orchestra.  I had a few concepts I wanted to try, one was musical and the other was more performance.  Since we have 6 blOrk stations, I wanted to simulate tuning each of these to the desired frequency, 440 Hz.  I also wanted to turn on each computer separately using a MAX object (aka.booklight) that allows you to change the brightness of the screen.  Incidentally, this is how the apple logo on the back of your laptop is lit.  So by switching the screen from completely dimmed to full brightness, it appeared that the laptop had turned on.  In fact, it was already on and ready to run my program.