August 2011

"Ghost Laser"

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"Ghost Laser" [mp3 removed]

The sort of quacking, '80s style pulse that runs through this is an analog-generated signal - two LFOs modulating a combination square and triangle wave. The intersecting waveforms create interesting syncopations. Pitch is then added via control voltage--an ascending four note pattern. This pulse is then sampled and the beats counted so it can be put on a timing grid and other instruments added via MIDI. The rather absurd Reaktor Lazerbass makes another appearance for the "lead" lines. The rhythms are analog or analog-modeling with MIDI-generated triplet echoes.

normals vortex rearrangement

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Black-and-white reconfiguration of a lolumad GIF.

The spheres, originally blue-purple, were cropped, stretched, and enlarged. The background was transparentized, then everything was converted to black and white in the Online Image Editor, which has a great (as in retro and unpredictable) algorithm for converting color gifs to pointillist monochromes.

The next phase will be to reverse the motion to eliminate the jump when the GIF resets.

Update: Here is the two-way version: [484 KB .gif]

lolumad_spheres_rmx

Your (Or Somebody Else's) Recent Image on Twitter

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Year by year the formerly minimal Twitter comes to resemble every other social media site, offering users "options." Lately it has a "Recent Images" feature. Please note that if you haven't uploaded any images, the twitter team will take care of that for you. Let's visualize the discussion that led to this:

"So we have this great upload feature and we want all twitterers to use it. Some folks don't want graphics on their pages though. What do we do?"
"If they ever linked to something on Flickr, we could pull that image up automatically, call it their 'Recent Image.'"
"Hmmm, is that really honest?"
"Uh, last I heard, twitter is free. These people have no rights. And it is technically a 'recent image,' even if they didn't upload it."
"Hmmm, OK, damn good idea."
"But what if the twitterer is an artist or a photographer, doesn't this look like they're posting someone else's work to represent themselves? Maybe there's some copyright issues."
"We'll get Legal to look at that, if it's not covered in the terms of service we'll just slip it in there. None of these freeloaders will sue us, though, it's too expensive."
"Cool."

revised for accuracy - "recent images" isn't quite as egregious as I thought but it's still pretty bad

"Ethereal Serial"

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"Ethereal Serial" [mp3 removed -- updated version is on Bandcamp]

Doepfer mini-synth, Vermona Kick Lancet, and two Reaktor synths (Rhythmmaker and three Titan patches).
Am enumerating the gear because it's getting harder in these descriptions to come with synonyms for analog and digital. The distinction is still important, I think: the former two synths give the sound a plausible bottom and slight unpredictable lurch, and the softsynths have all the complex time-stretching programming. Composition-wise, this work is unabashedly nostalgic for the '90s. I wasn't making music, then, just soaking up rave riffs.

The title is an in-joke for Putney Swope fans.