Brian Eno - Generative Systems
At http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/06/15/brian-eno-with-wright-on-spore-and-generative-systems-sound-and-paintings/ you will find a You Tube video of Brian Eno and Will Wright talking about generative systems. I find it to be a very interesting concept. To summarise their conversation: traditionally, artists have developed works by pre-defining the end result e.g. to draw a flower you already have some idea of what flower you wish to draw, its colour, the emotions you wish to express or evoke from the audience, etc; works produced by a generative system is unlike any of the traditional methods - its methodology is related to planting a seed with a set of few simple rules that spawns the growth of others e.g. you provide the system a notion of a flower and rules to dictate how they are to be drawn/formed which the system then randomly generates. What really grabs my attention is (as they say) its potential to generate unique viewing experiences. If the video here or concept interests you have a look at Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings at http://www.77millionpaintings.com/
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July 26th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
“Like two generative systems talking to each other without ever having met,” as Will Wright puts it. Pretty impressive to think of the powerful vriations of form and content based on a couple of very simple rules (such as the CA from Conway’s Game of Life, used here).
The generative audio and visual systems are both able to produce real-time variations that somehow “fit” and yet never repeat themselves in exactly the same way.
Though I get this, I often get the feeling looking and listening to this kind of stuff that the musical/visual results are in fact samey, or repetitous, while never actually repeating. A bit like fractals in general I suppose.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Some of this will be blah blah for some of you but I’m sure others will be interested….
I have been working on the concept of generative audio in PD but in terms of my own theoretical bent which asserts a generative system always finds the ‘difference’ that is the condition of development or change in an opening out onto the ‘outside’. The compositional system I’m working on now ‘listens’ to an environment (or across multiple environments for a mutual recursion)and is designed to develop a composition based on what it hears. It then plays this composition into the space or spaces it is listening to - sought of singing along with the space according to best-fit modes - its like a feedback loop that spirals rather than loops and allows a musician to interact with the developing composition in an improvisational mode. This is an attempt to get beyond either the closed mode of most generative composition and to kind of add the ‘next’ step to Cage’s wonderful openings onto ‘difference’ - prepared piano etc.
I have some of the number side working sort of but no sounds yet..
Vapourware….
July 27th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Ross, is there anywhere in Australia where such projects or installations exist? I want to see an actual live demonstration of such a device. I think I know what you mean… normally, even if it is randomly generated, after repeated viewing/listening/experience it becomes predictable. Reminds me of Weaver’s theory of ‘Organised Complexity’.
Matt, is PD Pure Data? I am trying to understand your concept so I have a few questions (they may be dumb or the obvious - my apologies if so):
1. what do you mean by an ‘opening out onto the ‘outside”?
2. what is meant by mutual recursion?
3. what is the ‘number side’?
4. what is Vapourware?
Cheers!
July 27th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
no dumb questions as they say..
yes.. Pure Data…
1. The easiest way to put this is to think about where musical ideas come from. The common (or popular) conception would have it is that music expresses some deep emotion or truth thats buried deep inside us waiting to come out. I would say that musical ideas don’t come from inside us but that we realize the expressive potential by listening to the world and we then use that potential as a means of expressing the emotion that we discovered there. We actually have to get ‘out of ourselves’ in order to find these new ways of expressing ourselves…..a truly generative system would have to be capable of the same thing. (Thats the best I can do here…)
2. A mutual recursion is a pair of mathematical functions a simple example looks like this a+2=b, b+3=a - different from a simple recursive function that looks like a=a+1.
3. meaning I have a Pure Data patch that listens and deduces melodic and harmonic content based on the musical modes - its all numbers and I haven’t yet plugged it in to a sound architecture.
4. vapourware is a term that refers to the common habit of venture capitalists , ambitious startups, and dreamer programmers to develop an idea without actually proving the concept by executing it…