[eu-gene] WolframTones (generative music)

[Edo Paulus]

On Sep 30, 2005, at 13:49, Jelle Herold wrote:

> Hi Joost and Lauri,
>
> Quoting Joost Rekveld (lists at lumen.nu):
>> hmm, a quick websaerch turns up this:
>> http://comp.uark.edu/~dmillen/cam.html
>> which is 17 years old.
>>
>> I would suppose there has been cellular automata music around since
>> the end of the seventies, since composers tend to be very early
>> adapting these kinds of structures..  A wild guess, uninformed as to
>> specific projects, but I do know several people who have been using
>> cellular automata for music for years and years and years, and they
>> don't claim to be doing something new...
>>
>> I guess what's annoying about Wolfram is the fact that there is no
>> credit whatsoever for precursors, but perhaps even these people are
>> not aware of them ?  I've understood that the same criticism holds
>> for parts of his book: he does not always credit people who did
>> similar things before him.
>>
>> On the other hand what is great about the Wolfram endeavor is that
>> he makes tons of interesting ideas available to a wide audience,
>> including this one.  And I guess if the site is labelled   'a new
>> kind of music', that must be true for about 99.9% of the people
>> visiting it...
>
> yes, there are many such systems in existence. The nice thing about
> this one is, like you said, that it brings this kind of CA based
> composing to a wide audience: runs in a browser, looks fancy and you
> can email links of generated tracks to you friends.

http://www.sseyo.com/

This company makes Koan. Koan is commercial generative music software  
that can be used for composition (for instance by Brian Eno) and has a  
plugin for within a browser and, I believe, also for mobile phones and  
such. It's there since mid nineties or something. When talking about  
trying to reach a wider audience this sounds more impressive to me.

But,..
I'm not really impressed.
"look mom, a new tool!"
No, I want the ground under my feet to be swept away ... any means  
allowed.

edo.


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  E d o   P a u l u s
   generative music, soundinstallations, performances.
  URL: http://eude.nl
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