Music vs. Theater

What a fantastic idea this is.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4]

They need to have the input audio be a solo piano piece to see what happens. First some Mozart, then some Debussy. Now THAT would be cool.

I’m curious how much the transformation considers the audio spectrum of the output device. What if this was instead driving a sampler? You’d expect a different midi result depending on the samples chosen.

Generating the audio acoustically is a big part of the neat factor though. It reminds me of the coolest thing I ever saw a SIGGRAPH, the Wooden Mirror. It’s literally a low resolution monochromatic display device of wooden pixels. Each square pixel has a servo attached and it would tilt up or down to reflect the right about of light.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZysu9QcceM

Pretty cool stuff.

No. Not Mel Gibson.

Molly Sheridan’s Mind The Gap blog has gotten particularly geektastic this past week as she hosted a virtual book club. The book in question, Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants. This certainly tickled the computer scientist in me, Kelly’s Out Of Control changed the way I thought about computing in the mid 90s.

Kelly has long been on the forefront of technological thought, hanging with Stewart Brand and his buddies back during the Whole Earth Catalog days through the WELL, and these days with the Long Now Foundation. And along the way he co-founded Wired magazine. Despite a long history of underconsumption and a fascination with Amish and other ‘anti-progress’ cultures, Kelly is cautiously pro-technology, believing that progress is inherently good while prescribing a very specific set of guidelines towards adopting technology more responsibly than we tend to. Read the rest of this entry →