A Very Special Groundhog Day dorkbot

best wishes for the day. maybe you know about this from the 1960s - by Pask and McKinnon-Wood:

###

The first was called MusiColour. This was a machine that controlled lights so that they reacted to (live) music. But not like the trivial machines of today, which pulse with the beat and change colour with frequency. MusiColour (which erratically toured nightclubs and popular music venues) picked out patterns in the music, responded to these, and got bored. If the musicians did not provide enough variety, MusiColour would provide speculative change of its own accord, working itself up into a frenzy until the musicians changed how they were playing. This is truly interactive. And it is the first program that is an agent provocateur: its purpose is to interfere with the musicians. This computer, sadly long since dismantled, expects you to respond to it in interaction. It anticipates drama.

[from: CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING
A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics

Vol. 3 no. 4 1996
Ranulph Glanville:
Robin McKinnon-Wood and Gordon Pask: A Lifelong Conversation

http://www.venus.co.uk/gordonpask/candhk.htm
]

###

wayne





douglas repetto wrote:

>
> It's a Very Special Groundhog Day dorkbot! With Sound! Noise! Even
> Music! Will the groundhog hear its shadow???
>
> —–
>
> The FACTS:
>
> what: dorkbot-nyc
> when: 7pm, Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005
> where: Location One
> http://www.location1.org/gallery.html
> 26 Greene Street between Canal and Grand, Manhattan
> $$$:$free
>
>
> Featuring the lovely and talented:
>
> Jason Freeman: Glimmer
> In Glimmer (2004), which was recently premiered by the American
> Composers Orchestra, the concert-hall audience members become musical
> collaborators who do not just listen to the performance but actively
> shape it. Each audience member is given a battery-operated light
> stick which he or she turns on and off over the course of the piece.
> Computer software analyzes live video of the audience and sends
> instructions to each musician via multi-colored lights mounted on
> each player's stand. Jason Freeman is a composer who uses technology
> to rethink the relationships between composers, performers, and
> listeners.
>
> Mike Rosenthal: The Travelling Sound Museum and Other Works in
> Progress
> A look and listen to three sound sculptures that are currently in
> development. I will show slides of the works, play some audio
> examples, show a video of one in action, and bring in an ancient
> sound jar containing rare snippets of sound from the year 1643! I
> will also give away my idea for a traveling sound museum absolutely
> free. Each of the works deals with the visual properties of sounds
> and the ways in which we interact with audio in a gallery setting.
>
> Neg-Fi: Uncontrollable Feedback Devices and Tape-Based Noise
> Neg-Fi is Evelyne and Ryan, a tape-based noise rock band that prides
> itself on its typically homemade packaging (childrens book cutouts,
> balsa wood, and foamcore are favorite materials). They are also the
> makers of "Wireless UFDs" (uncontrollable feedback devices), whose
> biggest selling point is the fact that they are wireLESS. They use
> the UFDs as part of their music, in addition to occasionally making
> them available for sale.
>
>
> –
> ………………………………………………………………
> ………dorkbot: people doing strange things with
> electricity……….
> ……………………. http://dorkbot.org
> ………………………
> ………………………………………………………………
>
> –