We humans tend to treat our perceptions as holistic—as seeing things as things, instead of as an accumulation of parts, details and features. This is the great abstracting power of the 3-pound neural network in our heads, and is a major differentiating characteristic from other computational paradigms.

The holistic pattern of Deconspectrum is that of the spectrum analyzer, a tool for understanding the components of a sound signal. You’d recognize the spectrum analyzer as the (often colorful) bar graph showing how loud the bass, mids and treble are on a fancy car radio or web MP3 player (which are often just fake animations). These graphical displays are intended to give an insight into the component parts of a signal that complement our own perceptions: we can hear the loudness of the bass or the absence of midrange, but we couldn’t tell you something as specific as how much energy there is at 250hz (at least, not without practice).

Any given sound can be understood as an accumulation of sine waves, a simple oscillation of air. Breaking apart a sound into these components is known as decomposition, and is the basic principal of a mathematical technique called the Fast-Fourier Transform, which gives us access to the raw numbers of a sound, the exact amounts of energy, that the unaided ear can’t provide. The spectrum analyzer supplements our perception by dividing a signal into “bands,” organized by the frequencies of these component parts. Or, at the very least, they give the manufacturers of audio devices something flashy to add to their product.

These tools are always presented as a single whole with a single function, one complete thing that breaks down the features of another perceptually complete thing. Deconspectrum pulls these things apart, eviscerates them, granting their constituents a new autonomy in the form of small luminous cubes that are each tuned to their own frequency band. These bands are mapped to the color of the cube, from yellow to green to blue to red and all the colors in between. They are conceptually identical to the rising and falling columns of the spectrum analyzer, but now spatially distributed and able to be moved and re-ordered—and crucially, still capable of emerging the holistic experience of the sound and its analysis. In other words, Deconspectrum is both the sum and the parts, the spectrum analyzer and its frequency bands, the pattern and the features.

Deconspectrum is best experienced in quiet, when the viewer can whistle, sing or hum distinct tones and see before them their melody reflected in color.

The individual units are completely autonomous, containing their own microphone, processor and color LED, and are also for sale individually as artist editions for $25. As such, they have an additional “standalone” mode that follows the peak frequency of whatever it hears, creating a colorful reflection of a melody, voice or spontaneous noise. They are both 9V battery and wall powerable with any 9 volt+ power supply.

A few months ago I accidentally fried my Wii Sensor Bar (a misnomer as it does not contain sensors of any kind) by powering it with an unregulated 12V power supply—whoops. So instead of buying a new one, which I’m loath to do given the typical prices, I built a new one with some infrared LEDs, a regulated power supply and—yes—a piece of cardboard.

Just solder up each LED after a 220 ohm resistor in parallel with each other—not in series.  This can be done with two “rail” wires, one connecting the positive leads, one connecting the grounds.  Then connect the rails to a standard barrel power connector and plug in your power supply.  I also added a green LED for visible power feedback.  Enjoy!

“Cryptophasia” is the working title of a language machine installation that I’ve been working on. Cryptophasia, according to Wikipedia, is “a peculiar phenomenon of a language developed by twins (identical or fraternal) that only the two children could understand. The word has its roots from crypto meaning secret and phasia meaning speech disorder. Most linguists associate cryptophasia with idioglossia, which is literally the same, but cryptophasia also includes mirrored actions like twin-walk and identical mannerisms. Little is known about cryptophasia.”

The installation consists of two motorized drafting machine arms that write to each other, emerging their own glyphic writing system as they do so. It is a continuation of my “language machines” research/art.

These are closeups of the joints of the drafting machine arm:

Shoe in Block is a sculpture collaboration between Taylor Levy and Ted Hayes that embedded a pair of sneakers in a pair of cast concrete blocks.  Following is the original commentary.  See bottom of post for the whole gallery.  Click here for the commentary in PDF form.
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SHOE IN BLOCK
The Superimposition of the Ordinary

Commentary
Taylor Levy  |  Ted Hayes

“Shoe in Block” I & II are sculptural objects that render ordinary, highly functional objects useless by superimposing them into the same material space.  An individual shoe is fused into the physical space of a custom-molded concrete masonry unit, creating a new unusable object that still retains the former signs of the shoe and the block.  The remaining signs thus become conflicting, as the observer cannot immediately reconcile the presence of the two recognizable signs, transposed as they are into one unrecognizable object.

This process of signification is disjointed: it forces the viewer to a halt, because the object as a whole has no immediate relation to a particular signified, in effect, the object has a “stalled meaning.”  Abstract sculpture tends to be comprised of subtle forms that give vague suggestions of potential signs, and the signification of the piece for the viewer takes place only over the course of discovering or experimenting with the possibilities of those signs in relation to each other.  In the case of “Shoe in Block,” the component signs are familiar, explicit and obvious, and it is the juxtaposition of the signs that produce new questions and novel readings.

A fundamental principle of semiotics is that the sign itself is arbitrary, and is only understandable as part of a continuum of differing signs.  The difference is critical to the existence of the sign.  “Shoe in Block” enables the viewer to understand each component by realizing that their normal functions are now obviated; that their normalcy itself is attacked.  Sneakers are, today, designed for two purposes: facilitation of movement and vehicles of branding.  As embodied in the sculptures, the shoes are still wearable, but the wearer cannot walk or run in them, and their commodity value is lost to the owner if they cannot be worn and seen.  Surrounded by and encased in concrete, the sneaker is understood by what it is not: a building material, an ad-hoc step or seat, a sign of compressive strength and material solidarity.  Likewise, the Concrete Masonry Unit (CMU), as it is known to builders or architects, is not a sign of fashion value, fleetness, or comfort.

The sculptures are combined inverses that retain only some of their constituent parts’ original properties.  Concrete blocks are heavy and deliberately designed to be unmovable in their final installation; sneakers gained their popularity and enormous market share via their association with basketball and other sports in which speed and agility is extremely valuable.  Combined, the shoe can still be worn and even walked in, granted a strong and patient subject, at a significantly reduced speed.  Similarly, the concrete block can still serve its ordinary compressive function, but not with normal geometric simplicity; these blocks cannot be lined up next to each other to form a gapless wall.

Both the sneaker and the concrete block are the result of elaborate and highly specialized factories that strive to create exactly identical products in mass numbers—yet the concrete block is subsumed in a field of sameness in their final function, joined with hundreds or thousands more and plastered and painted over, while the brightly-colored and eye-catching sneaker is expected to enhance the individuality of its wearer in its final function, and differentiate itself from the hundreds of other styles of sneakers at large.  Both are mass-produced but have diametrically opposed identities and purposes in their intended installation.

Their materialities are also inverted: concrete blocks are made from a material that has been in use for thousands of years and is extremely cheap and easy to produce on large scales, yet is highly durable and long-lasting.  Modern sneakers are produced only with the advent of a wide array of comparatively expensive synthetic textiles that must be assembled in precise and complex patterns by armies of machines and laborers (the employment of which has itself been the subject of much human-rights controversy).

But none of these properties are readily signified by the shoe or block alone as objects of contemplation.  The placement of these signs together allows each to be seen, much as individual neurons in brain tissue are only visible with a contrasting agent that enables them to be identified and studied.  The hardness and immobility of the block allows the observer to identify the softness and swiftness of the running shoe, and vice versa.

The superimposition of inverses is only the most explicit among a range of formal signification that sculpture, and art in general, is capable of.  It is only through difference (and perhaps Derrida’s différence) that signs mean, and it is only when ordinary signs and objects are contextually displaced, as in the case of much modern and contemporary art, that they are ready to be reinterpreted as narratives, dialogues, statements, or simply as a beautiful objet d’art.  The act of interpretation falls on the viewer of the artwork, as does the first choice of whether to view it at all as an artwork.

Confounding this traditional recontextualization, we envision Shoe in Block to be installed in common public locales, such as the Lower East Side’s Allen Street median strip.  A potential viewer, whether pedestrian or passenger or loiterer, is caught unawares at the seeming impossibility of the superimposed objects.  This context introduces a third “ordinary” component into the piece—removed from the gallery, the question of the artwork’s nature looms larger, and the viewer is left without the careful cues that galleries offer: the title, the statement, the bare white walls.  Devoid of these contrasting agents, the  absurd materiality of the shoe-blocks must be considered in new ways.  Does the errant passerby attempt to wrench the valuable shoe(s) from the concrete block, thereby possibly destroying the object so desired?  Or are the sculptures immediately recognizable as such to an art-oriented Manhattanite, and enjoyed or dismissed with that in mind?

“Shoe in Block” I & II lend themselves to a wide variety of readings because of the richness of their component signs.  The sneaker and the CMU come loaded with the viewer’s entire history of associations, their memories and desires and objections, and the strange combination thereof allows these entire semantic networks to collide and be bridged with new narratives and ideas.  The visceral pleasure of surprise, the stultifying wonder at their existence and question of their construction, and the longer process of association and contemplation contribute to the sculptures’ appeal as superimposed ordinariness.

Vox Mensuræ (The Measured Voice) is a graphical depiction of the quantization of sound, an end result of the process that converts audible waves of air pressure into numbers.  Each row is a single number displayed in binary—filled dots for 1s—with digit significance increasing to the left (just as decimal numbers, like “3,135″, increase in significance from right to left).  The number represented is the volume envelope (the “level”) of the sound coming into the computer’s microphone.

Quantization is not just the foundation of all digital technology, but the core of a fundamental model of the universe: quantum mechanics.  Classical models of reality considered some things to be “continuous” in contrast to “discrete” things; atoms were discrete but ether was continuous, and could therefore be infinitely subdivided.  The central insight in the modern era is that nothing is, in fact, continuous: even the energy levels of an electron land in “steps” and cannot exist in between those steps.

The quantization of sound is also the dividing up of a signal into steps, too small to discern with the naked ear—but when transformed into a string of bits, a stream of suddenly tangible visible information.

Vox Mensuræ is a software application built in OpenFrameworks.  Download it here for OSX.  I’ll try to get the source online so people can build it for other platforms!

Here’s a bit of a blast from the past:

http://www.epiphanus.net/rarebookroom/

The Rare Book Room is a collection of my drawings, paintings and sketches from the past 8 or so years of notebooks.  Enjoy, and let me know what you think!  Perhaps I’ll get a chance to update it with my more recent books

PuréeData is a browser-based PureData interface for a remote, central server that allows live, collaborative patching for anyone, anywhere.

Using Pd’s internal messaging system and an accompanying python script, PureéData allows anyone with a browser to modify a public, shared patch running on a server and listen to the results live over an OGG audio stream.

The project is currently in development and is freely available on GitHub.  PureéData is in part adapted from code by Jeraman.

The Phrygian Étude is a “chain letter” musical experiment in PureData that is composed of YOUR commits!  So fork the Étude, modify the patch (following certain rules), and push it back to us.  When the time is ripe, we will then play back each stage of the composition—commit by commit—as a live performance!

In the 5th grade, I devised my own language; for I could think of no better or more fascinating challenge. For my Master’s thesis at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, I could think of no better or more fascinating challenge than to invent language-inventing machines. What resulted was The Dawn Chorus, a group of electronic sculptures that do just this—emergently, and autonomously. Using a suite of custom hardware and a simple neural network for each device, the individuals learn from each other and are thus able to converge on common, conventional “words” for their experiences, such as a flash of light or sudden noise.

Seem them in action:

My final thesis presentation:

All the technical details are in the thesis paper!

This Dawn Chorus has gradually and emergently developed its own song-language, a metastructure that was never designed into any of the Chorus’s individual members.  Each member of the Chorus has the ability to sense the light and sound of its environment and the ability to vocalize—as well as the ability to learn from the actions of its neighbors.  In this way, the Chorus is able to naturally develop its own set of linguistic, musical conventions, entirely independently.

These sculptures contain a compact set of electronics comprising a microcontroller, sound and light sensors, a hybrid digital-analog synthesizer of my own design, a radio module and a speaker.  Each unit uses a simple neural network learning algorithm to associate environmental events and the actions of its milieu with generative sound patterns.  In short, the entities that make up the Dawn Chorus learn to talk to each other.

But what about?  The Dawn Chorus is not meant as an attempt to mimic animal behavior, but rather as an experiment in emergent poetics.  I see the songs of the Chorus as more musical than communicative, as more of a series of conversational poems than a survival strategy.  In time, we humans may even learn their language—but they will continue to enjoy it on their own.

Using blog corpora from The Blog Authorship Corpus and the Political Blog Corpora, I have begun developing a simple blog-post generator for Enpersonator, the identity-creating software part of Automenon, an artwork in progress with Sofy Yuditskaya.

See Enpersonator in action here: http://soniayuditskaya.tumblr.com/

Enpersonator is in development here: http://github.com/virgildisgr4ce/Enpersonator.  It requires the Python Tumblr library, which requires Django for its utilities.  The Markov Generator is modified from Adam Parrish’s.

The current version uses all 5 of the blogs in the Political Blog Corpora, comprising 133,953 tokens.  Not too shabby, but still not enough to avoid lots of wholesale reproductions.