20170731

A long and interesting article about artist Mari Keski-Korsu Finding ‘skinship’ with trees (2017) from we-make-money-not-art.com. Some of her recent animal related works are mentioned.

Should America’s Tech Giants Be Broken Up? asks Bloomberg mag (Long story short: Yes. Economy stagnates when tech companies develop into monopolies which fail to circulate their profits).

Found an interview in Elavä arkisto about my grandfather’s Göstä Lindholm’s PhD dissertation (He also has a Wikipedia page which I didn’t know about). Apparently he studied how personal preferences and the formal layouts of questionnaires affect surveys results. He used telepathy experiments as his material and proved that some symbols in Zener cards are more liked then others.

He also suggest that there are some biological rules in play when we make decisions. Judging from the interview he comes of as a semi-postmodern thinker who is confused about the result of his study and turns to biology to patch his world views. My mother disliked his thinking and believed him to be a nazi.

I always thought my belief that technological structures define the limits of our imagination (and responses) echoed my mother’s Marxist worldviews. But it seems that some of her favorite arguments on “how capitalist have rigged the game” are rooted on her father’s research.

I chopped the interview into samples I can play with my mG2. It would be poetic to get the Bastl GRANDPA (the pimped up eurorack version of mG2, available as a DIY kit) and have it play the samples through some sort of self generating modular patch (Krell?). A simple fake artificial intelligence of sorts.. An artificial idiot (vähä-äly kone) as specified by Otto Karvonen. Perhaps I can test the idea using Automatonism/pd. Found a promising article on Granular synthesis on audio file with Pure data.

Es-ow Diato’s Kandiadiou on My Mind is online. I assisted in the production (cam. / edit).

20170726

Meeting with the Neighborizome working group at Lauttasaari. Brought my microGranny sampler with me. Soundscapes as intertwining rhizomes for different ideologies? Blaah… A granular sampler seems like the best tool to investigate this. Catching up on the rhrizome-thinking with Deleuze for the Desperate lectures by Dave Harris (as recommend by Leena).

20170725

Selected 36 samples from the SOW: Blacksmith sound pack which I think are fitted for granular synthesis using the microGranny 2 (Found a good guide for mG2 sample workflow on Muff Wiggler. Also discovered a decent macOS utility NameChanger). I plan to prepare a horse sound selection which I can use as an acoustic element during Trans-Horse lectures (as seen in Pori 2014). Made a some small updates the SOW site.

Edits with FCPX are progressing slowly. Navigating between the viewer and timeline using keyboard shortcuts makes me feel like a pro.

20170724

Managed to build a working microGranny 2.5 unit. Messed up a connection ribbon but other then that the build went decently. I got the midi working (with a Novation Circuit) but I don’t have a usb-to-midi dongle so I can’t test the units midi CC parameter changes (I trust it’s ok). The midi-clock synced “RANDOM SHIFT” for grain playback direction is great! The unit came preloaded with Slavoj Žižek samples, which the unit can run as automated drum-like stutter. Unfortunately the file menu browser is slow and sometimes the faders behave oddly. Judging from the forums this is because the unit is based on an Arduino. It’s rather noisy too but I like it a lot.

Working on my first proper FCPX project. Added keywords to clips and marked favorites/rejects. Learning keyboard shortcuts and how to sync video to external audio. Tomorrow I’ll add the clips to the timeline.

20170719

My Bastl microGranny 2.5 kit arrived. The assembly looks very challenging.

I succeeded in installing Pure Data (Pd) on my RasPi 3 and I’ve been playing with Automatonism 1.1. It works great and even got my Novation Circuit to work with it! Automatonism is a virtual modular audio system. It’s the successor of XODULAR (both systems have been written by Johan Eriksson). Automatonism is a great way to learn both Pd and audio synthesis.

While fiddling with Pd I figured our that I can use it to write a midi CC modulator/translator which will change the CCs Novation Circuit sends over midi into CCs which the microGranny understands. The Circuit synths CC values can be automated using the inbuilt sequencer. The combination should make for very interesting results. Much like some Elektron sequencers with parameter locks. I guess I could run a Raspberry Pi Nano which only works as a Pd midi CC modulator/translator: ctlin (isolate CC) -> values -> ctlout (to desired CC). Or something.

I’ll try to learn Pd by making a midi clock input for Automatonism. Also discovered the Piz MIDI plugin collection which seems very useful. The plugins have been updated earlier this year. By the looks of it midiForceToKey can be used to make microtonal stuff.