innovation overtakes humans, a new age of exploration ?

30 November 2005

Last night I told my friend super collider guru fredrik about an idea I had many years ago to use games as a modulation input into synthesis software. Knobs and sliders are so boring. Specifically I wanted to take virtual terrain and fly directly through it and use the mountain's altitude as the output value. You could construct a 3D and then fly through it creating a single D output; lots of permutations of this.

I got so far as compiling an open source terrain flight thing and then trying to figure
out where to insert the "send the OSC to super collider".

Hacking game engines for art isn't new and has been happening for a while, but we didn't know about anybody using it as a modulation source. Within 24 hours one surfaces on the SuperCollider list :

quake used a modulation source into PD

There's always a human need to get patted on the head for having an idea, but ideas are also the product of the information environment you are in. You just happen to be the one to put two and two together. (still I pat selectparks on the head, nice one guys)

If you check out something like http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/ you see so many amazing projects you think "why bother ? I will just disappear in a minute." This is the cult of the individual dying off. Its good to be a part of fascinating cultural forms, just to have your little contribution make it in there.

Its good to hear a track by me get played, but its fine just to hear other people's stuff and know that I'm a part of that scene. You can't stand up and demand to be a dominant hero. (oh btw. on saturday at zentrale randlage I had girls screaming "timeblind ! timeblind !" after I was done playing. so there. i got my pat on the head for the week)

Soon the machines will start thinking of all these permutations themselves. They will just try every combination of everything.
in the future we will all be qwned by google every single millisecond ?

But there will be so much stuff out there that no human has ever even seen, that maybe we will become like explorers, foraging in the vast terrain of fucked awkward random creations.


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Solar Life Raft Ingredients

Timeblind
Format: Digital
Release date: 4th January 2010
Available at
  • coltan and cassiterite Timeblind

The unmixed ingredients from Rupture and Shadetek’s Solar Life Raft. Including two tracks by me: Coltan and Cassiterite and Space Cadet (which came out on last year’s 12” on Version)

I’ve been waiting/yearning for Coltan and Cassiterite to come out for much of last year. I was about to release it myself just to relieve my own tension waiting for it. Anyway, its on a good home: The Agriculture and the reviews have been great so far.

The title refers to two of the minerals that are mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and are components in portable electronics like cel phones. Its one of the unfortunate driving forces behind continuing warfare among the militias in the Rwanda/DRC border area.

Avail at boomkat: http://➯.ws/⚥ SLR in 320kMP3 and Flac

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