[microsound] Golden Shield Music

[Marco Donnarumma]

Hi Jonas,
many thanks for your feedback and sorry for late response but I had few days
off in Geneva for Mapping Festival.

Can you explain a little more about your aesthetic choices in selection of
> the "sound" of the voices? Maybe specifically about the choice of rythmic
> patterns and the choice of MIDI (which i suppose introduce the use of the
> cromatic relations) rather than just frequencies?
>

The idea behind the piece is to _not choose_ how the music will be composed,
but to let the data sound.
Thus I tried to create the simplest data translation method I could achieve,
and I used the simplest sound generators I could, i.e. 3 basic phasor and
sine generators.

Each IP address becomes a single note, formed by four voices. Let's say I
have the following IP: 192.34.53.23.
The software first decomposes each single value, then translates each float
in a MIDI value (using a proper mapping of the data), finally it feeds the
synthesizers.
There is no use of cromatic relations or other composition methods, numbers
just sound; notes are ordered by the amount of pages the Golden Shield
obscured for each IP address. Using polyrhythm I enriched the composition.
I used MIDI because it is the most immediate and suitable protocol for this
kind of data (rarely IP addresses contains float bigger than 200, this
allows a quite reliable MIDI mapping).


And maybe also how you think the actual sound of the piece relates to China
> and the cencorship problems you refer to?


I like the idea that those censored contents can become public while
mutating into another shape, from words and images to sound.
At the same time if the Golden Shield wouldn't exist, the piece would not
make any sense... in a way I tried to exploit this censorship technology in
the opposite way China government does.
They use IP addresses to identify cultural and historical contents to be
censored, my piece uses the same IP to compose music with free technology.
The sound of the piece is not relevant to me, I think the composition
process it's actually the real "artwork", even though I don't really like
this word.

Hope I answered to your questions,
I'd would be really interested in other microsound-ish works outlining a
process as main aspect of the piece.
Anybody wants to share?

Best,


Marco




On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:02 PM, Jonas R. Kirkegaard <jonasr at jonasr.com>wrote:

> Very interesting project!
>
> When mapping data to musical parameters you can allways do it in 100
> million different ways. Can you explain a little more about your aesthetic
> choices in selection of the "sound" of the voices? Maybe specifically about
> the choice of rythmic patterns and the choice of MIDI (which i suppose
> introduce the use of the cromatic relations) rather than just frequencies?
> And maybe also how you think the actual sound of the piece relates to China
> and the cencorship problems you refer to?
>
> All the best
> Jonas
>
> Den 22/04/2010 kl. 13.38 skrev Marco Donnarumma:
>
> Dear microsounders,
> I'd like to share with you my latest (Pure Data-based) work.
> Golden Shield Music is a multi-channel generative sound installation for
> censored Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
> Detailed informations (including an audio excerpt) can be viewed at
> http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/golden-shield-music/.
> Following a proposal by Greg J. Smith, chief editor at Vague Terrain, I
> wrote a project brief for the journal:
> http://vagueterrain.net/content/2010/04/golden-shield-music
>
> Would love to hear feedbacks from the community.
> Best,
>
>
>
> --
> Marco Donnarumma aka TheSAD
> Independent New Media Arts Professional, Performer, Teacher - Edinburgh, UK
>
>
> PORTFOLIO: http://marcodonnarumma.com
> LAB: http://www.thesaddj.com | http://cntrl.sourceforge.net |
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> EVENT: http://www.liveperformersmeeting.net
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-- 
Marco Donnarumma aka TheSAD
Independent New Media Arts Professional, Performer, Teacher - Edinburgh, UK


PORTFOLIO: http://marcodonnarumma.com
LAB: http://www.thesaddj.com | http://cntrl.sourceforge.net |
http://www.flxer.net
EVENT: http://www.liveperformersmeeting.net
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