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Ström

2013-01-28 16:45 visuals

Since the category 'visuals' is underrepresented in this blog and I don't like to embed video in my standard [HTML] pages, I thought I'd include this old piece here. This is the shorter abridged version of the full piece. The quality isn't the best - it's pixelated and jerky. One day I should re-render it in 60 FPS at a higher resolution. It looks a lot better when running in realtime from a computer.

Ström by Mattias Petersson (music) and Fredrik Olofsson (video) is, in its full version, a 45-minute minimalistic piece for five loudspeakers, live-electronics and live-video, based on an open-minded, artistic approach towards electricity. The piece is an attempt to transfer electric currents via sound to the audience. The five speakers in the surround system struggle to take over the sonic stream like electro-magnets. Sine waves and noise rotates with breakneck speeds around the listeners, tries to charge them with static electricity and, as an ultimate goal, even make them levitate. The video part is in direct connection with the sound and is generated out of five discrete lines – one for each channel in the surround system. The lines are treated in different ways, and as the high voltage builds up in the music they look more and more like electric wires, inflicting each other with violent discharges and eruptions. This version was made for a promotional DVD release on Swedish sound art.

Also, see /video/#strom


Traer Physics Library for SuperCollider

2012-11-27 23:59 supercollider

A while ago I started porting the Java/Processing library TRAER.PHYSICS 3.0 by Jeffrey Traer Bernstein to SuperCollider. It's a simple and elegant particle system and a physics engine all in one. There are already ports to ActionScript3, JavaScript and C++ (Cinder), but I haven't seen anyone working with it in SuperCollider yet. so I had a go - both to learn more and to have an alternative to my own physics library quark redUniverse.

It is now finished and released as a quark. This is the initial version and there might still be bugs. I _did see SuperCollider crash once in a strange way after spawning lots of particles, so watch out for memory leaks.

To install it run the following code and recompile SuperCollider...

Quarks.install("TraerPhysics");
//and then recompile and open the help file TraerPhysicsOverview

I also wrote a few simple examples to go along with the help files. Here's a screenshot of one...

traer screenshot

Hats

2012-08-21 16:10 electronics

A tiny circuit I designed and built-in five copies for dancer Raffaella Galdi. With the help of a small magnetic sensor, this circuit makes it possible to start and stop sound coming from an MP3 player. Because the five circuit boards, speakers and MP3 players are mounted inside pointy hats, the electronics had to be light and draw very little current from the battery.

For the sound volume control, I used a vactrol (LDR+led) and the timing and fade in/out logic are encoded in the firmware of a little microcontroller (ATtiny45). To save battery, the ATtiny45 is put to sleep and is only active when the magnetic reed sensor is triggered. I used the great JeeLib.h for controlling the sleep cycles of the microcontroller.

Schematics, firmware and parts list attached below.

hat circuit hat schematics
Attachments:
hats.zip

More SC Twitter

2012-05-14 16:25 supercollider

More audio recordings of my twitter sctweets. See twitter.com/redFrik and the previous post /f0blog/tweets/.

Normally you run these lines of code (140 characters) in SuperCollider and it will play you some kind of generative music or soundscape (also graphics in rare cases). Here I've recorded a few for those who are too lazy to install SuperCollider.

tweet0026

{CombL.ar(In.ar(8).tanh/8,1,1,8)!2}.play;Pbind(\amp,8,\dur,1/4,\degree,Pseq(List.fib(32)%(List.fib(64)%12),inf),\out,8).play//#SuperCollider

This one is using the built-in .fib (as in fibonacci) method to generate pitches (\degree) for the Pbind. The Pbind in it self is quite boring to listen to, so by playing it out on audio bus 8 and then making a small distortion+echo effect synth reading from bus 8, we get a much more interesting sound.

tweet0028

play{MoogFF.ar(LFTri.ar(CombN.ar(Duty.ar(1/8,0,Dseq(Dshuf(List.fib(16)%8*99,8),inf)),4,4,16))/4,LFTri.kr(1/16,0,2e3,3e3))!2}//#SuperCollider

Again using the built-in fibonacci method to generate patterns. Here every 8th bar the pattern is scrambled (Dshuf), and in every 8th bar period the first 2 bars are transposed by a strange trick running the melody pattern (i.e. the frequencies) through a CombN.

tweet0030

play{a=LFPar;GVerb.ar(VarSaw.ar(a.ar(1,0,5,a.ar([0.05,0.04],0,50,160).round(50)),0,a.ar(0.2,0,0.5,a.ar(3,0,0.2,0.5)))/8,80)}//#SuperCollider

Here is something that sounds a bit like a couple of trombones playing a riff in a reverberant room. The riff just goes on and on and is made from a pair of slowly changing LFPar oscillators, scaled, offset and rounded to the nearest 50 Hz.

tweet0033

play{f=LFPar.ar(1/14).round*20+80;Splay.ar(LFPar.ar({|i|[i+1*f,i*f+(i+1/3)]}!4)>BrownNoise.ar(Pulse.ar({|i|i+1}!4,0.35))/3)}//#SuperCollider

Sounds a bit like punk rock in 6/8 time signature. The crispness comes from the > BrownNoise combo and the rhythms from the Pulse. Overall melody is the slowly running LFPar oscillator stored in variable f. Note that this tweet only works in SuperCollider version 3.5 and above.

tweet0041

play{o=SinOsc.ar(1/RunningMax.ar(Sweep.ar(LocalIn.ar(6)),Impulse.ar([1,0.749,6,12,3,4])));LocalOut.ar(o);Splay.ar(o).tanh/2}//#SuperCollider

An ever rising tone cluster with some clicks. This is built using a LocalIn/LocalIut feedback chain. There are plateaus where one thinks the maximum frequency is reached, but those are only temporary and after a while the tone starts to rise again.

tweet0044

play{a=SinOsc;Limiter.ar(LeakDC.ar(a.ar(0.11,BRF.ar(a.ar(a.ar(0.12).exprange(1,1e4),2pi),1/a.ar(0.13).range(1,[99,100])))))}//#SuperCollider

Here the cutoff frequency of a BRF (band reject filter) is modulated with a SinOsc. The cutoff varies between 1 and 99 Hz in the left channel, and 1 and 100 Hz in the right channel. The BRF goes wild and outputs totally crazy sounds when modulated in this matter - just like the BPF used to behave in old SuperCollider versions (3.3 and earlier).

tweet0045

play{a=SinOsc;a.ar(a.ar(a.ar(0.11)),a.ar(a.ar(95*a.ar(0.01,0,1,1),0,a.ar(5e-3,0,50),100),a.ar([98,97]),pi+a.ar(5e-4))).tanh}//#SuperCollider

A deep fat bass. It sounds as lovely in a big speaker system as it sounds poor in laptop speakers. The patch is mainly doing phase modulation on a SinOsc with tanh distortion.

tweet0046

play{a=LFTri;GVerb.ar(Mix(Limiter.ar(BRF.ar(a.ar(50,1e-4),a.ar(a.ar([1.01,1.0111])*a.ar(8e3)*1e3+4e3,55),a.ar(0.01)*3))))/9}//#SuperCollider

This tweet sounds much like a field recording. The noise comes from an exploding BRF (band reject filter) that is wrapped in a Limiter so that it keeps in range. Last a GVerb is adding a metallic quality reverb to the overall sound.

tweet0047

play{CombN.ar(Limiter.ar(BRF.ar(LFSaw.ar(10,0,0.01),LFTri.ar([5,6]*0.1))),0.1,LFTri.kr(0.1,0,0.05,0.05).round(0.01))}//#SuperCollider#SC2012

This was coded, believe it or not, within a 5min time limit and under water pistol threat (part of sc2012 keynote talk in London). Again it's a BRF misbehaving run through a comb delay with short modulated delaytime (from 0 to 0.1).

tweet0048

play{a=Impulse;b=SinOsc;c=b.ar(0,BRF.ar(a.ar([7,8]),a.ar(9).lag2(1e-3),1.5,2pi));Ringz.ar(c,b.ar(0.02,0,99,150),1/9)+c*0.02}//#SuperCollider

A quite poor tweet. The rhythms are not so interesting and it also have the problem of running out and stopping after a few seconds. Anyway, the principle is that a BRF is generating strange sounds that phase modulate a SinOsc, that in turn goes through a ringing filter (Ringz). I only wanted to record it so that when someone fixes the BRF in some upcoming SuperCollider version, I can go back and listen to how it could sound.

tweet0053

Pbind(\freq,Pseq("SUPERCOLLIDER".ascii,inf)*Pstutter(64,Pseq([3,4,5],inf))*[1,2.045],\dur,0.03,\amp,Pseq([0,0.1],inf)).play// #SuperCollider

Super annoying little thing. It is using the values of the ASCII characters in the string "SUPERCOLLIDER" which is [83, 85, 80, 69, 82, 67, 79, 76, 76, 73, 68, 69, 82]. This is played in sequence and transposed and detuned. Maybe a candidate for the official SuperCollider theme song?

tweet0054

play{CombN.ar(SyncSaw.ar(Saw.ar([3,4],32,64),Saw.ar([4,3],99,Duty.kr(1,0,flop(Dseq(2!6++4++3,99)*(4**(0..4))))))/9,1,1/6,2)}//#SuperCollider

Very intense sounding tweet.

tweet0055

play{a=Pulse;CombN.ar(Slope.ar(a.ar(a.ar([1,2]/3,1/9,50,[50,150])),a.ar([3,4],1/3)+a.ar([2,3],1/4)/10+0.005).cos/5,1,1/6,2)}//#SuperCollider

An even more intense sounding tweet.

tweet0057

a=GVerb;fork{loop{z=play{#b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i=(1..50).scramble;a.ar(a.ar(a.ar(a.ar(Dust.ar(1),b,c),d,e),f,g),h,i)/20};6.wait;z.release(5)}}//#sc

This patch is heavy on the CPU. It consists of a synth with nested GVerbs all with random settings for roomsize and reverberation time. Synths play for 6 seconds and then fades out over 5 seconds as another synth, with different reverb settings start. The result is overlapping sounds and quite dense texture.

tweet0059

a=LFTri;play{CombN.ar(SinOsc.ar(Saw.ar(3,128,128),Saw.ar([3,4],a.ar(a.kr(0.1,0,8,12),0,32,128)).sin)/4,1,1/6,a.kr(1/32)+1)}// #SuperCollider

A rhythmic tweet. Gets a bit annoying after a while but there are some nice details in there.

tweet0061

a=Demand;b=SinOsc;play{b.ar(a.ar(t=Saw.ar([9,9.01]),0,Dseq(0!6++500,inf)),b.ar(a.ar(t,0,Dshuf((0..7)*99,inf)).lag(0.04)))/2}//#SuperCollider

Phasing melody in left and right channels. Every 7th note has a slightly different timbre (the 0!6++500 part) and every time one starts this tweet the melody changes (the Dshuf((0..7) part). The phasing is done with two Saw oscillators running at 9 and 9.01Hz. They are in turn used as triggers for the timbre and melody sequences (the two Demand UGens).


redShift Excerpt

2012-05-11 09:20 supercollider

A short excerpt from a rehearsal. It is made with the patch I played at the SuperCollider Symposium 2012 club night (Corsica studios, London).

It's controlled with my custom controller redThermoKontroll


One Reason Why I Love SC

2012-05-08 14:37 supercollider

140 characters...

play{Splay.ar(SinOsc.ar(9,SinOsc.ar(midicps((Sweep.ar(0,(33..3))%128&(Sweep.ar(0,(3..9))%(LFSaw.ar(3)*9+99)))+33),0,pi)))/3}//#SuperCollider

If we run this line in SuperCollider we hear this...

and using Rohan Drape's great sc3-dot quark and swap play{} with draw{} in the line above, this mess gets revealed...

637231982.png
(click image for hi-res version)

So with a single line of code - short enough to fit in a twitter tweet - we've built this amazingly complex sound synthesis patch. I can not imagine a system with greater code-to-noise ratio than SuperCollider.

And this one is pretty fun to .draw as well...

play{f={|o,i|if(i>0,{SinOsc.ar([i,i+1e-4]**2*f.(o,i-1),f.(o,i-1)*1e-4,f.(o,i-1))},o)};f.(60,6)/60}//#SuperCollider

A heavily recursive patch that looks almost fractal. The PDF file generated from this line of code is 300kB! The number 6 in the code means recursion depth and 60 is the base frequency.

To use the sc3-dot quark in SuperCollider on a mac you'll need Graphviz (I use 2.28 on my OSX 10.6.8). You also need to make sure the resulting .dot files open automatically in Graphviz and not Photoshop, Word or something. (Get info on a .dot file in Finder and change all filetypes to open with graphiviz. You'll find the .dot files from sc3-dot in your hidden /tmp directory)

Attachments:
637231982.pdf
1909609728.pdf

Analogue Video In/Out on a Recent MacBook Pro

2012-04-22 11:35 other

For a project, I needed to take in and send out realtime analogue (composite) video. Analogue video input has always been a problem, but on recent laptops, Apple even removed the video output via DVI adapter option (i.e. there is no DisplayPort to video/s-video adapter).

So after experimenting and going through some old hardware I had laying around, I found a solution using two devices that I last used around 10 years ago.

analogvideoinout

Broderi

2011-10-03 14:02 electronics

Wireless sensor for embroidery.

The sensor is a tilt-compensated compass i.e. a 3D accelerometer in combo with a 3D magnetometer. Compared to my other wireless boxes, this one runs on 3.0V (two AAA batteries) and not 3.6V. This due to the LSM303DLH sensor's lack of onboard voltage regulators and 1.8V I2C data lines.

The ATmega168 has an Arduino sketch loaded as firmware and is using the internal 8 MHz oscillator. So the circuit is pretty minimal.

As part of the project knyppel with Ann Rosén. Also, see this post.

broderi photo1 broderi photo2

Schematics, Arduino firmware, parts list, MaxMSPJitter patches, SuperCollider class attached.

Attachments:
broderi.zip

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