Composing Off The Map

Jesse Harlin

Off The Map

Cross Disciplinary Skillset Transference

Seizing new creative and professional opportunity

Leveraging of new technologies

... But why listen to me about this ?

I Practice 

professional software developer for about 10 years

own a software consultancy

Programming

Rapper Radio

Createsafe

I Practice 

Game development

Signal

Overgrowth

GRIFFIN

Alphabeto

I Practice 

Open Source

Webpack 4

Babel 7+

Es6 Support

Prettier Style

Bundle Analysis

Browsersync

Complexity Analysis

Es6-Plato

I Practice 

Music Composition

Degree in music composition

Scored Video Games

I Practice 

Music Composition

Active Electronic/Algorithmic Composer

Sound Art, Installation, Programming

Do we really taxonomize "skillsets" in a way that accurately reflects how our brains organize information?

Does our perception of the bounded set of things within our discipline affect our perception of opportunities we can take?

What value does our discipline add for others? 

What invisible feedback loops are we engaging in that affect us on a fundamental level?

What does it add for ourselves?

https://slides.com/jesseharlin/programming-and-music

Abstraction

Design Patterns

"Expressivity"

Protocols

Music composition

Computer Science

Shaped by Natural Limitations

Myth of the Lone Genius

Tooling Wars

Brain capacity

Sensory Organs

Problem of Anglocentricism

Refactoring

Borrowing, Stealing, Sharing and Licencing

Craft as "Competition"

Gatekeeping

Debugging

Complexity

Management

Engineers

are deeply concerned with

organizing and processing

Information

and so are those who practice

Creative Disciplines

Pentatonic

Turing Complete

Hindustani

Irish-Folk

Balanese

Gamelan

Chinese-Folk

Carnatic

Western High Tonality

Baroque

Romantic

Medieval

Tuuvan Throat singing

Prog Rock

Country Music

Minecraft (LOL)

C

C#

Java

JS

LISP

SCALA

GO

Haskell

Dance

IDM

*Note: This is not rigorous science

UNITY

Max/MSP

Abstraction

Map

Filter

Reduce

Mapping

  • Lossy
  • Destructive
  • Transformative
  • "Mental Technology"
  • Extension of the Nervous System
  • Ubiquitous

Compositional Mapping

Dr. Lamb

"Written by <Lone Genius>"

"Written by <Lone Genius>"

organs.map()

organs.map()

Body ( ) => A Column of air

Body ( ) => A Food Grabber

Welcome to Guitar Center Please select your body-to-resonator mapping

You may select from

  • Some drums
  • A keyboard
  • A guitar

Welcome to the University

You may select from

  • Slightly more things

Mapping Protocol

Practical Mapping

  • List Processing
  • Input Handling
  • API Communication
  • Transpilation
  • Human to Hardware Interface
  • Document Sharing
  • Music Therapy
  • Sonar

Creative Mapping

  • Data Visualization
  • Leit Motif
  • Programatic Music
    • Debussy Nuage
  • Absolute/ Abstract Music ?
  • Self Expression through song
  • Liturgical music
  • Tetris
  • A jingle on a commercial
  • Children's music to teach numbers
  • Meditation Drones

 

Most acts of engineering involve mapping.

 

Most acts of creation, involve mapping.

Most acts of music composition involve mapping.

1995 Aug;33(8):1047-55.

Increased corpus callosum size in musicians. (Schlaug)

 Our analyses revealed that the anterior half of the CC was significantly larger (15%) in musicians. This difference was due to the larger anterior CC in the subgroup of musicians who had begun musical training before the age of 7.

Programming in general is insanely anglocentric

Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one’s native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

- Dijkstra

Vehicle

Truck

GreenTruck

Airplane

BlueTruck

Green

GreenBall

GreenTruck

Colors

Blue

Inflexible Hierarchy Problem

Fragile Base Class Problem

The Gorilla/Bananna Problem

The problem with object-oriented languages is they've got this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a bananna, but what you got was a gorilla holding the bananna and the entire jungle

-Joe Armstrong "Coders at Work

Maybe more than the jungle, the universe the jungle is in.

 

Mapping is more bidirectional than it seems

 

Thought Experiment:

let engineeringDesignPatterns = [
    "Strategy Pattern",
    "Event Driven Architecture"
    "Scheduler"
];


let compositionIdeas = [...engineeringDesignPatterns].map(
    (pattern) => {
       return new MusicCompositionDesignPattern(pattern);
    });

Thought Experiment:

Real Data Sources

ZALGO

(He comes!)

http://julia-smith.com/shooting-fatalities/

  • Web applications
  • Presentations
  • Server Applications
  • Web Servers
  • Data Visualization (D3, P5)
  • SmartWatch Apps
  • Native Mobile Apps
  • Video Games (create-phaser-app!)
  • Flying Robots ( Johnny 5)
  • Scripting in Max Msp, AfterEffects
  • .... and Web Audio

Also, hey just saying...  people will pay you to write it

Tools

Tone.js

Howler.js

To name a few...

this space is

Exploding

with opportunity

http://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-systems-music.html

With Web Audio we can do something Reich, Riley, Oliveros, and Eno could not do all those decades ago: They could only share some of the output of their systems by recording them. We can share the system itself.

Javascript Systems Music: Learning Web Audio by Recreating the Works of Steve Reich and Brian Eno

https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/scheduling/

A Tale of Two Clocks

WAA Clock

https://github.com/sebpiq/WAAClock

http://www.whitevinyldesign.com/solarbeat/

Thank you!

Happy Crafting!

@5imian

info@simiancraft.com