Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

Ebay!

The Gift Economy and Sustainable Music

Daniel Wolf of Renewable Music reported that I was the first person trying to market commissions as e-commerce. There may be some disagreement on that, but I’m pretty sure that I’m the first person who has tried to market a commission on ebay. (Auction 1, Auction 2)

There are a few reasons you should care about this. One is that you might be the first person (or in the first group of 30, since that’s how many I’m putting up in this project) to commission a piece of music via ebay. The other is that this is a proof of concept for the viability of music in the internet age.
What is music but data? Data wants to be free. People love to share. On the one hand, we have the RIAA fighting the future (and the present) by suing all their customers. That business model is not sustainable and has numerous other problems. On the other hand, we have the sharers – people who love music and post their favorite pieces on the internet, via a website or p2p or whatever. And in the middle we have artists – me and others like me. The RIAA hasn’t done much for me lately, but neither has p2p, really. When musicians ask me how they’re supposed to cover the costs of recording if their music gets traded for free online, all I can say is what the blogosphere has been saying. Fans will buy merch. Fans will paypal you donations, like a tip jar. The fans will come through, somehow. But how, really? Merch is a logo on a piece of material. A logo is data. The logos, like the tunes they stand for, want to be free. So all we really have is the virtual tip jar.
Some of us do give virtual tips, but most don’t. Freeing mp3s to your fans isn’t like busking. There’s no eye contact. There’s no presence. This model is not sustainable, either. How many of us actually go and paypal every artist who we’ve downloaded and like? And what do the fans get in return? A moral satisfaction, sure, but not enough to make the model work. In practice, the fans get very little for their efforts.
Artists are left with the problem of how to distribute their music such that it makes it to their fans and they cover their costs and can live. Moreover, the manner of distribution and monetary compensation should capture the zeitgeist of sharing and direct involvement. The fans must get something tangible in return, in a time when tangibility itself is becoming slippery.
I think commissioning is the answer to this dilemma. The commission amount covers costs. The fans get something real in return – their name attached to the work – a credit as an integral part of the creation. Because as the RIAA knows and fears, the fans have been integral all along. This is one answer to the question of how smaller artists can thrive in a direct-to-consumer, sharing sort of environment. The gift economy! The commissioner gives money to the artist who gives music to hir fans. Like other gift economies, the value of the gifts grow as it spreads to more and more people. Instead of fighting the internet economies of data, this model requires it.
I think Ebay is a natural fit for this project. The auction aspect means that minimal costs are covered and the value of the fan’s gift is in proportion to the value in which other fans hold it. In any case, some sort of discrete transaction method is required. A popular artist could get more commissions than s/he could hope to fill otherwise.
If somebody gets this concept to work in practice, then we have the new model. So here’s my trial seeking a proof of concept. Music can be free and artists and fans can cooperate and thrive without leech-like corporations persecuting both.

Edit

See http://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh/podcast/?page_id=60 for more information

Trite observations

I’m in England. Every time I need to cross a road, I look back and forth in panicked confusion and run for it. I heard on the BBC radio today that there is a new tax on fags. I was momentarily alarmed, but then I figured that my crush on my dog sitter probably wouldn’t be enough to change my bracket. (You expect these sorts of confusions in a foreign language “attend” in french, “becoming” in german, but it’s quite startling when it’s your native language.)

I have not been admitted to Birmingham at this point, but I think I will be, gods willing. I went to a colloquium after having 2916491728 espressos today and participated more than anybody else, which Cola (who also went) said was probably a good thing. So if they have space, I’m probably in. Funding is another issue.
The town, which I haven’t seen that much of yet, seems kind of run down in parts, but it’s not like Middletown or anything. It’s the second largest city in the UK, so I have good hopes. Also, it’s only 1.5 hours to London and the hours of coursework expected of me would be 0. I might commute. However, there are lots of big, nice parks around and I think Xena would really like it here. I don’t know what’s up with me, but I really miss her when I’m away from her for more than a few hours. She’s just a dog, but she’s my dog and I wish I could take her with me everywhere.

Off to Birmingham

I’m going tomorrow morning to visit Birmingham. I applied to the University there and I’m having an interview. Hopefully they will let me in.

I failed to realize how soon this trip was looming and failed to find free lodging for myself, but found some for my dog at about 23:15. Thank gods.
Why Birmingham? Well, everybody says it’s SuperCollider heaven. I’ve only ever heard good things. Several people told me to apply. So I did. I haven’t done other things like read a prospectus or apply for funding or even discover how expensive the tuition is (yeah, I forgot Britain is stupid in the same ways that the US is and so education is probably ridiculously over-priced). £9,200 ack.
Early flight, off to bed.

Subliminals, Timbre and Convolution

Recently, in Boing Boing, there was a post about a company marketing a subliminal message to gamers. They would hear the message 10000 – 20000 times a second. That’s 10 kHz – 20 kHz. Those repetitions are almost too high to be in the audio range! I can’t hear 20 kHz all that well. Also, what about scaling? To keep from peaking, the maximum amplitude of
each message would have to be between 0.00005 – 0.0001 of the total amplitude range. That’s pretty subliminal, all right.

I went to work trying to play a short aiff file over and over at that rate. My processor crapped out really fast. That’s a lot of addition. As I was falling asleep that night, I calculated that on a CD, each new message would start every 4 – 10 bytes! Why at that rate, it’s practically convolution.
Indeed, it is more than “practically” convolution, it is convolution and as such it doesn’t need to be done via real-time additions, but can be done via free software like SoundHack. The first step is getting a series of impulses. To try to create a “subliminal” message, you need a series of positive impulses that vary randomly between 10000 – 20000 times per second. I wrote a short SuperCollider program to produce such impulses.

SynthDef("subliminal-impulse", {arg out = 0;

 var white, ir;
 white = WhiteNoise.kr;
 white = white.abs;
 white = white * 10000;
 white = white + 10000;
 ir = Dust.ar(white);
 Out.ar(out, ir);
 
}).play

The WhiteNoise.kr produces random values between -1 and 1. We take the absolute value of that to just get numbers between 0 – 1. Then we multiply, to make them numbers between 0 – 10000 and add to put them in the range 10k – 20k.
Dust makes impulses at random intervals. The impulses are between 0 – 1. The argument is the average number of impulses per second. So Dust makes 10k – 20k impulses per second. Record the output of that to disk and you’ve got some noise, but it’s noise with some important characteristics – all the impulses are positive and they have zeros between them. This is what we need if we’re going to be subliminal at gamers.
Ok, so I’m going to take that file and open it SoundHack and save a copy of it as a 16bit file, rather and a 32 bit file. Then I’ll split the copy into separate mono files. (This is all under the file menu.) then, to save disk space, I’ll throw away the 32 bit file and the silent right channel. So now I have a 16bit mono file full of impulses open in SoundHack
Under the Hack menu, there’s an option called “Convolution.” Pick that. Check the box that says “Normalize” (that will handle the amplitude for you so the result is neither too quiet or too loud) and then hit the button that says “Pick Impulse.” This will be our recording of spoken text that we want made subliminal. (Fortunately, I had such a message at hand.) In actuality, it doesn’t matter which file is the one with the clicks and which is the one with the text. Convolution treats both files as equal partners. Then it asks us to name the output file. Then it goes, then we’re done. Here’s my result.
If you suddenly feel like forming a militia or running in fear, then it worked. If not, well, the sonic result is still kind of interesting. The timbres are all totally present but the actual sound events are unintelligible (at least to the conscious mind). For every one of our little impulses created by Dust.ar, we’ve got a new copy of Jessica plotting revolution. (The text is actually from Lesbian Philosophy: Explorations by Jeffner Allen (Palo Alto: Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1987) and the piece I originally made with it is here.)
This is actually a lot like granular synthesis, if you think about it. Imagine that instead of convolving the whole audio file, we just did 50ms bits of it. Every impulse would start a new copy of the 50 ms grain, but instead of with additions, with FFTs, which are faster – we can have many, many more grains. And they could be smaller and still be meaningful. Heck, they could be the size of the FFT window.
The FFT version of a convolution involves taking a window of the impulse and another of the IR (our subliminal message – normally known as an impulse response). You add the phases together and multiply the amplitudes. The amplitudes multiplications give us the right pitch and the phase addition gives us the right timing – almost. Some additions will be too big for the window and wrap around to the beginning. You can avoid that by adding zero padding. You double the size of the window, but only put input in the first half. Then none of your phases will wrap around.
We can get some very granular like processes, but with nicer sound and better efficiency. For example, time stretching. We could only update the IR half as often as the impulse stream and do window-by window convolutions. There are other applications here. I need to spend time thinking of what to do with this. Aside from sublimating revolution.

PlayPlay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Jobs I want

I want to be that guy. OMG, it would be so awesome to work for the BBC on Dr Who music. That video is so awesome. Also, check out his kewl old keyboards. That Arp Odyssey is sweet! He says the BBC never throws anything away, so those are all lurking around there someplace.
The new series does not have incidental music that is as killer as the original series, alas. This is why they need me.
Also, they point out that the teme song is about a minute long. The guy spent 5 weeks on it and used like 16 tracks or more. I spend like an hour for a one minute piece and use around 4 tracks. I feel like such a slacker in comparison.
I think I’ll add some complexity to the three pieces in my queue now.

On the radio in 5.6 hours

Hello, I will be live on the radio tonight at midnight in The Hague. That’s 16:00 for Californians and I don’t know about other time zones, as something very odd is going on with daylight savings or something in the US. There is a live stream on the web and information about archives also here.

I will be playing some laptop and probably some tape pieces including one not yet posted to my podcast and one that is not done yet, but will be by then.
In other news, I’ve got 3 commissions so far and have been mentioned in a few blogs (w00t), so in good capitalist style, I’m going to raise my rates – on Friday. If you want the lower price, act fast. A commissioned minute of noise can make a thoughtful birthday gift, commemorate a special occasion or just show off your impeccably good taste. And it might lead to international fame of some kind – the folks so far will get their names mentioned on 90.2 FM Den Haag in a few hours.

Edit

See http://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh/news.html for commission information.

Commission a short piece

Ok, so I live in the “center” of The Hague. This is a lot like an outdoor shopping mall. Everyday, I walk past mannequins. They used to freak me out, but no more. One of them is wearing a suit which I like. I pass it every day. Every day I like it a little bit more. I want to buy this suit.

Ok, so now that we’re clear that my motives are totally shallow, I’ve decided to start a commissioning thingee. I’m working on an album of pieces around 1 minute in length. I expect it to be done in two or three months. It is possible for you (yes, you!) to commission a piece on the album for the low price of 7€ ($10ish USD). You as the commissioner get to name the piece. Your role as titler and commissioner will be mentioned in the program notes for the piece whenever it is presented in any form. You will get a copy of the pice emailed to you in the audio format of your choice (MP3, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, AAC) and have 5 days in which to come up with a title (I reserve the right to nix titles that I deem offensive). I retain copyright, but will release the piece under a share music licence, which thus grants you the rights to make copies for your friends and share it via your website or whatever.
The first commissioned piece is up on my podcast already. You could be next!

Edit

See http://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh/news.html for commission information.

Blog against sexism Day

Today is blog against sexism day 2007. (Un)coincidentally, it’s also International Women’s day.

Blogging against sexism is as obvious as blogging in favor of breathing. Sexism sucks. I think all civilized humans can agree on that. But if we all agree, why does it still exist pretty much everywhere? And what exactly do we mean by sexism anyway?
I think a lot of people view sexism in much the same way as they misunderstand racism. (White) people have the mistaken idea that racism is an emotion. In this view, racists hate black people. But let’s look at Strom Thurmond. This guy had an affair with a black woman and had a daughter by her and made sure to look out for his daughter during his entire life. It’s possible that he loved his mistress and his daughter. Similarly, many sexist men love their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters too. Heck, I love my dog. For real. She’s great. The best dog ever. No where near my equal in anyway, and possibly an emergency food source in the case of horrible disaster, but I love her.
My mother loved me. She thought she was doing me a favor by giving me a bunch of chores (and she was, but she wasn’t doing my brother the same favor . . . nor my dad). I had to wash dishes and clean bathrooms and vacuum and do normal kid-level household chores. But I complained, because my chores were ongoing whereas my brother got to do fun things like mow the lawn – which only needed doing once a week. My mother explained that when I got married, I would be responsible for all the cleaning and cooking and she was trying to prepare me. Because men and women have different roles in life, or did when she came up, pre second wave feminism.
Obviously, emotions like love and hate are related to sexism only in extreme cases. So sexism isn’t an emotion. What is it then? It’s both personal and systematic. Both reinforce and propagate each other. Personally, it’s gender essentialism. The belief that women have some sort of distinct role. The lowering of their horizons. Binary oppositions invite ranking and comparisons. When you create an essentialist gender binary, you put one group over the other and then compare them. Women lose every time. That’s systematic sexism casting it’s ugly shadow. When you set women on one course and men on another, men win and women lose.
Systematically, it’s the organization of society in such a manner as to favor men at the expense of women. Now some of you might be thinking to themselves that not all differences between men and women are socially constructed. Cisgender men don’t get pregnant, but cisgender women do. Well, that’s true. But the huge life-time earnings hit that American women take from getting pregnant is a social decision and thus is constructed. As is health insurance not covering birth control. As is women doing most of the labor in the world but men owning most of the resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN states, “Women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world’s food production . . ..” But “[n]ot even 2 percent of land is owned by women . . ..” and “[f]or the countries where information is available, only 10 percent of credit allowances are extended to women . . .” while at the same time “[t]wo-thirds of the one billion illiterate in the world are women and girls.” The list goes on, but it’s depressing. ( http://www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/Women/Sustin-e.htm )
In the US, women do most of the household chores and tend to earn less than men. Household chores are labor, although unpaid. But why do women earn less? Because they tend to be in fields that pay less than men. Why do these fields pay less? Because there are women in them.
More and more men are becoming nurses. The pay is rising. The prestige of the job is growing. When computers were first invented, software was an afterthought. The hardware was cool. The first programmers were all mathematicians who had to program extremely head-warping algorithms to compute stuff. It was much harder than it is today. But it was low status. Almost all of the first programmers were women. Gradually, engineers started to realize that the software was more important than the hardware. As programming became more socially important, the number of women declined in relation to the number of men. Now some folks wonder if maybe there’s a math-based biological bias that makes women unsuited to programming. Try again. It was Grace Hopper who invented the idea of high-level computer programming languages (and Cobol and Fortran).
Ok, so there’s a wide social bias that sees women as inferior, forces them to do more labor and yet keeps them in low economic rungs. And maybe the US isn’t “ready” for a woman president. And this is a worldwide problem. So what to do about it?
1. Make healthcare free. Cover contraception, abortion and prenatal care. Cover everything.
2. Paid maternity and paternity leave. Free childcare. Allow flexible work schedules. Shorter work schedules too. 40 hours a week is unreasonable. 2 weeks of vacation a year is absurd.
3. Free education. As high as you want to go and can go.
4. Mentorship. Match women, POC and other minorities with more experienced people in their field, who can help them navigate their way up. Also, start this mentoring early, maybe in college or even before.
5. Recordkeeping and outreach. You should know whether or not your place of business or university is reflecting the diversity of your region. If it’s not, then it’s time to do some outreach. Send out representatives from your company into the community, to job fairs to schools. Pick representatives who reflect the diversity that you are trying to mirror.
6. Consciousness Raising. How are things divided up in your own, personal life? Is it fair? Does it reflect exterior income inequalities? See your household income as joint rather than seeing incomes as separate. Separate incomes mean that the lower paid person might be pressured to quit or go part time in order to economize on paid services. This has lifelong repercussions on earning ability. (see http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/11/my-radical-married-feminist-manifesto.html) Do you see women as having different roles than men? What? Why?
These suggestions would benefit the majority of people in the US. Free healthcare helps everybody. Changing work-related penalties for having kids helps everybody. Free education benefits everybody. It’s an error to see this as a zero sum game. As our fearless leader says, we can grow the pie higher.
These changes create opportunity for women (and other folks) while removing penalties unfairly placed upon women. It moves childcare from the realm of chore to the realm of paid labor, thus increasing the economic participation of caregivers. This isn’t a complete list, but it’s a start.

Gender Therapy in the Low Lands

I’ve been putting off posting about this for a long while, so I’m hazy on the details. But how many Americans can give a first hand account of gender therapy in the Netherlands? I feel a duty to post. This kind of meanders into TMI a bit, though. Be warned.

Ok, so when I last spoke of my therapy issues, I’d seen a regular shrink who wasn’t sure what to do with me and who did not speak very fluent English. (I want to clarify that I’m not criticizing anyone when I say they don’t speak English well. It’s not like I speak Dutch well, which is the language of the land. When I mention that somebody doesn’t have high English skills, it’s just to clarify that communication was not overly clear. This is a sub-optimal situation to have with a shrink.) She asked me about going to see the gender specialists at the university in Amsterdam. There was back and forth. Finally, she referred me to a center in Voorburg.
Several days later, a letter came in the mail giving me a date and time for an appointment. Fortunately, my assigned time did not conflict with my class schedule. I biked the several kilometers to the PsyQ building there. PsyQ is some sort of organization that deals with people’s mental issues. I don’t know if they’re public or private or some mixture thereof. People seem to largely have private insurance in this country. Anyway, so I showed up and walked through an automatic door to an entry alcove. There was a large glass window with a woman behind it and a microphone. There was no opening in the window at all. It was solid glass (or whatever). I had to show ID to the woman behind the glass and also present my appointment letter. She pressed a button and the automatic glass sliding door to the lobby opened.
Of course, they deal with crazy people, so they need security to protect themselves. From people like me.
The woman took my insurance card (they only reimburse and don’t cover anxiety, which is specifically mentioned on my appointment letter, but whatever) and asked me questions so she could fill out paperwork for me. Because my Dutch skills are too low to fill out any of the forms by myself. People are generally very nice about my inability to communicate in their language. Anyway.
I went to the waiting room and a woman came to meet me and explained that she was filling in for whomever I was actually supposed to meet with. She asked me all the stereotypical shrink things while taking copious notes. How did I get along with my mother? My father? What was my childhood like? I told her about coming out in Catholic school. The first girl I kissed. blah blah blah. She wanted to know about my earlier childhood. At home, I played with boys. At school, I played with girls. My parents and grandparents always got me girl toys. I had a collection of Barbies, but found them to be dull. You dress them up? Who cares? Until, one day, my friend Christy from school came over one afternoon and wanted to play with my Barbies. She pulled off their clothes and a bisexual Barbie orgy ensued. Apparently, what you do with Barbies is make them have sex with each other.
“So she taught you how to play with Barbies?” the shrink asked, very seriously. Um, yeah, am I paying for this? Because I suddenly feel like I’m stupidly wasting everyone’s time.
She changed the subject. “So what makes you think you might be -”
“I don’t know.” I cut her off. I said “I don’t know” a lot. She asked me if I would rather talk to a man or a woman. Was this a trick question? If I say woman, then I’m really a lesbian? If I say a man, then, I’m really a man? Which way should I go? Ack. I asked for a fluent English speaker. Then I started coughing and couldn’t stop. I went home and felt crappy and got a fever and was sick in bed on my birthday (I’m 31 now, btw) poor me.
A week or so later, I went back to the same place, still feeling like I had a cold. I met a different woman, the head of the sexology department. She explained that the woman I had talked to previously was no longer employed by PsyQ and since they are having a staff meeting on March 5th to figure out what to do with me, somebody there should have met me in person. I was very careful the whole time not to say the word “transsexual.” (Because I am totally logical.) She asked me a few times the same question that the other woman had asked more than once. Did I have problems during sex? (Problems only in that the ladies can’t get enough of me. heh heh.) I asked her to explain herself. Well, my lack of a penis might make it difficult. (good lord) Then she asked me how I felt about my period. (um, well, questions about it make me feel uncomfortable.) I don’t think I dislike it significantly more than anybody else I know who has it. She asked me why I hadn’t stopped it with birth control. I explained that I really don’t like taking pills or whatever and don’t want to mess too much with things like that unless I have to for some reason. I’ve heard women talking about birth control side fx and stuff and always have felt glad I don’t have to mess with it. Emotional messes. Mojo killing. No thanks. “But it’s possible to stop it. Why don’t you do it?” she pushed. Yeah, but it can make your breasts bigger, I pointed out. She accepted that. She wanted to know why I hadn’t gone to Amsterdam to the university. Hey, I’ve just been going where y’all have been sending me.
I got the vibe that if I had asked for a referral for testosterone, she would have been willing to write one right then. (Actually, normally, they make you get 5 appointments in Amsterdam and then you carry forward. I don’t know if the appointments are to get a note for hormones or for surgery.) She clearly thought I was – that word that I was carefully shying away from. Which, I mean, what did I expect? A pat on the back and a “good for you being genderqueer!”? If I was fine just the way I am, why am I seeing a shrink anyway?
Then she talked to me about what she’s going to recommend they do with me. Anxiety therapy is the first priority.
god help me, I’ll get off Zoloft soon.
I’ve been off school for the last week. No classes! I didn’t go anywhere. I did an application for Birmingham (UK, not AL) and sat around. Today, I had a duo recording with a improv guy from the composition department. I took a deep breath and screamed “I don’t know who I am” as loud and as long as I could, though my tuba. (Metaphor, but not really.) Blat blat blat, I screamed, inhaled, bellowed improperly attacked breathy notes that don’t know where they’re going, what pitch they want to be, how they will resonate, where they are now, what valves are pressed or how much. Wail, blat blat blat.
Afterwards, I felt so much better. I didn’t even know I felt tense, but afterwards, I just felt so like I’d worked something out. so maybe the key to getting off Zoloft is playing loud, angsty tuba? I came home and actually mixed a piece of music. this entailed both me getting Ardour to work and having the attention span to mix something. Tuba is key.
I’m trying to be proactive. I used to tell myself to wait on things. I didn’t need to worry about my mental health problems as long as I could walk and eat and stuff. In the book Breaking Silence, I read about lesbian nuns developing stomach problems from stress and what I got form that was that I could wait until I had stomach problems. Yeah, last summer counted. I always wait like that. I went to a support group for FTMs once in San Francisco. One old guy there said that if you have to transition, eventually you’ll have to. In She’s Not There, Boylan writes of her experience at age 41, just being totally unable to carry on without taking action. I don’t want to be a mess in 10 years. I don’t want to delay and have my first stubble come in grey. I want to deal with this now and take action or put it behind me. I want to move forward from where I am now.
I know that’s it’s not a path of discovery, that it’s a path of creation. I have agency. I apply technologies of the self to create my own identity. It needs to be an identity I can make some peace with. that might require some more therapy. Or more tuba.