Les said, the better II

What would happen if you aimed a 10Hz FM transmitter right at somebody’s head? What about an AM transmitter? Aren’t the radios in cell phones supposed to be what causes brain tumors? Has that ever been proven? (My mom never used a cell phone, but I think the cordless phone was glues to her head often.) What if you took normal audio, but delayed the right channel by 1/6th of a second and had people listen via headphones? (166.7 ms would be very audible, huh?) What if you send an audio channel to the video in of a TV (AM modulated by a square wave LFO, of course)? What if I never write the stupid outline I ought to write for my thesis?

who owns ideas?
Tag: 10Hz

One of my favorite blogs is the one beloning to Tiffany. She’s understated and wry and she’s living in China. so she posts things that she thinks are mundane, but to those of us who have not ventured far beyond the borders of the US, it’s all fascinating.

Tag: Tifanjo

Apparently, Wesleyan has some sort of quota on their email system, so you can’t have more than 30 megabytes of undeleted email. Sheesh. So I’ve been going through, re-reading old messages and deleting ones that no longer matter, such as notices of overdue library books, schedule changes from concerts a year ago as well as personal exchanges. I had a lot more correspondence a year ago than I do now. Tons. I keep reading email people sent me a year ago. My god, was my life bleak. I went on d00med dates with people from personal ads who like Yanni and disliked academics. Worse, I had angst about it. The ex wanted to reconcile, then she didn’t, then she did, then she didn’t . . .. Repeat until Spring Break when I finally realized she had just been viscious on purpose and quit talking to her.

I feel all despondent just reading it. However, many things are abudantly clear from this perspective. 1. My life is way better now than it was a year ago. 2. Breaking up was right choice. 3. My friends are all very swell.

Yes, I have a rule about no smack-talking the ex. Yes, I just broke it. I’m sorry. I’m not sure how to think/talk/write about her. Nine years is a long time. There were good times. There were bad times. Sometimes I miss her. Those times are less and less. I’ve been leaving her out of stories and saying “I did x” when it was her and I. I did everything with her. Virtually nothing “I did x” was by myself. But I don’t want to talk about her every time I talk about a life experience. I’m a lot more individuated now than I’ve ever been. After being alone for the first time, I didn’t know who I was. But it turns out, I’m who I’ve always been. Just that person was sometimes just below the surface and not so visible. This gets all slippery when I try to blog it and I’m not sure. It’s hard to see personal change, cuz there’s no distance and no perspective.
Theoretically, the Saturn Return lasts from 27 – 29. I think I kicked it off early with my mother dying. This coming birthday will be my third without her, and hopefully, the end of my Saturn Return. In Indertiminancy, John Cage says, “Before enlightenment, men are men and mountains are mountains. After enlightenment it is the same. In between, things get confused for a while.” Moutains are now very certainly coalescing into rock and dirt and whatnot. Too bad I’m not enlightened, although I bet this would be a step on that path.
Tags: Celesteh, My Life

I’ve played extensively in the Middletown, CT new music scene. Ok, so I nearly fell over laughing at that phrase, but no disrepect to anyone. We do have a lot of new music around here, I just would never have thought to call it a scene. Only because I’m a big-city centric elitist. I would have called it the Wesleyan new music scene, personally, but not everything that happens is part of the university.

Speaking of education, when I last spoke with my advisor, he was pessimistic about getting my book published. However, O’Reilley published a book on Hacking Legos, so I have a bit more hope. He also pointed out that my thesis comittee wouldn’t actually understand my project and told me I would need to create some pedagological pieces in the style of David Tudor’s electronic works, like Run Through. So I popped in my CD of such musics and it was just evily irritating. I don’t want to write ensemble pieces for computer and certainly not like Tudor’s “i’m too good for analog synthesis” stuff.
I could also abandon my plans and just write program notes for all the pieces I’ve already written and that would count as a thesis. I’m just a composer, after all. It may be that everyone would rather I would just do that. It may not be. I’m clueless.

Tags: Middletown, Wesleyan, My Life, Celesteh

If anybody wants information about tickets for a “gala pre-[Other Minds] festival opening party including performances by Michael Nyman and Daniel Roumain and Asian Fusion cuisine by celebrity chef Rob Lam” on Feb 23rd, you should leave a comment, drop a line or call 415-934-8134. Tickets are $125/ person.

I’m supposed to find people who want to go and encourage them to come, but mostly I only talk to graduate students on the east coast, or professors on the east coast. So far, no takers. but it should be really cool. And you would really impress a date. For serious. Dinner, art bigwigs, composers, celebrity chefs! What’s not to enjoy?
If the name Michael Nyman is ringing a bell and you can’t remember why, It’s because he wrote the sound track to the Movie The Piano. You’ve heard this sound track. You’ve enjoyed it. It’s super keen. He also wrote a book called Experimental Music which is used as a textbook at Wesleyan. And it’s just worth reading.
So, yeah, you should go.
Tags: Other Minds, Music, Fundraising

So, 10Hz is the approximate frequency of alpha waves, which is why your brain responds and why it makes people feel sleepy. So 10Hz is a resonant frequency in your brain. And Your brain also reacts to electromagnetic fields oscillating at 10Hz. The chronicle recently reported, however, that Some people are senesitive (aka alergic) to electromagnetic fields. Hmm, you know that scene in the Matrix where they’re hacking Morpheus by doing all this stuff to him and making him sick? That’s not what I want to do. Although it would be interesting to see who would walk into an installation that might hurt them. So SRL.

Most electromagnetic fields are produced by electrical wiring in your home, computer monitors, electic motors, etc. The voltage frequency we surround ourselves with is 60Hz. That’s much faster than 10Hz, obviously, and it may be the speed that harms some people, I have no idea. I’m just guessing. But that low hum you hear right now? That’s 60Hz. When Americans are asked to hum the frequency of the earth, the sound of the planet, alas, they hum 60Hz. This is a totally new articifical envirnoment we’re inhabitting without any idea of what it might be doing to us. But I digress.
I went to an installation at the San Francisco MOMA a few years ago about Melatonin. I learned that looking at a lot of dark purple is supposed to stimulate melatonin. So I’m imagining putting people either into a windowless room or by themselves in a tube . . ..

Tube

The user lies down in the tube. The part she’s lying on is squishy and dark purple. The top of the tube is white, like a projection screen. Purple lights provide a small amount of lumination. The user puts on headphones, but there is also a speaker cone right behind her head. The speaker is emitting a 10 Hz subsonic sine wave, thus generating a physical sensation and an electric field. The headphones are playing calming music. Every frequency in the left ear is offset by 10 Hz from the frequency in the right ear. The tube illumination slowly dims as images beging to strobe at 10Hz over the user’s head. These could be flashes of light, but they could also be images. I think images might be interesting. Hopefully, the user feels calm and gets into an alpha state. The headphones begin to play words, for the hacking content. I’d probably do a slowly read meditation thing, “you are relaxing. you feel love towards the world” blah blah blah. Then, as it’s time to end the project, the speaker cone and the headphones begin to slowly speed up to 12Hz, the normal, waking state and the projections dim and the tube lights slowly come back up, but instead of being purple, they’re a yellowish green. I’m picturing it being 20 minutes in the tube, although half an hour might work better.

Room

The room is dimly lit with purple light. They’re a projection screen in front. People have beanbag cairs or something to sit on. A large speaker cone creates a 10Hz standing wave (no, I don’t know hot to do that yet) that users can actually feel. There is one speaker on the elft side of the room and one on the right. They are playing the same relaxing music as for the tube, however, I might drop the relaxation text. The projector is flashing images at 10Hz. My temptation (evil is always easier than good) is to flash images that ought to be immensely disturbing, but might not be in this relaxing setting. However, as tempting as it is, that would be evil. As the event comes to an end, after half an hour or longer (“concerts” are a longer format), things slowly speed up to 12 Hz and the room starts to fade up in green lights. People should feel energized afterwards, apparently. Rehersal Hall 003, on the Wesleyan Campus, is the perfect location for this.

Text

I have no knowledge of this, but my dad claims to. He says that if you’ve got people in suggestable states, the ideas you can communicate are very basic, like hunger. I suspect you may be able to get farther and incorporate in Fundamentalist ideas. Framing leftism in terms of fundamentlaism is probably too nuanced for a suggestable state. But I think people also have an impulse towards the sublime. We want to see god. We want to be spiritual. So I think maybe sublime, love everybody type stuff could work. We are all one. PLUR!
Tags: Music, Computer Music, Installation, 10Hz

Ok, the Times had an article (found via Boing Boing) on something called the Dream Machine. It’s basically a slow strobe. “[S]cientists . . . noted in experiments that light flickering at 8 to 12 flashes a second against a subject’s closed eyelids seemed to slow the electrical pulse rate of the subject’s brain to a state of semiconsciousness known as the alpha state and produce rich dreamlike imagery.” Furthermore, I have it on good authority that playing pieces with a 10Hz difference between the right and left ear has similar FX. 10Hz is the sleepy Hz.

There is some issue with using this phenomenon, at least with light. “Dr. Robert Fisher, the director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at Stanford, said that 1 in 10,000 people is likely to have a seizure in reaction to the its stroboscopic light, and that children are about twice as susceptible.” Ok, so it’s somewhat dangerous. This is why you can’t buy a dream machine (except hand-made), even though it’s supposed to be dern cool.
Ok, so what do you do artistically with a phenomenon which will harm 0.01% of the population? You can’t just put it up in a gallery, that’s for sure. So, you could do a small installation wiht lots of warning and posted no access for children, maybe. Or a web application. Or what? hmmmm.
I do want to try to slip ideas at people while they’re suseptible. Hacking Humans. I promise it will be good stuff, “Love they Neighbor,” etc. Although I’m sure Focus on the Family would object. “Pledging to love your neighbor is a way of accepting alternative lifestyles and homosexuality! What if your neighbor were gay, for example!” Said Lou Dobbs.
Tags: Installation, Dreams, 10Hz

Ok, so you’ve been to the concert where somebody is just sitting typing on a laptop. And for all you know, they’re playing a recording and checking their email. I mean, Carl Stone rocks back and forth and so you can tell he’s getting his groove on, but some folks, like me, just sorta sit there and twiddle their thumbs. There’s been all sorts of discussion about how to make the performance aspect more evident so the audience gets some visual stimulation. This guy has the answer. (You must watch the video [10.3 Mb]. I swear it’s accessible to everyone, not just computer music geeks.) I am going to copy him.
Tags: Music, Computer Music

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Goodness gracious, I got a right wing comment on my blog.

I’ve heard it said by leftists that men have no right to have an opinion about abortion. Well, then, what about women unwilling to engage in the procreative act with a man?

Abortion is a constitutional right, but I’ll still address this issue by Issue

Anti-choice people do not care about fetuses

If anti-choice people thought a fetus was a person, then they would never make an exception in case of rape or incest or anything. That wouldn’t matter. A person is a person. When someone miscarried, they would mourn it like a dead child. They don’t. They would have a ritual to name a fetus or otherwise celebrate its conception. This would be a religious celebration. I know of no such Christian celebration.
More than half of conceptions are never born. Is the afterlife overrun with the souls of those who never made it past a few cells?
A fetus, therefore, is only a person when a woman is pregnant by having consensual sex. Pregnancy is thus imposed upon women, if unwanted, as punishment. Women need to keep their bodies under control. If they do something they shouldn’t have, a person may be thrust upon them. If they were attacked or did not consent, then it’s not morally a person. Obviously, this has more to do with controlling women’s sexuality than with fetal people.

Controlling Women’s Sexuality Directly Effects me

If the only allowable sex is in marriage between a man and a woman, well, my life sucks then. Men are just not cute. I appreciate that people have different religious views than I do, but hopefully this is not a theocracy and what I do that doesn’t negatively effect any other person is my own business.

Just cuz I’m a dyke doesn’t mean I’ll never be pregnant

I read a few years ago that there was a gaybe-boom going on. Artificial insemination is all the rage. You can do it at home with a willing donor and a turkey baster. (It’s not the procreative act, but it’s certainly one of them.) I’ve been thinking about having kids. It’s terrible to contemplate, but something could go horribly wrong. I can’t say for certain that I’ll never have an abortion.
I can’t say for certain that I will never date (or whatever) a boy. I mean, people change their minds.
Women sometimes get raped. A small percentage of raped women get pregnant from it. Less than half of reported rapes get prosecuted. If women don’t want to report that they’ve been raped and, when they do, half the time prosecutors don’t think there’s enough evidence to take it to court, how is an exception for rape supposed to work? Weeks later, when she realizes that she’s pregnant, the victim comes forward and says what happened and there’s no evidence? That’s supposed to be in a court hearing? Or would we take her at her word?
Or if she does report it, but the DA decides it’s a case of he-said-she-said. If there’s not enough evidence to convict a rapist, then how could there be enough evidence to terminate a person. Except that a fetus isn’t a person, or the circumstances wouldn’t matter.

People can have opinions on any damn thing they want

I have opinions on lots of things. I have an opinion on how Russia ought to handle its oil companies. I formed it by reading the BBC’s news feed. I could blog about it here and probably only Marek would care. But I have an opinion.
I have zero voice in the matter though. I’m not a Russian. I don’t get to vote in Russia. I will never be in a capacity where I make a decision about a Russian oil company.
Pro-choice means I think women should be empowered to chose how they live their lives and make their own decisions about sex and procreation. If somebody wants to have a baby, great! If somebody wants to terminate, she can do that too. Birth control, fabulous. Dating girls, awesome. Women should control their own bodies. I’m a person, so I get an opinion. I’m a person so I get to control my own body. We live in a free society, so I don’t get to control anybody else’s body. How is that not clear?

Roe Vs Wade Established the idea of a constitutional right to privacy

Pregnancies end all the time. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes on purpose. How it happened is between a woman and her doctor. That’s the descision. I like having a right to privacy and in this era of spyware, homeland security and gigantic data-mining operations, I really don’t want to lose that right. Everyone, possibly preggers or not, has an interest in whether that right stays or gets chucked out. (I would make a joke about babies and bathwater, but it’s in terrible taste.) since it’s clear that anti-choice peopel don’t really care about fetuses, I wonder how much of their politics has to do with maintaining heteronormativity and male domination and how much has to do with the idea of destroying constitutionally-protected privacy rights.

I am a lousy speller

It’s always good to point out a misspelling in a flame, because it shows that you have much better spell checking software than I do. Also, I got an A in spelling when I was in 8th grade, but I failed typing. I hope this is somehow consoling.

Please go counter-protest tomorrow

10 AM Powell and Market. I would be there if I could.
Tags: Pro-choice, Politics

I’ve put up infomration on my iphoto publishing scripts. They modify the outputted webpages from iPhoto and generate my XML feed for my photo library.

I’m thinking of doing an additional XML feed which has all the new pictures on it instead of a link to the new pictures. I’m also thining of including flickr-like tags. But all of that is a lot of work.
anyway, if you use iPhoto or other, similar, web ill-equipped software, these scripts might be handy. I understand you can also find plug-ins for iPhoto. That might work, but it wouldn’t be nearly as helpful at getting me to procrastinate on my thesis.
Tags: iPhoto, XML