Some enjoy free jazz as soon as they first hear it; oth­ers think it sounds like music from an alien civ­i­liza­tion, a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence fit only for a jazz fan as high as a kite. But how about as high as a space probe? Out­er­he­lios, a 24/7 stream of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed free jazz, comes designed for broad­cast into out­er space by Dad­abots, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between musi­cians-turned-pro­gram­mers CJ Carr and Zack Zukows­ki (or, accord­ing to their about page, “a cross between a band, a hackathon team, and an ephemer­al research lab”). Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly built an AI-gen­er­at­ed death met­al stream (about whose cre­ation you can read in this com­put­er sci­ence paper), they’ve looked to the skies and trained their neur­al net­work on John Coltrane’s Inter­stel­lar Space.

“These duets between Coltrane on tenor (and bells) and Rashied Ali on drums sound like an annoy­ance until you con­cen­trate on them,” writes Robert Christ­gau in his orig­i­nal review of the 1974 album, “at which point the inter­ac­tions take on pace and shape.” The neur­al net­work “lis­tened to the album 16 times,” says the offi­cial Data­bots descrip­tion on the Out­er­he­lios stream, “then con­tin­ued to make music in the style.”

The project draws inspi­ra­tion from NASA’s probes Voy­ager 1 and 2, which “launched in 1977 car­ry­ing a mix­tape Carl Sagan made called The Sounds of Earth. It fea­tured Blind Willie John­son, Chuck Berry, record­ings of laugh­ter, Beethoven, Bach, Stravin­sky, along with dia­grams of human repro­duc­tive organs,” all “intend­ed for an audi­ence of intel­li­gent extrater­res­tri­al life­forms.”

Where­as The Sounds of Earth “used a sta­t­ic music for­mat pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed by peo­ple,” Out­er­he­lios fol­lows on Bri­an Eno’s ideas about gen­er­a­tive music by invent­ing a Coltrane album that nev­er sounds the same twice. “For a few min­utes, it’ll pro­duce plau­si­ble-sound­ing free jazz,” writes Futurism.com’s Jon Chris­t­ian. “Then the drums will segue into an inhu­man trill, or the horns will dis­in­te­grate into a cacoph­o­nous wash of sound. Let’s just say that it’s not your dad’s jazz” — even if your dad hap­pens to be John Coltrane, or indeed Bri­an Eno. But per­haps it will give NASA just the inspi­ra­tion it needs to get the next Voy­ager launched. The sound of the orig­i­nal Inter­stel­lar Space got Christ­gau think­ing beyond nations: “Euro­pean, Ori­en­tal, African — I don’t know. But amaz­ing.” Could the likes of Out­er­he­lios get us think­ing beyond the solar sytem?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Do you remem­ber your first Walk­man? If you grew up after the cas­sette era, of course, you might have owned a CD-play­ing Dis­c­man instead, or maybe — just maybe — even a Mini­disc Walk­man. Nowa­days you prob­a­bly have an iPod or iPod-like dig­i­tal audio play­er as well as a cell­phone equipped to serve the same pur­pose. But all the ways in which you’ve ever tak­en your tunes on the go evolved from a com­mon tech­no­log­i­cal ances­tor: Sony’s TPS-L2, which debuted on the mar­ket 40 years ago this month. First mar­ket­ed in the Unit­ed States as the Sound­about and the Unit­ed King­dom as the Stow­away, it did­n’t take long to achieve world­wide suc­cess under the Japan­ese-Eng­lish brand name that long ago became a byword for the per­son­al stereo.

“To cel­e­brate the Walk­man’s 40th anniver­sary, Sony has opened an exhi­bi­tion in Tokyo’s bustling Gin­za dis­trict,” writes design­boom’s Juliana Neira. “Titled #009 WALKMAN IN THE PARK 40 Years Since ‘the Day the Music Walked,’ the exhi­bi­tion focus­es on the peo­ple for whom the Walk­man has been a part of their every­day life.”

It also includes a wall “fea­tur­ing around 230 ver­sions of the Walk­man through­out its 40-year his­to­ry. From the nos­tal­gic old­er mod­els, all the way up to the lat­est mod­els, the exhib­it allows vis­i­tors to take in the changes in designs, spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and media for­mats over the years.” You can see all the rep­re­sen­ta­tive Walk­man mod­els from through­out the device’s four decades of his­to­ry in the minute-long offi­cial video above.

The Walk­man defined an era of per­son­al tech­nol­o­gy, but its brand has­n’t weath­ered so well in the 21st cen­tu­ry. “The beau­ti­ful­ly designed, easy-to-use TPS-L2 was the device that lib­er­at­ed the cas­sette from liv­ing room hi-fis and car tape decks to tru­ly make music portable,” writes Quartz’s Mike Mur­phy. But “a great many of the prod­ucts that Sony once dom­i­nat­ed with have been replaced, or have been con­sol­i­dat­ed into oth­er devices. Over the years, Sony has made fan­tas­tic cam­corders, stereo com­po­nents, cam­eras, portable media play­ers, and phones. Rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple buy most of these prod­ucts any­more, with the smart­phone usurp­ing many of these devices’ func­tions.” Today’s Walk­man devices don’t reflect “the influ­en­tial (and often exper­i­men­tal) Sony of yes­ter­day. And with Apple grap­pling with its own exis­ten­tial ques­tions about its future, who is left to take up the man­tle of the king of con­sumer elec­tron­ics?”

Still, when we put on our head­phones or pop in our ear­buds on the morn­ing com­mute and see that every­one else around us has done the same, we have to admit that we live in the world the Walk­man cre­at­ed. This has its down­sides, as Aman­da Petru­sich acknowl­edges in a New York­er piece on pub­lic head­phone-wear­ing: these include “the dis­con­nec­tion they facil­i­tate” (and the hand-wring­ing about that dis­con­nec­tion they encour­age) as well as the engi­neer­ing of music itself to accom­mo­date low-qual­i­ty audio repro­duc­tion. But then, “ambling down a city street with head­phones on — you know, maybe it’s dusk, maybe it’s mid­sum­mer, maybe you had a real­ly nice day — is, with­out a doubt, one of life’s sim­plest and most per­fect joys.” Sony’s music-lov­ing co-founder Masaru Ibu­ka, com­mis­sion­er of the orig­i­nal Walk­man’s design, must have known sim­i­lar joys him­self. But what would he make of pod­casts?

via design­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Good Are Your Head­phones? This 150-Song Playlist, Fea­tur­ing Steely Dan, Pink Floyd & More, Will Test Them Out

Con­serve the Sound, an Online Muse­um Pre­serves the Sounds of Past Technologies–from Type­writ­ers, Elec­tric Shavers and Cas­sette Recorders, to Cam­eras & Clas­sic Nin­ten­do

Lis­ten to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cas­sette Arts Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Andy Warhol, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­ers

City of Eight Mil­lion Sound­tracks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Kraftwerk put out their eighth stu­dio album in 1981, and they titled it pre­scient­ly: Com­put­er World was released into what human­i­ty had only just begun to real­ize would become a world of com­put­ers. But back then, most peo­ple either had nev­er used a com­put­er at all, or had used no com­put­er more advanced than a pock­et cal­cu­la­tor. But the boys from Düs­sel­dorf had a song for them too: the album’s first sin­gle “Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor.” And it was­n’t just a name: the Casio fx-501P pro­gram­ma­ble cal­cu­la­tor appeared on the list of “instru­ments” used in its record­ing.

Kraftwerk had become world-famous by the ear­ly 1980s, and on the inter­na­tion­al music scene they par­o­died the stiff, pre­ci­sion-obsessed Ger­man stereo­type to per­fec­tion. You’d think that they would thus demon­strate alle­giance to the for­mi­da­ble Dieter Rams-designed Braun ET55 cal­cu­la­tor, but by the time Com­put­er Love came out, Japan­ese com­pa­nies like Casio had come to dom­i­nate the per­son­al-elec­tron­ics mar­ket. Kraftwerk even record­ed a Japan­ese ver­sion of “Pock­et Calu­la­tor,” “Den­taku,” along with ones in Ger­man (“Taschen­rech­n­er”), French (“Mini Cal­cu­la­teur”), and Ital­ian (“Mini Cal­co­la­tore”).

“I’m the oper­a­tor with my pock­et cal­cu­la­tor,” go the song’s Eng­lish lyrics. “I am adding and sub­tract­ing. I’m con­trol­ling and com­pos­ing.” And whichev­er lan­guage you lis­ten to it in, it has a line equiv­a­lent to, “By press­ing down a spe­cial key, it plays a lit­tle melody.”

Kraftwerk actu­al­ly com­mis­sioned as a pro­mo­tion­al item a spe­cial cal­cu­la­tor from Casio that could do just that, a ver­sion of the com­pa­ny’s VL-80 mod­el that was also a musi­cal syn­the­siz­er. You can see and hear the basic, non-Kraftwerk mod­el demon­strat­ed in the video above. Casio, a name that in the music world would become a byword for sim­ple, inex­pen­sive syn­the­siz­ers, had already brought to mar­ket in 1979 the VL‑1, the first com­mer­cial dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­er (which itself includ­ed a cal­cu­la­tor func­tion).

With a Kraftwerk taschen­rech­n­er, even those with­out tech­ni­cal or musi­cal knowl­edge, let alone a full-fledged syn­the­siz­er, could make music. “Kraftwerk was eager for fans to play Kraftwerk hits on their own cal­cu­la­tors,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der, “so they issued these spe­cial instruc­tions — OK, let’s call it ‘sheet music’ — to play not just the new mate­r­i­al but also clas­sics like ‘Trans Europa Express’ and ‘Schaufen­ster­pup­pen.’ ” Today, Kraftwerk con­tin­ues to per­form all over the com­put­er world in which we now live. With the 40th anniver­sary of Com­put­er World approach­ing, per­haps the time has come to bring the cal­cu­la­tors back on stage.

(via Dan­ger­ous Minds)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk Plays a Live 40-Minute Ver­sion of their Sig­na­ture Song “Auto­bahn:” A Sound­track for a Long Road Trip (1974)

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

The Keaton Music Type­writer: An Inge­nious Machine That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.