Thomas Dolby Explains How a Synthesizer Works on a Jim Henson Kids Show (1989)

in Music, Technology, Television | May 21st, 2014

We’ve all heard the musi­cal fruits of audio syn­the­sis, espe­cial­ly if we reg­u­lar­ly lis­ten to the pop of the 1980s. But how, exact­ly, does a syn­the­siz­er work? Ask a mod­ern elec­tron­ic-music enthu­si­ast and the answer may come out too tech­ni­cal, and at too much length, to bear. But pio­neer­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed singer-song­writer Thomas Dol­by, he of “She Blind­ed Me with Sci­ence” (though I’ve always pre­fer his more ele­giac num­bers like “Air­waves”), can give you a clear­er, more con­cise expla­na­tion.


In fact, he gets it sim­ple to the point of child-friend­li­ness — so sim­ple that he gives it on a chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram. The Ghost of Faffn­er Hall, which ran in late 1989 in Eng­land and Amer­i­ca, taught lessons about music with a gallery of famous per­form­ers — Bob­by McFer­rin, Joni Mitchell, James Tay­lor, Mark Knopfler — in a pup­pet-rich set­ting. Those pup­pets, the denizens (liv­ing and dead) of the tit­u­lar Faffn­er Hall, came built by Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop, known for their mas­tery of Mup­pet craft.

Dol­by’s illus­tra­tion of a syn­the­siz­er’s oper­a­tion involves an unusu­al work of Mup­petry: a fly in a match­box. “A syn­the­siz­er con­sists of two things,” he says, “an oscil­la­tor and a fil­ter. The oscil­la­tor con­trols the pitch of the sound, and the fil­ter con­trols the tone.” Out, then, comes the box and its slight­ly unwill­ing (Mup­pet) inhab­i­tant. “I want you to imag­ine the fly is an oscil­la­tor, and this box is a fil­ter.” Dol­by shakes the box, rep­re­sent­ing elec­tri­cal cur­rent through an oscil­la­tor, which makes the fright­ened fly buzz. “The hard­er I shake the box, the high­er the pitch!” To demon­strate fil­tra­tion, he opens and clos­es the match­box, harshen­ing the fly­’s wail (until, indeed, it turns into a cry of “Help!”). If you’d like to hear Dol­by talk more about the inter­sec­tion of his art and his tech­nol­o­gy at a high­er, albeit Mup­pet­less lev­el, have a lis­ten to his appear­ance last year on the Nerdist pod­cast. He long ago, in anoth­er con­text, stat­ed his goal of teach­ing peo­ple that syn­the­siz­ers “don’t have to sound like a crate of mori­bund wasps” — an inter­est­ing thing to accom­plish with a match­box and a super­in­tel­li­gent fly.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dol­by Geek Out and Sing “She Blind­ed Me With Sci­ence”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Short Film Takes You Inside the Recovery of Andy Warhol’s Lost Computer Art

in Art, Technology | May 12th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks back, we told you how Carnegie Mellon’s Com­put­er Club used its tech savoir-faire to recov­er near­ly 30 paint­ings that Andy Warhol made on the Ami­ga com­put­er back in the 1980s. It involved restor­ing some Ami­ga hard­ware housed at the Andy Warhol Muse­um and then per­form­ing acts of “foren­sic retro­com­put­ing,” which meant reverse-engi­neer­ing the “com­plete­ly unknown file for­mat” in which Warhol saved his images. The Hill­man Pho­tog­ra­phy Ini­tia­tive cap­tured the whole process on film, and cre­at­ed a short movie called Trapped: Andy Warhol’s Ami­ga Exper­i­ments. It pre­miered Sat­ur­day, May 10 at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library Lec­ture Hall and it’s also now online. Watch it above. One inter­est­ing thing you’ll learn along the way: Steve Jobs orig­i­nal­ly asked Warhol to make his paint­ings on an ear­ly Mac. But the artist opt­ed for the Com­modore Ami­ga instead. Below, you can actu­al­ly see Warhol paint Deb­bie Har­ry on the Ami­ga.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Andy Warhol’s Lost Com­put­er Art Found on 30-Year-Old Flop­py Disks

Find Trapped: Andy Warhol’s Ami­ga Exper­i­ments on our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part  of our larg­er col­lec­tion: 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Andy Warhol’s Lost Computer Art Found on 30-Year-Old Floppy Disks

in Art, Technology | April 25th, 2014

1_Andy_Warhol

If you saw our post on Andy Warhol dig­i­tal­ly paint­ing Deb­bie Har­ry at the 1985 launch of the Com­modore Ami­ga 1000, you know how effu­sive­ly — effu­sive­ly by the impas­sive Warho­lian stan­dard, any­way — the artist praised the com­put­er’s artis­tic pow­er. Now, thanks to a recent dis­cov­ery by mem­bers of Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty’s Com­put­er Club, we know for sure that the mas­ter­mind behind the Fac­to­ry did­n’t sim­ply shill for Com­modore; he actu­al­ly spent time cre­at­ing work with their then-graph­i­cal­ly advanced machine, a few pieces of which, unseen for near­ly thir­ty years, just came back to light on mon­i­tors every­where. Above we have the 1985 self-por­trait Andy2. The 27 oth­er finds include a mouse-drawn ren­di­tion of his sig­na­ture Camp­bel­l’s soup can and a three-eyed Venus, sure­ly one of the eerier ear­ly uses of cut-and-paste func­tion­al­i­ty, all prod­ucts, explains the press release from The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Cre­ative Inquiry at Carnegie Mel­lon,” of a com­mis­sion by Com­modore Inter­na­tion­al to demon­strate the graph­ic arts capa­bil­i­ties of the Ami­ga 1000 per­son­al com­put­er.” 

Andy_Warhol_Campbells_amiga

1980s elec­tron­ics-lov­ing artist Cory Arcan­gel, upon watch­ing the video of Warhol at the launch, con­tact­ed the Andy Warhol Muse­um “regard­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of restor­ing the Ami­ga hard­ware in the museum’s pos­ses­sion.” The effort neces­si­tat­ed acts of “foren­sic retro­com­put­ing” — a del­i­cate process, since “even read­ing the data from the diskettes entailed sig­nif­i­cant risk to the con­tents.” The CMU Com­put­er Club team even had to reverse-engi­neer the “com­plete­ly unknown file for­mat” in which Warhol had saved his images. “By look­ing at these images, we can see how quick­ly Warhol seemed to intu­it the essence of what it meant to express one­self, in what then was a brand-new medi­um: the dig­i­tal,” Arcan­gel says in the press release. “FYI, it was the most fun project I ever worked on,” he says on his blog — a mean­ing­ful state­ment indeed, since so much of his oth­er work involves old Nin­ten­do games. The Hill­man Pho­tog­ra­phy Ini­tia­tive cap­tured it all in a film called Trapped: Andy Warhol’s Ami­ga Exper­i­ments, which pre­mieres Sat­ur­day, May 10, at Pitts­burgh’s Carnegie Library Lec­ture Hall, there­after becom­ing view­able at nowseethis.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Andy Warhol’s Christ­mas Art

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How British Codebreakers Built the First Electronic Computer

in Google, History, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | April 23rd, 2014

It was only a mat­ter of time before the folks at Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute wan­dered down the road in Moun­tain View to vis­it the Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um. Togeth­er they’ve tak­en on a slim lit­tle sub­ject, Rev­o­lu­tion: The First 2000 Years of Com­put­ing

Unlike the best Cul­tur­al Insti­tute exhibits (the fall of the Iron Cur­tain and the daz­zling array of oth­er art and his­to­ry col­lec­tions come to mind) this one doesn’t do enough to lever­age video to bring the mate­r­i­al to life. It’s a breezy lit­tle tour from the hum­ble (but effec­tive) aba­cus to punched cards, mag­net­ic discs and the dawn of minia­tur­iza­tion and net­work­ing.

But noth­ing about how the Inter­net devel­oped, lead­ing to the Web and, now, the Inter­net of Every­thing?

I’ll admit that I learned a few things. I hadn’t heard of the design-for­ward Cray 1 super­com­put­er with its round tow­er (to min­i­mize wire lengths) and bench to dis­crete­ly hide pow­er sup­plies. The Xerox Alto came with con­sumer friend­ly fea­tures includ­ing a mouse, email and the capac­i­ty to print exact­ly what was on the screen. The unfor­tu­nate acronym for this asset wasWYSI­WYG (What You See Is What You Get).

I had also nev­er heard about the Utah teapot, a pic­ture of a gleam­ing white ceram­ic urn used for 20 years as the bench­mark for real­is­tic light, shade and col­or in com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed images.

“>http://youtu.be/amRQ-xfCuR4

More inter­est­ing, and up to the Cul­tur­al Institute’s stan­dards, is the exhib­it built in part­ner­ship with the Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing in Buck­ing­hamshire, Eng­land. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of his­to­ry, focus­ing on Hitler’s efforts to encrypt mes­sages dur­ing the war and stump the Allied forces. He com­mis­sioned con­struc­tion of a super-sophis­ti­cat­ed machine (not Enig­ma, if you’re think­ing of that). The machine was called Lorenz and it took encryp­tion to an entire­ly new lev­el.

“>http://youtu.be/knXWMjIA59c

British lin­guists and oth­ers labored to man­u­al­ly deci­pher the mes­sages. Attempts to speed the process led to devel­op­ment of Colos­sus, the world’s first elec­tron­ic comuter. The project was kept secret by the British gov­ern­ment until 1975.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Close Personal Friend: Watch a 1996 Portrait of Gen‑X Definer Douglas Coupland

in Film, Literature, Technology | April 22nd, 2014

Whether we lived through them as kids or as grown-ups, few of us feel sure about whether we miss the 1990s. No gen­er­a­tion did more to define the decade before last, at least in the West, than the unmoored, irony-lov­ing, at once deeply cyn­i­cal and deeply earnest “Gen­er­a­tion X” that suc­ceed­ed the wealth­i­er, more influ­en­tial Baby Boomers. No writer did more to define that gen­er­a­tion than Dou­glas Cou­p­land, the Cana­di­an nov­el­ist, visu­al artist, and seer of the imme­di­ate future whose 1991 lit­er­ary debut Gen­er­a­tion X: Tales for an Accel­er­at­ed Cul­ture gave the cohort its name. There he wrote of the twen­tysome­things who lived through the 1990s def­i­nite­ly not as kids, yet, frus­trat­ing­ly, not quite as grown-ups, com­ing hap­less­ly to grips in the mar­gins of a human expe­ri­ence that an advanced civ­i­liza­tion had already begun detach­ing from sup­posed expec­ta­tions — jobs, hous­es, sta­bil­i­ty, tight con­nec­tion between mind and body, unques­tion­ably “real” lived expe­ri­ence — of gen­er­a­tions before.

Cou­p­land, also a pro­lif­ic sculp­tor (next time you get to his home­town of Van­cou­ver, do vis­it the some­how always strik­ing Dig­i­tal Orca), writer of the film Every­thing’s Gone Green, star of the doc­u­men­tary Sou­venir of Cana­da, and now the devel­op­er of a snor­ing-assis­tance smart­phone app, knows a thing or two about switch­ing media. Five years after break­ing out with Gen­er­a­tion X, he also made Close Per­son­al Friend, the not-quite-cat­e­go­riz­able short about tech­nol­o­gy, mem­o­ry, and iden­ti­ty at the top of the post. In what plays as a cross between a Chris Mark­er-style essay film and a mid­dle-peri­od MTV music video, Cou­p­land con­tin­ues his career-long rumi­na­tion about our “accel­er­at­ed cul­ture” and the fas­ci­nat­ing­ly empow­ered yet com­pro­mised human beings to which it gives rise. What does it mean in this mod­ern, hyper­me­di­at­ed con­text, he won­ders, that we now won­der whether we actu­al­ly have lives? “Not hav­ing a life is so com­mon,” he says. “It’s almost become the norm. […] Peo­ple just aren’t get­ting their year’s worth of year any­more.”

Giv­en our cul­ture’s fur­ther accel­er­a­tion since he spoke those words in 1996 — the world wide web as we know it hav­ing got its start just three years before — Cou­p­land’s thoughts on the sub­ject, whether expressed in fic­tion, through sculp­ture, or onscreen, still sound plen­ty rel­e­vant. Close Per­son­al Friend, with its void­like back­drops, video-blender edit­ing, and scat­tered clips of whole­some mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana, bears the aes­thet­ic mark of its era. Cou­p­land’s faint­ly omi­nous talk of “FedEx, Prozac, microwave ovens, and fax machines” also time-stamps it tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly. But the obser­va­tions have car­ried through, only grow­ing sharp­er, to his lat­est work. Asked to imag­ine the “two dom­i­nant activ­i­ties” of life twen­ty years hence, the Cou­p­land of 1996 names “going shop­ping and going to jail,” pur­suits he sees as now merged in his essay col­lec­tion pub­lished last year, Shop­ping in Jail. Just above, we have a half-hour con­ver­sa­tion between Cou­p­land and Q host Jian Ghome­shi about his even new­er book, a study of mis­an­thropy in nov­el form called Worst. Per­son. Ever. In the talk, he cites “I miss my pre-inter­net brain,” a slo­gan he made up that has gained much trac­tion in recent years. But does he real­ly? “No,” he admits. “It was bor­ing back then!” Close Per­son­al Friend will be added to our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Pod­cast

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Two Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Talk to Each Other & Get Into a Deep Philosophical Conversation

in Philosophy, Technology | April 16th, 2014

The folks at the Cor­nell Cre­ative Machines Lab are “inter­est­ed in robots that cre­ate and are cre­ative.” Here’s one such exam­ple of robots get­ting cre­ative. Above, the lab lets two chat­bots (essen­tial­ly com­put­er pro­grams designed to sim­u­late an intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion) start chat­ting with one anoth­er. They start by exchang­ing pleas­antries. Then things get deeply philo­soph­i­cal, fair­ly quick­ly.  It’s fun to watch it play out.

via Giz­mo­do

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

 

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Before The Simpsons, Matt Groening Illustrated a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Computers (1989)

in Comics/Cartoons, Technology | April 10th, 2014

A friend once told me of his old­er cousin who, for the freak­ish act of installing a com­put­er in his col­lege dorm room, found him­self imme­di­ate­ly and irrev­o­ca­bly dubbed “com­put­er Jon.” This hap­pened in the ear­ly 1980s, and boy, have times changed. They’d even changed by the late 1980s, by which time Apple’s col­lege mar­ket­ing efforts had become suf­fi­cient­ly advanced to require the tal­ents of Matt Groen­ing, best known as the man who cre­at­ed The Simp­sons. But that prime-time ani­mat­ed sit­com would­n’t begin its record-break­ing run (still with­out an end in sight) until Christ­mas 1989, while the Groen­ing-illus­trat­ed Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? (which you can flip through above) appeared ear­li­er that year. Back then, read­ers might well have known him first and fore­most as the cre­ator of the satir­i­cal alter­na­tive-week­ly com­ic strip Life in Hell, which had debuted in 1977. One of its stars, the hap­less but good-heart­ed young one-eared rab­bit Bon­go, even made his way to Apple brochure’s cov­er. Though com­put­ers them­selves had long since come to dom­i­nate Amer­i­ca’s cam­pus­es by the time I entered col­lege, he and Groen­ing’s oth­er now-less­er-known char­ac­ters did do their part to pre­pare me for acad­e­mia.

I refer, of course, to School is Hell, his 1987 Life in Hell book offer­ing sar­don­ic primers on each and every phase of mod­ern edu­ca­tion from kinder­garten to grad school (“when you haven’t had enough pun­ish­ment”). Groen­ing’s pages in Who Needs a Com­put­er Any­way? read like a less sharp-edged ver­sion of those car­toons, fol­low­ing Life in Hel­l’s sig­na­ture “The 9 Types of…” for­mat to present the read­er with their nine types of future col­lege class­mates, from “the stressed” to “the tech­noid” to “the unem­ployed.” Between these, you can read Apple’s pitch for why you’ll find a piece of equip­ment still some­what out­landish and expen­sive so essen­tial to every aspect of your col­lege career. Though dat­ed tech­ni­cal­ly — the text men­tions noth­ing of the inter­net, for instance, which this gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents would soon­er drop out than do with­out — it nev­er­the­less under­scores the design virtues of Apple com­put­ers — an intu­itive inter­face, appli­ca­tion inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, “every­thing you need in one small, trans­portable case” — that remain design virtues today. It also dis­plays an impres­sive pre­science of the per­son­al com­put­er’s com­ing indis­pens­abil­i­ty, a con­fi­dent pre­dic­tion that, if not for the slack­er’s lev­i­ty lent by Groen­ing’s hand, might, at the time, actu­al­ly have sound­ed implau­si­ble.

via Retro­naut/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984″ Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Free: Watch the First Episode of Silicon Valley, Mike Judge’s New HBO Series

in Technology, Television | April 9th, 2014

Mike Judge’s 1998 movie Office Space struck a nerve with just about any­one who ever wound up in a thank­less low-end white col­lar job. Few movies before or since have been able to artic­u­late the pet­ty indig­ni­ties, the inani­ties and the gen­er­al soul gnaw­ing awful­ness of such gigs. Though the film is far from per­fect, its abun­dance of painful­ly fun­ny jokes along with some emi­nent­ly quotable lines — “Ummm I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomor­row” — have enshrined Office Space into the canon of cult movies.

Six­teen years lat­er, Mike Judge has a new sit­com that aims its satir­i­cal sites on anoth­er white-col­lar ecosys­tem – Sil­i­con Val­ley (the home of Open Cul­ture). The series cen­ters on neb­bish pro­gram­mer Richard who unwit­ting­ly devel­ops a new rev­o­lu­tion­ary way to com­press files. Soon he finds him­self in a bid­ding war between two of the tech world’s biggest entre­pre­neurs. Like Office Space, the fun of the show is its wry, acer­bic obser­va­tions about the rar­i­fied cul­ture of the val­ley.

Just like some apps that offer them­selves for free before mak­ing you pay, the cre­ators of Sil­i­con Val­ley are offer­ing the first episode of the HBO series for free on YouTube. Check it out above. Now if only they would do the same thing for sea­son four of Game of Thrones.

Recent Posts:

The Secret His­to­ry of Sil­i­con Val­ley

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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