[00:00.000 --> 00:08.700]  It's about conceptual approaches to actually contemporary and modern art, and also how that connects to hacking.
[00:09.840 --> 00:15.780]  John Cage, improvisation, musical interface design, and gaming technology.
[00:16.100 --> 00:23.580]  How all three of those things play into art, hacking, and repurposed technology.
[00:23.580 --> 00:26.800]  So, my name's Tamara Yadao.
[00:28.160 --> 00:41.520]  I'm going to be giving a... my section's going to be about John Cage, and sort of the legacy that contributed to his working with silence as a concept in music.
[00:42.680 --> 00:51.000]  Nicole Carroll, right here on the left, is a custom synth builder, an electro-acoustic improviser.
[00:51.000 --> 00:53.100]  She'll be talking about interface design today.
[00:53.520 --> 00:59.800]  And Joshua Kopstein here, will be talking about gaming technology, the demo scene, and software crackers.
[01:01.720 --> 01:05.060]  Okay, so, just to start off...
[01:08.600 --> 01:10.740]  Is everyone familiar with this image?
[01:14.750 --> 01:19.490]  This is a page from the score of 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
[01:20.250 --> 01:22.210]  Does anybody read standard notation?
[01:23.090 --> 01:27.250]  Okay, so, we pretty much know what this means, right?
[01:27.810 --> 01:29.650]  We're resting for the entire time.
[01:29.810 --> 01:40.390]  This was a seminal piece of work that was composed in 1951 and performed in Woodstock by David Tudor, musician.
[01:41.150 --> 01:45.210]  And it received... it was just uproarious.
[01:45.210 --> 01:48.710]  People were just completely upset.
[01:48.890 --> 01:51.290]  They paid to come see music, and they got this.
[01:53.590 --> 01:56.890]  So, having said that, let me move forward to the next slide.
[02:00.320 --> 02:03.380]  Nicole, can you comment on this image really quickly?
[02:04.720 --> 02:05.210]  Fertnest.
[02:06.940 --> 02:07.430]  Breadboard.
[02:08.340 --> 02:08.820]  Breadboard.
[02:09.800 --> 02:11.150]  Arduino interface, yes?
[02:11.490 --> 02:11.960]  Controllers.
[02:12.240 --> 02:12.720]  Controllers.
[02:12.720 --> 02:12.820]  Controllers.
[02:12.990 --> 02:13.210]  Yes.
[02:13.650 --> 02:14.020]  Great.
[02:17.740 --> 02:19.860]  And this is an image of a crack-tro.
[02:21.340 --> 02:23.500]  Which, um, Josh, do you want to say anything about that quickly?
[02:24.400 --> 02:25.300]  No, it's crack-tro.
[02:25.700 --> 02:26.080]  Okay.
[02:27.300 --> 02:28.000]  Right on.
[02:28.320 --> 02:29.480]  Home of the real crackers.
[02:29.860 --> 02:30.000]  Okay.
[02:30.620 --> 02:31.620]  Kill a commie for mommy.
[02:31.780 --> 02:33.020]  The humor is really nice.
[02:35.560 --> 02:36.200]  Oh.
[02:36.400 --> 02:36.820]  Really?
[02:37.900 --> 02:38.060]  Okay.
[02:38.300 --> 02:38.680]  Great.
[02:39.640 --> 02:40.200]  Okay.
[02:40.500 --> 02:46.960]  So, where this all comes from is from an article that Richard Stallman wrote called On Hacking.
[02:49.100 --> 02:53.580]  Because, you know, hacking developed at MIT, you know, in the 60s.
[02:53.680 --> 02:54.660]  It was very counter-cultural.
[02:54.660 --> 03:03.940]  And they were trying to find, they were mostly programmers and, uh, you know, computer, um, hackers, geeks, if you will.
[03:04.580 --> 03:10.400]  Uh, there's been a stigma that's been, um, attached to that term, obviously.
[03:10.880 --> 03:13.240]  So, Richard Stallman wrote this article.
[03:13.400 --> 03:15.220]  Are a lot of you familiar with it, actually?
[03:15.460 --> 03:17.660]  Because maybe I can just skip ahead.
[03:18.220 --> 03:18.720]  Okay.
[03:19.140 --> 03:20.000]  Um, alright.
[03:20.220 --> 03:20.360]  Good.
[03:21.000 --> 03:21.380]  Really?
[03:21.880 --> 03:22.380]  Hands?
[03:22.620 --> 03:22.840]  Nobody?
[03:22.840 --> 03:23.620]  Okay.
[03:23.840 --> 03:24.540]  Oh, okay.
[03:24.960 --> 03:25.180]  Alright.
[03:25.440 --> 03:31.000]  So, um, basically, uh, he wanted to say, he wanted to try to de-stigmatize the word.
[03:31.140 --> 03:36.680]  Basically saying that, you know, hacking is not necessarily about destruction.
[03:37.220 --> 03:41.140]  You know, I mean, you could destroy something and then make something new from it.
[03:41.400 --> 03:45.180]  But that it's not about, you know, it's not a malicious thing.
[03:45.180 --> 03:48.820]  Um, and so, he performed this experiment.
[03:48.820 --> 03:53.060]  It happened, actually, he was at dinner with a friend and it, uh, pertained to chopsticks.
[03:53.600 --> 03:57.620]  Um, the waiter set down four, two sets of chopsticks instead of one.
[03:58.100 --> 04:01.740]  And he was completely, you know, taken by it, struck by that.
[04:01.800 --> 04:03.700]  And I was like, well, why not use four?
[04:03.700 --> 04:08.980]  So, he immediately picked them up and started trying to, you know, change his behavior.
[04:09.360 --> 04:12.300]  Um, to adapt to this sort of idea.
[04:13.080 --> 04:21.740]  Um, having said that, the reason art is important here is because of this, you know, creative act that he's actually taken on right here.
[04:21.740 --> 04:28.140]  Um, so, in this article, he specifically mentions these two composers, which is really excellent.
[04:28.780 --> 04:31.080]  Um, he, and music, specifically.
[04:31.380 --> 04:40.620]  Not any other artworks, but just music and composers, next to practical jokes and other various cultural things that aren't necessarily associated with art.
[04:41.580 --> 05:01.280]  Um, so, um, he said that both of these composers, Guillaume de Michaud, who was, um, seminal to polyphonic music of the 14th century medieval composer, and John Cage, who's an American avant-garde pioneer of, um, pioneer of the avant-garde music, um, in the 20th century in American music,
[05:01.560 --> 05:02.240]  contemporary music.
[05:02.680 --> 05:10.900]  Um, he said that these things have tons of hack value, that these pieces, these composers, what they did, their work, have this thing called hack value.
[05:11.100 --> 05:20.880]  And hack value is basically that thing which, um, that playful cleverness that you incorporate to push beyond the limits of something.
[05:20.880 --> 05:26.800]  Something that's either imposed, self-imposed, you know, based on social, you know, conditioning or, or whatnot.
[05:27.300 --> 05:34.860]  Or, or just the limitations of, of the hardware as it's, you know, presented to you from whoever, whomever you get it from.
[05:35.760 --> 05:37.440]  So, I'll move forward.
[05:40.320 --> 05:47.520]  So, having said that, um, I'm gonna jump into a little bit of art history here from, um, early 20th century.
[05:47.520 --> 05:53.140]  Um, I'm gonna talk about, um, Marcel Duchamp, who is like the grandfather of conceptual art.
[05:53.540 --> 06:10.120]  Um, conceptual art is sort of like, uh, it was, it's an idea that, um, emphasizes, uh, the idea or how, um, an artwork is put together over, you know, the traditional sense of aesthetics and materials that are usually emphasized in more fine arts.
[06:10.120 --> 06:12.180]  It's just straight fine arts sculpture or painting.
[06:12.700 --> 06:19.600]  So, um, it's not really necessarily about the materials, but how the materials are used.
[06:20.420 --> 06:24.660]  Um, having said that, does everybody know, um, the fountain?
[06:25.180 --> 06:26.320]  Fountain, yes.
[06:26.320 --> 06:31.200]  Very famous, uh, very famous work by, um, Marcel Duchamp.
[06:31.440 --> 06:39.460]  Um, that was presented at, or, excuse me, it was rejected from, uh, the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in 1917.
[06:39.460 --> 06:43.420]  Which is really funny because he was actually the director of the society.
[06:43.760 --> 06:46.240]  They rejected his work and then he resigned.
[06:47.040 --> 06:50.560]  Um, so, let me just show you a picture of that quickly and then I'll jump back.
[06:53.630 --> 06:56.070]  Um, on the left is, um, the fountain.
[06:56.690 --> 07:00.470]  Duchamp himself in the middle, uh, donning his alter ego, Rose Salavie.
[07:01.150 --> 07:09.070]  And, uh, the bicycle wheel, which is, um, a really beautiful sculpture, actually, but a combination of what you see, stool and a bicycle wheel.
[07:09.610 --> 07:12.390]  So, um, the fountain is signed with Armut.
[07:12.590 --> 07:15.450]  And, um, this was, you know, it's a urinal.
[07:15.650 --> 07:25.790]  So, it was very, very important to this idea of repositioning something in a different context, if you will, repurposing that object and redefining its function.
[07:28.750 --> 07:29.230]  Okay.
[07:34.380 --> 07:38.160]  So, Duchamp was sort of, so, you know, the conceptual aspect is, is there.
[07:38.340 --> 07:45.220]  That was called a ready-made, by the way, which is the idea of taking found objects and, um, repurposing them or repositioning them.
[07:46.060 --> 07:48.400]  Um, he, the bicycle wheel was also that.
[07:49.040 --> 07:54.200]  Um, so, he was, um, definitely into many different forms of music.
[07:54.200 --> 07:54.480]  He was into the media.
[07:54.600 --> 07:57.100]  He was into kinetics, sculpture, movement, etc.
[07:57.620 --> 08:09.100]  Um, he incorporated what's called, uh, you know, the idea of incorporating chance into, uh, sculpture, with the idea that something would happen.
[08:09.780 --> 08:15.240]  And since it's physical, if I just do that, you know, he was anticipating sound.
[08:15.240 --> 08:17.440]  So, he was calling them musical happenings.
[08:18.240 --> 08:28.960]  Um, a random musical, uh, which was made in 1914 and never finished, is actually, um, a, an instrument for a machine.
[08:29.940 --> 08:33.360]  So, that, the idea of that is, what if the new technology fails?
[08:33.600 --> 08:39.720]  You know, what if somebody bumps into it and kicks it over because it's, you know, positioned, like, in the corner of a restaurant?
[08:40.360 --> 08:41.340]  Um, etc.
[08:42.640 --> 08:52.820]  So, having said that, uh, Duchamp had these very, very revolutionary ideas about what, you know, what music is, what sculpture is, and what art is in general.
[08:53.340 --> 08:56.340]  Um, sort of the ontology of, of art, if you will.
[08:57.160 --> 09:02.840]  Um, so, uh, having said that, John Cage met Marcel Duchamp in the 1940s.
[09:04.100 --> 09:09.980]  Um, Duchamp wanted him to make a composition for something, and he said, well, you know, you don't really make art anymore.
[09:10.040 --> 09:15.200]  So, um, but I know you play chess because you started playing chess after you retired from being an artist.
[09:15.200 --> 09:17.480]  So, I want you to teach me how to play chess.
[09:17.760 --> 09:19.700]  So, that was the beginning of their relationship.
[09:25.510 --> 09:26.710]  So, um,
[09:31.010 --> 09:40.550]  once, um, Cage started, um, spending time with Duchamp, he came up with some fairly strange, uh, ideas about what music is.
[09:40.870 --> 09:47.590]  So, he wrote this piece called The Future of Music in, uh, this book called Silence, which is about his lectures and writings.
[09:47.810 --> 09:50.290]  It's, at the beginning, it's called The Future of Music Credo.
[09:50.450 --> 09:52.510]  And I'm just going to read you a little bit.
[09:53.310 --> 10:02.110]  I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments.
[10:03.790 --> 10:08.910]  Which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.
[10:10.130 --> 10:13.970]  Photoelectric film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music.
[10:17.680 --> 10:18.280]  Okay.
[10:19.400 --> 10:29.120]  So, um, 4 minutes and 33 seconds, uh, is a piece, I just showed you the score, where David Tudor sat down and played it.
[10:29.460 --> 10:46.340]  Um, the reason why this was important, not only because it re-emphasized and repositioned, repositioned, like Duchamp was repositioning the fountain, it repositioned music as being something that isn't necessarily musical, something that exists on its own in our environment.
[10:46.680 --> 10:54.720]  Um, as, uh, that, because of that phenomenon, it's connected to, uh, what's called aleatoric or indeterminate music.
[10:54.720 --> 10:56.860]  Which is like chance operations.
[10:57.280 --> 11:00.420]  Duchamp was calling it chance operations because he was dealing with sculpture.
[11:01.220 --> 11:04.740]  But, um, Cage began calling it aleatoric or indeterminate music.
[11:04.920 --> 11:13.940]  Which basically just means, you know, um, the empty, empty music, like the empty score that I opened the talk with, can accept any acoustic events.
[11:14.260 --> 11:14.760]  Okay?
[11:14.980 --> 11:16.980]  So, um, yeah.
[11:17.260 --> 11:18.760]  So, that, there.
[11:18.980 --> 11:23.040]  You know, that is, that's an accepted acoustic event now.
[11:23.040 --> 11:25.260]  Even, whether or not it was on purpose.
[11:26.540 --> 11:29.760]  Um, and the next person who sneezes is, also.
[11:30.500 --> 11:30.740]  Okay.
[11:31.040 --> 11:53.860]  So, um, continuing with that, the creative act, this is interesting because, um, Duchamp defines the creative act as, um, not performed by the artist alone, but also that, in that the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act as well.
[11:54.060 --> 12:04.020]  Now, this is really interesting because the connection of 433 and also the creative act speaks to this idea of, to this DIY philosophy, actually.
[12:04.260 --> 12:21.080]  The do-it-yourself philosophy, which in the arts really, at this point, means, um, that dancers, anybody's a dancer, anybody's a musician, anybody can take on any of these time-based forms, in this case, based on what these are, the legacy these artists have left,
[12:21.280 --> 12:23.520]  um, and can do it.
[12:23.740 --> 12:41.680]  And, um, that's also interesting because John Cage, before he wrote 4 minutes and 33 seconds, went to Harvard to conduct an experiment by entering a soundproof chamber, an anechoic chamber, and just to see what he would hear, if anything.
[12:42.180 --> 12:48.920]  And, um, what he heard were, was the, uh, working of his blood system and his heart.
[12:49.280 --> 12:55.780]  So, under, even under those circumstances, um, sound is always around us.
[12:56.380 --> 12:58.320]  In fact, we are sound generators.
[12:59.140 --> 13:05.140]  That idea of the ontology of musicians and what musicianship, I think, is really what he was getting at.
[13:07.100 --> 13:22.660]  So, having said that, once, um, society heard about this, 4 minutes and 33 seconds, um, he, uh, did a, a live performance, which, I, because we don't have any sound, I don't know if it'll work, uh, it'll be...
[13:23.400 --> 13:24.100]  nice to see.
[13:24.200 --> 13:26.360]  I guess if you would like to see it afterwards, please come up.
[13:26.360 --> 13:29.180]  Uh, but it's really, you can watch it on YouTube, it's called Water Walk.
[13:29.740 --> 13:38.300]  Uh, it was actually, um, composed for an Italian TV game show in 59, but then he was requested to perform it on What's My Line in 1960.
[13:38.700 --> 13:43.640]  So, that clip is on YouTube, um, and I have it on my laptop if you'd like to see it after.
[13:47.340 --> 13:48.280]  So, um,
[13:51.680 --> 14:02.140]  now, um, based on all of this art history, I wanted to talk about a hacking mindset, because I think this is really what Richard Stallman was getting at, um, in his article.
[14:02.360 --> 14:06.560]  That, you know, it's, you know, hacker doesn't mean this, that, or the other thing.
[14:06.680 --> 14:09.420]  It's a way of thinking, it's a philosophy on some level.
[14:09.420 --> 14:16.780]  So, um, the connection of playful cleverness and boundaries and the avant-garde is extremely important.
[14:17.180 --> 14:20.760]  Um, the avant-garde is, is about boundaries, exactly.
[14:21.100 --> 14:28.640]  And whether or not it's playful or whatever, you know, agenda the artist has, it's still about trying to engage those boundaries.
[14:29.460 --> 14:38.100]  Um, so conceptual art, which is idea-based and repurposing, um, and Duchamp's Fountain, uh, plays into that also well.
[14:38.100 --> 14:46.160]  Let me read you this, uh, quote from Jerry Saltz, this art critic who writes for The Village Voice, said this really, um, illuminating thing about the fountain.
[14:48.340 --> 14:57.180]  Um, the fountain brings us into contact with an original that is still an original, but that also exists in an altered philosophical and metaphysical state.
[14:57.980 --> 15:09.740]  Um, it is a manifestation of the Kantian sublime, a work of art that transcends a form, but that is also intelligible, an object that strikes down an idea while allowing it to spring up stronger.
[15:10.060 --> 15:18.640]  So, if anything, um, I think I could call hacking conceptual art and repurposing the building of, of, on top of ideas.
[15:18.860 --> 15:28.840]  Even if it's not sculptural, I think, um, you know, uh, hackers, you know, working with systems and figuring out how to, you know, play with getting around systems.
[15:28.840 --> 15:30.840]  I mean, that's actually building on something.
[15:30.960 --> 15:33.220]  That's like building another system within a system.
[15:33.720 --> 15:37.340]  And, um, you know, that's, that's kind of fascinating.
[15:37.660 --> 15:41.040]  Um, the sociologist Bruno Latour talks about this a lot.
[15:41.180 --> 15:45.000]  Like, how do these digital systems inform other digital systems?
[15:45.000 --> 15:51.680]  Because they're very, um, much like computational biological media on some level.
[15:51.880 --> 15:53.040]  That they have a life.
[15:54.300 --> 15:59.220]  Okay, so, um, wrapping up with a hacking mindset and the evolution of it.
[15:59.700 --> 16:04.060]  And how it, it's affecting how artists have taken on these mindsets.
[16:04.300 --> 16:07.180]  I just want to talk about these binary oppositions quickly.
[16:07.540 --> 16:09.300]  Um, about the avant-garde.
[16:12.840 --> 16:16.780]  So, if, you know, I think there are a lot of, these are kind of vague.
[16:16.960 --> 16:19.360]  There are a lot of different contexts that you can apply these to.
[16:20.000 --> 16:23.200]  Um, I mean, yes and no binary opposition.
[16:23.200 --> 16:24.460]  Correct, incorrect.
[16:25.220 --> 16:27.080]  Old, new, mistaken intention.
[16:27.380 --> 16:31.840]  Now, that, that's actually an interesting inadvertent hack, um, on some level.
[16:32.120 --> 16:33.900]  Because, you know, Richard Stallman.
[16:34.100 --> 16:37.420]  I mean, you could say he, he did that on his own because it struck him that way.
[16:37.900 --> 16:38.980]  That he just thinks that way.
[16:39.100 --> 16:44.000]  But, I mean, if people aren't, if you aren't raised with like a certain, you know, chopsticks.
[16:44.440 --> 16:46.760]  I mean, I think I'm pretty good at using them.
[16:46.900 --> 16:50.120]  But, you know, when I first picked them up, I mean, it was not, you know.
[16:50.120 --> 16:52.520]  And I maybe picked them up when I was like 25.
[16:52.980 --> 16:58.280]  So, um, a convention or hack or an innovation.
[16:58.700 --> 16:59.080]  Okay.
[16:59.320 --> 17:00.300]  So, that's the avant-garde.
[17:00.520 --> 17:01.460]  A one or a zero.
[17:01.760 --> 17:02.060]  Okay.
[17:02.280 --> 17:06.750]  So, having, I think, um, any kind of basic construct like this.
[17:06.900 --> 17:08.510]  You know, when one thing opposes another.
[17:08.510 --> 17:13.970]  Um, that's sort of where, uh, the evolution of the hacking mindset comes, I think.
[17:21.130 --> 17:22.850]  I already talked about this a little bit.
[17:23.070 --> 17:25.950]  But, just going back to Cage to wrap up my section.
[17:26.270 --> 17:27.930]  Uh, the DIY philosophy.
[17:28.610 --> 17:31.310]  And the ontology of musicians and musicianship.
[17:31.470 --> 17:32.370]  What is a musician?
[17:34.090 --> 17:38.110]  Um, and what is musicianship really about at this point?
[17:38.110 --> 17:43.450]  I mean, I could make the argument based on this talk that right now we're all making music.
[17:43.630 --> 17:44.490]  At the same time.
[17:45.470 --> 17:50.430]  Um, so I think this is really, uh, sort of where I'm coming from.
[17:50.510 --> 17:53.950]  Cage has inspired, inspired this talk about the hacking mindset.
[17:54.790 --> 17:56.210]  So, thank you very much.
[17:56.470 --> 17:59.850]  And, um, Joshua is going to speak next.
[18:27.840 --> 18:27.940]  Hi.
[18:28.940 --> 18:30.420]  So, uh, my name's Josh.
[18:30.860 --> 18:32.980]  Uh, I also go by Zen Albatross.
[18:33.380 --> 18:38.560]  Uh, I've been writing, uh, chip music, uh, for about five or six years now.
[18:38.720 --> 18:42.180]  And I'm going to go in to explain a little bit about, uh, what that is.
[18:42.440 --> 19:01.200]  And, uh, also the, the roots that it has in, uh, using software in subversive ways, uh, which have, over time, evolved into becoming, in their own discipline, uh, completely independent of, uh, of software security and, and where, where they originally,
[19:01.660 --> 19:02.800]  uh, where they originated.
[19:03.060 --> 19:11.280]  Um, so, this is, this is basically my, my usual spiel about chip music when people ask me.
[19:11.600 --> 19:22.240]  Uh, essentially, chip music, the way that I would describe it is, is basically just music made using the sound chips from, uh, obsolete video game consoles and computers.
[19:22.240 --> 19:33.420]  Now, the reason why, I guess, uh, a lot of, a lot of people have been attracted to this is because this is from a period in history when computers actually had unique sound sets.
[19:33.700 --> 19:40.920]  Um, this was before MIDI, before, uh, before any kind of, like, CD quality audio, obviously.
[19:41.260 --> 19:45.540]  And so, these, these sound chips had their own character.
[19:45.540 --> 19:54.560]  And it's become, uh, an exploration of limitations because these sound sets were also trapped within hardware that was incredibly hard to manipulate.
[19:55.740 --> 20:10.300]  Uh, and with the exception of the people who were originally writing software, uh, or music for this hardware, uh, most people didn't get into it until relatively later on when, uh, interest in this started coming back up.
[20:10.300 --> 20:28.140]  Uh, and also, it's, um, it's become a diverse sort of international music scene, uh, revolving around people who are just focused on using these, these sound palettes in order to construct new, new works, uh, that are completely, uh, built from within,
[20:28.340 --> 20:29.360]  that run on the hardware.
[20:29.780 --> 20:39.940]  Sometimes they can not run on the hardware, but generally speaking, uh, when you're talking about chip music, you're talking about people who are working with real, with hardware that's basically running and generating synthesis in real time.
[20:40.800 --> 20:47.500]  Uh, and then on the other side, uh, a lot of confusion sometimes comes where people just immediately assume that chip music is video game music.
[20:47.640 --> 20:48.860]  It can be video game music.
[20:48.980 --> 21:06.520]  Obviously it was in the eighties when there were a lot of people who were making music using these games, but there's actually a pretty, pretty large gap between what you hear in the original era of when these, these sound chips were being used, uh, when the computers were still contemporary and what you see now,
[21:06.700 --> 21:09.180]  uh, and the difference I'll get into in just a second.
[21:09.320 --> 21:11.420]  And another thing is, uh, about it being a genre.
[21:11.720 --> 21:14.800]  It can, a lot of people describe chip music as a genre.
[21:14.980 --> 21:29.480]  I, I really see it as more of a, of a methodology or a medium, uh, because you, you have no limitations at, you have very few limitations, despite the limited hardware, as to what kind of sound you can actually produce from here.
[21:29.540 --> 21:31.300]  I've heard like country western music.
[21:31.460 --> 21:44.880]  I've heard, you know, hip hop, uh, you know, just beyond the regular scope of just dance music, although a large portion of it winds up being dance music because that's one of the, one of the easiest ways to get into it is by making, uh, making, you know,
[21:45.120 --> 21:47.180]  four, four, sort of four to the floor dance music.
[21:47.360 --> 21:50.940]  It can evolve and it has evolved into a lot of different other forms as well.
[21:51.400 --> 22:00.400]  So, um, of course chip music started when these old computers came out and people were making software for them, uh, and people were making music for that software.
[22:00.640 --> 22:20.100]  But if you actually go back to where, where the actual DIY aspect of people like who are now contemporary chip musicians making this stuff, it actually goes back to when people wanted shit for free because they had the software market was just starting up in the eighties and it was starting to become a viable commercial enterprise.
[22:20.140 --> 22:23.000]  And obviously people were going to steal it.
[22:23.000 --> 22:27.980]  So, when this happened, this, uh, when it first happened, it was really subtle.
[22:28.180 --> 22:32.680]  This is a, an early crack and you can tell because it's, it's really subtle.
[22:32.940 --> 22:38.940]  The, aside from the one line that says cracked by Mr. Xerox, you can't really tell that this is, there's, there's any difference.
[22:39.140 --> 22:47.660]  But the interesting thing is when you start to see a parallel movement evolve out of this, when people start, uh, be getting more creative with it.
[22:47.720 --> 22:50.380]  This is another one that's actually pretty, pretty subtle as well.
[22:50.380 --> 22:57.300]  Uh, this just looks like a missed Pac-Man screen aside from when you realize that dear Fuhrer was not a computer programmer.
[22:58.000 --> 23:10.760]  Um, uh, but as, as time goes on, it stops being about cracking software, about how fast can you crack it or, you know, how, how many quality wares can you have?
[23:10.860 --> 23:12.820]  Is everybody familiar with wares?
[23:13.820 --> 23:25.660]  Uh, if you, also, if you want, if you're more interested in wares, there's another talk tomorrow, uh, that some of our friends are putting on about, uh, art wares for people who are taking digital art and making them to wares and packaging them.
[23:25.840 --> 23:35.640]  Uh, but here I'm talking about, uh, basically it, it evolving to be about more, to be more about how fancy can you sign your name?
[23:35.700 --> 23:37.480]  That's the best way that I can describe it.
[23:37.580 --> 23:47.180]  Where people start concentrating as much, if not more, on the actual presentation of their, of their cracked software than they are on the crack itself.
[23:47.560 --> 23:50.800]  And that's when you start getting into things like the demo scene.
[23:51.720 --> 23:53.160]  And that's where the demo scene comes from.
[23:53.260 --> 23:55.480]  So I'm just gonna run a demo on here.
[23:55.800 --> 23:56.180]  Hold on.
[24:07.340 --> 24:09.140]  So, you can't hear this, obviously.
[24:09.300 --> 24:10.780]  I thought we were gonna have audio, but I guess not.
[24:11.060 --> 24:11.380]  But yeah.
[24:11.620 --> 24:13.860]  So, this is what we were talking about before.
[24:14.080 --> 24:17.300]  But essentially, this is just, this is still a crack screen.
[24:17.300 --> 24:28.540]  But the line begins to blur at this point, when you start getting people who are, uh, just taking a lot of time to make, to make the presentation as, as slick as possible.
[24:28.820 --> 24:35.720]  And of course, there's all the other stuff going on, like, you know, people shouting out to their friends and, and repping their crack groups and whatever.
[24:36.140 --> 24:43.820]  But, uh, this is, this is where it starts splitting off to become something completely not about cracking.
[24:44.520 --> 24:46.260]  And more about creative limitations.
[24:46.840 --> 24:49.000]  Uh, and hardware limitations, specifically.
[24:50.200 --> 24:51.320]  And, let's see.
[24:55.130 --> 24:57.310]  This is an actual demo that I'm gonna try and run.
[24:59.590 --> 25:08.750]  So a lot of the, the cracks screen, a lot of the crack screens establish some of the techniques that started to become used when the demo scene eventually became its own thing.
[25:14.110 --> 25:17.090]  And this is a demo by a group called Booz Design.
[25:17.090 --> 25:22.410]  Uh, it's widely regarded as one of the most impressive C64 demos ever released.
[25:23.030 --> 25:34.050]  Uh, and it's really, this is again, just sort of pushing, pushing, this is like, you know, I mean, this was made much later on after demos, demos sort of became a thing.
[25:34.270 --> 25:44.450]  But, when you pursue it to its, like, natural conclusion, it starts being prime, like, entirely about just, like, how much, how much code can I crunch?
[25:44.690 --> 25:52.990]  How much, you know, how many, how many, like, impressive scrolly shits can I do that make it, you know, as, as impressive as possible?
[25:53.210 --> 25:55.610]  And, and at this point, it's because, it has nothing to do with cracking.
[25:55.870 --> 25:57.410]  Although, it still does have to do with hacking.
[25:57.530 --> 26:07.930]  Because it's basically just trying to find loopholes to, to make as an impressive amount of thing, when everyone is on the same, the same sort of playing field.
[26:08.210 --> 26:12.030]  And that's, hold on, go back to this,
[26:16.950 --> 26:18.130]  actually expand this.
[26:18.950 --> 26:20.870]  Yeah, so this is when we get into the demo scene.
[26:21.170 --> 26:23.550]  Which is, uh, does anyone not familiar with the demo scene?
[26:24.890 --> 26:25.870]  Okay, a couple people.
[26:26.090 --> 26:28.550]  So the demo scene, essentially, was what I was just describing.
[26:28.750 --> 26:32.770]  It was this movement of artists that were, of course, mostly before the Internet.
[26:32.770 --> 26:36.790]  So, they, they communicated mostly through trade shows and, and meetups.
[26:37.030 --> 26:40.410]  And, uh, they traded their demos on discs, on diskettes.
[26:40.710 --> 26:49.010]  And, basically, this was all done through either BBS or in, or, you know, IRL through meetups and whatnot.
[26:49.270 --> 26:58.710]  And, basically, the important thing about this was that the, the competition aspect that came out of it was because everyone had this hardware and it was all the same hardware.
[26:58.710 --> 27:04.050]  So, it was very easy to see who was more skilled and who was not as skilled.
[27:04.070 --> 27:10.350]  Because if you're working on a C64, generally speaking, you're working with the same hardware limitations as everyone else.
[27:10.490 --> 27:15.450]  And so, this is where it sort of became kind of competitive, but also artistic in the same time.
[27:15.450 --> 27:28.870]  Because it involved people using, uh, like what, what Stallman was mentioning, uh, a creative mindset to approach the computer in order to make something, uh, that becomes, in, in some interpretations, an artistic work.
[27:29.190 --> 27:35.210]  Uh, and this is a, a real, uh, a demo, a very famous demo by a group called Future Crew called Second Reality.
[27:35.410 --> 27:39.790]  If you're not familiar with it, uh, this is pretty much all you need to know in terms of the demo scene.
[27:40.090 --> 27:47.010]  Well, it's not all you need to know, but it's, it's a pretty good example of exactly what the demo scene evolved into, uh, at some point.
[27:47.010 --> 27:50.530]  Uh, there was, when this demo came out, it, like, blew people's minds.
[27:51.530 --> 27:59.050]  Uh, and so, this, this goes back to the, these variations on this dogma, which has gotten repeated a million and one times throughout history.
[27:59.450 --> 28:02.550]  And Stallman mentions it in the Unhacking piece that we mentioned before.
[28:02.870 --> 28:07.910]  The idea that Unhacking is a means of exploring the limits of what's possible.
[28:08.130 --> 28:15.350]  And then, uh, the second quote being from Jordan Mechner, who's the creator of Prince of Persia, who I actually saw at a, at a talk that he did at NYU recently.
[28:15.350 --> 28:30.870]  And he, uh, he mentioned this also, and it was actually kind of interesting, because he was talking about how when he made Prince of Persia, although it was sort of a late-in-the-game Apple II software, he, um, there was, there's still only 48k of memory that you can use to program this.
[28:30.990 --> 28:46.870]  And some of the aspects of the game, such as the idea that there was this sort of Campbellian confrontation with your shadow self at the very, like, near the game's conclusion, were born entirely of the idea that he just didn't have enough memory after he had recorded... I don't know if you actually know about Prince of Persia,
[28:46.930 --> 28:49.190]  so you know how all the movements are, like, fluid.
[28:49.310 --> 28:52.130]  If you've seen Prince of Persia, you've noticed that, like, the character animations are really fluid.
[28:52.290 --> 29:02.590]  That's because he filmed his brother, uh, jumping and grabbing onto ledges, and then traced over every single frame individually, and used that as the character animation.
[29:02.590 --> 29:14.350]  And that took up a lot of memory, and so that, that, uh, that sort of Campbellian confrontation that he, uh, that he puts into the game is a direct result of him not having enough memory, and it actually winds up making the game more interesting.
[29:15.350 --> 29:23.870]  Um, so, while I, when I got into chip music initially, it was around the same time that I saw this film, and I highly recommend that you watch this film if you ever have a chance.
[29:23.870 --> 29:32.470]  It's called The Five Obstructions, and it's, uh, it focuses on a Danish filmmaker named Lars von Trier, who made this film in the 1960s called The Perfect Human.
[29:32.790 --> 29:43.850]  And in the film, basically, his, uh, his, uh, I guess his, um, his pupil, this guy named Jorgen Leth, uh, challenges him to remake the film five times.
[29:44.050 --> 29:48.090]  And each time, there's another set of limitations that he has to abide by.
[29:48.270 --> 29:54.710]  Uh, and some of these are, some of the more interesting ones are, for example, that, uh, every shot can only be 12 frames long.
[29:55.050 --> 30:04.810]  Uh, and then there's another scene where he has to, uh, reshoot the entire, the entire film in, uh, the slums of Mumbai, which is one of the most impoverished areas of the world.
[30:05.070 --> 30:13.790]  And there's a lot of scenes in the, in the original film that make that sort of very, a very striking image to see one thing, uh, superimposed over another.
[30:14.070 --> 30:19.530]  And in, when I look back at this in retrospect, I realize that this is essentially the cinematic equivalent of hacking.
[30:19.710 --> 30:29.370]  And even though the, uh, the limitations here are arbitrary as compared, as compared to the, uh, the demo scene limitations, which were technical, I feel like that there's a lot of overlap with those two things.
[30:30.250 --> 30:31.930]  And so, now I'm gonna go...
[30:31.930 --> 30:37.010]  So this is basically primarily what I, what I use with, uh, the way that I got into shoot music was through the Game Boy.
[30:37.130 --> 30:40.630]  And so I'm going to use it as an example, uh, of the hardware side of things.
[30:40.830 --> 30:49.810]  And so, the, there's a lot of problems and a lot of hacks that you can, that you can, uh, use to approach those problems when you go into using a Game Boy.
[30:49.810 --> 30:53.930]  The problem, main problem is that there's only four, four channels of stereo sound.
[30:54.110 --> 30:56.450]  Which is, the, the stereo part is actually important.
[30:56.650 --> 31:05.990]  But yeah, the, the four channels are basically two pulse wave channels, which are the sort of, like, if you think about 8-bit music and you think about those flat tones, that's generally what they are.
[31:06.150 --> 31:12.990]  There's two channels of those, and it, and it can do really good melody, but unfortunately it doesn't have a lot of character, unless you start manipulating it.
[31:12.990 --> 31:21.230]  Then the third channel is a wave channel, which basically is like a 16-step sequencer in, like a, a mini 16-step sequencer that can sample things.
[31:21.450 --> 31:32.910]  But the only problem with that is that, although it has a lot, it's good for bass and it can generate a lot of good textures, you're only, you only have three volume control settings that you can adjust, uh, in the tracker at any one time.
[31:33.110 --> 31:47.890]  A tracker, by the way, is, the, the upper right is, uh, a screenshot of the tracker called LSDJ, which was invented by this guy, or created, I should say, by this guy named Johan Kotlinski, uh, who is from Sweden, and, uh, he made that in about 2000 or 2001.
[31:48.250 --> 31:54.110]  Uh, and this is, this was basically the first, uh, widely available software that enabled people to make Game Boy music.
[31:54.250 --> 32:08.710]  And so, even though there are all these problems with the Game Boy's hardware, uh, over time, and this is what separates the people who started making this music initially for games, and the people who are doing it right now, is that people over time have figured out all these tricks,
[32:08.710 --> 32:17.710]  which I think is totally analogous to what you wind up doing, uh, whether you're cracking, or just programming, or whatever, is that you find ways around things.
[32:17.930 --> 32:24.990]  And so, for example, one of the, the ways that you can make the sound, sort of, sound more, more whole, is by creating this echo effect.
[32:25.170 --> 32:30.170]  And it's, it's actually pretty simple when you consider, like, when you think about what an echo is.
[32:30.170 --> 32:39.130]  An echo is something originating in one place, and then moving, or seeming to move, uh, to another location, and getting softer in doing so.
[32:39.310 --> 32:55.290]  And so, if you just approach it like that, you're, you can do that in the Game Boy software by just creating a software instrument that pans from right to left, or from center to left, or from center to right, or whatever, and then making that echo again softer,
[32:55.790 --> 32:57.850]  uh, when it, when it repeats.
[32:57.850 --> 33:02.990]  So, it's just repeating the same thing, uh, but putting different properties on it the second time.
[33:03.170 --> 33:08.370]  And it's interesting how you can get that to make it seem like you're actually hearing an echo, but you're not.
[33:08.550 --> 33:10.450]  You're, you're just hearing, basically, a hack.
[33:10.650 --> 33:18.410]  And then the other example would be rapidly shifting the timbre of the, uh, the pulse waves, which, so, there's, like, several different widths.
[33:18.650 --> 33:31.630]  Uh, it's, I wish I could, like, give you an example audio-wise, but we don't seem to have an audio jack, but, uh, basically, the, the Game Boy is capable of about three, or 3.5, actually, different, uh, kinds of timbres, the pulse waves are.
[33:32.030 --> 33:38.390]  And, um, you can shift between them rapidly to generate, like, a more interesting texture, and so that's another thing.
[33:38.590 --> 33:40.230]  These are just a couple of examples.
[33:40.410 --> 33:48.050]  There's so many, uh, there's so many different, uh, exploits, or whatever you want to call them, that people have found over time to make the sound more interesting.
[33:48.650 --> 33:52.370]  Uh, but, yeah, in general, it's just thinking about what real sound sounds like.
[33:52.370 --> 33:59.750]  And then, sort of, taking the limited structure of the software and applying it to make it sound like that.
[34:00.290 --> 34:01.550]  Uh, okay.
[34:01.830 --> 34:18.270]  And so, this is basically the conclusion, and it really just, sort of, uh, touches on a lot of lessons that overlap into chip music and demo scene and hacking in general, and programming in general, is that there, the, the main idea being that constantly repeated dogma that limitations are powerful,
[34:18.430 --> 34:28.390]  they evoke greater creative output, and that's evident if you look at any kind of example of demo scene or chip music as it stands today as compared to how it was when it started.
[34:28.770 --> 34:35.090]  And then, the other, the other thing being always push your craft to the limit, no matter which of these categories it falls under.
[34:35.310 --> 34:41.730]  And, obviously, this is something that a lot of programmers I know are very familiar with, is that the easiest way to do something isn't always the best.
[34:41.730 --> 34:52.970]  In fact, sometimes you wind up getting a lot better results if you approach something that, from a, like, a much more difficult, uh, uh, angle, and then you wind up getting a more interesting result.
[34:53.210 --> 34:55.630]  And then, the other thing being about gear.
[34:55.850 --> 35:01.930]  I've never liked gear, but mostly because, for a while, when I started making, uh, chip music, I was really f*cking poor.
[35:02.310 --> 35:15.630]  And so, I had no gear to work with, but I had a Game Boy, and so, that, I think that limitation of not, you know, sort of splurging and buying a lot of equipment can be really liberating in the end, because you, you sort of learn to work.
[35:15.850 --> 35:23.910]  There's actually a whole artistic movement that's devoted to that, called bricolage, where, that's, uh, involving using materials that are immediately accessible to you.
[35:24.030 --> 35:36.090]  And then, the last thing being something that a lot of people, uh, I'm sure here can agree with, is that computers and electronics need to always be used as you see fit, and not how corporations and the people who manufacture them tell you to use them.
[35:36.550 --> 35:47.710]  And all of those things basically result in, in way more, uh, way more interesting compositions, and way more, uh, way more, you know, just more creativity in general.
[35:47.950 --> 35:50.730]  And so, that's about it for me.
[35:52.270 --> 35:52.710]  Thanks.
[35:53.430 --> 35:54.230]  Thank you, Joy.
[35:54.970 --> 35:55.790]  Do we have time?
[35:56.310 --> 35:57.770]  Guess, guess what I just found.
[35:58.390 --> 36:01.710]  I just found a stereo, a mini to stereo.
[36:01.870 --> 36:02.430]  Just in time.
[36:02.810 --> 36:03.130]  Yeah.
[36:04.010 --> 36:07.290]  Um, so do you want to plug in?
[36:07.650 --> 36:08.290]  Oh, do you want to?
[36:08.410 --> 36:08.550]  Okay.
[36:08.670 --> 36:08.870]  Yeah.
[36:09.570 --> 36:20.450]  Um, so, Josh, yeah, why don't you go ahead and I'll plug you in here and give your, give your example, and I'll, uh, do the, and then Nikki will go, and then I'll play the water walk at the end of the talk.
[36:26.160 --> 36:39.640]  So, I wish that there was a better way to visualize what's on a Game Boy screen, uh, but unfortunately, the only really good, really easy way to do that is by working in an emulator, and last night I was trying to make that happen, and I just can't, and I did not have a,
[36:39.640 --> 36:44.460]  uh, you know, control pad, USB thing, and doing it on the keyboard is just so infuriating.
[36:45.340 --> 36:49.880]  So, I, I'm gonna have to do it here, but you can hear the difference in what I'm talking about.
[36:49.880 --> 36:58.500]  So, uh, I guess I can try and go back to that, that interface, just so you know what I'm looking at right now.
[37:00.380 --> 37:01.980]  Yeah, this interface right here.
[37:05.810 --> 37:08.710]  Yeah, so that interface on the upper right is what I'm looking at.
[37:08.850 --> 37:14.150]  And basically, the reason why Game Boy, uh, the Game Boy Tracker, so, a tracker is essentially just a sequencer.
[37:14.290 --> 37:23.210]  It's a, uh, a musical sequencer that, it has rows and columns, and essentially, what you're doing is hex editing when you're, when you're working in LSDJ, this program.
[37:23.690 --> 37:32.230]  Uh, because everything is represented by hex values, and the only thing that's confusing about it to anybody looking at it for the first time is the fact that all the screens are sort of broken up.
[37:32.670 --> 37:35.350]  Uh, not everything is all on one screen like most trackers are.
[37:35.530 --> 37:38.250]  So, you need to sort of, like, it's all hierarchical.
[37:38.330 --> 37:48.330]  You need to go from the first screen, which just has a list of, of, uh, of hexadecimal pairings which are just linking to phrases, which are linking to actual measures with notes in them.
[37:49.010 --> 37:51.010]  Uh, and so, I, I guess I'll just...
[37:51.010 --> 37:55.170]  There's no real way of showing you that without a visual type thing.
[37:55.510 --> 37:58.650]  But, I'm gonna go in here and just...
[37:59.910 --> 38:00.870]  Can you hear that?
[38:01.470 --> 38:02.410]  Uh, can we turn...
[38:02.410 --> 38:03.330]  Is there a volume control?
[38:03.810 --> 38:05.290]  I don't think so.
[38:06.010 --> 38:07.270]  Well, this is all in pointless.
[38:07.450 --> 38:07.910]  Thank you very much.
[38:08.430 --> 38:09.270]  No, um...
[38:09.830 --> 38:10.670]  Is there a volume control?
[38:11.070 --> 38:12.010]  No, there's...
[38:12.010 --> 38:12.330]  No.
[38:12.330 --> 38:14.430]  It's just two DI boxes and you don't have...
[38:14.430 --> 38:14.870]  Great.
[38:14.970 --> 38:16.550]  Well, you'll have to listen really carefully.
[38:16.730 --> 38:17.370]  Wait, hold on.
[38:19.030 --> 38:19.410]  All right.
[38:19.750 --> 38:20.510]  So, that is...
[38:20.510 --> 38:25.550]  If you can hear that, that's a 12.5% square wave.
[38:25.790 --> 38:29.690]  This is the most basic sound you can ever hear coming from a Game Boy.
[38:30.190 --> 38:34.210]  Now, if you change it to make the width...
[38:34.210 --> 38:36.770]  It's basically the frequency of the waveform that's changing.
[38:36.950 --> 38:38.130]  How frequently it's repeating.
[38:38.130 --> 38:44.130]  So, if you make it repeat less often, you start getting different tone.
[38:45.330 --> 38:46.270]  And I totally...
[38:46.810 --> 38:48.830]  I'm so sorry if anybody can't hear that.
[38:49.030 --> 38:50.090]  But like...
[38:50.090 --> 38:50.570]  It's...
[38:50.570 --> 38:52.090]  Does everybody hear difference?
[38:52.270 --> 38:52.470]  Okay.
[38:52.630 --> 38:53.010]  There we go.
[38:53.330 --> 38:53.550]  All right.
[38:53.690 --> 38:54.070]  So, again.
[38:56.630 --> 38:57.070]  12%.
[38:59.330 --> 38:59.770]  25%.
[39:02.390 --> 39:02.830]  50%.
[39:02.830 --> 39:03.410]  So, you hear that.
[39:03.410 --> 39:04.310]  It's like a different...
[39:04.310 --> 39:08.850]  It's like a change in the actual timbre of the square wave.
[39:08.970 --> 39:13.330]  But the thing that's interesting is when you start cycling that.
[39:14.490 --> 39:19.590]  So, the way that you do that is you write sort of a subroutine, which basically...
[39:19.590 --> 39:21.050]  Which is called a table in LSDJ.
[39:21.510 --> 39:26.410]  And by doing that, you can have these three widths cycle...
[39:29.350 --> 39:31.550]  So, that creates a more interesting timbre.
[39:31.830 --> 39:34.330]  But also, you can make it not sound like garbage.
[39:35.850 --> 39:37.570]  And do something like this.
[39:38.310 --> 39:41.010]  So that every time it gets hit...
[39:41.890 --> 39:44.990]  I've become really fast at doing this, but apparently not fast enough.
[40:05.980 --> 40:07.220]  So, that's just one thing.
[40:07.620 --> 40:11.180]  And then, there's all kinds of other things, but I don't wanna...
[40:11.180 --> 40:11.860]  Do you wanna...
[40:11.860 --> 40:18.460]  I just wanted to make you hear that so that you understand the similarities when you're working with...
[40:18.460 --> 40:20.080]  Because essentially, what you're doing...
[40:20.080 --> 40:28.100]  The way I always explain anyone that's interested in using this software is that it has more in common with programming than it does with writing music on a staff.
[40:28.300 --> 40:29.760]  And that usually intimidates a lot of people.
[40:29.760 --> 40:30.360]  But I hope...
[40:30.360 --> 40:39.500]  If you ever get a chance to try out LSDJ, I'm sure that most people in this room, if not all, will probably catch on to it pretty easily.
[40:39.680 --> 40:44.520]  The only thing that takes some getting used to is the fact that everything is sort of split everywhere and broken up.
[40:44.780 --> 40:45.000]  But yeah.
[40:45.560 --> 40:45.960]  That's about it.
[40:46.740 --> 40:47.980]  Did you wanna...
[40:53.890 --> 40:54.670]  Thanks, Josh.
[40:54.850 --> 40:55.330]  That was great.
[40:56.370 --> 41:00.310]  I just wanted to say a quick word before Nicole comes up here.
[41:00.310 --> 41:09.870]  But there is a chip music concert tonight, actually, downstairs on the first floor in the pavilion of the hotel, which I highly recommend.
[41:10.850 --> 41:17.410]  We have an old school pioneer who's here from Sweden named Pazeram.
[41:17.550 --> 41:19.370]  So it would be a special treat to catch him.
[41:19.570 --> 41:20.890]  I'm also gonna be playing.
[41:22.110 --> 41:27.370]  And two other artists, Minus Baby and still CMYK.
[41:27.370 --> 41:29.130]  So it would be great to see you there.
[41:32.170 --> 41:32.590]  Thanks.
[41:32.850 --> 41:32.890]  Yeah.
[41:33.010 --> 41:33.530]  10 o'clock.
[41:33.570 --> 41:35.330]  Right where the escalators are, it's to the left.
[41:35.630 --> 41:35.970]  Yeah.
[41:36.550 --> 41:37.090]  10 sharp.
[42:06.300 --> 42:06.720]  Hi.
[42:07.040 --> 42:07.400]  I'm Nicole.
[42:07.840 --> 42:11.480]  I'm gonna give you a five minute talk on hardware hacking for the musician.
[42:19.750 --> 42:22.490]  So just a little bit about myself.
[42:22.710 --> 42:24.890]  I'm a composer, electroacoustic composer.
[42:25.150 --> 42:28.230]  I grew up playing flute and bassoon.
[42:28.430 --> 42:29.910]  So very classically trained.
[42:30.730 --> 42:33.590]  I got into electronic music in college.
[42:34.350 --> 42:39.750]  And electronic music in the academic sense, not the apex twin or dance music sense.
[42:42.350 --> 42:43.070]  Microphone.
[42:43.070 --> 42:44.090]  Oh, God.
[42:44.350 --> 42:45.530]  I really hate talking to the microphone.
[42:46.270 --> 42:48.970]  So, hardware hacking.
[42:49.130 --> 42:52.810]  I got into this after grad school because I realized that I was poor.
[42:53.070 --> 42:57.110]  In grad school, I had a really fancy studio to work in.
[42:57.270 --> 42:59.210]  Really awesome software, hardware.
[42:59.410 --> 43:01.090]  Anything I wanted at my disposal.
[43:01.970 --> 43:06.130]  And then I found myself living in a farmhouse in the woods in Vermont.
[43:06.130 --> 43:10.070]  And had pretty much nothing to create all that awesome music with.
[43:10.330 --> 43:12.150]  So I had to figure out what I was gonna do.
[43:12.330 --> 43:15.050]  How was I gonna still make music being a composer?
[43:15.550 --> 43:17.050]  So, I picked up a book.
[43:17.450 --> 43:18.250]  Nicholas Collins.
[43:19.610 --> 43:20.290]  He kind of...
[43:20.290 --> 43:21.570]  He pretty much changed my life.
[43:21.710 --> 43:22.450]  So here we are today.
[43:22.670 --> 43:24.090]  Hardware hacking for the musician.
[43:24.330 --> 43:25.430]  And what it's really about.
[43:25.610 --> 43:26.130]  Which is...
[43:27.430 --> 43:27.870]  Yeah.
[43:28.190 --> 43:29.470]  Exercising your right to be an artist.
[43:29.750 --> 43:32.490]  Not just a musician, but a multimedia artist.
[43:32.630 --> 43:33.710]  Because now you can make stuff.
[43:34.330 --> 43:35.430]  So, here we go.
[43:36.330 --> 43:37.510]  Electronic music.
[43:37.670 --> 43:41.510]  When we talk about hardware hacking, we're covering a lot of ground.
[43:42.410 --> 43:48.950]  As Tamara mentioned, we have the Cage Muma Tudor camp and his contemporaries of the 70s.
[43:49.050 --> 43:51.750]  They were using non-musical devices as instruments.
[43:52.470 --> 43:54.550]  Is anybody familiar with cartridge music?
[43:55.210 --> 43:57.270]  Just a piece, cage piece cartridge music.
[43:58.110 --> 44:03.690]  So they're using cartridges from record players to play things like feathers.
[44:03.690 --> 44:06.090]  And sand.
[44:06.610 --> 44:13.370]  And any weird non-musical everyday earthly thing that you can think of to amplify it and make sound.
[44:14.310 --> 44:16.030]  I'm gonna skip ahead.
[44:16.770 --> 44:18.710]  Composers Inside Electronics.
[44:18.710 --> 44:24.030]  This is a collective of electroacoustic composers based in New York City.
[44:24.110 --> 44:25.010]  Founded in 1973.
[44:25.730 --> 44:26.690]  Still active today.
[44:27.050 --> 44:31.150]  They're notable for the performance of David Tudor's Rainforest 4.
[44:31.510 --> 44:34.230]  Is anybody familiar with this group or Rainforest?
[44:34.750 --> 44:35.510]  No?
[44:35.730 --> 44:36.090]  Okay.
[44:36.090 --> 44:36.110]  Okay.
[44:36.630 --> 44:45.370]  So, I'm gonna give you a little video so you can kind of see what's happening.
[44:47.150 --> 44:47.830]  Hopefully.
[44:54.380 --> 45:00.160]  So, this group builds these sculptures out of everyday objects.
[45:00.160 --> 45:02.600]  They're using transducers.
[45:02.820 --> 45:03.580]  They're using transducers.
[45:03.580 --> 45:04.180]  That's a speaker.
[45:05.200 --> 45:08.340]  The speakers are affixed to these sound sculptures.
[45:08.820 --> 45:11.200]  They are playing sounds through the speakers.
[45:11.340 --> 45:18.700]  And the sculptures are resonating at different frequencies depending on what's being pumped through them.
[45:18.700 --> 45:31.300]  This is a performance last summer which I had the honor to help install with John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein who are two active members of this group still here in the city.
[45:31.600 --> 45:33.120]  Does anybody know these guys?
[45:34.300 --> 45:39.920]  So, they take this around the world even though the piece was written in the 70s.
[45:40.220 --> 45:42.900]  And Tudor passed away, I believe, in 1996.
[45:43.640 --> 45:48.680]  They're still keeping it alive and they, aside from Rainforest, they are still alive.
[45:48.680 --> 45:52.700]  They also perform other works, basically using the circuitry that they are building.
[45:59.410 --> 46:01.970]  Due to time, I'm going to cut that short.
[46:05.030 --> 46:06.790]  And slide back.
[46:11.660 --> 46:13.060]  Sorry, super messy.
[46:15.120 --> 46:18.500]  Okay, so, our next group, circuit bending.
[46:18.940 --> 46:19.500]  Reed Ghazala.
[46:19.700 --> 46:22.360]  So, now we're turning non-musical devices into instruments.
[46:26.580 --> 46:27.100]  Example.
[46:27.440 --> 46:29.020]  This is Dora the Explorer.
[46:29.560 --> 46:32.580]  She was meant to teach her kid how to speak Spanish.
[46:32.900 --> 46:35.880]  And how to say backpack and bananas in Spanish.
[46:38.760 --> 46:39.580]  Pretty cool.
[46:40.000 --> 46:41.200]  Not a musical device.
[46:41.700 --> 46:47.000]  She has some little sounds or songs that she sings.
[46:47.200 --> 46:48.640]  But it was meant to be played with.
[46:48.880 --> 46:52.260]  Not meant to plug into a concert and make music with.
[46:52.260 --> 46:59.860]  So, when we're talking about circuit bending and turning non-musical devices into musical instruments, this is what we're talking about.
[47:00.060 --> 47:02.600]  And I'll talk more about this in a minute.
[47:03.280 --> 47:09.420]  So, next group, with Nicholas Collins, we have creating instruments from consumer electronics.
[47:09.420 --> 47:13.380]  That is your five cent digital logic chip.
[47:17.700 --> 47:18.300]  Hi.
[47:18.760 --> 47:19.800]  Can everybody see this?
[47:20.020 --> 47:25.080]  This is a box that I built several years ago and I play it in my sets.
[47:27.920 --> 47:31.220]  As I said, Nicholas Collins wrote the book on hardware hacking.
[47:31.560 --> 47:32.660]  Modern hardware hacking.
[47:33.220 --> 47:34.540]  And how to make instruments for yourself.
[47:34.700 --> 47:38.260]  Noise boxes that don't cost you as much as a Moog synthesizer.
[47:38.960 --> 47:40.760]  Because, really, who can afford that?
[47:43.240 --> 47:44.360]  So, yes.
[47:45.260 --> 47:45.820]  Microcontrollers.
[47:45.900 --> 47:47.740]  We're going to talk more about that in a minute.
[47:53.520 --> 47:54.000]  Microcontrollers.
[47:54.280 --> 47:55.400]  Arduino basic stamps.
[47:55.500 --> 47:56.820]  This is a revolution.
[47:57.180 --> 47:58.860]  Everybody's using Arduino now, I think.
[47:59.000 --> 47:59.640]  It feels like it.
[47:59.820 --> 48:01.900]  Is everybody using Arduino now for something?
[48:02.680 --> 48:03.380]  All right.
[48:03.560 --> 48:03.960]  Cool.
[48:03.960 --> 48:05.220]  So, now we know.
[48:05.400 --> 48:18.540]  Now we're combining coding and environmental sensors as well as the digital logic chips and all of the other tools that the other guys gave us to create controllers for ourselves.
[48:18.800 --> 48:21.060]  This is actually what I do mostly.
[48:21.500 --> 48:28.220]  I build controller objects for artists that need a little help.
[48:28.220 --> 48:32.500]  Not everybody knows how to solder.
[48:33.380 --> 48:37.960]  So, hopefully, you're going to get some motivation to go to the table out there and learn how to solder.
[48:39.400 --> 48:45.960]  I'm going to give you a little bit of background in circuit bending because that seems to be, like, the thing to get people into electronics.
[48:46.860 --> 48:48.360]  For musicians, that is.
[48:48.920 --> 48:49.980]  So, circuit bending.
[48:50.280 --> 48:56.320]  Short-circuiting electronics for the purpose of creating sounds and effects that are not part of the original circuit design.
[48:56.320 --> 49:02.140]  So, what we're doing is we're making unintended circuit points to produce electronic sounds.
[49:04.700 --> 49:06.100]  So, in her...
[49:06.100 --> 49:08.760]  In this box, there's a lot of extra wires.
[49:09.000 --> 49:10.360]  There's a lot of extra solder points.
[49:10.560 --> 49:12.400]  Things that the maker...
[49:12.400 --> 49:14.820]  Not Texas Instruments, but the maker didn't intend.
[49:15.460 --> 49:21.820]  They didn't intend for her to glitch out and to mimic Richard D.
[49:21.940 --> 49:22.180]  James.
[49:22.180 --> 49:24.500]  But, now we can make her do that.
[49:28.680 --> 49:29.160]  Um...
[49:30.060 --> 49:30.540]  Uh...
[49:30.540 --> 49:30.780]  Sure.
[49:33.480 --> 49:37.480]  So, the most common thing for people to bend are children's toys such as this.
[49:37.700 --> 49:38.080]  Uh...
[49:38.080 --> 49:39.820]  Drum machines are really common.
[49:41.580 --> 49:42.060]  Keyboards...
[49:42.060 --> 49:42.300]  Um...
[49:42.720 --> 49:43.220]  This will work.
[49:43.500 --> 49:44.840]  No, it's a quarter inch.
[49:45.160 --> 49:45.320]  Oh.
[49:46.700 --> 49:48.920]  Casio SK-1s are very popular.
[49:50.420 --> 49:51.240]  Moving on.
[49:53.040 --> 49:54.100]  So, what's the difference?
[49:54.800 --> 49:56.100]  Circuit bending it...
[49:56.100 --> 49:59.240]  Again, we're talking about a few different, um...
[49:59.240 --> 50:00.420]  Processes and techniques.
[50:00.660 --> 50:01.000]  Bending.
[50:01.840 --> 50:02.320]  Modification.
[50:03.420 --> 50:04.300]  So, bending.
[50:04.560 --> 50:05.960]  The process of exploration.
[50:06.800 --> 50:07.860]  No known outcome.
[50:08.080 --> 50:11.520]  This is much like Cage's Chance Music when we're using the I Ching.
[50:11.720 --> 50:12.240]  We really...
[50:12.240 --> 50:13.520]  You know, we have no intentions.
[50:13.780 --> 50:17.360]  We're just gonna stick our probes on the contact points and see what happens.
[50:17.360 --> 50:18.820]  So, modification.
[50:19.880 --> 50:20.440]  Oh.
[50:20.740 --> 50:21.700]  To demonstrate.
[50:23.740 --> 50:25.580]  These controls, if you can see them.
[50:25.880 --> 50:27.620]  They're glitch points, loop points.
[50:29.700 --> 50:30.260]  Um...
[50:30.260 --> 50:31.620]  Pitch, uh...
[50:31.620 --> 50:32.040]  Envelope.
[50:32.560 --> 50:33.000]  Whatever.
[50:33.680 --> 50:35.620]  I found those through the...
[50:35.620 --> 50:36.300]  Is it over?
[50:37.260 --> 50:37.680]  Oh.
[50:37.840 --> 50:38.300]  Stop.
[50:38.520 --> 50:38.980]  Oh my God.
[50:39.400 --> 50:39.920]  Okay.
[50:40.660 --> 50:40.840]  Sorry.
[50:46.310 --> 50:46.870]  Um...
[50:46.870 --> 50:48.330]  I'm gonna let you read that for five seconds.
[50:48.450 --> 50:48.930]  Can I do that?
[50:48.930 --> 50:49.450]  Yeah.
[50:49.630 --> 50:49.930]  We got it.
[50:58.950 --> 50:59.350]  Okay.
[50:59.810 --> 51:00.210]  So...
[51:00.210 --> 51:00.510]  Sorry.
[51:01.610 --> 51:02.930]  Well, you can read that.
[51:03.030 --> 51:03.770]  And I'll just...
[51:03.770 --> 51:06.150]  If you have any questions, you can come see me later.
[51:06.710 --> 51:06.750]  Yes.
[51:06.750 --> 51:07.790]  You can check out these links.
[51:08.310 --> 51:11.850]  I would love to show you my other more current work.
[51:13.250 --> 51:13.650]  Um...
[51:13.650 --> 51:14.350]  And there you go.
[51:15.610 --> 51:16.250]  Thanks, Nikki.
[51:16.430 --> 51:16.870]  That was great.
[51:17.050 --> 51:17.250]  Yeah.
[51:17.530 --> 51:17.870]  All right.
[51:18.070 --> 51:18.730]  Thank you.
[51:18.730 --> 51:19.310]  Um...
[51:19.770 --> 51:22.450]  Like I said before, if you want to...
[51:22.450 --> 51:22.750]  Uh...
[51:22.750 --> 51:24.970]  If you have any questions or you want to talk to us...
[51:24.970 --> 51:27.110]  I believe The Yes Men are not speaking in this room.
[51:27.330 --> 51:27.650]  So...
[51:27.650 --> 51:28.630]  I mean, they're tele...