sonic surrounds

The Institute for Computermusic and Sound Technology ICST releases version 1.1 of the ICST Ambisonics Externals for Max/MSP, under the LGPL.

The objects are:

• ambiencode~ - encode n audio-channels in up to 3rd order ambisonic b-format
• ambidecode~ - decode up to 3rd order ambisonic b-format to n audio-channels
• ambimonitor - graphical user interface object for sound-source placement
• ambicontrol - control sound-sources in the ambimonitor in a variety of ways

They can be downloaded here, with sourcecode in the packages.

On October 3, 2006, the Sydney Morning Herald published that Peter Shann Ford,

“An Australian researcher using high-tech software has found the tiny missing article in Neil Armstrong’s declaration as he became the first human to step onto the moon’s surface.”. He discovered the signal evidence of the utterence of the word “a” in Armstrong’s historic phrase “one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind”.

Going to the source, a page on Peter’s Control Bionics company website links to a PDF describing the analysis process he used.

Here is a quick summary of my main points regarding Peter Shann Ford’s analysis of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing speech.

• There are more appropriate tools than Goldwave software, for example, Matlab, Praat (which is free, seen in David Beaver’s analysis), or some other software. Perhaps a spectrogram (commonly used by speech researchers) could have helped the analysis.
• The original NASA audio download Peter linked to is 11.025kHz, 8 bit quality - not highly detailed, and some unknown number of generations removed from the primary sources (which are reportedly lost - read a report on the matter here).
• I think Peter’s claim (in his PDF) that the noise removal process does not change critical voice characteristics is questionable.
• The “control phrase” (”for man[kind]“) has a gap between words that is so similar in time to the test phrase (”for (a) man”), that they are unlikely to indicate different utterences. Speech researchers have mentioned it is likely that the sound between “for” and “man” is what is known as “creak” - an involuntary sound occurring between particular sounds of speech. There is more information about these features on the Language Log website linked from below.
• Peter’s research was not peer reviewed by speech researchers, but by an astronaut and “Ms. Rano Singh, a Physiotherapist with a Masters in Biomechanics”.
• Language Log notes that the mouth diagram in Peter Shann Ford’s analysis is “from a description of Korean alveolars, and Korean does not have the American English approximant /r/.”

There are some further arguments on Language Log website:
First Korean on the Moon!
Armstrong’s abbreviated article: the smoking gun?
One small step backwards.

Back now from two days at electrofringe 2006. I had a great time and my performance went down well, both for me and others it seems. Hopefully I can find some opportunities to play again before too long! In the meantime, when I get some spare time I’ll make some sound pieces to download (hopefully in 5.1 formats, or binaural, though stereo could work).

But this post is more about some tangential discoveries through and around this year’s festival. Unfortunately I missed more than I caught, having been busy developing for my performance until Saturday. Nevertheless, there were many great bits I experienced or heard of from others. Here they are in no particular order, or consistency of detail…

Lloyd Barrett performed his Mise En Scene in Sp[AV]ce just before me, and I was interested to hear some similarities in concept and intention to my own work. He spoke of use of spatialisation not in a discrete, point source panned manner, which he dislikes, but more to create space and immersion. He also writes on his site, that Mise En Scene is intended to be “like two parallel worlds coexisting - digital/analog - manufactured/organic”, and on his Sound Creatures project, he writes that he has “become increasingly obsessed with ways to combine the organic nature of field recordings with electronic sounds in a manner that does not allow for a differentiation between the two”. Tangents off Lloyd’s site lead to the Half Theory blog that apparently partly picks up the Brisbane experimental music trail from the discontinued Small Black Box monthly experimental performance event. Some of Lloyd’s music is available hosted by Half Theory, as are patches and other data from a collaborator of his, Hetleveiker, who does some interesting Pd work, both audio patches and some stunning and complex Gem images - which on a further tangent, remind me of the exquisite gem-based audio-visual work of Cyrille Henry and Damien Henry under the name CHDH (think of the video for Autechre’s Gantz Graf, and make it into live performance, with much tighter connection between audio and visual, since the same data and control process underly both). Hetlevieker’s site also led me to discover the CPS patcher software, recently made available as shareware, which is notable at least for its ability to be embedded into Macromedia Director/Shockwave productions.

Back to Electrofringe, and Somaya Langley (in ID-i/o mode) and Dave Wolf (dpwolf) did a great performance of audio (ID-i/o) and visuals (dpwolf), controlled by Somaya using her arm-mounted accelerometer microcontroller jacket, throwing crackly particles of multichannel sound bouncing around the room backed by Dave’s randomly scan/panned images of urban (de)construction melded with scattered synthetic particle-system debris.

Jasch was another artist I missed, doing live audio-visual work in Max MSP using the LCD (?) object for complex and beautiful pen-drawing based visuals.

I was at the new media writing workshop, run by Mitchell Whitelaw and Gail Priest, which sparked very lively debate from two types of writer - the practitioner, writing to audiences in the know about particular process based forms such as live-coding music performance (eg Toplap), - and the broader-based writer interested in new media practice, trying to find a way into understanding complex art practice forms that aren’t immediately apparent. A very provocative example of work to review was Ben Bogart’s improvisational performance, Reflex, a self-referential use of Pd to generate sound and visuals through a complex feedback loop of live-coding and sonification of internal Pd datastreams, in the manner of a software-process based interpretation of Alvin Lucier’s seminal Sitting in a Room (on which I based my Automatic Lucier Pd patch). A couple of interesting tangents from here are Mitchell’s blog, (the teeming void), the Generator.x site and Vague Terrain online journal.

Another performance I missed was Rob Curgenven, performing with a Japanese woman, Ray (don’t know her surname), at the Friday night Cambridge gig. I believe the performance might have included field recordings, piano and violin, working with harmonic interactions between the acoustic sound sources. Tangential from here, is the website of the privatelektro label. Also, news of gigs that Rob has done with others in acoustically unique sites, such as an old oil storage tunnel at the Surrounder festival and a gas tank in the Darwin Festival event Surrender with Chris Abrahams and sitar player Kabita Ghosh. I see some photos taken by photographer Lari Gadza, a charming and talented friend I met when I visited Darwin in 1999/2000.

Other great acts were Wade Marynowsky’s Pink Gimp, who I unfortunately missed at the Cambridge on Saturday. I did catch the second screening of Soda_Jerk and Sam Smith’s brilliant and monumental remix movie, “Pixel Pirates II: Attack of the Astro Elvis Video Clone”.

So much more that I missed, but of course, that’s a side effect of any great festival. And of course the come-down after all that creative stimulation and late nights. Many thanks to Sumugan Sivanesan, Ben Byrne, and Cat Jones for the festival organisation to make such a great event. And now, I just have to deal with getting back to work…