November 2011

facebook gift download follow-up

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Just made a comment on Rhizome's post announcing its new feature The Download. Seems they forgot to mention that Ryder Ripps is offering all his Facebook data for download because he's quitting Facebook. This is all too convoluted to make much of a story but there is actually a journalistic nugget here.

Neither this post nor Joanne McNeil's paragraphs describing The Download mention that Ryder Ripps has deleted his Facebook account and this download of all his data is connected to that. That's kind of a big deal, especially since Ripps has been a Facebook love/hate supporter for some time. McNeil mentions that an artist named Kevin Bewersdorf deleted his data from his site once and murkily suggests that Ripps' The Download has something to do with that. This isn't even a case of "burying the lead"--hiding it, more like. But why?
All the best,
Tom Moody

It remains to be seen if this is a real Facebook resignation or one of those "that's it, I quit smoking today" moves. Regardless, in an absence of plausible reasons given for Ripps' Download as a work of art, you'd think it might be mentioned.

Update, a few days later: Am told that Ripps has reactivated his Facebook account. The precise, art historical term for this is "lame."

"Dribble Chords"

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"Dribble Chords" [mp3 removed -- an altered version of this can be heard on Bandcamp]

Mostly software-based. The Element P rhythm synth is run through MIDI effects (echo and a "chorder") to create the main riffs. Rhythms are the Sidstation sample kit I made a few years ago. The quasi-jazzy quasi-organ is an OKI Computer 2 patch that I made, always on the verge of going out of tune (in contrast to the machine-like tuned percussion of the Element P).

"Doepfer A-112 Wavetable Demos 1-2"

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"Doepfer A-112 Wavetable Demo 1" [mp3 removed]

"Doepfer A-112 Wavetable Demo 2" [mp3 removed]

doepfer_modules

The Doepfer A-112 sampler module has two modes, sampler and wavetable. You can record audio as an 8 bit sample and play it back as a wavetable--a type of synthesis where graphic waveform snippets are cycled and used as an oscillator. In both of these examples I sampled a melodic patch played by the mini-synth (module on the far right) and then switched the A-112 to wavetable mode.
In the first example, the playback speed is set to a low pitch and a slow-sweeping, external LFO (from the mini-synth) acts as a real-time control voltage triggering different parts of the "table." This alters the pitch, causes stuttering (like a CD skipping) and also gives the sample a nasty edge. Even toothier is the second example, where a graph drawn in the MIDI pitchbend control editor on my PC plays different parts of the wavetable, also acting as a sequence of control voltages for the table.
The Reaktor "spring tank" reverb is intermittently mixed in as a plug in effect for the final recorded audio.

"Chorus of Angles I-II"

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"Chorus of Angles I" [mp3 removed]

"Chorus of Angles II" [mp3 removed]

Similar to the piece "Noise Gospel," some wav file recordings of a strange vocal-ish Doepfer patch I made were loaded into the Reaktor Krypt sample map, for granularization and triggering by the Krypt sequencer. The sequencer plays notes intended to trigger another set of samples, so it was a matter of listening to a bunch of patterns and finding groups that sounded good with these particular wavs. The patterns were then arranged into a songs.

The digital sounds seemed harsh to me so I recorded each song two more times using the Mutator filter, then overlayed (stacked) the original and each of the Mutated versions as simultaneous tracks and mixed them down to a single wav file. Slight variations in the files may create a chorus or fattening effect. Whatever subtleties are there are probably lost in the final "maximization to CD gain levels."