randform

Tim has made a new trailer for the Enigame 2021_2 puzzle hunt this fall – the spaced out edition.

Tim has to cope with an increasing workload, moreover heavy commuting also takes its toll, so he currently doesn’t get too much recreational time – even not on weekends. But over pentecost he now managed to create a nice drone with matching visuals.

After a brief history of the radio technology museum Königs-Wusterhausen on the “Funkerberg” (“broadcast hill”) and an overview on the impressive Dieselgenerator here now part 3 of the series. Part 3 deals a bit with the radio broadcasting itself and in particular with the role it played within my family.
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In the randform post “Gesture steered Turing machine” I used data gloves, which were made following the instructions of Hannah Perner-Wilson who is a member of the gloves project. Being weary of sitting too much at the computer I had also written in this post that I would like to make more use of body movements and in particular include danse-like movements in computer interaction and in particular in programming.

Unfortunately rather shortly after I had written the post a not so nice medical indication in my vicinity which was -at least partially- due to too much computer sitting urged me to more or less dramatically speed up this project.

The gesture recognition for my gloves, which were used in the Turing machine example, works, but it is not yet fine grained and exhaustive enough. So I had to look for an easy and fast and at least to some extend workable and affordable solution which would insure a more direct and precise steering possibility, like some version of key gloves. To make it short: In the end I made my own version with Tims help. Again it’s only a start but still.

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For Berliners and those who can afford to go to Berlin for a quick trip I would like to mention an absolute must see exhibition, namely the exhibition Generation Z: Renoise about the russian musical avantgarde in the 20s and later which is curated by L. Pchelkina, A. Smirnov, P. Aidu, K. Dudakov-Kashuro and E. Vorobyeva. The exhibition is unfortunately not as highly promoted as it should – given how fabulous it is! I hope that this post makes some more people visit it. It is definitely worth it! The exhibition is in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kunstraum (unfortunately not so easy to find), it runs until Feb.23, 2014. It is free of entrance and open from 12:00-19:00 o clock.

The exhibition has the themes: Projectionism and Radio-ear, Revasavr, GIMN Institute, Theremin, Graphical Sound, Industrial Noise Machines, Amateur Noise Instruments and Destruction of Utopia. Below is a small excerpt from the respective themes. A lot of details can also be found in Andrei Smirnov’s book “Sound in Z“.

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A new video of one of Tims recent music projects (a video about the ladder filter is here). In the video he explains the construction of a spring reverb:

A detailed description on how to build the spring reverb can be found on the astlab page.

A soundtrack on soundcloud of how the spring reverb sounds:

Tim and a bit of his music projects will eventually appear in a new film by film maker Ekaterina Eremenko. That is we had a film team from Moscow here at home. But it is sofar not clear wether the material will be used.

Ekaterina Eremenko, who has also studied math, received recently much attention for her film colours of math (trailer) featuring amongst others the rather well-known mathematicians Cedric Villani, Anatoly Fomenko, Aaditya V. Rangan, Günter Ziegler, Maxim Kontsevitch and Jean-Michel Bismut.

I don’t know if this is a new trend but I found incidentally more recent films where features of the life of mathematicians are documented. Like at the website of the “Higher Algebra section” at Moscow State University I found interviews with V. N. Latyshev talking About academic mathematics (in russian) and about Reminiscences of A. A. Markov (in russian) made by Andrei Verovkin who features a whole series of interviews with scientists.

In this context a short note for those who are in or are planning to go to visit Berlin: There were/are currently music festivals for more modern music taking place in Berlin, which enhance the usual club life or on the more classical level regular events like e.g. the weekly series “Unerhörte Musik im BKA”. One was the Ultraschall Festival and one is the ctm festival, which is in cooperation with the festival for art and digital culture “transmediale”. The transmediale theme of this year is “afterglow:”

The conference takes afterglow as a metaphor for the present condition of digital culture, examining the geopolitical, infrastructural and bodily consequences of the excessive digitisation that has taken place over the course of the last three decades.

Randform Reader Uwe W. Herzog said

I really appreciate these efforts to bring the socalled “high culture” to the people. However classical music is a rather elitistic culture. That is classical music may eventually be a way to meet the cultural needs of a small upper class, but alone the statistics show: the broad population prefers pop music or Schlagers. It may however be interesting to lure the elite to Hellersdorf like in order to draw attention onto serious deficits in urban planning. Like I heard that Helle Mitte has difficulties in renting out all that shop area?

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Excerpt of performance of Jugendsinfonieorchester Marzahn-Hellersdorf in Helle Mitte, Sept.2, 2013 in juggly Hendycam-Reelmode

In a comment concerning the voting system in Syria (I recently got again a bit interested in voting systems, maybe more later) it was mentioned that there were some problems with certain german groups which were against the set-up of a refugee home in my neighbourhood, which is intended to shelter also Syrians. The image in the above linked article by Deutsche Welle shows the square Alice-Salomon-Platz in Helle Mitte, Hellersdorf, Berlin. It should be mentioned that there are also nicer events at that square.

Like the company Wohntheke, which represents several real estate companies, which offer rentals in Marzahn-Hellersdorf had organized last sunday a party in the park adjacent to the square and engaged the Jugendsinfonieorchester Marzahn-Hellersdorf (see also randform post here and here) which belongs to the music school Marzahn-Hellersdorf to play there.

Thanks to the strong men who helped director Jobst Liebrecht to carry the heavy Timpanis back to the building!

related: Soheil Nasseri is giving tonight a solo piano concert in New York.

Here you get an exclusive look behind the randform (iron ;)) curtain:

Tim’s latest free time projects were heavily located in music electronics. His last weekend project was to use a socalled x-OSC chip (which he is currently beta testing) by the british company x-io technologies (see blue blinking board in the video) as a wireless remote control for a socalled ladder filter (unfortunately a bit hard to see in the wirings on a kitchen table…).

Tim has written and put together some code for a wireless USB midi/OSC connection.