Did a fun talk/experiment tonight at MIT. I was very fortunate to join David Gauthier and Richard The, both of the Media Lab for an evening of presentation and discussion of art in the digital realm. Rebecca Motola-Barnes of the MIT arts office organized the event, which was hosted by Jay Scheib.
Instead of giving a normal talk, I gave myself 25 minutes to make a spontaneous composition from a sound recorded during the session. Here’s the sound:
I’m about to let this sucker die. Not really feeling it anymore. If anyone hears some potential and wants the files, hit me up. I can shoot you a Live 7 file with all the audio bits, etc.
Here’s something I’m working on at school that’s not related at all:
Snakes on the Plains
Just after the demise of the dinosaurs–about 65 million years ago–dense forests receded, giving way to grasslands. In these open fields, primitive snakes–ancient relatives of boas and pythons–found that large muscular bodies left them too slow to catch a rapidly diversifying population of mammals. Smaller snakes had the agility to catch prey, but lacked the sheer strength to subdue or kill it. Enter the fang.
Like the beaks on Darwin’s finches, fangs–and their accompanying venom glands–are adapted to specific purposes and different quarry. Some snakes have fangs in the back of the mouth to hold prey while venom takes effect; others have fangs up front, ready to deliver a lethal first-strike. Herpetologists debated whether these two types of fangs were related, but in July researchers announced evidence pointing to a common evolutionary origin.
“We couldn’t turn back the clock to look at how they [fangs] evolved, so we were looking at how they develop to give us a clue” said Kate Jackson of Whitman College, one of the study’s authors. Looking at present-day snake embryos, the team found that rear-fanged snakes like the garter, and front-fangers like cobras and vipers, develop their hardware in the back of the mouth first. Embryonic tooth-bearing tissue in the upper jaw splits into front and back sections. In garters the front turns into teeth; in cobras and vipers, it shrinks as their fangs move forward. This splitting allowed each piece to evolve independently, equipping snakes to conquer the many ecological niches in which we find them today.
I just got access to final cut pro and some cool robot footage. I’ve never really done much film editing before, so please excuse the rough nature of this experiment.
Here’s a remix I did for Boy Eats Drum Machine’s new free ep release, “fre*e*p”. It uses samples from “I’m Alive Don’t Bury Me” and “Demonic with Horns”, both from his upcoming full-length: “boomboxx”. There’s also a little BBv1 and Steven Kray thrown in there for drums. You can download fre*e*p for…um, free…here.
