Polyrhythmic Tone Beating

Written in 2009. Performed by I Gusti Komin and I Gusti Ketut Muliawan. Recorded by Suzanne La in Pengosekan, Bali in 2010.

Etude 2010

Every Recording of Gymnopédie 1

buy the vinyl

code: https://github.com/andrewcsmith/human_use_of_human_beings

This project takes Norbert Wiener's Human Use of Human Beings as a source text and inspiration, transforming a section by removing information in each successive paragraph. The Extermination of the American Bison is used as a statistical model of the English language, building a transition probability table (using a radix trie) for each n-gram. Then, a window is moved through the text with a threshold, such that if the information content (e.g., the entropy, according to Wiener) can be reduced by eliminating a given character, then that character is eliminated. The threshold is lowered with each successive paragraph, so that each paragraph becomes more "compressed."

These ideas owe quite a bit to Allison Parrish's work on using word2vec to compress texts using DCT (JPEG) compression. In this case, I'm interested in using probability tables at the level of the letter, which is significantly simpler, but also very fun to read aloud.

Human Use Of Human Beings - Live on KZSC

On the closing night of Le Guess Who? 2018, Indian Carnatic music pioneer Kadri Gopalnath gave a mesmerizing performance, curated by Shabaka Hutchings. 

About:
Kadri Gopalnath’s life’s work is to incorporate the woodwind instrument into the classic South Indian Carnatic music. To do so, the 69-year-old saxophone maestro single-handedly modified his alto sax and developed inventive playing techniques, recreating the microtones and vocal-like arrangements of orthodox Indian music. It took Gopalnath over twenty years to successfully integrate his instrument into Carnatic music, but the results are stunning; an ecstatic and majestic sound combining the best of both worlds.

Read our in-depth ‘Tracing the Roots’ feature about Kadri Gopalnath: “A lifetime of pioneering Indian Carnatic music”: https://www.leguesswho.nl/news/tracing-the-roots-kadri-gopalnath-a-lifetime-of-pioneering-indian-carnatic-music

Recorded and mixed by Marc Broer on Sunday, 11 November, at TivoliVredenburg’s Grote Zaal during Le Guess Who? 2018. 
Photography by Juri Hiensch.

www.leguesswho.com

Polyrhythmic Tone Beating

brianbaumbusch

Related tracks