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Hello!

Another week and some progress to share. I’ve been taking my time to re-factor my program completely. Much of which is almost done! Therefore, onto bigger and better things. It is difficult for me to talk about my progress without talking about the underlying structure of the program, which because it is beginning to be large it becomes more difficult to manage.

I’ve been working on making my program more dynamic. On a previous version, I made one object and every function augment an object’s attributes that were literally written for that object, so an object of different size wouldn’t compile in my program. In the newer versions, I encapsulated all these function into a double layered class structure. One class for assets and another class to control the user-interaction with the program. The assets are a party of objects from a kernal object that contains information about where the matrix is on the screen and all of its containing shapes, which make up the remaining asset objects. They are the tones object which is an array of objects, a play button, a mute button, a savestatebutton, and a save-state array that saves rhythms within an array of of objects each containing the state of the tones at a particular time. Then all these objects are wrapped in one object that has access to view and change all the asset objects. This makes it simple to test and run my program, though it may provide extra overhead, though that shouldn’t be a problem and depends on how many matrix objects are in use at one time. Now I have a program that can run any matrix I throw at it dynamically, which is subtle but opens up an interface to create and save ‘palates’ collections of sounds and matrices that I can use to compose sounds.

Next week I plan on finalizing and polishing a beta version so that it may be ready for people to load their own sounds and create their own compositions, though the program still needs work before it is completed. I’m pretty excited and if this post is confusing, wait until next week in which I’ll aim to post a working version on the web.

Stay Tuned,

Charles.

I’m currently an undergraduate at The Ohio State University. I’m studying Computer Information Science and currently have a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Miami University. I’m interested in visual graphics, but also in implementing algorithms for genome analysis. I never thought I’d learn so much over the years of studying in university. At times it has been rigorous and lonely and other times it has been rewarding. From studying protein translocation in cells to abstracting information to create a functional program.

I spend most of my time creating and studying. Mathematics is becoming a language of expression for me. If I want to visualize data, I can do so in an infinite number of ways. Perhaps I would like to link sound to the orbit of planets around the sun, I simply parameterize Newton’s first law of gravity to a stream of data, whether that be music or internet traffic. When the traffic grows perhaps so does the gravity and when it lessens then so does the gravity. An entire simulation of the universe controlled by the traffic of data. What can become of it, is up to the user, but even I don’t know the limits or outcomes of a program. It remains in homeostasis that is reliant in how the user interacts with the data, or perhaps how the data interacts with the program. This is just one system, out of an infinite; only limited by our mind’s ability to perceive.

I never dreamed I’d have the ability to express such systems, but with the capability to automate information over time, anything is possible. I’m really grateful for how far I’ve come, but completely daunted in how to express these ideas to others, as they seemingly make no sense physically. However; within the realm of the infosphere, they take on context that is very much alive and breathing. Therefore, this semester I plan to exercise my creativity more and build my ideas so that they may become reality.  I want to make it clear how lucky I feel to be capable of having technology at my fingertips and an education in which I’ve learned so much. One education spent learning about the biosphere, an ecosystem, I feel of mathematics that have worked itself off over millions of years, and the infosphere, that’s patterns and mathematics will evolve over the next million. It is an exciting time to be practicing art and science and with my final year in undergraduate at University, I hope to develop more within this context to create and develop for the rest of my life.