Network Weaving

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Listening to Conversations


Several years ago I was invited to speak on "social cartography" at the ART + COMMUNICATION conference in Riga, Latvia. Included in that conference program were performances of ambient electronic music -- some very unique, using processed signals from old Soviet radar installations that still exist in some parts of the Baltics. I was talking to one of the electronic artists and he asked "I wonder what your networks sound like? You should try to put your networks to music/sound." My hobby is electronic music, and I have several music synthesizers that I play. So, I thought "Hmmm. I'll give it a try."

This talk with the electronic musician is an example of how innovation happens when people from two diverse communities interact. Innovation happens at the intersections! Diversity is important, but similarity in perspectives/knowledge is also required. If we did not have an overlap of experience around ambient music, his comments would have seemed silly to me, and I would have quickly forgotten them. But he and I had the right mix of similarity and diversity for an idea to sprout. That is why I say...

"Connect on your similarity and profit from your diversity!"

I have yet to figure out how to model a complete network in sound, but I am starting to experiment with conversations as ambient music. Look at this brief intro to the soundscapes of conversations, including links to several ambient works of mine.

What do you think? What conversations do the three soundscapes remind you of?

Enjoy!

posted by Valdis at 4:29 PM  

7 Comments:

  • Hey Valdis,

    Interesting. You know I am a musician too ---- jazz pianist. I am not sure either about representing a network as sound. I think a key question is: if you are translating a static network into music then you have to decide what is the beginning of the song and what is the end. If you translate a dynamic network into music then this question has an obvious answer; for a static network the answer is not obvious.

    On a related "note," I have wondered about making a website that riffs sonically on the emergent collaboration idea. You know the sites where each person gets to draw one line with a virtual pen, and eventually a full drawing happens? Imagine each person gets to lay down one track of bass, or drums, or synth, etc. Does this already exist?

    By Bruce Hoppe, at 6/26/2006 12:19 PM  

  • Excellent point Bruce! A dynamic network lends itself very well to a musical interpretation. If you have the link-by-link dynamics captured as they happen the music almost writes itself! The composer just needs to put in the translation factor(s). Now, who is going to write the SNA-to-MIDI interface?

    I like your idea of group composition! That would be easy to do with a tool like GarageBand[Mac] or ACID[PC]. You would have to email/download the partially finished piece for each update... don't know of any web sites doing this. MIDIpedia??? ;-)

    By Valdis, at 6/26/2006 1:39 PM  

  • Valdis -

    Can you model a network as a series of chords, and then make the soundscape a traversal of those chords?

    You'd start by asking yourself "what does this network sound like for ego", and then move stepwise from ego to ego sounding things out.

    I can imagine very simple sounds just from metrics. If Alice has high centrality her sound is louder - if she's on the periphery it's not so loud. The bigger the degree, the more notes in the chord. You could signal different group memberships by applying different instruments.

    By Edward Vielmetti, at 6/26/2006 4:51 PM  

  • Valdis,
    It's truly interesting to me that while searching for a bit of ambient music, I stumbled upon this post of yours!

    THANKS!

    By the way: In case you aren't yet familiar with her work, I'd like to introduce you to Lessons From Water by Ellen Britt PA, Ed.D.:
    http://lessonsfromwater.com/

    By the way II: If you haven't yet found someone to handle the midi programming for "Listening to Conversations", Phil Sabatine of Midi-Classics here in Connecticut might be just the right person for the job: http://www.midi-classics.com/resume.htm

    By the way III: Phil is a lot friendlier than his posted resume suggests! He's just too busy to go through a recruiting process! But I'm sure he'd be thrilled by the concept you and Bruce are discussing.

    And I do DEFINITELY want to thank you for these:
    http://www.networkweaving.com/music/conversation01.mp3
    http://www.networkweaving.com/music/conversation02.mp3
    http://www.networkweaving.com/music/conversation03.mp3

    Just what the "Musical Doctor" ordered, Valdis!

    Vincent Wright
    "Everything In Nature Signals To Everything In Nature" (E.I.N.S.T.E.I.N.)

    By WrightHandBlogger, at 9/17/2006 10:16 PM  

  • Thanks Vincent!

    I will contact your MIDI expert friend Phil.

    Glad you enjoy the music, I keep working on new ones in the basement. These will be used for background music in our Networkweaving podcasts.

    By Valdis, at 9/22/2006 9:51 PM  

  • Ha! Someone put nice interface on "nodes to notes"... play around with this network and the violin notes it produces:



    Enjoy!

    By Valdis, at 10/03/2006 2:32 PM  

  • This is what I am talking about! Brian Eno makes ambient music and art together...

    http://www.allsaintsrecords.com/Tokyo771.htm

    By Valdis, at 10/21/2006 1:56 PM  

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