Category Archives: Science

by | April 10, 2012 · 1:00 am

Circuit bending

Until now, the assumed hurdles of electronic design have kept laypersons at bay. Circuit bending—the chance-directed rewiring of preexisting electronic devices—transforms the circuit into a friendly and immediate canvas, like that of a painter: Just walk up and paint.

Indeed, the modern-day painter’s canvas is more immediate than ever, since there is no longer a need to study the science of pigment making. Similarly, circuit bending’s chance approach—an act of clear illogic—obviates any need to understand the science of electronics.

Just as traditional cultures can transform a coconut into myriad different instruments, circuit bending can transform a Speak & Spell, for example, into an untold number of homemade synthesizers.

This according to “The folk music of chance electronics: Circuit bending the modern coconut” by Qubais Reed Ghazala (Leonardo music journal XIV [2004], pp. 96–104).

Many thanks to the Improbable Research blog for reminding us about Ghazala’s writings! Below, the author discusses his work; above, he admires an amanita muscaria.

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by | February 25, 2012 · 1:00 am

Insects in rock and roll cover art

Insects in rock ’n’ roll cover art is an article by Joseph R. Coelho, who teaches in the Biology Program at Quincy University.

The article, which can be read online here, was published in American entomologist (L/3 [fall 2004] pp. 142–151). It  is part of a larger project called Insects in rock ’n’ roll music, which also includes lists of insect-related songs, albums, and artist names.

Above, a classic Iron Butterfly album cover. Below, ants dancing to Ant man bee from the legendary Trout mask replica by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.

Many thanks to the Improbable Research blog for alerting us about Professor Coelho’s work!

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by | January 11, 2012 · 1:00 am

Cristofori’s oval spinet

In designing his oval spinet, Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) sought to produce a relatively small instrument with long bass strings, two 8′ registers with a difference in timbre equal to that obtainable with a harpsichord, a symmetrical distribution of the tensions on the soundboard, and an aesthetically appealing and elegant appearance.

The longest string is placed in the center of the soundboard, while the strings move towards the acute in symmetrical alteration to the left and to the right; they therefore require a complicated action system for the movement of the key levers to be transmitted to the appropriate jacks.

All of the first register’s strings are arranged in order towards the back side, while the second register’s strings progress from the center towards the front side—it is the two registers, and not the sequence of notes, that are symmetrical with respect to the center. The selection of the registers is accomplished by sliding the keyboard, which activates a counter-lever system.

This according to “Bartolomeo Cristofori: La spinette ovali del 1690 / Bartolomeo Cristofori’s 1690 oval spinet” by Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni, an essay included in Bartolomeo Cristofori: La spinetta ovale del 1690—Studi e ricerche / The 1690 oval spinet—Study and research (Firenze: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, 2002).

Above, a replica built by Tony Chinnery and Kerstin Schwarz. Below, a brief documentary on Cristofori and his instruments.

Related article: Liszt’s monster instrument

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by | January 9, 2012 · 1:00 am

Routledge research in music

Routledge inaugurated the series Routledge research in music in July 2011 with Music, science, and the rhythmic brain: Cultural and clinical implications, edited by Jonathan Berger and Gabe Turow.

The collection focuses on the effects of repetitive musical rhythm on the brain and nervous system, integrating diverse fields including ethnomusicology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, religious studies, music therapy, and human health. The authors present aspects of musical rhythm and biological rhythms, and in particular rhythmic entrainment, in a way that considers cultural context alongside theoretical research and discussions of potential clinical and therapeutic implications.

Considering the effects of drumming and other rhythmic music on mental and bodily functioning, the authors show how rhythmic music can have a dramatic impact on mental states, sometimes catalyzing profound changes in arousal, mood, and emotional states through the stimulation of changes in physiological functions like the electrical activity in the brain.

Included are discussions of experiments using electroencephalography (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and subjective measures to gain insight into how these mental states are evoked and what their relationship is to the music and the context of the experience, demonstrating that these phenomena occur in a consistent and reproducible fashion and suggesting clinical applications.

Related article: NeuroScience: Music and Brain (taxi-dog.com)

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by | December 11, 2011 · 1:00 am

George Breed’s electrified guitar

On 2 September 1890 U.S. Navy officer George Breed (1864–1939) was granted a patent for a design for an electrified guitar (Method of and apparatus for producing musical sounds by electricity, patent no. 435,679); it appears to be the first application of electricity to a fretted string instrument.

Like the modern electric guitar and other similar instruments, Breed’s patent was based on a vibrating string in an electromagnetic field; but his design worked on very different musical and electrical principles (in particular the Lorentz force), resulting in a small but extremely heavy guitar with an unconventional playing technique that produced an exceptionally unusual and unguitarlike, continuously sustained sound.

Breed is now almost completely unknown as a musical instrument maker and designer; the significance of this instrument has largely remained underappreciated, and the circuitry unexamined.

This according to “George Breed and his electrified guitar of 1890” by Matthew Hill (The Galpin Society journal LXI [April 2008] pp. 193–203). Below, Dr. Hill discusses his research.

Related article: Ken Butler’s anxious objects

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by | October 13, 2011 · 1:00 am

LEGO™ music

Sonic constructs is an interactive sound installation that uses LEGO Mindstorms™ semi-automata musical robots; it was created by Pedro Rebelo, Franziska Schroeder, and Graham McAllistair.

In Sonic constructs, two robotic devices move and interact while performing trajectories that produce sound as a by-product of the movement itself. Direction, speed, acceleration, position, scratching, and collision characterize an environment for kinetic and acoustic participation.

This according to “Sonic constructs: Robotics and the residue of sound” by Rebelo and McAllistair, an essay included in Systems research in the arts. VI: Music, environmental design, and the choreography of space (Windsor: International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics, pp. 58–62).

Images, sound clips, and a video are here.

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by | October 5, 2011 · 1:00 am

Wagner and Darwin

Darwin’s On the origin of species and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, both completed in 1859, share an articulation of the shift from one worldview to another: from change as a repetitive circular movement to development as a cyclic process. Darwin’s treatise is more than a scientific theory—it is an aesthetic account of the wonders and beauty of nature. Wagner’s opera is more than a subjective work of art—it clearly reflects dimensions of evolution akin to scientific explanations of the phenomenon.

This according to “Darwin and Wagner: Evolution and aesthetic appreciation” by Edvin Østergaard (The journal of aesthetic education XLV/2 [summer 2011] pp. 83-108). Below, the unresolved harmonic tensions of the opera’s prelude create (in Østergaard’s words) a feeling of ongoingness, unfinishedness, and incertitude in a performance by Zubin Mehta and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester.

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by | August 9, 2011 · 1:00 am

The first pipe organ recording

Capable of producing sounds beyond the range of human hearing, the pipe organ presents the ultimate challenge for sound recording. The first known attempt was the Columbia Records recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from late August and early September 1910, which included two organ solos played by John J. McClellan.

Probably the very first pipe organ recording was a test made on 30 August 1910, with McClellan playing Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture. Two enormous acoustic recording horns, five feet long and two feet wide, were suspended on a rope strung across the Tabernacle. Although the engineer deemed the recordings successful, apparently they were never approved for release.

This according to “The first recordings of organ music ever made” by John W. Landon (Theatre organ: Journal of the American Theatre Organ Society LIII/4 [July–August 2011] pp. 22–28). Above, the Mormon Tabernacle organ as it appeared at the time of the recording (two 15-foot wings were added in 1915).

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by | July 27, 2011 · 1:00 am

Ghostcatching

To create the virtual dance installation Ghostcatching the digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar used a computer-based optical system to track the movements of the choreographer Bill T. Jones. The data from this motion-capture system formed the basis for three-dimensional digital animation.

The work challenges previous modes of commodification and enjoyment of the racialized other; it also provides a new generation in a genealogy of mechanized figures and automatons, as exemplified by the photographic work of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904).

This according to “Ghostcatching: An intersection of technology, labor, and race” by Danielle Goldman (Dance research journal XXV–XXVI/2–1, pp. 68–87).

Above, some of Marey’s 1870 locomotion studies; below, excerpts from Ghostcatching.

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by | June 11, 2011 · 1:00 am

Flute or food?

In 1996 Mira Omerzel-Terlep reported that a bone fragment excavated at the Divje Babe I cave site in Slovenia is considered to be the oldest man-made flute, dating from 45,000 years ago (“Koščene piščali: Pričetek slovenske, evropske in svetovne inštrumentalne glasbene zgodovine” [Bone whistles: Origins of the Slovenian, European, and world history of instrumental music], Etnolog: Glasnik Slovenskega Etnografskega Muzeja/Bulletin of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum VI, pp. 235–294). Further studies sought to demonstrate that the fragment had originally belonged to an instrument capable of producing a diatonic scale.

Other researchers were skeptical, though, and in 1998 Paola Villa et al. tried to put the speculation to rest, showing that the holes in the bone were the results of gnawing by animals (“A Middle Paleolithic origin of music? Using cave-bear bone accumulations to assess the Divje Babe I bone ‘flute’”, Antiquity LXXII/275 [March], pp. 65–79).

The argument has not abated. In 2002 a pair of essays staking out the opposing camps was issued in Archäologie früher Klangerzeugung und Tonordnung/The archaeology of sound origin and organization; Musikarchäologie in der Ägäis und Anatolien/Music archaeology in the Aegean and Anatolia (Rahden: Leidorf); April Nowell states that the results of taphonomic testing offered no viable proof that the bone fragment was an instrument (“Is a cave bear bone from Divje Babe, Slovenia, a Neanderthal flute?” pp. 69–81) while Robert Fink presents research supports the theory that it was (“The Neanderthal flute and origin of the scale: Fang or flint? A response” pp. 83–87).

More recently, an exhaustive study by Cajus G. Diedrich of Paleo-Logic, Independent Institute of Geosciences, ends with the conclusion that “The ‘cave bear cub femora with holes’ are, in all cases, neither instruments nor human made at all” (Royal Society Open Science, 2 : 140022; the paper can be read in full here).

Still, the controversy is alive and thriving on the Internet.

Below, Ljuben Dimkaroski performs on a reconstruction of the alleged original bone flute.

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