Lo!

            I’m not exactly a Fortean, but I am fascinated by Charles Fort’s work. In the scope of world events and unfolding, he had a knack for finding the most curious phenomenon. Fort embraced a philosophy of “damned” evidence: anomalous events that no hard science could properly explain, or explain away. Frogs falling from the sky, rains of blood and black ink, mysterious indentations and glyphs left in cliff faces, weird sounds heard over enormous geographical spaces. The list goes on and on. His writing is a kind of manic fever dream in which shadowy things become marginally lucid and coherent.

            I couldn’t help but think of Fort when I came across an article last week in which scientists discovered strange radiation bursts recorded in tree rings about 1,200 years ago. Somewhere between AD 774 and AD 775, an enormous burst of carbon-14 (¹⁴C) hit the earth’s atmosphere. So far, the findings rule out a solar flare or supernovae. What on gods’ green earth could produce enough ¹⁴C isotopes in the atmosphere to raise the global ¹⁴C measurement to nearly 20-times its nominal level?

            Modern radio and x-ray telescopes give us the ability to look through time and into space for remnants of massive astronomic activity. However, so far, nothing is visible from that epoch to indicate a supernovae or enormous influx of γ-rays or protons. Again, we are stuck with the questions: What? How? Where? And science has no answer and would most likely refute any supra-normal hypothesis. Therein lies a problem that makes me fickle about science and the pompous poise of our age.

Science is made weak by the same conceit that makes religion feeble. The self-assuredness to explain something away theoretically without factually bringing evidence to the table is the self-same arrogance religious institutions use to control and manipulate. “Hard” science often contributes its own heresies to the collective reality by making presumptions based on past experiments and data, which may have held true in the past, but don’t adequately account for the future model of understanding. Yet, it seems every other day, new information and data is presented that has us re-calculating, re-hypothesizing, and re-thinking our reality funnel.

No one is bringing answers or possibilities to the table. This kind of discovery makes me wish for a man like Charles Fort to step to the table with a wild talent for paranormal pronouncement. What fun lies in this reality if we take all the mystery out of it?

Cortexting Neurotifications

            Remember that rad (yes, I still use this word) house party you went to last Friday? Remember the totally suave status update you posted while the cute girl you were chatting up went to the bathroom? And those pictures! Who knew you could embarrass yourself so much that a complete stranger would catch it on film and tag your drunken face on Facebook.

Now imagine these feelings, physical states, and emotions presented in ways text characters and words could never express. What if the capacity to capture the psycho-emotive-physiological state of an experience was as easy as uploading a packet of information for another to receive and re-experience?

            I find myself discussing brain-control interfaces (BCIs), EEGs, eye tracking, and similar technologies quite frequently. These technologies will unequivocally reshape our understanding and techniques of computing and data interaction over the course of the next decade. Much like in the film Strange Days, I expect a day in the not too distant future, where a “status” update will be a complex data packet capable of recreating emotion, physical sensation, and psychological state through some readily accessible and affordable hardware medium. Perhaps we should call these experiential neurobiological updates neurotifications or cortexting.

            Of course, this brings a whole host of tricky and problematic questions to the table. Privacy, security, and accessibility all linger like dark shadows in the corner booth at a smoky bar when the adytum of the soul is exposed for the world to see and dissect. The discussions regarding privacy and security on social network platforms like Facebook (e.g. persona/profile hijacking for affiliate advertising, facial-recognition and tagging automation scripts, “phantom” accounts for agitation, etc.) present a whole generation with ideas more foreign to the human mind than any generation preceding could have ever imagined. These concepts may not dominate our thoughts on a daily basis, but it is hard to deny they’ve sown deep seeds and may bring forth a new dynamic in the eons-old vacillation between knowledge of self and knowledge of other.

            I can recall many times, sitting there staring at the blank update box, wanting to say something that might stir the same overwhelming emotion or feeling that put me in a “loss of words” state in the first place. Driven by some sick hope that if I were able to select just the right words, just the right rhythm, the right moment, that little box could bare my essence to others so they might understand. More often than not, I find the words and ideas chosen to communicate those candid thoughts presented in a solipsistic manner. Quick as I was to share that feeling, I often wipe the slate clean and go back to some other distraction or sublimation of emotion.

            It strikes me that the possibility of tapping into the neural network of the human body to advance the trend begun by social networking will have many folks up in arms. Oddly enough, I find myself wont to embrace and apply such a technology. However off-kilter it may seem to the reader, a part of me perceives such a wild technology fostering the capacity to achieve the effect social networking ought originally have been designed for: to put us intimately in touch with one another; to increase cross-cultural and pan-global understanding and empathy; and to dissolve the geo-political borders which parochial, xenophobic governments have put in place to barricade us from embracing the next phase of human evolution.

Truncating Communication via Space Travel

            “Splashdown successful!! Sending fast boat to lat/long provided by P3 tracking planes #Dragon.” – @elonmusk

            This Tweet changes many things. It changes the way we look at the future of space travel and exploration. It changes our perspective on what is possible once the individual endeavors to excel where the governing institution resigns to irrelevance and extinction in matters of exploration and discovery. Most importantly: it changes everything about the way we communicate.

            If you pay attention to technology and science trends (and how can you not in this day and age?) you probably know Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) put their flagship rocket, Dragon, into orbit last week. It delivered its payload to the international space station then completed re-entry yesterday, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean not too far off the coast of California.

            You might find yourself asking: “How does the future of private space exploration change the way we communicate?” Well, let me explain. It isn’t really the space exploration; it’s the Tweet. This transformative platform of communication isn’t exactly new. Twitter, SMS messaging, and Facebook have contributed significantly to this new paradigm. What I see as the impetus for future dissemination of information is that we’ve surrendered to this hyper-truncated method of communication. Complex thoughts, data, and emotion need to fit in 140 characters. This means conveyance is shifting towards rapid-fire exchanges of 0.14kb of data or less. Given the volumes of data we now handle on a daily basis, this seems, perhaps, miniscule.

            Take it one step deeper with me. To understand the Tweet at the beginning of this post, one needs to have an encompassing awareness of many trends and events for the context of the Tweet to make any sense. For most of us, this comes through our array of RSS feeds, hardcopy or digital newspapers, or word of mouth. Hold that thought for just a second: word of mouth? Whereas this predominantly shaped our means and method of communication of news for several centuries (post, social gossip, town crier), the advent of newspapers shifted that transference of information into high gear. The parturition of the Internet took that from high gear into interdimensional overdrive. I have to pause here for a moment, because I can only think of Spaceballs when Rick Moranis takes “Spaceball One” from ridiculous to ludicrous speed and says, “My brains are going into my feet!” That scene succinctly captures the feeling of what we face—word of mouth becoming near instantaneous, pan-global awareness in 140 bytes or less.

Twitter’s enmeshed use of the hash mark (#) and the ampersand (@) as identifying classes for objects, ideas, and persons is not groundbreaking. Anyone who has spent time developing with or learning an object-oriented programming language has experiential familiarity with these codifications. The uniqueness lies in the crossover from the cold, digital cyberworld into the neurobiological wetware of the human brain’s left hemisphere. We find ourselves trying to adapt to the staggering volume of information coming in; and in so doing, we’ve created shortcuts to navigate the cybersphere that cross-correlate to classifying identifiers in our own minds. This psychological matrix, to survive in the digital future, finds it necessary to produce routines and algorithms unique to each individual to keep pace with the data, events, and ideas coming in on all fronts.

Two years ago, I spent a semester teaching expository writing to college sophomores. I didn’t quite suspect it then, as I do now, but I knew we stood on the precipice of a huge shift in the linguistic structure of our verbal and written communication systems. When I discovered the first “u” as replacement for “you” in an academic paper, I was furious. It undermined the whole system of grammar and attention to language I fostered as truth just as a priest wields a Bible like a cudgel. However, I now see and accept this transition and shift in communication as inevitable. Just a few days ago, I was reading through an old historical record on the history of Witchcraft in the British Empire during the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Middle and Old English seem foreign languages in comparison to modern American or British English. Inevitably, future variations and linguistic aberrations will manifest, so the English of as little as five to ten years from now will in no way be recognizable. How else will we keep pace with complex communiqués in 140 bytes or less? 

Low-Tech Classified Ads

There is a growing awareness about two divergent paths our species could follow from this point in our bewildering milieu. The first presupposes that our technology will continue to advance exponentially toward beautiful (or perhaps terrifying) outcomes and horizons of possibility. The second shivers with the fear of a planet-wide collapse of society and technology, spiraling us into a new “dark age” of low technology and primitive social structures.

I follow Klint Finley’s blog, Technoccult, and appreciate his insight and attention to unfolding trends in technology and society. He recently began a thread with this question: “In a low-tech, post-apocalyptic world, what would you want your job to be?” I still haven’t found an answer to this question, but it began ticking at the back of my brain.

This question spiked to the forefront of my mind again yesterday, after receiving an email from my dear friend Carolyn, about low-tech booby traps setup alongside popular hiking trails in Utah. The article got me to thinking about another angle on Finley’s question; and made me pose my own: What if persons already committed to a low-technology future are already placing bids on their jobs in the post-apocalyptic world?

Our entire culture, at this very moment, is white knuckling the steering wheel into a tunnel with no light at the other end. Our collective future is shadowed by Fukushima, increasing tension and violence between “law” enforcement and citizens worldwide, and a persistent fear-based media that aims to unhinge citizens young and old and create divisive reefs between people who have more in common with each other than the governments who represent their interests (and I use that word loosely).

I’ll admit I’m not ignorant, or without consideration, of a possible low-tech society in our immediate future. During a conversation with a friend on his birthday last week, the notion of a “ten-year” plan popped up. He has two kids, seven and five-years-old, so for him, there is a stronger notion of a necessity to plan for the future. I’m single and have no children, but the concept hit me pretty hard. What will the world look like in ten years? What do I want my role in whatever world unfolds in ten years to be? How do I start placing my bid on that role now?

Tying rocks and spiked stakes to ropes in trees is definitely not the best answer. Neither is arguing moot political blunderings until we’re all blue in the face or parading in the streets alongside violence tourists. The only answer I’ve discovered to this point, is the same notion I’ve tried to build my life on for the past ten years: learn to be a boundless being in this culture which tries, with all its might, to incarcerate you, whether it be in a job, a house, or a tailor-made personality marketed on the web or television. It is up to you to decide your own role in the post-apocalyptic, zombified world, which is already upon us.

Diagnosis -- FREE Reaktor Ensemble!

I spent a few hours fooling around in Reaktor today and built this slick little wide-pan stereo modular synth. It has 2 oscillators, a multi-pass filter, and several modulation generators. Requires 5.6.2 update to work properly. Have fun!

Click to download.

Project Glass: Another step toward embracing the Godgle

            It isn’t exactly cutting edge news as the announcement managed to hit most media and press releases in early April of this year, but I think in keeping with my supporting the super-intelligence candidacy for Godgle, the Google Project Glass prototype deserves another look.

            I mentioned the science fiction author, Vernor Vinge, in a recent post and would like to visit a concept from his 1999 novel A Deepness in the Sky. The milieu for A Deepness is perhaps within a thousand years in an alternate dimension or universe to our own, as the technology is slightly advanced, but in many ways very similar. Without delving into a dissection of this fabulous novel and its plot (which I highly recommend!), I’d like to focus on one particular piece of technology Vinge envisions. In his book, Vinge refers to them as head up displays or HUDs. They are, by no stretch of the imagination, the exact same technology as Google’s Project Glass: glasses or goggles, which allow interaction with both local and wide-area networks through voice command and eye-tracking.

            Google unveiled this project to subtle fanfare. When we perceive how Bluetooth headpieces brought us fully into the futuristic musings of Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek transcoders, we can also see how this new project undertaken by Google will bring us into a whole new way of encountering and interacting with the datasphere. This is big-time stuff. This is going to make the iPhone, the iPad, and all other tablet and touch technologies look like the cave man who kept pushing rocks up a hill after another guy discovered the wheel.
             While the eye-tracking implementation may not have found incorporation into the design yet, I can assure you the technology exists and will find its way into the design shortly. Further attention and development with EEG and BCIs will allow technologies like Project Glass to take us directly into the virtual or augmented reality we are all collectively building on the web.

            Sergey Brin of Google appeared recently on the Gavin Newsom Show to demonstrate the technology. While we don’t get to see the user’s perspective, the brief interaction with this profound piece of R&D boasts a staggering future of computing possibilities.

            After seeing these specs in action, I can only stand out in the crowd waving my arms wildly in the air, yelling “Hire me to Google X Lab! I want to help design and conceptualize this kind of stuff, too!!”

The Future is Noisy: Where's my Filter Algorithm?

A few weeks ago, I underwent a special EEG test called a visual evoked potential (VEP). This test is designed to measure irregularities in cortical processing of visual stimuli. It is often used to help evaluate whether multiple sclerosis (MS) is a suspected diagnosis for abnormal visual and neurological symptoms. A cluster of EEG nodes are attached to precise locations on the back of the skull to measure the transference speed of voltages traveling from the occipital cortex while the subject’s vision is stimulated by the shifting inversion of a graphic pattern.

As I sat there staring at an old CRT monitor with a checkerboard pattern that center-terminated in a single red dot, I ruminated on the data filtering process of the technology that was about to measure my brain waves on the nano-volt level. I began wondering what capacities it might possess if the noise filtration were tuned to track the subtlest variations of thought, emotion, and sense. With ever increasing data filtration sets, we could soon use our brains to control a vast number of interactive and emotive technologies. Our emerging technologies, while vast and increasingly impressive, are lacking in creativity of application and humanity of scope. Once we can overcome hurdles of isolated focus, I expect that the data sets and filtration algorithms will advance at a dizzying pace.

I was reminded of that experience while reading through Twitter, Facebook, and blog feeds over coffee yesterday morning when I came across an article about the new ZeroN levitating interaction element on the Blind Giant blog of author Nick Harkaway. Harkaway makes an interesting statement about the direction of emergent technology and how “data is simply the world around us represented by a machine.” It strikes me, that all these interactive and wave-analysis technologies, once properly attenuated to the task, will give us an even broader understanding of data. Perhaps even a better understanding of what being “human” means.

Once I get rattling down this cyber-existential railroad, I cannot help but think of Heiddeger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology.” Every time I read this essay or attempt to teach it to students or share it with friends, I find myself plagued with thoughts that paint technology as a kind of bacterial parasite that decided to infect lower reptilian and mammalian critters to birth humans; and beyond that, eventually birth machines. Machination, automation, and the trend towards a digital reality coup d’état of the analog, in this light, seems like some poetic manifestation nature had planned all along.

On that note, I will leave you with a quote by George Dyson, author of Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence, which incoherently leaves me both terrified and awe-filled at the prospects of the future: “In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.”

The Technocore

Last week, a good friend of mine began a discussion on his Facebook page about how the human drive toward god-like omniscience and omnipresence is manifesting in the shape of technologies such as Google. The thread jokingly referred to the megalithic search engine and enterprising empire as “The Godgle.”

Over a year ago, I coined the term Godgle to many friends as a sort of humorous jab at the nebulous portal through which all information seems to flow. I am quite positive I was not the first to graft God to Google, nor was I first to have an inkling that the mega-company had indeed birthed something completely alien and, in some regards, deific.

I make no secret of the fact that I am a science fiction nerd and avid futurist. I fell in love with Ray Bradbury’s work as a child and spent the last thirty years consuming everything from Frank Herbet to Stanislaw Lem like an obese child eats cake with a glint of greed in his eyes. The transcendent computer demiurges hinted at in the works of Dan Simmons and Vernor Vinge, now seem more like prophetic utterances of the coming of Google than fantastic universes of speculative fiction; and with this month’s passing of California Senate Bill 1298, the Godgle takes one more step toward immortality by introducing “autonomous” vehicles completely at the mercy of algorithims, sensors, and computers.  

For the sake of imagination and argument, let’s suppose that author and futurist Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the future indeed comes to pass and a “singularity” will erupt at the point where exponential acceleration of information and technology tumble over each other to birth a super-intelligence. Godgle has the human resources necessary to burn midnight oil on the task: money, masterminds, and manipulators. It has the established framework: a global network of servers, users, and programmers. Last but not least, it has the undying attention of a global population thirsty for information based on an ever-expanding toolset, foresight, and opportunism.

Based on the available data and information at present, I hereby elect Godgle as most likely candidate for ascension to super-intelligence. Cast your vote!

Recent article on Percussa blog

Percussa, the creators of AudioCubes, featured my article for using their Improvisor software with iZotope's Stutter Edit to create unique glitching effects in your productions.

You can find the article here: Feral Glitch: Using Percussa's Improvisor with iZotope's Stutter Edit

Ableton Live: Resampling 101

This week we're taking a quick look at re-sampling. If you've been wondering how to bounce your stems to consolidate or simply reduce CPU load, this is the way to do it. Also a good way to streamline your production flow once you start hitting a "mix-down" stage in your tracks and songs.

Enjoy!

FeudalSounds #1

FeudalSounds #1: Previews by intergalactErrorist

FeudalSounds #1 is now available!

54 Drum Loops
IDM/Breakcore/Hip-hop/Experimental

10 Bass Loops
Analog/Spazzy/Textural

15 Synth/FX Loops
Keys/Atmospheres/Trippies

19 One shots (tonal)
FX/Synths/Bass/etc

All for CHEAP! $7-11 sliding scale.

This is the first installment in this series of samples and loops. Look forward to full 24bit/96khz in future and implementation for Maschine and possibly Kontakt.

On a budget?

I'm on food stamps $7.00 USD I'm rich, bitch! $11.00 USD

Outlook 2012!

Trying to land a slot, help me out by giving this mix a play and possibly a favorite if you dig it?

Cheers
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Outlook Festival 2012 demo mix by Batholiths on Mixcloud

Sampler and envelope automation

Today I've designed a Live Pack for all of you out there who have wondered how to mix and/or blend between effects racks using automation in your production sessions or live performances.

The pack is designed around a Dave Smith Instruments pulse wave sampled from the MoPho.

1) Download the DSI Acid Pulse Live pack.

2) Install the ALP in a convenient location (e.g. //Tools/)

3) Watch the video!


4) Feel free to send me your questions and comments.

Enjoy!

In these dark times...

There exists a crew of outrageous, loving beings from galaxies unknown who have come here to plant hope, joy, and uninhibited adventure in your heart. They arrive by intergalactic booty bus and will put on a show you'll never forget. Right now, they need a little help though. Even if it's only $5--they'll make it worth your while. I promise.

Beat and sample packages

I just began work on a collection of original beats and sample loops that I will be posting for sale through UPLOADnSELL.com and by PayPal one-time payment - they will be completely royalty free, and available for you to cut, chop, or simply drop in your original productions or DJ mixes and mashups. Various genres and styles will be covered from hip-hop, glitch, IDM, dubstep, and more.

Stay tuned for details...already got some seriously sinister beats that destroy!

Brain-music and emergent control technologies

When I was a little kid, I used to daydream and wonder about crazy, impossible things. As young as three, I remember stubbornly mulling over existential problems like: “if there is such a thing as God, then what God created that God?” Over the years, that tendency to dream big, crazy, and sometimes surreal things has proved itself a motivating force in my pursuit of challenging the limits of what is considered “impossible.”

By the time I reached my late-20s, I had become engrossed with electronic music and fascinated with this realm of music as it inched closer and closer to a synergetic immediacy between composer and computer. I found myself dreaming about the day I’d be able to connect my brain directly to a computer or synthesizer and transmute my thoughts, emotions, and the correlative harmonies and melodies they triggered in my head into a tangible waveform. And lo and behold…that day has arrived

My desire towards a “synergetic immediacy” is now mirrored in contemporary EEG and eye-tracking technology. The BBC released a short news reel video Tuesday on their website that takes a look at these rapidly developing technologies and their application as control devices for computers and interactive media.

What was once only dreamed of is becoming physically extent and apparent. As we further develop our understanding of the subtle bioelectrical circuitry of the brain, we will be able to provide more accurate tracking of thought, emotion, and concentration, thereupon breaking through the “impossibility” barriers of all fields of science, art, and present-day techno-culture. Only two years ago, Robert Schneider, a toy-hacker and musician from the band Apples In Stereo, created what he calls the “teletron.” His experiments and performances were covered in this Wired article.

Anyone who has ever experienced a psychedelic trip through the vast unknown territories of the human mind can only imagine what might be possible once we are able to reverse the journey of those brilliant, hyper-intense fractal landscapes that are traversed when music collides with an altered human bio-computer. When that wormhole of terror, delight, and vision can find its way conversely back through the connective apparatus (EEG and similar tech) that will soon bridge the internal microcosm with the external creative and engineering tools, who knows what kind of hyper-real macrocosm will be possible? We might find ourselves looking into some crazy existential mirror of another sort—watching our collectively “wired” culture creating the next offspring in a virtual world of light and sound, becoming gods in our own right, over the domain of the imagination and what it might manifest. Brain-music is only the beginning…

Welcome!

Welcome to the new intergalacterrorist blog! I've decided to take this blog in a new direction and use it as a platform to share my studio techniques and tricks.

I hope to provide aspiring DJs, producers, and fellow electronic music nerds with new ideas for working in the studio and helping to improve live performances.

Come back regularly as I will regularly be posting innovative tips, techniques, and ideas for sound design, synthesis, and beat production. Look forward to consistent articles, videos, and tutorials. I'll also occasionally post expansion packages of sounds and racks designed for use in Ableton Live and Native Instruments.

Please feel free to post comments requesting any specific questions you'd like addressed or techniques you'd like explained.

Stay wired.
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