Comments on: Microsounds: Compressed Sound Art to Amuse, Shock, and Confuse

By: peter kirn entertains with Microsounds:… « lickableclickables

peter kirn entertains with Microsounds:… « lickableclickables — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:36:34 +0000

[...] kirn entertains with Microsounds: Compressed Sound Art. nice. [...]

By: waveplant

waveplant — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:51:42 +0000

i’d be interested to know more about the compression algorithms.
do they work in reverse?
are we hearing all of the material or just bits and pieces?
i realize that it probably wouldn’t sound all that different either way based on what the ear can perceive, but execution & presentation in this type of conceptual art are some of the most important criteria in determining its success.

By: analoq

analoq — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:21:11 +0000

I’m not sure whether it’s supposed to be serious or not, but either way I liked it.

By: ross

ross — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:34:22 +0000

Of course without the explanations the sound has no meaning, but with explanations it’s an intelligent humour. It doesn’t disturb me that it’s no visual art, I don’t think that’s important.

By: Anig Browl

Anig Browl — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:24:26 +0000

Put me in the unimpressed camp. Leaving aside whether you like the music aspect (which is OK), if you listen without the video and don’t know the context, there’s nothing in any of these samples that gives you even the remotest sense of what makes one thing different from another.Beethoven and Britney Spears are reduced to the same level of meaninglessness…and so on.

Really, what we’re hearing here tells use more about whatever sound editor (and its mathematical code with its cumulative rounding errors) than it does about the content that’s put through it. I really like the idea, but the execution is dreadful and uncreative. What would be interesting (and I hope the artist will pursue some other avenues) would be to ‘normalise’ these disparate audio sources to the same length and then modulate, convolve, vocode, or otherwise blend them together.

It’s like Looking at google Earth – occasionally you see a blob that might be a person, but since you can’t tell you don’t much care.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:32:22 +0000

Yep, yep. If you don’t take this thing too seriously, it’s fun. If you appreciate that compressing things this much makes them meaningless, it’s fun. To me, it’s less about the content and more about the perception of time… remember the Beatles in Yellow Submarine pointing out just how long 60 seconds can be? I feel this can do that with even one second.

I appreciate everyone offering up this other work; some great stuff. That’s the idea … just to start a discussion. I always figure the post is half the story, and your comments are the other half. ;)

By: rhowaldt

rhowaldt — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:10:15 +0000

execution. and is it agree with, on or to? confused. (not native English)

By: rhowaldt

rhowaldt — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:09:13 +0000

conceptually i think it is very good, and with a sense of humour. i must agree however, with the fact that the exection in video is very, very ugly. but i guess the guy is not a visualist.

By: Kyle McDonald

Kyle McDonald — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:54:09 +0000

I feel like being familiar with this approach helps a lot. I don’t think it’s supposed to be taken “seriously”, it seems more like an over-the-top parody of time-compression based work.

By: Michel Rouzic

Michel Rouzic — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:07:06 +0000

Not to be pedantic or anything, but from from hearing the speeded up sounds I’d say the technique used to speed up sounds actually keeps a very small amount of the original sounds. That’s why it sounds more like fast forwarding on a CD.

I realised that a couple of years ago when using ARSS (the command-line predecessor to Photosounder) I tried speeding up speech between 10 times and 100 times and realised when you keep all the sound info and actually compress it instead of discarding then it sounds a lot more bubbly.

Here’s an example of George W. Bush’s 2008 State of the Union Address speeded up 100 times so it only lasts about 30 seconds http://arss.sourceforge.net/examples.shtml#Bush