19/04/22
I am so easily tempted by Keyboard Maestro and MetaGrid Pro to be making shortcuts and macros all the goshdarn time. This is my only criticism of using these tools (- it’s similar to my issues with Notion…).
To be clear, it’s a criticism of myself, not the tool. If I see a way to shortcut something for future me, the pull of it is too strong. The promise of future efficiency trumps getting on with the hard task of just doing the work right now.
I’m only human.
I have various methods to avert this, none of them very effective, eg
- Mindfulness training – notice the thought, acknowledge the thought, release the thought
- Writing it down – I do this but then it ends up languishing on the master-task-list-of-doom and never gets done. I know this, so I’m really averse to using it. I have to accept that there are other things more important and I may never get to the point where this nice little task can get done.
And making a macro in KM and MGP is so easy. There’s no friction. But, of course, I digress.
—
An idea I had has been fleshed out (sort of). I call it Constellated.
I had another idea a while back – 30 Seconds of Lovely – and I still want to revisit it but i don’t really know what it’s for yet. Why it is. Who it’s for (or if it’s just for me). What I might do with it. Still turning it over in my mind.
Back to Constellated.
- “We are star stuff”.
- The connections we feel are all in our minds; the distinction between what is real and what is not is blurred, and hard to pin down.
- Why do we cling to fiction when the reality is so much more magnificent and awesome and terrifying (the last is probably why)?
- What is the source of the sound that I use?
- The ‘real sound’ (I think I mean vibration) of things vs
- interpretation of cold data vs
- the emotional tone of a sound created for its own sake.
Maybe all three?
But audified or sonified data in itself is not that interesting – it’s gurgles and clunks and white noise and splats. It’s sound, but not musical in and of itself. And when it’s interpreted into music it’s so arbitrary that the source doesn’t really matter anymore. The sonification of data is a nice idea but in practice it’s not that inspiring to me.
So maybe I’m not after that.
So I’m not looking for data. Instead, it’s what I think it feels like it sounds like.
Since I am starstuff, after all, just like everything on this planet, so I’m probably qualified.
Decision made – the sonification of data is not of interest to me.
Perhaps I’ll use an image as input or inspiration, but I’m not focussed on interpreting ‘reality’. It’s more of a feeling. A personal representation, perhaps.
Not that fussed about asterism stories (astrological constellation stuff). They still feel arbitrary. Is it the ‘constellations’ created in the mind of the listener that I’m after?
Or the illusion of connectivity… or the flimsiness of it?
Humans are driven to recognise patterns, seeing connections everywhere.
But the reality is only ever imaginary. Is reality itself imaginary, as we know it?
Hmm. Not sure what I’m getting at but there’s something here.
20/04/22
I’ve sketched an idea but it doesn’t quite fit this brief.
It’s mostly ambient and beautiful and smooth and like a straight-line-wash of scintillating (is that the right word for it?) sound. It’s very major/western tonality (but that is very me, so I don’t see it as necessarily a bad thing or wrong). Like a non-randomly-shaped nebula – regular, artificial. It’s not constellated.
I’m going to look at constructing varied and variable star ‘sound objects’, then at ways of connecting them up.
I think also some sort of surround emulation to give the impression of a boundless sky.
A sort of twinkling, glittering, sharp edge. Radiation. Simultaneously dangerous and life-giving, at a distance.
Each ‘star’ or point of ‘light’ has a tail or attaching thread that’s made of or extruded from the star’s material, and the sound quality stretches, blends and morphs into the next star.
—
I made three v rough ‘stars’, popped them in Logic’s sampler, automapped it, turned on ‘one shot’ for each, and now it’s an adorable, christmassy instrument that may not be completely on brief but, my, it has cheered me up.
Might think more on the source of my audio…
21/04/22
SO the threads do not have to be linear. They aren’t literal beams of light. They are the feeling of connection.
22/04/22
Is it hard to tell the meandering threads and the static stars apart at some point?
When the threads coalesce into something beautiful or terrifying, do they become a star, the way matter collapses in on itself and the gravity well it creates ignites a fusion reaction?
What is the relation of the threads to the stars and vice versa? The indistinction of the two? The causality?
I suspect this might become more clear from the process of building.
Nice to imagine it though.
