FECR Noisecast

openCV color test

2010-03-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

custom color filter from LukeNoonan on Vimeo.

Asterisk Video

2010-03-11T13:55:00.000-08:00

Asterisk 1 from LukeNoonan on Vimeo.

The Vimeo compression really butchered it but you get the idea.

The star of an upcoming project

2010-02-04T13:54:00.000-08:00

screenshots

2010-01-27T14:10:00.000-08:00

Some early screen shots from a work in progress.

More to come . . .

On Deep Listening

2010-01-23T07:28:00.000-08:00

Luke Noonan

Deep Listening

from December 8, 2008

I plan on sharing my journey into the process of Deep Listening. This journey has been one of growth, punctuated by a number of wonderful realizations.

I find myself in the lucky position of being able to study Deep Listening at the same time I am studying architectural acoustics. This juxtaposition has helped to provide me with a broad perspective on sound. The mechanisms of the ear are some of the most elegant bio-technical systems I have ever come across.
The outer ear reacts sound into the ear canal, both amplifying the sound as well as altering it slightly. Since the way sound bounces into the ear is different depending on direction and path, we can aurally locate an incoming sound based on its spectral characteristics. Just as the stereo image captured by the eyes allows us much stronger depth perception, we can use the stereo image coming into our ears to perceive both lateral location, as well as distance.

When I sit for a listening meditation the first thing I tend to do is to reach out perceptually and explore my sonic environment.

First my own breath and body noises.

Then, as I settle, I hear the inevitable sound of construction,

people in the hallways,

the ventilation system.

Then I really start to reach.

I hear what I imagine are voices of people outside,

perhaps people talking in the parking lot,

perhaps people yelling on the street up the hill.

I don't know if I am really hearing these sounds.

I can't really tell if or when the start and stop.

I seem to just remember them a moment later.

In the world of computer audio, additive synthesis is a process by which a sound wave is constructed by layering a number (sometimes a large number) of simpler sound waves together. This process allows a sound designer to use a few dozen sine waves to sound like a trumpet or an opera singer. This same process is at work every moment, just outside our heads.

There are no boundaries to sound.

It pervades every bit of space humans can inhabit.

Walls can't stop sound.

Other sounds can't stop sound.

No wall is perfectly rigid.

No substance is perfectly absorptive.

No place is ever silent.

Every moment your ear is receiving a sum of sounds from countless sources. Our ability to sort out those sounds is pretty amazing. By listening carefully and deeply, we can stretch our perceptual limits. We must listen with our entire bodies, both inside and out. This route can help us to see things that are obscure to many. Deep listening has allowed me to critically examine both how the world affects me as well as how I act on it. It is this listening that has helped to form the holistic spiritual/perceptual outlook I now hold.

Sound can provide a powerful framework with which to take in the world. By using sound to think about matter and energy, many interesting ideas fall out. Some Zen Buddhists use the analogy of waves to describe human existence. While each wave may seem distinct if one looks at the whole lake, the temporal dependence of those waves is clear. When we look at what sound is on a molecular level, there are a number of interesting parallels. Sound is traveling waves of air pressure. There is no static sound. Just like the waves on the lake or people walking the earth there is no sound without time.

The world is a messy place.

So much energy is spent attempting to clean it up.

Think of how much we spendon Hi-Def, noise removal, with better filters and better lenses.

Pitch corrected, Hi-Fi, acoustically insulated and isolated, quantized and color adjusted purity.

Science itself is always chasing the micro, the nano, the atomic, subatomic, the pure. To science, understanding the smallest unit is to understand everything. But there is no atomic unit of sound. You can scale, quantize, and magnify as much as you like, but in the end the only way you
can listen is holistically.

There are two very similar looking computers in the lab. I have to use them both, but since they are attached to the same monitor, I always have to lean way in and listen to the hard drives to tell which one is which before I put a disk in the drive. I start a program and then listen for the faint whine of a drive spinning up. Then I crawl further under the desk to get closer to the other machine. Once I'm sure, I put the disk in and wait for it to load.

The acoustics lab is an interesting place. Since the walls are all acoustically treated, you have to make a lot of sound before anyone can hear you in the next room. The quiet is often very calming. With minimal extra sound to draw on your attention, its easy to focus on the task at hand, but in a dead space like the lab, time seems to pass a little differently. With few windows
and no outside sounds, time seems to hang in that space while it slips along quickly outside.

When I step out into the parking lot I take a deep breath.I feel the cool city air and my eyes adjust to the lights of the evening cityscape.

I hear a car splash along the street and pull up to the stoplight.

The muffler of a beat up sedan roars through the intersection, I hear it echo off the buildings as moves down the block.

Eventually it fades into the muted evening sound scape.

Artists like Francisco Lopez and R Murray Shaffer talked about blind listening, listening without seeing the source of the sounds. I really like this idea. Pierre Shaffer's concept of acousmatic listening focuses on the sounds themselves, not on their origin. This acousmatic listening allows us to think about sounds we hear for what they are, as opposed to thinking about them based on what we know about their origin. After all, our ability to decode incoming sounds is amazing, but ultimately limited.

Lopez wrote:

The birdsong we hear in the forest is as much a consequence of the trees or the forest floor as it is of the bird. If we listen attentively, the topography, the degree of humidity of the air, or the type of materials in the topsoil become as essential and defining of the sonic environment as the sound-producing animals that inhabit a certain space.

Deep Listening has helped me to listen to sounds, the actual sounds themselves, not the meanings and information they represent.

More and more often I find myself on the receiving end of quizzical stares as I talk about sounds. I have been known to stop in the middle of a sidewalk to listen to airplanes.

Is everything OK?

yea . . . listen

to . . . ?

That twin engine. The engine harmonics are shifting so much, it must be windy up there. Isn't that cool?

yea. Can we keep walking?

As I learn more and more about recording and computer audio I have gained the ability to create a wide variety of sounds. One might think that this knowledge might take some of the wonder out of listening but I would argue the opposite. I can synthesize sounds a dozen different ways but I still stop to listen to the echoes when I cut through alleys. I know what I am hearing has never been heard before. Its a soundscape that was built by everything around me, the whole city, the whole world.

As I sit in my living room I hear a low frequency rumbly sound.

If pressed on it, I would guess it was a car or truck driving through my neighborhood.

But I can't know that.

Seeing is Believing they say.

But what should I believe about the light coming through my blinds?

I can't be sure that sound was a car driving in front of my apartment, or a truck around the block.

I am not saying our ears are not worth of our trust, because I feel they are.

In the end I can't say with certainty much about the world.

What I can talk about is how I engage the world, how the world engages me.

Everything we perceive is through incalculably complex filters.

I don't know about headlights and mufflers I know about lights and sounds.

Science is a powerful thing. It is our most powerful tool, with which to predict the world around us. When I let go of my guitar, science says:

It's going to travel to the floor.

It will strike the floor.

That collision will cause the strings to vibrate relative to the pickups.

That vibration will be induced as electrical systems.

And the amp will vibrate a speaker to play some wonderful dissonant tones.

Eventually those tones will reach my ears.

Science doesn't make those things happen. But it does suggest to me that they will. Just as I can’t know everything about the voices I hear outside my window, I can't ever be certain of what will happen. That uncertainty could be terrifying. But everyday the world keeps moving, keeps vibrating, keeps making sound.

For me, Deep Listening is not about hearing better. It's not about hearing more. Its about engaging with sound earnestly and honestly. Its about perceiving more than what is around us. Its about accepting the world for what it is, and us for what we are. Deep Listening has helped me appreciate the world for the wild mess it is.

Topographic maps

2010-01-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

I am currently taking a class on mapping (as well as other things) the idea for this sketch came to me in that class.
First I generate a 2D perlin noise field (using example code by Daniel Shiffman)

Then I filter the image and where the (brightness of the pixel)%20 is less than a certain threshold (in this case 2) I draw black pixel
After that comes the fun part: playing with the colors.
One could fairly easily do this with other height-fields
I like the idea of creating topographic maps for use in game. I am also playing with the idea of procedurally texturing a digital landscape to match a topographic map.

2009-12-23T14:17:00.000-08:00

I was cleaning out some old files and I came across video of this processing sketch. It was an experiment with rudimentary feature tracking.

Image Shift from LukeNoonan on Vimeo.

Space Invaders

2009-12-14T21:46:00.000-08:00

I just posted a new game little game project.
I would embed it but its a little bigger so instead I will point you to openprocessing where it lives.

Reimagining Space Invaders

This was a project for my computer graphics class. I was re-designing space invaders via re-creation.

More game-ish news coming soon.

Gaming in the Expanded Field

2009-12-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

I am proud to announce a new website I am starting.

Gaming in the Expanded Field

This is a collaborative effort to advance the discussion of modern gaming via the discussion of modern gaming. In my first semester here at UB I have met a ton of really cool people. A bunch of those cool people are interested in studying and/or making games. This site will involve a number of those people.

Expect good things.

Speaking of good things, I will be playing a set at the End of Semester Graduate Student Show. on Thursday Dec. 10. The show will be in the Media Study grad studio in the Center for Fine Arts on the UB campus. our show starts at 9:00 pm but the undergrad show will be happening directly before down the hall. Come early and check out some of my students work.

Event Pictures from Frequencies

2009-11-22T22:10:00.000-08:00

So I have been doing a lot of Event photography this weekend. 3 Shows. These are a few from the third.
Frequencies was put on by the intermediate sound art class in my department. The show turned out really well.
I also did some photo work for The Crack Horse to check those out and their new website (designed my yours truly) head to www.thecrackhorse.com

Letter flock

2009-11-14T13:32:00.000-08:00

An interactive poetic piece.

Click to add more letters.

Simulation Sketch

2009-10-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

This didn't scale well click the link to see it run in all its glory.

screenshots

2009-10-14T13:58:00.001-07:00

I wanted to post an update on some software I am working on. Often when I find myself talking about a project, I really wish I could just show someone a picture, or at least draw a diagram. (Unfortunately the hallway or bus where the conversation is happening is almost never equipped with a white-board. ) I wanted to write a little bit about this project and I figured some screen-shots would help the process.

Most of my programming across the past few months has been dedicated to developing modular tools for bigger projects. These screen-shots are from a prototype for a live improvised text environment. Ultimately I see this becoming an open-source tool, to enable poetic/visual/audio improvisation.
As I am settling in to the Media Studies department here at UB, this is looking like it may be my next big project.

Right now I have not yet implemented video support or network capabilities. Network next then video. Now that I have access to an equipment room again I have started to collect imagery. I am of the opinion that the best way to test something like this is to use it, so hopefully I will be doing that soon.

For those that are interested in some of the technical bits:
The program is written in Processing
The UI is done with the controlP5 library
The text is handled with the RiTa library
The photos are all shot by myself on a Nikon-DX40.

2009-09-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

I was playing with some OpenGL shapes in Processing. I was working on a sketch which was reliably producing the image below.
At this point I went to make some grilled cheese for dinner. I had left the sketch running on screen.
When I came back I found the sketch below. I believe the "issue" is that I am not refreshing the screen during the draw cycle and the trig code is causing my points to drift. I personally think the runaway code looks much cooler. (now if I can figure out how to look like that without waiting 15minutes I'll be all set)

Experiences like this make me glad to work with code.

Yellow OpenGL Flower

2009-09-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

done in:
python + OpenGL

A Deep Listening Haiku

2009-07-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

the chaos of air
the wave crashes through the sea
a sound passes by
-Luke Noonan (2009)

Fun with Grass

2009-06-16T15:51:00.001-07:00

Particle systems are so cool. I came across this awesome tutorial, Which I uses to produce the above image. I recommend it if you are at all interested in doing particle based hair/grass/fur in Blender.

By the way, Blender 2.49 just dropped. Which makes me excited for the big 2.5.

Machine Dreams

2009-06-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

In case any of my readers happen to be in South Korea this month, you should stop by Space CAN and Media Space at Soongsil University. I don't know which space my piece will be at, but there should be lots of cool work including some by Kyle McDonald and others.

a nunnery thought her antipapal ...

2009-06-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

I am playing around building software that writes sentences. Here are some conversational highlights:

the nonregimental Qubecois gratulatorily let in the Delaware.

Kazue limpingly handed Conti to the Peralta.

Walter nonflirtatiously represcribed Huggins.

And my favorite:

Mia and Mia yakety-yakked sycophantishly.

More to come on this project later

Neural Constellation

2009-06-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Finally some documentation of my thesis project.

Neural Constellation from LukeNoonan on Vimeo.

The mind is an inscrutable thing. Science can tell us exactly how a neuron operates, but it cannot even start to explain why we love, hate, hope or dream.
Neural Constellation is a pulse-based neural network created using circuit boards and microcontrollers. This system is modeled after neurons in the human brain. Each of the independent neurons communicates with flashes of light. Forming an interconnected neural tissue.
Unlike most computing systems, this one is not kept constantly busy with endless calculations. This is a mechanical brain at rest, blinking away in peaceful slumber: dreaming.

This work is now headed to a show in South Korea called Machine Dreams (my page). Curated by Byeong Sam Jeon and Haru Ji.

Thesis Show

2009-04-23T06:05:00.001-07:00

I will be showing my thesis this week.

Tubes

2009-04-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

Quick break from thesis work, done in processing.

perlin noise cloud

2009-04-05T00:29:00.000-07:00

A processing Sketch.

Each frame is a slice of perlin noise cloud. The arrow keys change the scale of the noise (left/right is the x and y, up/down is the z).

If you haven't had a chance to look around over at Openprocessing.org I would recommend doing so. They just re-launched and the site is sporting lots of nice new features.

PCB

2009-03-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

So my thesis is going up in the West Hall 111 gallery at the end of April.

Here is the layout for my Neuron PCB.

The PCB order is away. When they come in, assembly will start.

Thesis Update

2009-03-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

A few pictures from my thesis project.

I am currently in the prototyping stage. Hopefully I can place the parts orders and start assembling soon.
The cheap random assortment of photo-sensors and a similarly cheap and similarly random batch of LEDs for testing. The first batch of ATtiny13s waiting to be programmed.