My research has progressed, and now rather than using a simple PC speaker my software outputs MIDI information. That can then be interpreted by all means of other software, or even hardware synthesisers to actually turn the data into sound. Also I’ve stopped using this blog as the data source, I’ve actually obtained a months worth of web server log data. This has given me about 7 million records to use as my data set. Due to the way the software processes data the amount of time that it would take to “play” is equal to the amount of time that data took to collect. So, the months worth of data I’m using currently would actually take 1 month to listen to. Here’s a few excerpts from my current set up.

Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4

The “rules” that the software adheres to are as follows.

• MIDI note is determined by an addition of each segment of the clients IP address, which is then divided by 8. The reasoning behind this is that there are 128 possible MIDI notes. The sum of IP address segments has 1024 different possibilities. 1024 / 8 is 128; so this calculation will always provide a valid MIDI note.
• Length of note is determined by looking at the length of time in between web requests. This means in busy periods the software produces lots and lots of notes, whereas at quiet times (in the middle of the night) very few notes are played.

In time I’d like to further develop the system, exploring using other things as parameters with which to modulate aspects of the synthesis. One idea is to look at the geographical location of the client and then alter the sound accordingly in some way. This could work very well with a multiple speaker set up. Also plugging the system into the live log data would be really exciting.

A further development would introduce a visual element to the software. Illuminating variou screen sections according to IP address processing, like the audio. I haven’t looked into that as yet though..! It would probably mean transferring the MIDI processing code from VB into Processing; no bad thing me thinks.

Hmmm.

- Update, I’ve just hacked together a webserver that will make my laptop beep everytime there is a hit on it. So- if you’re reading this then make my PC beep by clicking here.

One possible approach would be to use web activity as the data source.

How about a website that produces a tone. The frequency of the tone could be denoted by the number of visitors – or some other factor that is effected by the visitation. Java.. Get Sam to help!

I failed to go to a party at Lo Recordings, which Leo invited me to, which was annoying. As it happened I made it to Old Street, and was waiting for a bus there, when my mobile phone died. It took with it the address I was going to, the contact numbers of the people there and any chance of finding the place. So I took the tube back to Fulham where I was staying. Effectively making a 2 hour round trip to nowhere. Making matters worse the travelling between Fulham (West) and Central & East made it impossible for me to go and see the first ever Starting Teeth gig – which was another annoyance.

On the plus side, I briefly met both members of Starting Teeth and Nathan Fake in some bar on Brick Lane. And indeed, it was the first time I’d ever been to Brick Lane so that was cool too….

Back to the point – when I was in London I also went to the Tate Modern and had a good look round. It was really good. I’m normally not the most attentive person, when looking round an art gallery, I have a relatively low boredom threshold – whether the art is good or bad – but here I was interested for the whole 2 hours or so I spent there.

However the best part was the bookshop. Now I’m not a big reader at all. In fact in the last 5 years I’ve probably read about 3 books. I used to read more, commuting almost makes reading a must. Due to having recently finished my University dissertation (or ‘extended essay’) I’ve had my head in a few books and a lot of websites, and have kind of got the bug a little bit again. So I found this book “Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow” (Victoria Vesna) – which I’m still reading – but I came across an interesting piece by Nancy Paterson, the stock market skirt (live webcam animation shown below).

In really simple terms, it works by tracking the stock market. The higher the market goes, the higher and tighter the hem line of the skirt gets. I think what began with Net artists in the 90s has brought about a boom in networked installations, like Paterson’s skirt. I guess the boom in networking and computing in general probably goes hand in hand with that though.

I’m interested in using Twitter – a kind of micro-blogging website – as the data source for a similar piece. The idea of using real world data, especially things that are easily accessible, and creating something more physically tangible out of it is a really interesting concept and a good area for artistic exploration.

I was talking to Sam – who plays in post-rock band Fridge – at mine and my sisters joint birthday party, at our parents house in Yorkshire. Unfortunately I was a little drunk, and so our conversation is now obscurred by a thin blanket of imparement, but I remember thinking it was great at the time. Inspite of the drunkeness I have retained some of what we talked about. One key point that came up is that a lot of my work utilises the network effect. Its silly really, I knew my work was using it, indeed using it was the point, but I hadn’t really thought about the network effect as an individual entity. More of a by-product. Pretty simply the network effect refers to how one good ‘user’ can have a positive effect on the system as a whole. I think it’s normally used in economics and business, it’s also a really good analagy for the so called ‘Web 2.0′ – something I wrote about a lot in my dissertation.

We also talked about the value of data and the power that it holds. Facebook, Digg, Delicious, MySpace; all gathering unimagineable quantites of data about their users. Amazon gathering precise statistics of how people use their services, in order to better tailor them toward people making purchases. For the big web players, it’s a data game and a numbers games. The data is the value, but its only valuable in numbers, but the numbers are there.

And what about thinking laterally about data. Below the surface there are often hidden depths. A little like Deep Thought concluding that “the answer” is 42; it makes sense, but only if you know what the question is. Data often seems to be relatively useless but if you ask it the right questions then it will come into focus. Sam mentioned a paper (that I think he wrote) whilst studying at Harvard. By specifying some, apparently strange, criteria the paper defined a way that you could identify the poorest economies in the world by using Google Earth.

I can’t remember what most of the criteria actually were, but they included things as seemingly random as ‘if the capital city’s governmental district has a high density of small blue patches in it’ and ‘if the capital city is obscurred by clouds’. The first suggests a poor economy because it signifies that high ranking government figures have swimmingpools, possibly indicative of corruption which is more commonplace in poor nations. The second point is because the satellite or plane that captures images for Google Earth will likely not return to recapture cloud obscurred pictures over the poorest nations.

It’s just very interesting to get underneath the ‘bonnet’ of data and to try and look at it in unusual ways. More on that later.