My Little Grundgestalts

originalmusic

...is an algorithmic composition of mine — the sounds that you can hear are produced by instruments that play notes selected by an algorithm.

The algorithm simulates matches from a traditional game of cards known by the name Beggar-my-neighbour (also known as Strip Jack Naked).

Every match is defined by the cards that are shuffled and then given to two players, whom I call Neal and Jack.

The pack of cards is not the “standard” pack. It only has 12 cards, by the following face values: two 0s, one 3, two 5s, three 7s, one 8, and three 9s. Six cards are given to Neal, six cards to Jack, and they start playing.

Where does the music come from? From the states of the game, represented by Neal's cards, Jack's card, and the card that are being stacked “on the table” by the two players. Those states are interpreted as numbers, and those numbers select notes.

Sounds complex, though it is actually very simple to code. The simulator, e.g., is available here, while the note selection code is defined here.

Now, if you consider the states of the games as coordinates in a space, what happens exactly? That the progress of the game becomes... a set of points in that space!

And that's what you have in this videoclip: what you see is the set of all possible states, plotted as a set of unit spheres. The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is used to create the frames of the videoclip, in which the position of the observer is slowly changed at each time step so as to create the illusion of movement. The video was created with the Permutation Feedpovray tool.

If you like this music, you may want to download a lossless version of it from my bandcamp. There you may find a lot of my compositions. And if you like them too, maybe you could subscribe to my list and be informed of the new songs I add there.

A “like” to my page would also be great ^_^ Thanks very much!

  • Eidon.

#Eidon #Teleology #NorbertWiener #Cybernetics #OriginalMusic

#Iwakura

Everything is sacred in Japan. Rivers, animals, objects, places — all deserve respect, for they can be associated with the divine. In particular, they can be gates, like torii, that lead to the dimension of the divine. Therefore it is no surprise that even a stone can be a door, an opening to the Other Side.

“Iwakura” (岩倉) is the name of certain sacred stones used to summon the Kami — the gods of Shinto. And Iwakura is also the family name of the protagonist of Serial Experiments Lain, a very special anime that tells the story of young girl that becomes the Doorstep between the physical world and The Wired, namely,

“a virtual realm that contains and supports the very sum of all human communication and networks, created with the telegraph, televisions, and telephone services, and expanded with the Internet, cyberspace, and subsequent networks.” (wikipedia)

But to me, “Iwakura” has a third meaning: it is the door between my inner “music-world” — the music inside of me — and a set of sounds that I can organize in the physical world.

So here it is to you, my Iwakura!

https://eidon.bandcamp.com/track/iwakura

#Iwakura #Japan #Lain #SerialExperimentsLain #Torii #Music #originalmusic

Okonai is the rite of marriage between the rice fields and the mountain, which represent the world organized by man and the Absolutely Free world of Nature:

“There is an ancient rite, the okonai (行ない), which clearly expresses, in the symbolic language of the ceremony, the cultural perception of sacred space, based on overcoming the opposition between the two dimensions of the ecosystem that characterizes daily village life: the rice fields and the mountain. On the night of the first of the year, the village heads of households climb up to the slopes of the mountain. On the edge of the forest they draw a sacred perimeter. The tōya 当屋, the religious and social leader of the village, enters it, holding two wooden statues representing one the mountain goddess (Yama-no-kami, 山の神) and the other the god of the rice field (Ta-no-kami, 田の神). The tōya joins the two statues symbolizing their sexual union, pours sake, the symbol of semen, on their sexes, and declares them to be newlyweds. Everyone then presents offerings to the deities and the officiant reads norito 祝詞, a prayer formula. Sake is then distributed to each person, and the offerings are divided and consumed. The village chief makes possible the union between the deities who define the two different spaces, of the cultivated and the wild, and seals the harmony between humans and nature. The dichotomy of these economically and culturally distinct worlds is not perceived as a rigid opposition, a distinction that denies any possibility of an exchange relationship; it is expressed in the terms of a necessary complementarity. Everything in this ritual is mediation: mediation of spatial patterns because the ritual takes place at the boundary point between the last rice fields and the forest. And mediation of time, because the ceremony marks the transition from one year to the next, between the cultivation cycle that has passed and the one that is to begin; it is the last hours of the night when the rite begins and, when it ends, it is dawn.”

(Massimo Raveri, “Classical Japanese Thought,” Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, ISBN 9788806165871).

Two worlds becoming one; the transition from night to day, from the old to the new, from the mystical to the carnal: all this struck me in no small measure. I then thought of writing a piece of music dedicated to this propitiatory rite. And so here is Okonai, an algorithmic composition generated from the two seed strings “tanokami” and “yamanokami.” It can be downloaded from my #bandcamp here. I hope you're going to enjoy it!

The photos, so beautiful in my opinion, are by Kanemori.

#Japan #Shinto #OriginalMusic #AlgorithmicComposition #Grundgestalt #Eidon

“Vi è un rito antico, l’okonai (行ない), che esprime con chiarezza, nel linguaggio simbolico della cerimonia, la percezione culturale dello spazio sacro, fondata sul superamento dell’opposizione fra le due dimensioni dell’ecosistema che caratterizza la vita quotidiana del villaggio: le risaie e la montagna. La notte del primo dell’anno, i capifamiglia del villaggio salgono fino alle pendici della montagna. Sul limitare della foresta essi tracciano un perimetro sacro. Il tōya当屋, il capo religioso e sociale del villaggio, vi entra, tenendo in mano due statue di legno che rappresentano una la dea della montagna (Yamanokami, 山の神) e l’altra il dio della risaia (Tanokami, 田の神). Il tōya congiunge le due statue simboleggiando la loro unione sessuale, versa sui loro sessi del sake, simbolo del seme, e li dichiara sposi. Tutti allora presentano alle divinità le offerte e l’officiante legge norito祝詞, una formula di preghiera. Il sake è quindi distribuito a ognuno, le offerte sono spartite e consumate. Il capo del villaggio rende possibile l’unione fra le divinità che definiscono i due diversi spazi, del coltivato e del selvatico, e suggella l’armonia fra gli uomini e la natura. La dicotomia di questi mondi economicamente e culturalmente distinti non è percepita come un’opposizione rigida, una distinzione che nega qualsiasi possibilità di rapporto di scambio; essa si esprime nei termini di una necessaria complementarietà. Tutto in questo rito è mediazione: mediazione degli schemi spaziali perché il rito si svolge nel punto di confine fra le ultime risaie e la foresta. E mediazione del tempo, perché la cerimonia segna il passaggio da un anno all’altro, tra il ciclo di coltivazione che è trascorso e quello che deve iniziare; sono le ultime ore della notte quando il rito comincia e, quando finisce, è l’alba.”

From Massimo Raveri, “Il pensiero giapponese classico”, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, ISBN 9788806165871.

Image by かねのり 三浦 from pixabay.

Music © Eidon. All rights reserved.

If you like this music you might consider following on my bandcamp

My blog collects a few of my Grundgestalts.