Jamie jamie.hurlbut ....................................... ............. . . ............. ............. ............. ....................................... ........ ... ... ........ ...... ... ... ...... ................ ..... ................ ............. ..... ............. ....................................... www.hurlbotics.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
While reading the swarm article on New Scientist's site, I couldn't help
but notice the link to the latest exploits of the "dj's deejay", HPDJ . It
seems he's added biofeedback and genetic algorithms to his belt of
turntable wizardry. All the users-- I mean, all the dancers, wear wireless
monitors that tell HP their location, heartrate, and how fast they're
moving. The british passions for surveillance and clubbing have come
together at last! HP then feeds this info to it's genetic algorithms as a
fitness test for which combination of track elements "survive". It looks to
me like this gadget is reaching that critical stage of hype where it's
inventors start throwing every buzz technology at the thing to just keep
it standing, and I imagine it will crash soon. From my somewhat limited
exposure to genetic algorithms I'd imagine that there isn't enough time in
a dj's set to get enough generations to achieve any meaningful mutation and
natural selection results, and you would need a very large audience to have
a suitable population size. Anyways, the author fails to examine what would
really make-or-break HPDJ, the contents of the database of musical elements
that it uses to construct its set, and the way the biofeedback data is
interpreted. I think if computers really did take over djing (ha ha, maybe
when a rat's brain can be controlled with a computer ;) ) then there would
still be alot of room for artistic/creative, i.e. "human" intervention in
these two aspects. The artist would simply shift his role in the process,
but be just as important to the final product. My 2 cents.
