Author: catsynth

Podcast correction

A serious “mybad moment” with the podcast series. The March 25 release “Charmer:Firmament from Woodstockhausen 2003” had the wrong audio file. I have now corrected the situation, and the proper audio is linked in.

Those who have already subscribed and downloaded the March 25 episode will probably have to either unsubscribe (as I did in iTunes) or perform some other acrobatics to get the updated audio.

The “incorrect” piece was an ensemble improv from 2004 that I may release in an upcoming episode, this time properly labeled and attributed.





New Podcast: Improvisation with Octave The Cat

Another Sunday, another podcast release. Tonight I present a short improvisation on the recently acquired Octave CAT synthesizer. I have been playing with this instrument now for several days and getting a better feel for both it's timbres, it can do some really smooth analog sounds and really glitchy complex elements as well. I try to cover both qualities in this performance. Enjoy!

I am also rolling out the new logo, part of reintroducing the podcast as “The CatSynth Channel.”








Moo-gee-O!

No, this article has nothing to do with Moog. Rather, it's just a story with a happy ending published by the local SPCA a month or so ago (unfortunately, they appear to have removed the link to the original PDF). Everyone needs a happy story now and then, even the rather dark and cynical characters who spend time on this forum.

A cat had been found in a San Jose alley nursing her kittens. She had been a victim of animal cruelty and had a 14-inch slash that extended from under her left arm to the end of her stomach. She had been rushed to an emergency vet hospital where surgery was performed to stabilize her and clean and repair her wounds.

Now it's possible that the 14-inch slash on the cat's belly was an accident, but it's more likely that it was a deliberate act of cruelty. What sort of sick, depraved, person slashes a poor kitty, let alone a mother with kittens? I suspect kids. Pro-lifers, take notice! Fortunately, the cat did recover from her wounds:

Although in pain and barely alive, Kitty continued to love and care for her three kittens. The staff at the humane shelter quickly realized this was a special cat as she was extremely sociable and quite the purr-box.

She was then transfered to the Santa Cruz SPCA, where she acquired the name Princess Mugio. Mugio is a Latin verb for groan/roar/bellow, and of course, “moo.” The following is a quote from the person who fostered her during her recovery:

Upon laying my eyes on this severely injured cat, a tremendous wave of sorrow came over me. I could not understand what would possess someone to commit such a heinous act. Here laid this helpless animal, weighing a mere five pounds, suffering from a fourteen-inch thoracicabdominal wound. Princess Mugio had done nothing to deserve such abuse.

Pro-lifers, take note a second time.

Happily, Princess Mugio did make a full recovery, and became quite a charmer:

Princess grew stronger and healthier with each day. She began to flourish. Her unique personality slowly emerged. She began conversing more, especially in the mornings and when I would return from work. It became clear she was a remarkably intelligent cat.

Sounds a lot like Luna, who is not only a “princess”, but is also quite the conversationalist in the morning and evening (when I get home from work).

Eventually, Mugio was ready for a permanent home, and was featured as a “Pet of the Week,” with her own ad in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. It stated: Deserving Princess Seeks New Castle. The link takes you to their archives.

Apparently it didn't take long for someone to give her that “castle” and what appears to be a happy ending to what could have been a very tragic story.









Weekend "CatSynth" Blogging #97: Luna and TX802

Weekend Cat Blogging crosses the CatSynth juggernaut:

Here we see Luna posing next to a Yamaha TX802.

The shine on her fur on this photo looks a lot like the cute black cat Puddy, who is hosting Weekend Cat Blogging #97 along Kate at A Byootaful Life.









Octave The Cat

Well, after months of trying to track one of these down, I finally have in my posession an Octave CAT!

Of course, I find myself wanting to write “Octave the Cat” because of the main “Octave / The Cat” fan site, and repetition of the phrase at matrixsynth and elsewhere.

It turns out to be in fantastic shape, both cosmetically and functionally. I brought it in to work on the grounds that it might need a little work, and instead we've been having a great time playing with it. No repair work necessary. A wonderful addition to the collection (and quite appropriate for this site, don't you think?)





Quagmire

No, not that quagmire!

Rather, I am talking about an interesting software art project in which programs exist within a bitmap. From the author:

Quagmire is an emulation of an impossible 8bit processor, where all memory is addressed in 2 dimensions, and is represented by pixel value. Program execution threads can run up, down, left or right. Sections of code are visible in memory, as are the processes as they run. Unlike a normal computer the internal process of the machine is visible. Programs are drawings.

The programs are executed by scanning pixels in the bitmap/drawing and interpreting them as instructions that can change the original bitmap, including the parts that are being “run.”

The best way to illustrate this concept is will an illustration, or rather, a series of illustrations:

In the above example, the “program” in the lower-left corner switches various pixels on and off, and spawns more copies of itself in the process. After running for a while, one ends up with four animated “stripes” of execution.

The program changes dramatically if the “non-executed” area of the image is different. For example, we can paste my “digital fish” logo onto the image and then run the program again:

The very orderly execution over the empty image becomes much more complex in the presence of the fish logo.

Although the complex changes in the image can seem random, they are completely deterministic. Running the same program/image in Quagmire yields the same result every time. Indeed, this can be seen as an example of chaos in which simple processes can produce incredibly complex results that may seem random but are completely deterministic.

Some images produce less complexity. Applying the same program to a picture of Space Ghost (who has appeared in several posts on this forum recently) causes a small number of changes after which the program comes to a halt:

By contrast, applying the program code to an image of Luna appears to grow ever more noisy and complex:


The Quagmire site has more detailed technical information about the programming language (more of a machine language) and an implementation in which you can run your own programs. You can also find links to more examples of “software art.”

It would be interesting to explore software art that uses audio in addition to (or instead of) visual images…