follow-up to this post "Pixelh8’s work “Obsolete?” is a audio and visual study of the people, machines, history of The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park and looks closely at the themes of mathematics, logic, code-breaking and enciphering. The project was funded by the PRS Foundations new music award and commissioned by The National Museum of Computing.
The music itself is composed using some of the oldest and rarest computers in the world such as the WWII code-breaking machine Colossus Mark 2 Rebuild, and the 1960’s Elliott 803 largely used for mathematics and some of the more commonplace machines such as the BBC Micro. With over thirty machines studied and utilised within the music, it is a combination of both sounds from the internal sound chips and the external electro-mechanical sounds. In addition to this, the piece also utilises such items as the early non-electrical mechanical adding machines.
The project was comprised of twelves pieces of music and accompanying visuals and culminated in two performances at the prestigious Bletchley Park Mansion on March 20th and 21st, 2009.
The project attracted widespread media attention and has been featured on BBC New 24, BBC Look East, BBC South Today, New Scientist Magazine, Dazed & Confused Magazine, Games TM Magazine, Future Music, BBC Radio 4, BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio Suffolk, BBC Three Counties and covered on several news websites including The Register, MacWorld, bit.tech, Slashdot, The IET, IT Pro and several more.
Available on iTunes, Napster, Spotify and more.
You can watch a interview with me about the making of Obsolete? here vimeo.com/3847750 [below]
"The last update has been published not such a long time ago. The next update will cover more MIDI functionality, some memory managing help and bugfixes - also the knob movement recording will be a part of the next update. But at the moment we are working on a new product that will be presented at the Frankfurt Musikmesse.
No - it's not a Spectralis 3 and it's not a Spectralis keyboard version. But it is a very special keyboard...
I don't believe, that we will have another Spectralis version before summer."
YouTube via RanKirlian "This one is a raw track I prepared for 1 hour or so on a sunday evening while I was tweaking the Polymorph. First string pad is from Quasimidi Polymorph, played via midi from the Access Indigo 2, who also starts sounding on 00:43. Then, on minute 1:29 enters the first sequence, bass sequence comes at 2:09 and shortly after appears the last sequence.
While this is not a very elaborated track, I wanted to share it mostly as a Polymorph demo, a great sounding machine and a great fun sequencer."
Indigo Redback & Polymorph - Sequence Jam II
"Another jam with Access Indigo 2 Redback and Quasimidi Polymorph. The pad and the strings comes from both Redback and a part of the Polymorph. Sequences starts at 1:50.
Same of previous video: not a very elaborated track, but another Polymorph demo, who fits pretty nice on my setup and looks great next to the Redback."
YouTube via zioguido "This is an effect VST plugin called ShakePad which simulates a touchpad multi-effect that can be used with a mouse. In this video I'm testing it with a cheap VGA touch screen... Funny :-)"
YouTube via MaxMusicOne "with Wave Overture in DownTempo for make start the Run of Strato in FastTempo (all this at 180 bpm in 3/4) SIAE 2010 (C)opyright Reserved by Max Mazzotta."