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Speech Synthesizing the Linux Kernel for Arts Sake
ungulation writes "A joint project of SFMOMA, The Goethe-Institut, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Walker Art Center, a group called CrossFade broadcast the entire linux kernel 2.4.18. From the CrossFade website: "In Free Radio Linux, the entire source code of the Linux kernel will be webcast over the Internet. A speech synthesizer will convert into talk radio the 4,141,432 lines of code, which will take about 600 days to read." According to the Free Radio Linux website the stream is only available in ogg-vorbis format."
Definitely not. This goes beyond geeky. It's beyond weird even. And definitely a complete waste of time. Why this was posted as a /. story is beyond me.
Geez, folks... It's performance art. If everything had to be practical, this'd be one hell of a dull world. I mean, what practical use does a performance of The Nutcracker Suite (for instance) have?
As geeky as we geeks are, artists are at a whole other level of weird. Accept it and stick to what you're good at, huh?
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Yes, I mean, if they're going to do something like that, I could just say "i'll do it" and run something useful, like Seti@Home in its place.
The sad part is, I know at least 20 people that would keep it on for ambiance in their home.
I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
what practical use does a performance of The Nutcracker Suite (for instance) have?
To some people it's entertaining. Last time I checked entertainment was a pratical use. Look at games, movies, music. All for entertainment. They have a hell of a lot more use than the Linux Kernel being read off line by line.
I don't know of anyone who would could listen to this 24/7 for 600 days. Perhaps a download edition will be avaliable? Also, consider the fact that the kernel is constantly changing, and that this is only a snapshot in time. Nearly two years from now the kernel will be vastly different and this will be obsolete.
C:\>
A waste of bandwidth? A waste of resources?
Maybe, but dont flame the guys for having fun :-)
Now, you could certainly argue that in today's "postmodern" (whatever the hell that means) world, we must expand our definitions of art and performances, and take an "artist's" word for it when they claim that the landscape around them is their work of art, or that speech-synthesizing kernels is a "performance" of some sort, but I just don't buy it in this case.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
This is just as pointless as Distributed.net's RC5-64 effort. Yes, they managed to crack the code, and yes, they showed that (a) with enough computing power you can brute force RC5-64; (b) the now-outdated RC5-64 is very hard to brute-force; and (c) the same system at a much higher keysize would be safe from brute-force attacks this side of World War III.
Well worth knowing, I'm sure. But they spent 1,757 days to do it. Nearly half a decade. Surely it didn't require FIVE years to "learn" what was obvious within a month of the project starting!
Like RC5-64, this "Speech Synthesized Kernel WebCast" is another such example of "there's absolutely no doubt it can be done, it'll take a whole bunch of resources to pull off, it won't be finished for two years, it'll be completely irrelevant when it does finish, and we won't learn anything in the process."
This isn't art, it's just pointless. Calling it "art" is a patently weak justification.
Hey, don't get me wrong -- I couldn't care less whether they do it or not, it just makes me wonder how nuts these people are.
Seriously, the only way this thing's going to achieve any more than a cursory listen by a small number of bored Slashdot readers is if the synthesized voice is set to "breathy, seductive woman"...
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
I wouldn't call it performance art either. I think of it more as an installation piece. The other posters miss the point; it's not that the piece is entertaining -- reading the source code might be, but listening to synthesized speech reading it sure isn't -- but what questions the piece is putting in front of you.
Source code is art?
Source code is speech?
Source code is free speech?
I'm not going to listen to this for more than a minute, and I'm sure many other will do the same. The fact that no one will consume the entire piece doesn't make it any less meaningful. The point of the piece is that someone actually went out to do it.
If it helps, think of it in terms of DeCSS.
Well, I have to disagree. If anyone thinks that they'll be able to use this as part of some legal argument, I suspect they're out of their minds. I admit that there's a bit of geeky funness to the whole thing, but what is this supposed to prove about DeCSS? Or free speech issues? So they're trying to point out that source code is free speech. And they'll broadcast it using a speech synthesizer. Big whoop. I could set up a speech synthesizer and broadcast Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_ if I wanted, that doesn't make it public domain. I could set up a speech synthesizer to rattle off the machine code for Windows, that doesn't make it free software. And just because I set up a speech synthesizer to plod through the Linux source code doesn't somehow make it "free speech," no matter how much someone's trying to convince us it's "art."
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
No, the people broadcasting the kernel for 600 days sound like they're on the MS payroll. It's stupid, and won't help Linux's claim for being a solid alternative OS, just the OS of people who want to waste time and resources....
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