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."

Comments

Seriously!

[cybermace5]

I use Linux, and have used it for years. I enjoy its flexibilty and the ease I can "open the hood" and see how things are working.

But something like this.... Does this make people think "Wow, Linux is Free Speech and Good" or "Wow, Linux users are a bunch of loonies with a religious bent and more concerned with ideals rather than developing a serious OS my business can depend on."

I don't see how this is useful or good in any way. 600 days? I just say, "Why?"

Wasn't this being done already?

[vadim_t]

I'm pretty sure this is not new. I've heard of such a thing before, and even heard a bit of it. I think the point was to establish that source code is speech.

Re:And now to get it back in source form

[Rhubarb Crumble]

I wonder if now someone will write a tool to covert this ogg stream back into source code? :)

What, to get around US export restrictions, like PGP used to?

(they would print out their source code, export it in paper form and OCR it in switzerland to make the PGPi codebase. at least so I've heard.)

Been done...

[Rhubarb Crumble]

This has been done, but with DeCSS rather than the linux kernel...anyone remember the "descramble song"?

"This function is void, it takes two args/The first is sec a pointer to 2048 unsigned bytes/That are the encrypted disk sector and will be decrypted"

For more information:

[haggar]

Check this infomative link

Spamradio

[frozenray]

Here's an alternative: Spamradio.

Quoting from their site:

"Spamradio is serving up delicious helpings of spam each hour of every day to all who are hungry.

Using a complex arrangement of pipes and funnels we turn the junk mail that we receive into a streaming audio broadcast that can be enjoyed from anywhere on the Internet."

I sometimes listen to it during coding sprees late at night; eerie but worth a listen.

The REALLY interesting question

[Banjonardo]

The really interesting question is to see what kernel we're on by then. (600 days later.)

More complicated than that I think...

[Mochi]

I am a computer scientist and have worked with and done some collaborative pieces with several different artists so I'll try to give my perspective on this:

Many of the artists I have worked with start out with an idea that they think is "cool", or is "aesthetically pleasing", or reflects some sort of social phenomenon, etc. The beginning of the piece is usually very shallow. After longer thought, more and more philosphical justification is caked onto the original idea until it finally carries some weight in the mind of the artist(s).

The problem is that most of us "laypeople" see the end result and only understand the same shallow meaning (or lack thereof) that originally instigated the piece, and quickly write it off as stupid. In my opinion, however, it is the artists RESPONSIBILITY to make the piece compelling enough to be necessarily thought provoking. Like others have mentioned, most people are going to look at (listen to) the broadcast and just go: "duh, that is really lame." There may be a tiny circle of pretentious art critics that will bother to crack the surface of the piece and get to what the artists intended, but then the effect of the piece is totally lost.

But that brings me to another (and somewhat annoying) element of pieces like this. If I am going to spend my time thinking about the meaning behind the piece I want to KNOW that the artists did the same. And that there is some conclusion to be drawn (or at least an interesting journey in the exploration of the meaning). The idea that an artist shouldn't "explain" their work is ludicrous. I have seen so many times that this is an excuse to protect the weak meaning and feeble thought behind the work. (I am not implying that all art/artists are so, as there are many who spend great effort to express well thought out and profound ideas in interesting ways. But the opposite is also true.)

So I guess my statement is this: I would like to see a summary of the ideas that the artists are addressing in this broadcast...at the very least. I don't think it is a waste of time unless there is no meaning...but at the same time, even if there is meaning, I presume it will be lost on the majority of viewers because of poor execution (lack of necessary connections to the meaning) and will therefore still be a waste of time.

But we'll see...