Beer-Coated CDs are Optical Biocomputers

commodoresloat writes "A DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's some of his research, and some media samples which include mp3s of the distorted music." Yes, the term biocomputer is used in the loosest sense.

Comments

Beer ... computers ... it's a wrap!

[the bluebrain]

The only "maningful" change results from the error correction logic in the CD drive.

• [...] the way fungus and bacteria [grow] can shape the sound in weird ways.

Tosh. It's flipping some of the bits in a bitstream which represents audio encoded with an arbitrary codec. Dude - there are more interesting ways of flipping bits, and ones that might just tell you a bit more about bacteria, fungi, music, life, the universe, and everything.
What's this guy on? I want some.

/beer, you say? Good. I can do that.

Re:Music?

[blincoln]

Formal music created through random, pseudo-random, or mathematical processes is almost a century old at this point. Check out some Schoenberg or John Cage. It may not be your kind of thing (I'm not really into it myself), but it is an interesting branch of art.