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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.
This is an obvious attempt by RIAA blackhats to get everyone to buy new CDs while simultaneously destroying computer CD-RW. Time to grep for a good lawyer.
This is another good example of how beer benfits our lives. First I found out if I drink a beer a day it somehow helps my heart, but now... now.. my life is complete.
Paint.NET, a Free Image Editor, with Source Code Available!
Where does the "art" enter into this? Are you we to assume that the DJs who are varnishing, scratching, and otherwise farking up the media actually know what they will get when they do this, or are they just screwing around and hoping something comes out?
I realize this is the natural progression from Jimi setting his guitar on fire-- but you won`t catch me at a concert.
davejenkins.com |
...the submitters are using beer for other things besides ruining their CDs. Such as drinking it and forgetting that this story already was on the main page.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
news.google.com:optical+biocomputer
As long as the fungus is on the cd and not actually ON Britney Spears, I'm fine with it. I need my baby to be tip-top for her man.
Coating CDs in beer, wine, whiskey, or any other hard or malt liquor/liquer is a violation of the DMCA.
Allowable liquids:
Windex
Water
Pepsi (One, Blue, Vanilla)
Beer, is there anything it can't do?
It's precisely beer o'clock down under (17:18 Friday), so while this article is otherwise a complete waste of 1's and 0's, at least it's aptly timed.
It would have to be an Australian
to mix beer and CDs..
Now finaly we can prove which
beer is the best musicly..!
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
or the next thing you know SCO will own beer too.
SCO Sues Miller For Copyright Violations
SCO: See! The beer and fungus are derived from Linux which is derived from Unix which is owned by us, so pay up!
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
Aussies don't have any beverages that could be regarded at beer.
As the Monty Python Joke goes:
What is the difference between making love in a canoe and Austrailian Beer?
Nothing. They are both fucking close to water!
im guessing Vic Bitter...each sat nite that makes my biocomputer say colourful words and sounds ;-)
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
Beer--the cause of and solution to all of life's little problems.
COPYRIGHT BEER! Yes, 12 year old girls are not enough! Now they want to sue us for drinking beer!
Those SOBs! If only Rainbow Brite were alive. She would know what to do.
Well, back to my beer...er, research. *hic*
...I've had Beer on my AOL coasters for 10 years now.
"If it's lost, it'll turn up. Things always do" "I love it when a plan comes together"
He claims it did not destroy the CD, but really, the data side is the side where the label is. He might be talking about the clear glass side. If so, that is fascinating. I would figure the laser would not be able to focus on that. One has to wonder what if different types of bacteria from things other than yogurt or beer would create even more interesting types of sounds.
I don't have a regular CD player. Someone should do this, record it, then post it up here for those of us without regular CD players!
Seal: new self titled album
The RIAA has invested millions into this guy: If he succeeds in his research, the RIAA can continue their practice of being raving, jealous alcoholics and the expense can be written off for business; The beer was to foil computer CD-ROM drives to not play the discs.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I was expecting to see what the fungus looks like, and whether it could survive the high-speed spin in the CDROM drive, however all I found was a lame stock photo.
the more interesting question would be:
can you influence the fungus that it does something useful and not only distort the data randomly...
might be useful for encryption if you could find a way to restore the original data with a secure "key"/method/anti-fungus-spray/whatever.
".Sig Stealer" was here
So does it make the ugly artists sound better?
Is this where our research dollars are going? :)
I'm Australian, and I don't like beer. Is there something wrong with me?
Yes, you probably drank Foster's.
Yes, the key to biocomputing has been unlocked,
and it is beer.
All behold and bow down before the oncoming might of the free (as in beer) biocomputing technology.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Caution: Be aware that beer contains a lot of female hormons. If you drink too much you start takling nonsense and you're unable to drive a car.
Oh s*** better hope the RIAA doesnt find out about them
So now we know why skynet wants to whipe out the human race.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Being australian I am extremely fond of beer but and don above was quite right that monty python joke was done as them playing australians and goes" american beer is like making love in a canoe they're both fucking close to water." this joke was done after they said we have brung some australian beer along. and by the looks of the green cans I say it would be VB which is a low beer not as low as XXXX or fosters all of which is above budweiser which I do say is close to water. German and Belguim beers are great aswell as good old guiness the beer thats a meal. But yes you will find many a good australian beer espicially at the national beer festival in brisbane next weekend over150 australian beers on tap.
I wish I had a gun sometimes so I could put people out of my misery.
The MP3 samples of the audio cds dont sound that weird, just like a 486/33 trying to play a 44.1Khz 128Bit MP3.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Logic, macros, and more
No need to wonder about who will reap the next IGNobel prize in biology... :-)
Thomas Miconi
=============
Reminds me of the discovery of the Infinite Improbability Drive. About the same probability that this could result in anything actually worthwhile. Though it is said that people used to pour beer down the back of bar pianos to "improve the sound".
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
- [...] 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.
yes, we have no bananas
...maybe this guy could spill beer on The Roches' "Big Nuthin'." On second thought, that would probably be redundant.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Ok, so this sounds a lot like a troll, but...
I don't see that this is terribly impressive. I mean, he's done a fair bit of research, wrote several papers, and uses big words like "nanoscale chemical filter" and "Boolean string re-arrangements," but in the end, all he seems to have done is pour chemicals on CDs and make them skip. I could do the same with a brillo pad. Why is that impressive? He makes a lot of noise about computing, but is any usefull computing actually going on? What are the practical applications of this "technology"?
Taking a look at the media samples, it doesn't strike me that he's stumbled on a cool new artistic technique at all (it should be mentioned that the artist Oval has been scratching up CDs in the name of art with much better results for years). This is the same thing anyone has gotten when they accidently scratched up a CD or DVD. There's no art to it, and frankly it sounds terrible.
I can understand why this would be important if his techniques yielded predictable, useful results, such as achieve a specific, desired audio or visual effect. But basically all that he gets in a broken file. The same could be done by randomly flipping an arbitrary number of bits inside a mp3. Nothing usefull is being computed or done at all. So why is this important, or even relevant?
Stupid like a fox!
So this is what happens to all those AOL disks Ive been using as coasters..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Anybody wanna buy some beer bio-keyboards? I also have them available in coffee and cola models.
John Kerry is a Joke!
"A student and teenager in Australia whose research is in the area of communication
through pick-up-lines, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled
beer on down his throat and left it there for a couple of hours. The resulting drunkeness
that formed distorted the sound of his voice in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's
some of his research, media samples which include mp3s of the distorted "music" coming soon."
Yes, the term biocomputer is used in the loosest sense.
You'll also need a supply of the beer itself. While most Australians would drink tray slops if that's all that was available, it takes many years of practice to achieve this level of sophistication. I'd suggest you start out with something more mainstream but only the good stuff. I'd recommend Boags Premium or Coopers Pale Ale. Get the full strength stuff. Light beer is un-Australian and vaguely suspect.
Once you have your gathering the tough work begins. Start drinking. Push on through the taste for the first half dozen and you'll be there! If you are completely unable to start drinking beer then you may have to start with some other girlie drink for the first couple of hours and then move on to the nectar of the gods later in the evening (afternoon or morning depending on when the support group gathered).
A couple of sessions such as this and you'll be able to stand proudly at the bar at your next public engagement and say "Beer thanks mate".
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I've created an olfactory biocomputer in my shoes, but you don't see me bragging about it.
Seriously, though, I cannot be alone in having stumbled upon these effects by accident myself.
Although it was interesting to learn the difference in growth patterns between fungus and bacteria, I can in no way see what is "pioneering," or even interesting, about this.
This isn't news, it's bullshit. The examples given are just ordinary degraded media, there's nothing surprising in the result. So what's this meant to be about? We have to worship entropy now, do we?
Slashdot editors should not feel obliged to post this kind of intellectual jerk-off just because it got high score on the keyword-o-meter. Try reading the stuff first dammit, see if there's any value in it.
I find the sound is also somewhat distorted after drinking (a few) beer.
I can confirm that music sounds distorted
when too much beer is involved...
at least unfunny is better than offtopic, which is what you are, bitching about moderations and being an all around pompous ass.
of course bitching about bitching about moderations and being a pompous ass must put me somewhere below you. but Im not posting AC so at least im not a pussy
bite my glorious golden ass.
Ahem, considering the article, I think we're allowed to post about anything here.
.. does puking on CDs counts as biotech, too ?
Er,
I'm looking at the owners manual for the olsen twins CD I just bought...
...sucker
1. remove CD from protective sleeve
2. open included DCD concentrate and delute in 3oz water
3. add 1g authenticated signed substance, mix until fully dissolved
4. submerge CD in ASS solution for 30 seconds
5. remove CD from solution, allow 3 to 5 minutes to dry
6. enjoy your music
bite my glorious golden ass.
The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways
Whe else thought that the guy imbibed the fungus for these effects?
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
and so would my mate in Japan. He's finally got hold of a cache of the stuff and is a very happy man!
Read his web diary for the story:
http://gaijinlife.tripod.com/
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
A computer, bio or not, is a system that takes input, performs specific and predictable calculation, and produces output.
An artist, DJ or otherwise, is a person who through talent and skill creates deliberate and specific sensory effects that stimulate the audience in interesting ways.
What we have here is neither art not science, and the article sounds like something from April 1st. Allow me to translate the text again:
A bus driver and part-time juggler in Milton Keynes whose research is in the area of communication through flaming torches, serendipitously created an 'golden pussycat' when he spilled beer on his shirt and left it over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the shape of the shirt in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's some of his research, and some t-shirt samples which include opinions of psychotics of the distorted garments."
"Interesting and meaningful" to whom exactly?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Thanks for that. I might run into you there on Friday ;-)
National Festival Of Beers, Brisbane [2003-09-19 - 2003-09-21].
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I've been using the AOL coasters for years as well. It is nice to see someone else found a good use for AOL.
When was the last time you spilled beer on your CD's while at work!
Losing Karma. Oh well, that is what it is for. (At least I get to sleep easy at night because I speak up for what I believe in.){=Original and not a bad sig.
/.
/. logo.
/. so why not some Quid Pro Quo?
Two issues with this story, one is the fact that if you indeed get the 'perfect' mold grown on your disk it is very difficult to freeze the err, data in a static way.
The number two thing is why are people researching this 'Fungus-effect' rather than say, rubbing crayons onto cds with a far more reproducable effect?
Bio-cds perhaps?
Not to mention the health hazards are also greatly reduced with crayons. Of course you will still have to deal with the issue of the foreign matter of your choice clogging up your CD drive.
Also the offbalancing in that 100x drive you picked up at costco for twenty bucks. is going to cost you a trip to the return line.
It's your hardware, please do as you wish. (Just let us know what happens) Visions of mold based prior art dance through my head sorta like the SCO executives.
Personally I vote to wait and see what the community will come up with the 'New Mold sound' and then start a fund to blast it from afar into BG's compound.
The Karma Killer: This was indeed posted on Fark.com a day ago. To be fair. Fark takes great pains to acknowledge any scoops from
They even show the
It kinda ticks me off that we can't even acknowledge a odd story news gathering site with a tech bias. Fark is zero threat to
Slashdot is depth. Fark is popcorn.
Sometimes popcorn needs to be chewed in depth.
And sometimes depth has to be chewed by popcorn.
Thank you for reading my semi-off topic rant that I am sure to pay for in the morning.
The last possible shield for my slim castle of karma: I showed this article to a fellow co-worker when we were both under a very tight deadline (He moonlights as a DJ, Biggest cd collection I have ever seen. 5000+ collection)
He just started laughing and laughing. I know that is sorta creepy but it was a relief sort of laugh, not one of those ones in the very scary under-reported storys thread.
That kind of stuff is hard to refute.
I work in the Media and that thread gave me great pause.
One nice thing I really like about Slashdot is the fact that I might take a verbal tongue lashing from the literati, I don't usually get my lug nuts pried of my car because I think different. I am using a metaphor for having my car stereo ripped off a long time ago. What I learned was don't keep expensive stuff in your car. (Basic knowledge 101)
FTA:
A DJ [...] whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells
Yeeah. Right.
Translation: he jerks off in public.
my
Place a CD in a microwave for just a few seconds. You probably won't get a biocomputer, but it puts on a good light show. And to make sure this isn't off-topic...try it while drinking a beer!
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Any professor with Nine Inch Nails in their music collection is worth supporting.
Maybe we can get him to spill other beverages and mixed drinks onto CDs and record the results.
A government grant should also be in the works.
I am guessing that the reason they have beer in the lab is incase their hypothesis and data don't match up. This way they can down a couple and then everything starts looking right.... :-)
No more need for acurate studies! I only wish they had supplied beer at my school's lab. I know I would have done better on those darn exeriments.
...in beer-related science. Since 1908, Aussies have been doing groundbreaking work in this field.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Is it just me, or does this remind anyone else of Sir Isaac Newton's famous apple?
Parent is Informative??
Mwa ha ha ha haaa, that is truly funny. For those who don't know, yes - getting drunk may get you laid, the results are...unpredictable though.
Try Looking Here for examples.
I don't think I'm very happy. I always fall asleep to the sound of my own screams.
...the sounds and images of a University webserver slowing being Slashdotted to death....
written by and starring the infamouse Yahoo Serious?
I posted my funny comment on fark.com when this story was posted there about 3 days ago.
AT&ROFLMAO
I wonder if one could hack a CD-player to act like a microscope? The key would be to turn off any error correction/fault detection stuff and watch the raw bit pattern. When those bits are reconstructed into tracks, we would get a 1-bit image of the surface.
OK, there's a ton of tiny details that prevent this from working -- mostly due to the fact that modern CD players are unhackable blackboxes with all the magic inaccessibly embedded into a few inscrutable ASICs. It also does not help that the image plane (or is that play'n) is located on the metalized side of the disk. Cleaning a spot on the data-side, mounting a thin specimen well and reflective cover would be hard. Getting the disk to balance would be a challenge. Perhaps this hack would be a good use of all those ancient CD players, built from discrete components, that refuse to play RIAA-corrupted discs (I got a old CD player at a garage sale that actually had 6-daughter boards plugged into a backplane).
Done well, this system should be capable of resolutions of a couple of microns (the track-track x the pit-to-pit spacing). Oh, and for even higher resolution, hack a DVD player.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Did anyone else picture Yahoo Serious doing this as they read the summary?
I have listened to every mp3 and watched a pair of videos... but it's really obvious that what you get is a random inability of the error correcting code of the sound/image interpreter. It's all because of the pseudorandom distribution af data on the surface for error correction purposes!
If the guy tried something on a vinyl it should be much more interesting because the sound is not digitally treated and is perfectly sequential...
Yes... but the result of course would be a low frequency filter and a destruction of the pickup!!!
Really non interesting research. IMHO.
I'd like to try letting a cellular automata on a WAV file and to see what I can get from this. THIS would be science.
"Beer, the cause, and solution of all of lifes problems."
Homer Jay Simpson
It's pretty evident to anyone who has a bit of knowledge about the data processing involved in the encoding of an Audio CD.
Just thinking about the interleaving make all this stuff senseless.
Said that, I think that the guy would have a brilliant future as an audiophile.
Although this is better quality than most of the songs that I download from Kazaa, I'd like to get better rips.
BTW, do you log everyone who takes these MP3s? Or is it "anonymous"?
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Does it bother anyone else that this scientist was drinking while on the job???
-- jbl
So, if the cd's have fungi on them that need beer to survive, do you have to dunk them in beer every day or something? that would be really inconvenient... I wouldn't buy a CD that needed to be maintained like that. Also, minors would be unable to use CD's because they would have no way of purchasing food for them... legally, anyways. Tell me if this makes any sense at all, I havent slept in over a day...
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
that must mean that many people here were just informed of the existence of beer-goggles. More slashdot regulars are going to get laid this weekend! Well, as laid as one can get while semi-conscious from alcohol poisoning.
:)
Note to mods: This is a joke! Not an attack of your lifestyle.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
However, in the movie it was champagne on on the Motherboard not beer on the CD.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
No Seriously there's a shitload of them down there!
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
Now I'd like to see him try it with real beer from Canada! Boo*hic*yah!
If you spill beer on a copy protected CD (you know, the kind with induced errors on it), does the fungus distort the errors so they disappear?
If so, will the fungus be sued under the DMCA?
Yah. All the track did was drop samples. Frankly, I as hoping for some weird morphing of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but alas, all I got was dropouts. I hope the author does not write a paper on this as it is unstupendous in the least. Boo...
This guy not only spills beer on his CDs but leaves them that way for so long that they grow fungus. I can only imagine what his bathroom must look like, or his personal hygiene. God knows where else he has fungus growing, *ugh*.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
DJ Yahoo Serious?
man, that never gets old.
free online diet tracking.
And I always thought it meant having your taste in women dangerously affected by your intake of alcohol.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I'm tired of going to science websites that DON'T have Bikini girls. That's what science needs to be taken seriously, more Bikini Girls! And the massive emphasis on beer makes it a Hooome Runnn with *this* hard-drinking girl-loving quantum physicist.
Yup, I'm bookmarking this one, for sure. As my favorite politician says, "I'll be back!"
Please, people... This isn't science. This just shows how a CD's error correction copes with relatively mild distortions. It's little more than gadgetry.
> There's no art to it...
The result of this kind of concept art isn't a piece of work that's enjoyable in a traditional way. Instead, it stimulates interest--positive or negative--and discussion about what art is. For instance, fractal geometers have often been slandered as not producing "art" because their pictures are created by mathematical formulae. (However, these pictures are usually enjoyable in the standard sense.) Now, on the other hand, we have a biological entity "creating" music, and it sounds shitty, but will those anti-math critics consider it "art"? Perhaps it's not too deep, but there is certainly some art to the idea, process, and presentation, if not the result.
That said, IMO this work is totally overblown. There is nothing special about the way bacteria damage a disc. For instance, I can say for sure that his damaged jpegs have exactly the same qualities as my totally random corrupt program.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of one of these... Hiccup...
My dauther gets crap on my DVDs all the time.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
So, if beer can create a "new sound" as it were, and it has successfully assisted in the creation of a "biocomputer", then what can the world look forward to? Paul Hogan promoting Foster's 2.5MHz "Head"less PC? I hope that's not what this world is coming to... And dear God, please PLEASE do not let any company use the Crocodile Hunter in any more promotions...
Given that God is infinite, and the Universe is also infinite, would you like some toast?
Maybe it's just me, but I heard virtually nothing about them that sounded different than any number of scratched-up CDs in my collection. (except for the slightly interesting distort on Trent's voice in Hurt) You could likely get about the same effect by holding a zippo up to the CD for a few seconds.
He gets props for discovering a highly novel new way of destroying CD players, and for being generally cool, but that's about it.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Didn't we have story a year or so ago about some Aussie boffins researching the physics of the "fall" of bubbles in Guinness? (Do the bubbles go up or do they go down?)
I'm beginning there might be some connection between Australian scientists and foamy malt beverages. But, YMMV.
Don't throw water on the beerputer parade!
SCO commented that it allready holds a copyright on part of the source code (ingredients)for this Beer. SCO claims that Miller, Budweiser, etc., illegaly obtained this code (known has Higher Open Protocol Syntax or HOPS), and must pay a licensing fee in order to remain legal in production.
Alllllright, I already HAVE a beowulf cluster of these!
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Beer brings out many peoples musical ability. Well manly drunk people
=If life was easy, i would be out of a job=
I think it would be infinitely more beneficial to the music to supply the musicians with beer (and other drugs, preferably pot and heroin) versus fucking up your CDs with fungus. Of course, it's not an either-or, but the musicians presumably know what they're doing and what sound they are after. Random (and that's what it is, no matter how many times you use neato k-spiff l33t words fractal and branches) fungus growth on a CD does not add anything special to the music.
Interestingly, if you add beer to both the CD, to fuck it up, and the listener, to fuck them up, I think both effects would cancel each other out.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
This is moronic at best! It's like firing a shotgun at Shakespeares works and expecting improvement.
I found the treatment of DVD-discs to be especially silly as the types of MPEG-2 corruption artefacts you are likely to get are pretty predictable.
A witty
"Examples are given for both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular interference with optically stored data. Differences in cellular parameters such as organelle density, refractivity, and gross morphology (branching versus aggregation) are shown to impact on error correction using the Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code."
Holy crap. You could have just said, "Hey, when I grow shit on my CD's it sounds funny."
If it's not one thing, it's Steve's Mother
Someone came up with a use for beer.
It's about time.
I watched the "Snow White" video sample linked to on the guy's page, and it looks exactly like what any other scratched or dirty DVD looks like. I rented "Gods and Generals" from Hollywood Video a few days ago and encountered the same phenomena because there was a big splatter of dried something-or-other on the surface of the disk.
So, this guy has clips on his web site of skipping music and DVDs. That's great. This guy should be working in somebody's marketing department. "As your product ages, it will inevitably acquire what appear to be scratches, but are actually nano-scale utility enhancements!"
and left it on the cd for a couple hours. When I played it many, many drinks later, Madonna started yelling and cursing at me.
Yep. Definitely the beer's fault.
Y'know, serendipity being what it is, it's surprising there aren't more inventions throughout recorded history which involve beer.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
This bloke's made a living off of his clumsiness. 'Ere Vroomfondel, how come we don't think of things like that!?
Un-news
I once took a piece of water-damaged paper that had grown a few patches of fungus and scanned them in at 1200dpi. I thought it was pretty cool-looking.
What did not occur to me -- and this is obviously why I am not climbing the ranks of academia -- was to call it an optical biocomputer and write a paper about how the underlying shipping manifest was altered in "interesting and meaningful ways."
Of course, if I was sloshing beer all over my music collection, there's no telling what I might come up with.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I personally know Eugene Chadbourne, from Greensboro, NC, who often invents instruments such as the electric rake. Another was rubber super balls (like from a vending machine) with pickups stuck inside them, so the bouncing sound could be output through an amp (or computer, or whatever).
In Brazil, Os Mutantes and Tom Ze, members of the Tropicalia movement, did some really crazy stuff to their instruments/sound systems. David Byrne (Talking Heads) liked Tom Ze so much that he rereleased some of his music on the Luaka Bop label (subsidiary of Warner Bros, I think).
Someone else mentioned Kid Koala, but Aphex Twin, DJ Spooky, and Squarepusher are a few electronic artists who have been especially innovative. Given the capabilities of samplers these days, experimentation like this beer/CD thing can have much broader implications than the mp3s this guy made. I understand that creating new instruments is not exactly playing with the media, but what about a song that samples the crackles and pops of an old LP? Or a vocal track recorded on really low-fi equipment (I'm thinking of "I Can Hear You" by They Might Be Giants, recorded using old wax cylinders ala Thomas Edison).
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
I just hope the funding for this "research" doesn't have any public components.
Just pour the beer right on the speakers. Then punch holes in them. Now ALL your CDs will sound different.
I'm a 2000 man.
I once sneezed beer onto a CDR. I would think that was much more "biocomputing-like" but the cd never worked again.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
Ph.D Thesis
Like, this thesis, by oh eh hello I'm Bob, and this is by brother Doug, how's it goin' eh, anyway, the Canadian government's decided that based on this research we're now computer scientists, eh. Yeah, eh, we've come across like a revolutionary like improvement on like the original research, eh. Turns out that back bacon grease also works like a computer, eh - but you need to drink like a lot of beer to figure it out eh.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I remember a time when getting slashdotted was quite an accomplishment. Today, it's some drunkard spilling beer all over his music collection, and playing the CD's b4 rinsing them off. =)
>oo -hic- oo
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
CDs have solomon-reed error checking codes on them. When bits are changed, these errors are detected. For small enough errors like just a few missing bits, the player responds by interpolating the waveform; for bigger swatches of errors such as those caused by groove-aligned scratches, the result is an outright dropout/skip... NOT a change of pitch, tone, etc as alleged by the article in describing the effects of beer/yogurt/whatever. I don't even feel motivated to try the described procedure... as a character on the Simpsons once said, "I make it a point not to turn my head if I don't expect to see anything."
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Wow! I just spilled beer on my Windows 95 CD, popped it into my computer, and it installed - and I can't crash it!
Completely unpatched, I've thrown every virus I could get my hands on. The result? Nothing! I've discovered a version of Windows that actually works!
Unfortunately, after contacting Microsoft, they've already brought legal action against me. Seem that they knew all along how to make Windows work well, but it prevents them from making money since Windows problems make them billions in support services and upgrades.
It also explains why Linux is so stable: Beer = Perfect Code. That is, it worked when I used Canadian beer, but I can't seem to get the same results with Budweiser or any other US brands. Any thoughts?
Ruby on Rails Screencast
this might be a good way to make an otherwise shitty album (which is about all of the stuff that's being produced now) and improve them by just a tad.
Let's just hope they don't patent the process: of SPILLING BEER on things!!!!
MoFoQ gets his trusty ol' pitchfork and flaming torch handy just in case.
Ohh no, there are like, billions of funguies (is that the correct plural?) in this world, and what if some of them holds popular songs or pieces of code!
I think that RIAA and SCO are going to try to sue these fungies, and they are going to pay! Yeah!
What will be next? Maybe my pudding will devolope a new software language... What a special thought... How do I even dump data from puddings?
Should I stomp them flat and put them on a CD?
Probably.
... was really the Starship Enterprise? I knew I sold that car too cheap.