Algorithmic Political-Media-Mashup Vodcast

flexatone writes "Composer Christopher Ariza, author of the first algorithmic, computer-generated podcast, announces the next phase of his experimental political-media-mashup project: the babelcast-zoetrope. The babelcast-zoetrope employs the subscription model of the vodcast (RSS feed, iTMS subscription) to deliver timely multi-media artifacts of the contemporary media landscape. Generated with free, open-source software tools (such as athenaCL, Python, Csound, and ffmpeg), babelcast-zoetrope is an experimental, algorithmic, computer-generated video podcast. Sounds and images of U.S. and World leaders and commentators are algorithmically fragmented, distorted, and recombined into a media tapestry. New episodes are defined by a time period: audio and video sequences are constructed only with materials collected during this period, lasting from days to weeks."

Comments

Not noise

[CRCulver]

This is like an expansion of the musical traditions of musique concrete and rigorously mathematical composition which gave the 20th century some of its most noted works of art music. See Iannis Xenakis' Formalized Music and Griffith's Modern Music and After (Oxford University Press, 1996). Yet, it is being applied to news media and creates interesting tapestries that are a perfect match for the times we live in. New technologies really do create new kinds of art, although I suspect for now some would be reluctant to call this art.

hmmm on tv

[caffeinemessiah]

If I want distorted commentary and irrelevant news pieces, I'll just switch on a local news station with its over-zelaous anchors. It's interesting, but other than a cursory "check-out", I don't see much value to this.