I was not sure what was inspiring to me today. I considered looking at some concrete poetry and a nice collection of ee cummings, but I decided to just go and click around ubuweb. Here I became happily sidetracked with the films of Agnes Varda – who I love and listened to some Kathy Acker (trigger warnings) it hard to take. I love the accents of midcentury native new yorkers. I hope I have something like that. A ghost of it perhaps. I finished it all off with some Samuel Beckett as a palate cleanser while coding.
Today I experimented with lexical relationships and text generation. I started with some simple definitions and examples of usage based on the word ‘middle’: Here is the audio text to speech which is slightly more interesting. I discuss why I did this below.
Middle
it is in the center of town they ran forward into the heart of the struggle they were in the eye of the storm
a n a r e a t h a t i s a p p r o x i m a t e l y c e n t r a l w i t h i n s o m e l a r g e r r e g i o n
he hit the ball to deep center
t h e p i e c e o f g r o u n d i n t h e o u t f i e l d d i r e c t l y a h e a d o f t h e c a t c h e r
they were raising money to build a new center for research
a b u i l d i n g d e d i c a t e d t o a p a r t i c u l a r a c t i v i t y
a l o w – l y i n g r e g i o n i n c e n t r a l F r a n c e
it is in the center of town they ran forward into the heart of the struggle they were in the eye of the storm
a n a r e a t h a t i s a p p r o x i m a t e l y c e n t r a l w i t h i n s o m e l a r g e r r e g i o na p o i n t e q u i d i s t a n t f r o m t h e e n d s o f a l i n e o r t h e e x t r e m i t i e s o f a f i g u r e
it is in the center of town they ran forward into the heart of the struggle they were in the eye of the storm
a n a r e a t h a t i s a p p r o x i m a t e l y c e n t r a l w i t h i n s o m e l a r g e r r e g i o n
A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end”- Aristotle
a n i n t e r m e d i a t e p a r t o r s e c t i o n
young American women believe that a bare midriff is fashionable
t h e m i d d l e a r e a o f t h e h u m a n t o r s o ( u s u a l l y i n f r o n t )in your heart you know it is true her story would melt your bosom
t h e l o c u s o f f e e l i n g s a n d i n t u i t i o n s
he stood still, his heart thumping wildly
t h e h o l l o w m u s c u l a r o r g a n l o c a t e d b e h i n d t h e s t e r n u m a n d b e t w e e n t h e l u n g s ; i t s r h y t h m i c c o n t r a c t i o n s m o v e t h e b l o o d t h r o u g h t h e b o d y
he kept fighting on pure spunk you haven’t got the heart for baseball
t h e c o u r a g e t o c a r r y o n
t h e o r g a n o f s i g h t
she has an eye for fresh talent he has an artist’s eye
g o o d d i s c e r n m e n t ( e i t h e r v i s u a l l y o r a s i f v i s u a l l y )
he tried to catch her eye
a t t e n t i o n t o w h a t i s s e e n
The functions that generate these sentences return lists. As you can tell some are lists of words and some are lists of letters. I sort of visually like the way it looks when I concatenate indiscriminately however it is completely unreadable.
Some of these lines I love and it is sort of like an exquisite_corpse surrealist experiment. How can I get beyond the surreal, into something new? Something with a deeper structure that gives rise to the meaning of the thing.
This is what happens when I start to play with parts of speech such as antonyms.
it is in the center of town they ran forward into the heart of the struggle they were in the eye of the storm
an area that is approximately central within some larger regionthe central area on a theater stage
the central part of a city
the part of a city where financial institutions are centered
the playground is the hub of parental supervision the airport is the economic hub of the area
a center of activity or interest or commerce or transportation; a focal point around which events revolvethe older and more populated and (usually) poorer central section of a city
the part of a city where medical facilities are centered
(sports) the middle part of a playing field (as in football or lacrosse)
the middle of a stream
a center of authority (as a city from which authority is exercised)
the central area or place of lowest barometric pressure within a storm
he hit the ball to deep center
the piece of ground in the outfield directly ahead of the catcherthey were raising money to build a new center for research
a building dedicated to a particular activitya center where patients with severe burns can be treated
a center equipped to handle a large volume of telephone calls (especially for taking orders or serving customers)
a center where the members of a community can gather for social or cultural activities
a center where conferences can be conducted
the general in command never left the control center
the operational center for a group of related activitiesa center where research is done
a recreational center for servicemen
a center in an underprivileged area that provides community services
a center for student activities at a college or university
a low-lying region in central France
it is in the center of town they ran forward into the heart of the struggle they were in the eye of the storm
an area that is approximately central within some larger regionthe central area on a theater stage
the central part of a city
the part of a city where financial institutions are centered
the playground is the hub of parental supervision the airport is the economic hub of the area
a center of activity or interest or commerce or transportation; a focal point around which events revolvethe older and more populated and (usually) poorer central section of a city
the part of a city where medical facilities are centered
(sports) the middle part of a playing field (as in football or lacrosse)
the middle of a stream
a center of authority (as a city from which authority is exercised)
the central area or place of lowest barometric pressure within a storm
a point equidistant from the ends of a line or the extremities of a figurethe middle part of a slack rope (as distinguished from its ends)
the center of the Earth
the center of a target
the center of the circle of curvature
the point within something at which gravity can be considered to act; in uniform gravity it is equal to the center of mass
point representing the mean position of the matter in a body
the ball has a titanium core
the center of an objectthe central part of the Earth
the Incas believed that Cuzco was the navel of the universe
the center point or middle of somethingthe center point on a shield
the positively charged dense center of an atom
(astronomy) the center of the head of a comet; consists of small solid particles of ice and frozen gas that vaporizes on approaching the sun to form the coma and tail
it is in the center of town they ran forward into the heart of the struggle they were in the eye of the storm
an area that is approximately central within some larger regionthe central area on a theater stage
the central part of a city
the part of a city where financial institutions are centered
the playground is the hub of parental supervision the airport is the economic hub of the area
a center of activity or interest or commerce or transportation; a focal point around which events revolvethe older and more populated and (usually) poorer central section of a city
the part of a city where medical facilities are centered
(sports) the middle part of a playing field (as in football or lacrosse)
the middle of a stream
a center of authority (as a city from which authority is exercised)
the central area or place of lowest barometric pressure within a storm
A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end”- Aristotle
an intermediate part or sectionyoung American women believe that a bare midriff is fashionable
the middle area of the human torso (usually in front)
in your heart you know it is true her story would melt your bosom
the locus of feelings and intuitionshe stood still, his heart thumping wildly
the hollow muscular organ located behind the sternum and between the lungs; its rhythmic contractions move the blood through the bodyenlarged heart commonly found among athletes trained for endurance
a heart (as of mammals and birds and reptiles) having two auricles
the muscle tissue of the heart; adapted to continued rhythmic contraction
the artery that branches from the aorta to supply blood to the heart
a valve to control one-way flow of blood
a structure in a hollow organ (like the heart) with a flap to insure one-way flow of fluid through it
he kept fighting on pure spunk you haven’t got the heart for baseball
the courage to carry onthe organ of sight
in insects and some crustaceans: composed of many light-sensitive elements each forming a portion of an image
it is not safe to look directly at the sun with the naked eye
the eye unaided by any optical instrument that alters the power of vision or alters the apparent size or distance of objectsthe right eye
the left eye
an informal term referring to the eye
an eye having a single lens
a natural opening in something
either of the corners of the eye where the upper and lower eyelids meet
a branch of the ophthalmic artery; enters the eyeball with the optic nerve
a highly vascular membrane in the eye between the retina and the sclera; a dark pigmentation minimizes the scattering of light inside the eye
one of several arteries supplying the choroid coat of the eye
the ciliary body produces aqueous humor
the part of the tunic of the eye between the choroid coat and the irisa transparent lubricating mucous membrane that covers the eyeball and the under surface of the eyelid
the transparent dome-shaped anterior portion of the outer covering of the eye; it covers the iris and pupil and is continuous with the sclera
a vertical fold of skin over the nasal canthus; normal for Mongolian peoples; sometimes occurs in Down’s syndrome
the ball-shaped capsule containing the vertebrate eye
his lids would stay open no longer
either of two folds of skin that can be moved to cover or open the eyemuscular diaphragm that controls the size of the pupil which in turn controls the amount of light that enters the eye; it forms the colored portion of the eye
the structures that secrete and drain tears from the eye
an artery that originates from the ophthalmic artery and supplies the lacrimal gland and rectal eye muscles and the upper eyelid and the forehead
drains the lacrimal gland; empties into the superior ophthalmic vein
biconvex transparent body situated behind the iris in the eye; its role (along with the cornea) is to focuses light on the retina
a protective fold of skin in the eyes of reptiles and birds and some mammals
one of the small muscles of the eye that serve to rotate the eyeball
a ring of smooth muscle surrounding the iris
the innermost light-sensitive membrane covering the back wall of the eyeball; it is continuous with the optic nerve
the whitish fibrous membrane (albuginea) that with the cornea forms the outer covering and protection of the eyeball
the part of the eye that contains the iris and ciliary body and choroid
a tubule that drains excess aqueous humor
she has an eye for fresh talent he has an artist’s eye
good discernment (either visually or as if visually)he tried to catch her eye
attention to what is seen
I feel like perhaps this is a way to generate raw material for a piece rather than the piece itself.
So I went and decided to some how use this for my daily tidal cycle/music experiment. I am using tidalcycles (vim tidal) and supercollider. To use tidalcycles with vim (or neovim) you need to use tmux- which I do not have much experience with.
Basically tmux lets you tile windows in the command line. At first I thought that vi was opening a bash prompt but no, the terminal was itself opening up a tidal cycles or a haskell repl. This was confusing because I kept trying to change vi buffers and it was not working.
Ok so tmux commands:
- exit – this closes application windows (detach also detaches the processes)
- : you can type ‘:’ to get to the tmux prompt – very VI like.
- ctrl-b arrow should move me to the other pane
- This did not work, instead i used ctrl-b o to cycle through panes
then I put SuperDirt.start (shift + return) but error ERROR: Input sample rate is 16000, but output is 44100. Mismatched sample rates are not supported. To disable input, set the number of input channels to 0. I fixed this by opening /Applications/Utilities – Audio Midi Setup and fixing the input rate. I had some old midi keyboard hooked up it seemed like.
A bunch of samples could not be found – oops – had to install
include("SuperDirt");For some reason I could not get audio coming through on my earbuds – I need to debug this. I also dont have the Super Dirt samples. No matter. I played around with a bunch of random stuff and had a good time. I feel like there is no time signature there is just the cycle that we can speed up or slow down. We can put as much stuff in the cycle as we want and we can alter it programatically. I set up a simple set of instructions and it was interesting to hear it change over time. Like a really crapy audio version of game of life.
I converted one of the poem outputs to text via Say < poemX.txt although this seemed to loop. When I listened to the poem it was more interesting than reading it. I noticed that middle had been interpreted as center – as in the hub of activity. This is different from the middle – as I was in the middle of my life – as in the beginning of the Divine Comedy. I used ffmpeg to convert m4a to wav.
Basically I think the clips are too long – but these are some early experiments. I use the audio that I generated from the mac os text to speech but you cannot really tell. Baby steps.