Sonic artist and programmer Daniel Jones and composer Peter Gregson have joined forces with Britten Sinfonia orchestra to create The Listening Machine, a tool that listens to the social networking activity of 500 people in the United Kingdom and uses algorithms to translate that into music.
The machine is a piece of software that monitors the Twitter activity of 500 people (the team won’t reveal their identity to ensure that the musical outcome is not affected by people becoming aware that they are part of it) selected from eight different fields — arts, business, education, health, politics, science, sport and technology. Whenever these people post an update, the properties of the tweet are analyzed in terms of the sound and meaning of the words, and generates music based on it. Many different elements of the music have been prerecorded as individual musical cells, which are then recombined by the generative software.
The aim of the project is to create a six-month musical installation that is a “live soundtrack to the thoughts, opinions, feelings and conversations of the U.K.’s population, as played out on Twitter.” - Olivia Solon, Wired UK
http://www.thelisteningmachine.org/
—
This is all sorts of amazing. Enjoy!
-JM
Cellist and composter Peter Gregson was the speaker at May’s CreativeMornings/London. The event took place in the Billiard Room at The Sanderson.