Harmonique

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Capsules

A serie of genre-bending, 100% vinyl recorded mixes.

The Sonification Machine by Loud Numbers

The data sonification studio Loud Numbers created a sonification machine that create music based on various real-time data sources such as temperature, human/bot ratio on the internet, or current cloud cover.

From Loud Numbers' own Sonification Machine page:

What does a cloudless sky on a warm day sound like? What about a rainy night, with the international space station passing overhead, and an internet full of bots? The Sonification Machine suggests an answer, allowing us to hear the physical and digital environment that surrounds us. Eight different soundscapes are created by live streams of data captured by global sensors.

Yuri Suzuki's Ambient Machine

The sonification machine creation takes root in Yuri Suzuki's Ambient Machine. Yuri Suzuki being himself inspired by the work of Brian Eno.

The Ambient Machine is an instrument for shaping the sonic atmosphere of our daily lives — an exploration of how sound influences mood, perception, and presence. It transforms background noise into an intentional composition, allowing users to design their own evolving soundscapes through a simple, tactile interface.

Born from a time when we became acutely aware of our immediate surroundings, the Ambient Machine responds to the need for both escape and grounding. White noise masks intrusive sounds, natural ambiences transport us elsewhere, and rhythmic patterns provide a sense of structure and calm. Inspired by Erik Satie’s concept of "furniture music" and the ambient soundscapes of Brian Eno, this piece merges chance with control, creating an ever-shifting dialogue between user and environment.

Purity spiral

What happens when virtue signaling is taken to the extreme? Purity spirals: the phenomenon where groups become increasingly extreme as members compete to demonstrate ideological purity. The concept describes how communities can radicalize themselves through escalating demands for conformity to their core beliefs.

Was software a scarce commodity all along?

I spend too much of my waking hours questioning the impact of AI on the software industry. Currently, I’m playing with the thought experiment that, just like coffee, software is a commodity. What I find interesting in that framing is that, unlike coffee, the software price equilibrium was defined by a scarcity in production capabilities. The main driver of this production scarcity was the high capital requirements needed to produce and maintain software.

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