Max also did a very nice Essential Mix for BBC two years ago. (The mix also introduced me to Niels Frahm, which I found very enjoyable. Check out his album Spaces if you don't know where to start.)
Nils Frahm's "Less" remains one of my favourite examples of minimal music. So many small details. I won't ruin it, but if you like the song you should google how he got that sound.
I always love seeing anything following the philosophy of emergence[0], I think the "composition of simple rules leading to organic unpredictable complexity" is a powerful metaphor that can help understand nearly any natural phenomena.
It's exciting to see the increasing emergence of this idea (see what I did there) in modern science & industry, such as in MIT's Mediated Matter lab[1].
My favourite among the vidoes is "Adaptation", for the song "Order From Chaos", created by French VFX artist Maxime Causeret: https://vimeo.com/196269431
So it looks like almost all of them are videos, but only some of them look vimeo-playable. Does anyone know why, or where to get the full thing?
This is gorgeous. It's the thing of thing I want to shove in people's faces when I see unimaginative things like the umpteenth golden ratio overlay on nature or a basic and extremely pixellated rendering of the julia fractal.
What about this is more imaginative and deep than something like a fractal? If anything these videos seem more hokey to me in that they are implying a deep connection between the mathematical model and reality (where there might be none, or just an artistic interpretation/expression) whereas fractal lovers like fractals for their own intrinsic beauty. I'm not saying that artistic expression is bad, but if you "shoved" this in the face of someone who was interested in the math of fractals, they'd rightfully say this is mathematically gibberish.
I agree that the golden ration nonsense is worthless.
I guess, the point of a fractal is not to be imaginative, but in that the object itself is interesting. If you're saying people's unimaginative renderings of fractals are dumb, I'd be inclined to agree, but I don't think there are necessarily "good" renderings of fractals either, or that the bar for such hasn't, in my opinion, been met.
I think demoscene has met my bar for "good" rendering of fractals. Hopefully worth a quick search for anyone not already familiar with that corner of esoteric programming.
There are a good many fractal renderings which meet the bar as far as my taste is concerned. Have you seen any of the videos by Julius Horsthuis, for example?
See I'd say these are unimaginative because they're all too similar. Once you've seen one you've seen them all, and they're all the same degree of gaudy. It's like the McMansion of fractals, intended only to overwhelm you with the impression that the creator has a really good rendering engine.
Maybe I'd be more impressed to see the process, but every time I watch one of those videos of someone making fractal art, it's just them tinkering with settings on some fractal rendering engine they bought online.
Of course, this all just shows my standard for good fractal art (and good art in general) is orthogonal to "using a powerful rendering engine."
> If anything these videos seem more hokey to me in that they are implying a deep connection between the mathematical model and reality
I agree with this for sure. Conceptual and aesthetic beauty are different. In terms of aesthetic beauty, these are some examples of the kind of things that were shown to us (at least when I was growing up) as examples of how "mathematics can be beautiful":
At best half-hearted attempts that neither show conceptual beauty, and definitely not aesthetic beauty. Especially that fractal page, ugh. Since then, people have gotten much better about this sort of stuff, e.g. with fractals, look at how much more imaginative and aesthetically beautiful these are, and yet still generated:
I'm reading Goedel-Escher-Bach right now, and that's full of brilliant examples of both aesthetically and conceptually beautiful things, and ties far-flung concepts together.
Anyway, what does "mathematically gibberish" even mean? Most of these videos are (if I'm understanding correctly) in essence generative processes, resulting in some interesting and (subjectively speaking) beautiful behavior. I don't know if you could truly call them "mathematically gibberish" as much as perhaps just argue that there isn't an exceedingly simple set of equations that give you complex and lifelike behavior. But that's great - I think it's OK to consider the idea that perhaps the processes that govern nature around us just aren't very simple and conceptually pure. That a set of equations that generates fractals is interesting, but it's even more interesting how romanesco broccoli gets its fractal-like look WITHOUT having an overarching global process enforcing a set of equation-rules. That our models of certain processes that we find "beautiful" are just abstractions on top of the actual messy way the system works (e.g. how we found that newton's laws are sort of the emergent result of how the lower layer of physics works). Anyway, these are just my opinions :-)
> Anyway, what does "mathematically gibberish" even mean?
For example, to imply that the "dimensionality" video says anything interesting about dimensionality or even anything substantial about the torus is ludicrous.
I was lucky enough to see the show live in London in the beginning of December. It was stunning, one of the most beautiful blends between music and visuals that I've ever seen.
I really hope Max will release the entire thing on DVD, I would buy it in a heartbeat for all my friends. He has a few shows coming up in Europe, if you guys are nearby you won't regret it.
He has the first third of the show up on his Facebook page (it was broadcast live and Facebook keeps the videos). Sadly I can't find how to share the URL.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 58.4 ms ] threadhttps://m.mixcloud.com/livesetsdjmixes/max-cooper-essential-...
It's exciting to see the increasing emergence of this idea (see what I did there) in modern science & industry, such as in MIT's Mediated Matter lab[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence [1] http://matter.media.mit.edu/tools
This is gorgeous. It's the thing of thing I want to shove in people's faces when I see unimaginative things like the umpteenth golden ratio overlay on nature or a basic and extremely pixellated rendering of the julia fractal.
I agree that the golden ration nonsense is worthless.
https://vimeo.com/juliushorsthuis
Maybe I'd be more impressed to see the process, but every time I watch one of those videos of someone making fractal art, it's just them tinkering with settings on some fractal rendering engine they bought online.
Of course, this all just shows my standard for good fractal art (and good art in general) is orthogonal to "using a powerful rendering engine."
I agree with this for sure. Conceptual and aesthetic beauty are different. In terms of aesthetic beauty, these are some examples of the kind of things that were shown to us (at least when I was growing up) as examples of how "mathematics can be beautiful":
http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/miscellaneous/mandel/mandel.html / http://www.intmath.com/numbers/math-of-beauty.php
At best half-hearted attempts that neither show conceptual beauty, and definitely not aesthetic beauty. Especially that fractal page, ugh. Since then, people have gotten much better about this sort of stuff, e.g. with fractals, look at how much more imaginative and aesthetically beautiful these are, and yet still generated:
http://www.ams.org/mathimagery/thumbnails.php?album=13 / http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2007/winners.php
I'm reading Goedel-Escher-Bach right now, and that's full of brilliant examples of both aesthetically and conceptually beautiful things, and ties far-flung concepts together.
Anyway, what does "mathematically gibberish" even mean? Most of these videos are (if I'm understanding correctly) in essence generative processes, resulting in some interesting and (subjectively speaking) beautiful behavior. I don't know if you could truly call them "mathematically gibberish" as much as perhaps just argue that there isn't an exceedingly simple set of equations that give you complex and lifelike behavior. But that's great - I think it's OK to consider the idea that perhaps the processes that govern nature around us just aren't very simple and conceptually pure. That a set of equations that generates fractals is interesting, but it's even more interesting how romanesco broccoli gets its fractal-like look WITHOUT having an overarching global process enforcing a set of equation-rules. That our models of certain processes that we find "beautiful" are just abstractions on top of the actual messy way the system works (e.g. how we found that newton's laws are sort of the emergent result of how the lower layer of physics works). Anyway, these are just my opinions :-)
edit: Of course there are fields studying all this too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems
For example, to imply that the "dimensionality" video says anything interesting about dimensionality or even anything substantial about the torus is ludicrous.
I really hope Max will release the entire thing on DVD, I would buy it in a heartbeat for all my friends. He has a few shows coming up in Europe, if you guys are nearby you won't regret it.
He has the first third of the show up on his Facebook page (it was broadcast live and Facebook keeps the videos). Sadly I can't find how to share the URL.