a few things, concerning the phsysics music relation in the last few decades i think it is important to underline the importance of operational frequency domain analysis which became available analaogically by the begining of the century and digitally with the early fft algorithms in the 70s.
in fact this has to do with time , as long as time was basically measured by mechanical devices the limit, given by the inertia in the parts of the machine that need to run faster and faster to reach small time intervals, at some speed any attached mechanical device breaks under inertial forces, so when mass got out of the way with elecronics and temporal patterns could be produced without involving inertial forces several orders of magnitude in time detail where made available to analyze and syntetize (eg the oscilloscope)
this gave frequency domain analysis where time is understood both as a monotonically increasing variable (time domain) and as a frequency domain structure or process where multiple frequencies of different amplitudes and phases coexist.
obvioulsy physicists and mathematicians enjoy playing with these things
then in computertimes, a major breackthorugh came in the late 1960s and early 1970s when applied mathematians (watts and jenkins etc) working on time series analysis published the code of fast fourrier transforms that could be run in any computer, a few years later real time spectral analysis and synthesis of sound could be done
I visited IRCAM in the mid 1970s many times and had good friends there, one day i was shown the rack of circuits that they were developing and later became MAC4 and the whole geneaolgy of programmed sound poetry
the newly developed circuits where securized with a crossing fine rope tied in the mdiddle and sealed with red laquer, just as a 17th century document would have been
so at some point sound and time could be dealt with in the frequency domain not by using scores but by modulating digital and then analogical oscillations of electromagnetic fields and hydraulic presure, over a vast range of frequencies and periods, much beyond the 20 Hz to 20 kHz where we do that in sound perception or the 400nm 700nm range where we see colours
all of this is a good example of the interplay between collective, abstract understanding of things and the constroction of functional signals, material perturbations that do things, making inventions out of fictions as was said in a previous discussion here
and to close this just a note on the experiments with sound on water reported some years ago that managed to implode air bubles with huge sound pressure waves in a way thet the energy concentrating as the bubble dimished increased vastly and at some points seemed to produce fusion conditions, it did not seem a very practical way of doing it but as far as i could see it was plausible
r
--- On Sat, 6/6/09, Jean-Pierre Dautricourt <jpd@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
> From: Jean-Pierre Dautricourt <jpd@post.harvard.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] artists and atoms: fission and fusion
> To: "'YASMIN DISCUSSIONS'" <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Cc: "Roger F Malina" <rmalina@alum.mit.edu>
> Date: Saturday, June 6, 2009, 4:21 PM
> Dear Yasminers,
>
> Thank you Roger and Guillermo for inviting me to be one of
> the discussants.
>
>
> As a composer and sound technologist, I would like to
> illustrate some
> aspects of how post-war avant-garde and contemporary
> experimental music was
> greatly influenced by atomic bombs, nuclear physics and
> nuclear issues in
> general, responding with profound aesthetical developments
> in music creation
> and practice.
>
> At that time, there was intense interest by musicians in
> the discovery and
> analysis of the internal structure of sounds, the inherent
> continuum between
> rhythm, pitch, and acoustic energy, and in bold, decisive
> crossing of new
> perceptual time scale boundaries in music practice.
> Music and physics
> became almost indistinguishable for some composers.
> They invented synthetic
> "sound particles" analogous to those of particle physics
> and "microsound
> composition," the art of composing with sound particles,
> developing many new
> technologies, such as granular synthesis (Dennis Gabor) and
> grainlet
> synthesis.
>
> In a different but parallel vein, composer and
> mathematician Iannis Xenakis
> in his "Formalized Music" proposed microcomposition based
> on stochastic
> processes. I think this too demonstrates inspiration
> from the quantum world
> of nuclear physics. One of his methods referred to
> pressure-time space (as
> in air pressure received by the eardrum). About it he
> judiciously wrote:
> "It is necessary to limit untimely growth of these
> pressures as they could
> otherwise equal those of the atomic bomb."
>
> In light of what has been said in this discussion about
> fission quickly
> becoming interpreted as negative, I think it is interesting
> to note that
> even music or sound can used as a weapon (LRAD for ex.,
> http://www.atcsd.com). In his "Music and Ideology
> in Cold War Europe,"
> composer Louis Saguer claims that composers wanted to
> pursue "a purely
> technological path holding the possession of a new
> compositional system like
> that of an atomic secret." Incidentally, Xenakis
> founded the Center for
> Musical Mathematics and Automation which was granted
> official recognition by
> the French government in 1970 and was housed in the Centre
> de Recherche
> Nucléaire of the Collège de France!
>
> John Adams' 2005 opera "Doctor Atomic" (http://www.doctor-atomic.com) is
> about Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the first
> atomic bomb at Los
> Alamos. This is quite unrelated to the above in its
> approach, as it
> explores characters and personalities in an operatic
> setting, but is
> nevertheless a powerful social statement.
>
> I believe the beginning of this new century may be even
> richer in arts and
> atoms technology developments. I agree with Patrick
> that there should be an
> artist-in-residence program at ITER.
>
> Jean-Pierre
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
> Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
> http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
>
> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>
> HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to
> subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"),
> enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found
> further down the page.
>
> HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way
> down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter
> password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the
> page that will appear ("options page").
>
> HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page,
> find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or
> off.
>
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
