As all men know, 2001 was largely a cautionary tale about the hallucinatory and metaphysical dangers of strange monoliths you may find rotating ominously around Jupiter, and how licking one will turn you into a giant, creepy space fetus. Lesson learned, Mr. Kubrick!
Another thing we all learned from 2001: what it looks like to reach the next stage in human evolution. We can thank John Whitney and his Magical, Mechanical Analogue Computer for that.
Coverpop has posted an application that takes some of John Whitney's hallucinogenic motion graphics and assigned notes to their geometrical swirling as they pass a set line. In some ways, it is much like listening to an obsessively-compulsed schizophrenic bang his fingers according to the chaos of his soul against the keys of the synthesizer, except — every so often — there is a crashing simultaneity of notes.
Look, in many ways, it's just noise. Yet the patterns in the music become clear over time and I found it fascinating to note exactly how long it can take for extremely intricate musical patterns to become evident. It sounds like what John Cage might play if he had been more obsessed with mathematics than Zen Buddhism.
Whitney Music Box [Coverpop]
