Otomata

alphacat · Post by **alphacat** » Mon May 02, 2011 9:16 pm

createdigitalmusic.com wrote:

Behold the power of the Web: composition ideas become a tool, a tool becomes a means for even casual users sharing musical sketches, and a browser toy can be a window into a Turkish sound artist breeding musical DNA like some people breed strains of flowers.

Otomata is a simple generative online grid-based sequencer, owing to a number of step sequencers and Toshio Iwai’s Tenori-on, with some beautiful circular visualizations of the resulting sounds. I’m late in posting it, but in a way, that’s a good thing – in the time that this sequencer has spread around the Web, it’s spawned a small army of casual musicians producing their own videos and patterns.

And that brings me to an observation. In all the discussion of “apps” versus the Web – a discussion as old as the network itself, having appeared as “cloud computing” and various other forms before – people may be missing the point. Right now, Otomata is not an app, though iPhone/iPad and Android versions are reportedly in the works. It runs as a Flash file, which gives pretty much anyone access to it (including the majority of people on the planet who still don’t have either an iOS or Android device).

But it’s Web sharing that’s already making it powerful – people sending around links, sharing creations, and showing friends. App or not, the Web is what makes software successful these days, through YouTube views, blog posts like this one (ahem), and even casual “look what’s on my screen” sharing that results in the exchange of a URL anyone with a browser can run. Flash may not be the best rich tool the Web has ever seen, but it’s only the means to an end – the end being getting things in a connected browser.

Want further evidence? Look no further than the Facebook page, or better yet, open discussion on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/otomata/

Great design, embodying musical sense in the structure of the tool itself, makes this a hit. And for that, you can thank “computational sound artist” Batuhan Bozkurt of Istanbul. His musical expression is generally procedural by nature, expressed as a set of rules in compositional form. Check out his terrific video on this work, as built in the open source tool SuperCollider.

If you can tear yourself away from playing with this wonderful toy, you can get deep into genetic code for musical composition and spectacular SuperCollider creation.

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab

Rapid iteration? Quick contagian? Generational evolution? Hmmm… sounds a bit like what’s happening on a larger level as creations like this spread around the Web. But it’s a heck of a lot more fun than genetic engineering … or the plague. So play away, Internets.

Tons of additional information and goodness on Batuhan’s site:
http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata

Thanks to Max (and others) for the tip! (Max actually suggests trying this with multiple tabs open!)

drokkr · Post by **drokkr** » Mon May 02, 2011 9:19 pm

Awesome. Great post!

nowaysj · Post by **nowaysj** » Mon May 02, 2011 9:26 pm

Love that thing! Am recreating it for a sound design project.

3za · Post by **3za** » Mon May 02, 2011 9:35 pm

This is wicked

My new songs;
http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 1j7l237n4n
http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 4p4k3i8p0t

MIDI out?

legend4ry · Post by **legend4ry** » Mon May 02, 2011 10:09 pm

Yeah, I love this now ive found out about it... Had this on loop for the last 20 minutes.

http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 5z51492f2c

Just, sounds, soo, good.

3za · Post by **3za** » Mon May 02, 2011 10:10 pm

I love this

My best yet (applied minimalism for the maximalism generation); http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/?q=2f4h584d

It's so good it has a faggy title

3za · Post by **3za** » Mon May 02, 2011 10:12 pm

legend4ry wrote:http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 5z51492f2c

I think you missed the point of this

I did a remix: http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 51492f2c3k

legend4ry · Post by **legend4ry** » Mon May 02, 2011 10:16 pm

3za wrote:
legend4ry wrote:http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 5z51492f2c
I think you missed the point of this

How so?

3za · Post by **3za** » Mon May 02, 2011 10:27 pm

legend4ry wrote:
3za wrote:
legend4ry wrote:http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 5z51492f2c
I think you missed the point of this
How so?

You was using it as a tradition sequencer, because you was not letting any of the notes hit each other to change the sequence.

Check the remix I posted, I only added one more note, but now the patterns change, and evolve.

legend4ry · Post by **legend4ry** » Mon May 02, 2011 10:28 pm

I done that to start off with but I genuinely just like the sound of it haha.. Its an interesting concept and might actually start sampling some of the random pattens.

alphacat · Post by **alphacat** » Mon May 02, 2011 10:55 pm

Just doing my part to keep you all thoroughly distracted, whatever you're doing.

3za wrote: MIDI out?

from the site:

"Q: MIDI Output? OSC output?
A: I will look into my possibilities for doing this. I will make a standalone version of this at some point which will emit OSC and MIDI. A VST and AU version might follow. These will take time. Sorry."

Ongelegen · Post by **Ongelegen** » Mon May 02, 2011 11:08 pm

Very cool stuff!

nowaysj · Post by **nowaysj** » Mon May 02, 2011 11:16 pm

Can just record the audio, and convert that into midi, deedo.

zeek · Post by **zeek** » Tue May 03, 2011 5:27 pm

made this banger

http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 4k7j431l4i

alphacat · Post by **alphacat** » Tue May 03, 2011 6:16 pm

Even more geek fun - you can alter the compositions by altering the characters in the string. So from Zeek's composition above, change some numbers and...

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otom ... 4k7j431l4i

Ah, yes.

Numbers and letters.

legend4ry · Post by **legend4ry** » Tue May 03, 2011 6:23 pm

http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 0k0m075t52

Its amazing how much it changes within 2 minutes of listening to it.

zeek · Post by **zeek** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 6:51 am

there's an alpha version of nova3, a vst inspired by otomata http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=319771

nowaysj · Post by **nowaysj** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:05 am

Nice heads up, thx.

Filthzilla · Post by **Filthzilla** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:12 am

Pretty patterns.

Augment · Post by **Augment** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 1:34 pm

wow, sick. Random clicking produced this http://earslap.com/projectslab/otomata/ ... 6c1f6x4g3m, could listen to it al day

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