Why does time gets faster as you get older? Accordian to me maths teacher at the time, sitting duck despondent at the front of the class (he’d suffered a 49th birthday), it seems to get fasta because each new year represents a smaller slice of your life to date. If anyone could map this equation – it’d be Dave Burraston of www.noyzelab.com, himself an electronix tinkerer of many a year, and classical pianist since age of 7. From his bunker, deep in algorithmic research and it’s application to creative media technology, he found time for these replies.
AV interference technology? Whatchoo lookin to interfere with (Willis) ?
Since I met with Douglas Adams around 97 : life, the universe, … everything!
Can you explain Cellular Automata – and your attraction to them?
The fundamental compuational algorithm and the founding technology of artificial life. My attraction is based on.. errr.. realising that they are the answer to .. life, the universe… everything.
What are some of the challenges / joys of working with algorithms?
Challenges : coding it up and getting it do something of artistic/aesthetic value instead languishing in midicritter.jpgsome boring corporate research lab and lining the pockets of some dork.
joys : making a beautiful and terrible noyze!
How would your current research surprise the hell out of the ‘Dave of a decade ago’?
Well I was doing this a decade ago anyway.. but, now its more coherent for me. I suppose the clarity of my application now surprises me, even now.
Maths & music – how have they influenced each other for you?
I taught myself piano at 6 because my parents were musical-ish and sent my older brother for lessons, but said I wasn’t allowed to start until I was 7 and I’m the sort of person who wants things when I want them. My dad was a computer programmer in the 50’s on the first commercial computers thru till the late 80’s , so I was drilled in maths early on and hated it, but had a good aptitude 4 it. after seeing the light thru various chemicals I realised that maths is a pretty cool thing. “all music is unconscious calculation” : Leibniz. I found out that there is a whole world of interesting maths out there that they dont teach you at school. When I started gettin into synths @ 1977 I realised I could apply myself better using my maths skills, so I suppose its more of symbiosis than influence.
How’d you end up building a custom Digital Signal Processor for Richard James ( aka da Aphex) ?
I met Richard through Mike Dred aka Kosmik Kommando some years back now and ended up going round the world with them and the rephlex krew a few times, guesting it up on video projecting with straydog and generally gettin trashd up. Me and Rich kind of hit it off koz I’m a bit of a synth freak and know a lot about the modular stuff as well as the digital n modern stuff. I woz round his studio a few years bak avin a larf n gettin wrekd and mentioned this box I done that processsed sound like the speak n spell does, except it does it on any audio signal, rather than typing in letters. Rich is a bit of speech synth nut and said to me “I’ll definately buy one of those!”. Well I’d long since put the project aside to move on to other things, but he was well keen and well, so we swapped a few synths n bitz and I woz pretty desperate for cash at the time, so it was either knock up the box or sell some of me beloved machines to eat! Plus it also helped me out for moving over to OZ to do me phd. The box ain’t perfect, but then again neither is life! One of the main criteria was a “beer proof cover”, to which I obliged. Any more info on the werkings than that is top secret I’m afraid. I played all my test recordings to Garry Bradbury, a top chap, and hopefully he will be remastering them for me. In case you wondering I only made 2 and I have the other one. funny test recording enclosed.
What’s hapnin with your label – Research Records?
Well we managed to put out a wicked 12″ in 1994, through kudos, and some cdr n tape bitz ere n there to friends and interested parties, but gettin a distributor for our esoteric brand of research has proved somewhat difficult… I’ve lost count of the amount of cdr’s I’ve sent to distributors. I would love to release everything I’ve ever recorded, which would probably be a 900CD box set, I’ve got quite a large archive of work dating from about 1981. So until we get a distributor for the label…… thats why I did noyzelab.com really, just to get some of the the stuff out there.
Next Noyzelab gig = ? ( include gig details, venue, time etc 🙂
Wed Sep 03 as “Bang Lassie”, which is me n Wade Marynowsky (spanky) @ lan franchis, 144 Cleveland st, Sydney, from about 8pm onwards as part of Shannon O’Neills DISORIENTATION.