
A terabyte of harsh noise, stored on 233 DVDs - urras
http://www.jliat.com/n1tb/
======
mrb
Oops, the artist's source code has a bug making the 233 DVDs contain not what
he thinks they contain... All his source files [1][2][3] attempt to generate
the random noise with:

    
    
      // basically no wimpy numbers - only fat ones
      if (s > 0 & s < 30000) {s = (short) (s + 30000);}
      if (s < 0 & s > -30000) {s = (short) (s - 30000);}
    

s is a Java 16-bit signed short initialized to a random value. His intent is
apparently to modify s to generate sound samples in the ranges [-32768,-30000]
and [30000,32767] to make the noise "harsh" (no samples close to 0). But
because shorts wrap around the boundaries -32768 and 32767, most samples will
in fact be in the range [5537,32767]. See for yourself: if s=5537, he adds
30000, s wraps to -29999, he subtracts 30000, s wraps again back to 5537. s
will end up in the ranges [-32768,-30000], [0] and [5537,32767], making the
noise less harsh than it should have been.

Damn I would hate to have to re-burn 233 DVDs, or this set of 510(!) he
produced later:
[http://www.jliat.com/HNW510/index.html](http://www.jliat.com/HNW510/index.html)

This type of bug, an integer overflow, is one of the many types of bugs I look
for when I review source code as part of my job in info sec.

[1] [http://jliat.com/HNW/HNW.java](http://jliat.com/HNW/HNW.java)

[2] [http://jliat.com/HNW/HNW90.java](http://jliat.com/HNW/HNW90.java)

[3] [http://jliat.com/HNW/hnwfile.java](http://jliat.com/HNW/hnwfile.java)

~~~
jewel
> ... I would hate to have to re-burn 233 DVDs...

Burning 233 DVDs is easy if you have the right equipment. At my workplace we
used to use units from rimage.com and now use units from microboards.com. The
units have built-in inkjet printers so that each disc can have its own label.
The software that will let you queue up lots of jobs at once.

(You don't want a disk duplicator, those will typically burn you 10-at-once of
the same image.)

------
terminado
If you're going to master an original work in a digital format, and it's going
to be a terabyte of anything, why MP3 and not FLAC?

Figure at a bitrate of 128 kbps, and a sample rate of 44.1 Khz, an MP3 1
million bytes in size usually clocks in at close to 1 minute of playback. With
those statistics in mind, a ballpark figure of 2 years of noise is a
reasonable estimate, and that's pretty close to the 711.5 days they cite.

FLAC compression, by comparison, is closer to 10MB per minute, so maybe you'd
only get 71 days in the same space, or require 10TB of storage. You could
probably fit the lossless version on roughly 400 blu-rays, and opposed to some
233 DVDs?

Even cooler though, is what seems to be some java source for the original
noise?

[http://www.jliat.com/HNW/](http://www.jliat.com/HNW/)

[http://www.jliat.com/HNW/HNW.java](http://www.jliat.com/HNW/HNW.java)

Who needs a compressed static copy, when you have the original source?

EDIT: There's also a lossless version in 16 bit WAV audio...

[http://www.jliat.com/HNW510/](http://www.jliat.com/HNW510/)

~~~
maaku
Um, lossless compression (FLAC) is not going to handle random noise very well.
You're probably better off with the raw WAV file.

~~~
JTon
If it's lossless, then it'll handle noise the same as the raw wav file. Am I
missing something?

~~~
lultimouomo
I'm guessing he meant that FLAC could actually inflate the file size (which is
very probable).

~~~
dredmorbius
Probably, but not by much -- you'd add the size of the data header. Depending
on the compression block size, that could be repeated multiply to the file as
a whole.

But yes, compressing random values makes little sense. Doing it losslessly
_increases_ data size. Doing it lossily decreases randomness.

~~~
nitrogen
If the samples don't occupy the full range, then a Huffman table or related
encoding could reduce the storage requirements. Ignoring encoding overhead, at
most ~12 bits per sample are needed if everything works as the author
intended, or ~14.8 bits using the range from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272071)

------
fuzzywalrus
A rather John Cage-ian anti-music piece although the only thing of interest
but the way it was written I wasn't sure if the 4 GB limit "discovered"
FAT32's limit or if it was a MP3 format issue that players simply couldn't
handle files larger than 4 GB because they were 32 bit.

Other than that, I can't really say that creating a project of 700 days of
generated noise is very interesting from an art perspective, but I'll save the
art critiques beyond that.

~~~
Aardwolf
It could become even more art if it included a performance of playing this for
711 days, with someone changing the DVD to the next one every 3 days.

~~~
dmcginty
There's a John Cage piece called "Organ^2/As Slow As Possible" that is
currently being performed on a specially-made pipe organ in Germany. Note
changes happen every few years and the piece will finish in 2640.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible)

~~~
quarterto
Also Longplayer[1], played on singing bowls, which will end at midnight on the
31st of December, 2999. It's written to constantly evolve and never repeat.
You can stream it!

[http://longplayer.org/](http://longplayer.org/)

------
S_A_P
The Roland MS-1, I remember wanting one of these but having to settle for a
second hand Roland S-330.(which I was actually glad to have done) The MS-1 is
a quirky sampler- has a simple interface and IIRC is battery operated. It did
some data compression internally to bump up the sample time and stored the
samples in flash memory. This is not really a "hi-fi" sampler, and depending
on what settings were used, I would argue that its characteristics would
smooth out harshness rather than enhance them. I think you could get around a
minute of sample time if it was set to its lowest sample rate. Not bad for the
90s...

------
gtani
I was going to try something similar, something like a MIDIquest 'random
parameter' generator running into a few analog/virtual analog synths (MS2k,
SY35, mopho, whatever else i see on Craigslist). Probably the most
straightforward way to generate "harsh" noise (there's blue and violet noise,
emphasizing above 1kHz, according to Brian Shepherd's synthesizer textbook) is
to run random parameters into a Yamaha DX7.

_______

reminds me: need to read Vertical Color of Sound:
[http://www.amazon.com/Brian-Eno-Music-Vertical-
Color/dp/0306...](http://www.amazon.com/Brian-Eno-Music-Vertical-
Color/dp/0306806495)

also reminds me: someday I'm going to listen to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music
_

------
infinity
In a far distant future an interstellar scientific exploration vessel will
approach the lifeless remains of the solar system and discover, stashed away
in a big artificial moon, one very huge data archive consisting entirely of
harsh noise. They will be so happy.

------
nine_k
It's like a child's play: the result is utterly uninteresting, but the process
is fun.

Adults just have more money and skill to put into activities like that.

------
mjankowski
Where can I get one? Will I get a guarantee that my set would be unique and
impossible to recreate?

------
amadeusw
Is this an art project? What is the use of this data? Is there a sample we can
listen to?

------
mjankowski
after a while: if it is music, how would it age? would it be considered old-
school after 10 or 20 years? if so, would recording a new set be a remake or a
new one?

------
asn0
Another data source for /dev/random?

~~~
ild
/dev/random will take forever; too slow.

~~~
dredmorbius
I believe asn0 was suggesting this as a seed / _input_ to /dev/random, not an
_output_.

The lossy compression (and apparent algorithmic errors) make this a fairly
poor choice of random noise input.

------
jliat
OK - some background...

Reading the thread is interesting! My motivation for the 1 Terabyte work was
nothing to do with conceptual art, I wont go into detail but originally
conceptual art was the idea that art was essentially a practice of examination
of the nature of art, see

[http://tallervi.pbworks.com/f/Art%20After%20Philosophy.pdf](http://tallervi.pbworks.com/f/Art%20After%20Philosophy.pdf)

This is an incredibly important document (though I don’t subscribe to it now)
as it poses the severing of art from aesthetics! (which I do subscribe to)

Unfortunately the media then took the term ‘conceptual art’ to mean any art
using any ‘idea’ about anything! Which was usually linked with challenging the
viewers idea of art etc. or being ‘interesting’ or smart or ‘pushing the
boundaries’… And was based on the misunderstanding of the lack of symmetry in
this kind of thing..

1\. New art is shocking. 2\. Something shocking is new art.

1\. might be true in some cases, but 2 does not follow anymore than…

1\. New theories in science are often thought crazy. 2\. If this is thought
crazy its new science.

So my motivation for 1TB– simple

“A man climbs a mountain because it's there. A man makes a work of art because
it isn't there.” Carl Andre.

So not a conceptrual work but an OBJECT.

I just thought - could I make a terabyte of noise? I like the discussion about
why mp3? The project began many years ago 1990s… using a lap top and VB to
write the files. This was so slow that after about 2 days the program would
crash… the problem seems not FAT32 but the old VB couldn’t handle files larger
than 4gb. Well after several attempts the lap top gave up! Latter of course
you see the header of a .WAV file allows for a max of 4gb. (“WAV files are
usually stored uncompressed, which means that they can get quite large, but
they cannot exceed 4 gigabytes due to the fact that the file size header field
is a 32-bit unsigned integer”) So I had two problems, size, and the time taken
to write! such a long file. The answer was when I found you can join mp3s and
they will play… even using a DOS copy command… copy *.mp3 /B big.mp3 would
copy all the mp3s in a folder to one big mp3 – which would then play! (unlike
mp4!)

So I created a .vb program (called MUZILLA....) to randomly splice chunks of
.mp3s to create large mp3s. The random selection giving different sound files
of very large lengths. This would make very big mp3s in minutes not days…. So
the project looked possible!

Moreover I found though one can count up to a billion, a trillion is
impossible, I am very interested in ‘objects’ which exceed the human.
[http://www.jliat.com/tg/index.html](http://www.jliat.com/tg/index.html)

[http://www.jliat.com/APCDS/index.html](http://www.jliat.com/APCDS/index.html)

This is bound up with such ideas as infinity, multiverses and a time before
and after humans as being the nature of reality. (Speculative Realism) If
reality is essentially inhuman – and if art is about our relationship to
reality… then I think my work could be considered as being art. Or if not then
I’m just messing with what I find in the world…

