Re: error correction/Nicolas Collins

[Keenan Lawler <klaw@konstant.com>]

Hello Jeese & all loopers-i agree with yr comments on Nic Collns-hes quite
a brillant composer/musician who has done so much innovative work esp his
inverse guitar stuff- have you ever seen the kalvos & damien new music
bazaar site?

check this  for a live interview & great music from Collins (as well as a
wellspring of great music from many diverse composers )
& some wacky banter in between .Its a huge archive of radio shows from 5
years ago to the present-youll need real audio 


scroll down the page & click  the programm to see the playlist---


http://www.goddard.edu/wgdr/kalvos/shows.html
                 Oedipus Nix
                                                     July 6

Nicolas Collins, 2
   58 
                 Czar Nicolas, the Tunguska Fireball
                                                     June 29
                                                                    42

Nicolas Collins, 1



enjoy!

    K












At 06:30 PM 4/14/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I've been hearing and reading quite a bit about Nicolas Collins lately 
>(who
>coincidentally studied at the school I now attend, though that has nothing
>to do with how I heard about him), but I haven't been able to find his 
>stuff
>anywhere.  However, Kim's remarks reminded me about an interview I read 
>with
>him where he talks about his modifications to CD's and players.  The below
>is excerpted from a longer interview at
>http://www.art-bag.net/contd/issue2/collins.htm#f1
>
>By the way, if anyone has more info on Collins or is familiar with his 
>work
>and where to find it, do share, off-list or on.
>
>***
>I started to do the CD-skipping-thing in '88 or '89, and used it a lot in
>live performances, since I tend to do a lot of pieces that are based on
>processing found sound material. In a nutshell, everything I do has to do
>with sticking something into a machine and watching it come out different 
>at
>the other end. I used to work a lot with cassette tapes, I put different
>material in the left and the right channels and sort of distributed stuff
>randomly over tape so you would never know exactly what you would get 
>when.
>And I started using CD players because I could remotely control them very
>easily, to get access to different parts. I did some modifications in the
>players just to see if I could manipulate the CD the way you can an LP --
>scratching. I came up with a few very simple tricks whereby you can 
>scratch
>and cue and this kind of stuff.
>
>MC: So you do the tricks on the CDs or inside the CD player?
>
>NC: In the CD player. In terms of history, there were a number of artists 
>--
>most particularly Yasunao Tone, a Japanese artists working in New York, 
>who
>did pieces where they prepared the CDs themselves. They discovered that if
>you put crayon marks or cellotape on the CD, you can get it to do all 
>sorts
>of jingling stuff. But I went inside the CD player and looked, because I
>suspected -- and I was right -- that the laser was always reading
>information off the disc, even when you're on pause or moving from track 
>one

>to track 30. It's always reading information, but the control computer
>"censors" the output, decides for us what is music (i.e., the clean
>playback) and what is "noise" (scratching, skipping). So I found that
>control signal, marked "mute" and I simply flipped that pin off the chip 
>so
>that it could no longer mute anything. And that opened the door to the 
>inner
>world of the CD: you could hear anything that the CD-player was doing at 
>any
>time. Later I got in deeper and started to turning in and off the motor 
>and
>sled, slow it down, make things go backwards, typical screw-up things.
>***
>
>-Jesse
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Kim Flint <kflint@annihilist.com>
>To: <Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 1999 2:42 AM
>Subject: Re: error correction
>
>
>>
>> I played around with this idea once. I think I even mentioned it on the
>> list a long time ago, since it's an interesting way to get some crazy
>> loops. With a little experimentation, you can get some really nutty 
>things
>> to come out of a cd player. My favorite from those days was a bad heavy
>> metal band* cd that I painted lines on with white-out. Then I scraped 
>some
>> of the white-out off so it was fairly spotty. I think it was an 
>iterative
>> thing, really. I painted a bunch on, played it, didn't like it, scrape
>some
>> off, play again, etc, until I got a good result. For me, the cd player
>> would randomly skip around the disc, getting stuck in tight loops over
>bits
>> of audio for a while and then skipping randomly again. Sometimes it 
>would
>> actually play a stretch for a little while before skipping off again.
>> Ofentimes I'd have to press buttons on the front to break it out of a 
>loop
>> if it stuck too long. The result sounded like some wild industrial 
>music.
>> Intense, percussive loops would form over little stretches of bad-metal
>> sound, and suddenly switch to a different bad-metal loop. Great fun.
>>
>> A guy I knew then who did this weird college radio show suggested
>> microwaving the cds. I guess it makes lots of sparks before the plastic
>> around the disk shatters, leaving spider webs of lines all over the cd
>> surface. Probably that wreaks havoc on the poor cd laser. Never tried 
>that
>> one, as I would surely starve to death if I blew up the microwave.
>>
>> I don't imagine it's easy to disable error correction in the player.
>> Different manufacturers probably use different error correction
>algorithms,
>> so I would guess the results differ from machine to machine. However,
>error
>> correction is only meant to handle bits of dust and small scratches, so
>any
>> serious damage to the cd should completely overwhelm it. I don't know 
>how
>> the guy would get pitch and timbre changes, but I'm sure you could get 
>all
>> sorts of crazy stuff if you experimented with different cds and
>> cd-mutilation techniques.
>>
>> I say, just grab some crappy cd's and go for it!  If you destroy your cd
>> player or any other home appliances in the process, please don't blame
>> me....
>>
>> *Meliah Rage, remember them? no? They were much better after I finished
>> with them. ;-)
>>
>> ______________________________________________________________________
>> Kim Flint                   | Looper's Delight
>> kflint@annihilist.com       | http://www.annihilist.com/loop/loop.html
>> http://www.annihilist.com/  | Loopers-Delight-request@annihilist.com
>>
>>
>>
>