personal development plans: Noise Lab review: The Owl Project

Yesterday I went to the Noise Lab for their latest event which was a talk by Graham Massey (of 808 State), basically telling people about his history and how influences and Manchester changed his music over time. Unfortunately, due to the pigeon-hole time slot of one hour that he was given, he had only told us of his progress up until 1987 when his time had run out. It was interesting but perhaps a bit disappointing considering he didn't make it to the period which he is actually famous for....but I guess it's understandable that the Noise Lab can't afford to run any longer.

After this though there was another talk by a group calling themselves 'The Owl Project', which initially had everyone in the room laughing due to how bizarre it was. They're basically a group of guys that get pieces of logs from a tree and put various electronic chips inside, perhaps an inside joke at the natural sounds that they create, the aim of it all being that they exploit the random and generic sounds such as mains hum and static which come from naturally from all electronics....and then combine these to create minimal electronic music.
Whilst there were moments throughout the demonstration of sudden loud static sounds which almost caused us to have a heart attack, it was interesting that there were actually some rhythms amongst the hiss. In particular I found that some of the sounds they were creating on the spot triggered a visual connection in my mind, the one of which I remember quite clearly was of a train journey.

Up until this point I don't think that anyone was really taking them seriously as people were still laughing....and even the two guys of group giving the talk were also laughing themselves. But then they introduced their latest gizmo called 'sticks'.....

The guy picks up these two sticks resembling claves (again cut from a tree log) and plugs a USB cable into them, he then opens up a piece of software that they had written to accompany it....the interface of which was just a blank waveform with 8 zeros underneath, and a metronome click sounding along with it. He explained that he wanted to experiment with the binary code that controls all actions of a computer (combinations of 0 and 1) so that he could use rhythm to complete basic computer tasks.
Sure enough he demonstrated this by banging the two sticks together in particular rhythms, which interpreted by the 8 bar binary code in the software changed each click from a 0 to a 1.....therefore changing the overall binary code and producing an action.

....of course this all sounds very confusing, but to put it simply....he banged the sticks together as a rhythm and just by doing this was able to open up his e-mail program, open a new e-mail, type it out and then send it!
Whilst it was really funny to watch, I found it very inspiring and innovative....and I could envision a future for this method of input whereby people who have lost limbs or are less able to use a computer with a keyboard and mouse can have the chance to be more active with technology. A concept which I think is very important considering the way that technology is affecting all our lives and will continue to do so even more in the future.