Maz & Kilgore

I’ve been working on Debtonation with Ann Pettifor for several months. For those who don’t know her work, Ann is one of the very few economists who accurately predicted the current global financial meltdown. As early as 2003 she warned of an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis - not exactly a popular position at the time, and she continues to call it right. So check out Debtonation for independent and forthright analysis of the incredible mess we’re in. Here’s an excerpt:

“It is hard to over-state the gravity and extent of the collapse of the global economy. I can barely find the words to fill a blog that I fear you, dear reader, may weary of.  It is even harder to find an economy escaping the carnage, or to avoid politicians dashing for the cover of bail-outs.  But one can still encounter economists confident and chipper in the face of such massive, global destruction – and the threat of sustained economic failure.”

Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to consult on user experience and interface design for a number of companies in the software world. (more…)

Beginning in 1995, Maz and I worked as Creative Directors of the Social Interface Group at Microsoft. We had been working under Karen Fries and Barry Linnett on an application codenamed Utopia back in ‘93. They had assembled a team of programmers and artists to work on a radical new interface inspired by the emerging body of research into so called “social interfaces”. Much of this landmark research was performed by Stanford professors, Cliff Nass and Byron Reeves. (more…)

Here’s an incarnation of a graphic interface for creating and controlling probability-based ambient audio soundscapes. Click here or on the image to try it out.

WHAT IS THIS?
This is a set of 8 rack units. Each one contains a preset bank with a handful of sounds. You can trigger them as a “single shot”, by pressing the play button. A sound will loop indefinitely when the “Loop” mode button is selected.

RANDOM TRIGGERS
On the left hand side of each unit is a “random trigger generator”. Clicking the button marked RND engages the random trigger for that channel. The frequency knob controls the “rate” at which new random numbers are generated. That is, every time the LED goes on or off, a random number between 0-100 is generated.

If the random number is less than the value of “Amount” then the sound will play. The “Prob” knob adjusts the “amount of probability” or the threshold below which the random number will trigger the sound.

It’s best to test each sound by just playing it once with the play button. Some sounds are quite long. These long sounds are best triggered with either a very slow rate of chance or with a low probability of occurring.

MASTER: NEW, LOAD & SAVE
I’ve added the ability to save configurations for the full rack of eight units. You could tweak an existing patch and click “Save” and it will be updated. Tweak an existing patch but type in a new name is equivalent to “Save As”.