Agent modeling in behavioral economics in order to find the rules and interactions whose emergent properties positively affect the climate.
complexity
PDX I Love You
Friday, December 18th, 2009
Imagine the city covered in hearts on Valentine’s Day. So many people love this city, and here is a way to express that love. On Valentine’s Day, anyone walking alone in the city may see a heart poking out from a corner, and perhaps a smile will creep on their lips. A heart that is not commercial, a heart placed not for a single person, but for anyone who walks by. We want to give a medium for people, to encourage them to freely express their affection through this simple symbol, and re-conceive the purpose of Valentine’s Day, as not a huge commercial endeavor, but a chance to just show anyone- maybe even a city- you love them.
This was a collaborative project organized with Jason Edward Davis in Portland, OR. We organized a booth in the Love show to spread the idea and materials, and on the night of February 13th, 2009 we placed hearts around the city with dozens of Portlanders. The following are the notes preceding the project, and documentation of its progress.
Concepts
Ephemeral art is essential in this project because the intention does not involve littering or graffiti. Creating hearts that are biodegradable, or will come out in the rain is essential. Possible mediums include chalk, newspaper, construction paper, powder, and natural materials like sticks, dirt, or stones.
While exploring East Berlin, one can’t help but notice the wealth of street art. Its all around, and after wandering a few days in that city I felt the dialogue the artists had with the city dwellers. Walking in the city, daydreaming, thinking about different things, and these artists’ works would penetrate my thoughts. The street art is for the public, and its free to view. Its a similar dialogue and notion of art free for all that PDX I Love you seeks.
The intention is to cover as much of the city as possible with hearts. This is a large scale project, and in order to meet that scale we take into account the concepts of networks and how information and action flows through them. In order to scale to the size of the city, the execution is from the bottom up. We offer simple guidelines, without any core structure, to allow groups to grow organically. There is the option to meet at the love show, or to message us to find groups. With groups forming anywhere, and without reinforcing certain locations, it becomes possible to have hearts emerge all around the city without having a single individual put each one up.
Documentation
The messages sent out and development of the project was maintained on pdxiloveyou.blogspot.com
Soon after spreading the word of the project began, the curator of the Portland Love Show, Ben Pink, welcomed PDX I Love you into the show. We set up a booth there where we spread the message and also materials to heart the city.
On Valentine’s Day and for weeks after it was fun to look out for hearts and hear about hearts that were seen around town. For the most part the project was incredibly fulfilling because of its general uplifting outlook and giving nature. People became inspired about the idea, and we were excited by enthusiastic responses.
S&P CA
Thursday, December 17th, 2009A genetic algorithm of cellular automata rules in one dimension to model the s&p 500.
emergence_voice
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
Tom Cramer - Scent
I am excited to create music for the Tom Cramer opening downtown at Floyds for First Thursday. When I first saw the pieces I thought of a lot of the multiscale phenomena that occurs within complex systems.
For example, an individual ant alone will not last very long. Even 100 ants will not be able to sustain themselves for very long. However you take 1000 ants, or even 10,000 and a collective intelligence emerges. I had previously discussed many of these ideas in terms of non-hierarchical performance with Gary Wiseman when we collaborated on HEXAGON last spring, and he is curating this opening.
In Cramer’s works there is a homogeneity from a distance, with small variations, but as one gets closer it becomes evident that the immense number of simple patterns are all unique, slightly different. To respond to this idea I created many simple synthesizers each controlled by a separate random arpeggiator and varied the rates, as well as other qualities of the sound. Each individual sound is simple, and though their placement in pitch-space and time is random, a smoothness emerges as the complexity of the music increases i.e. as the rate of each arpegiattor increases, or as the notes begin to sonically merge within one other.
I will perform this music live in order to respond to the environment, Cramer’s work, and those wandering into the coffee shop to look at the art.
A sample of what may play at the opening:
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Thanks Erik Carter and Mariah Maines for additional vocals.
The opening is on December 3rd from 6pm-9pm at Floyd’s in Old Town: 118 NW Couch St Portland, OR 97209
Documenation: emergence_voice parts I, II, and III
The following three tracks are from the Tom Cramer opening at Floyd’s. When listening to the pieces it is important to note that the tracks were created for the environment of the opening- so they would be accompanied by conversations, voices, and in a space one could move through. These recordings are the sounds alone, so they do not include the more social-interactive aspect that was present during the show.
Part I was recorded live. Part II was recorded before the show and played during intermission. Part III was recorded live. All together it is about two hours and 45 minutes long.
part I:
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part II:
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part III:
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The music was created using a generative process. The following is a simple schematic of the way the sounds were set up.
A diagram of how the sounds were created
Five synthesizers and three voices were mapped to a keyboard notes D, E, F#, G, A, B, C. The voices were recorded live, without any manipulation in the mapping. An arpeggiator selected a note randomly. During the live performance the rate and resolution of the arpeggiator were affected, as well as the reverb, filter, pitch and ASDR of the synth and voice tracks.
Complex systems have multiple levels (scales) of activity. With the ant metaphor mentioned in the earlier post, there is the scale of an individual ant, and then there is the scale of the collective of ants. The individual ant appears to be moving randomly, but the collective of ants seems to move with purpose. From the complex systems perspective, a designer of a complex system must be aware of these levels and choose carefully what will be controlled and what will be left alone. If each of the individual ants were controlled externally and coerced to a certain action, it is unlikely that the same degree of complex collective intelligence would develop.
For this piece I chose to represent these concepts by what would be controlled live, and what was left to chance. I chose to leave the exact note choices in time to chance by defining the pitch-set to be P = {D, E, F#, G, A, B, C}, and leaving to chance the way in which these pitches would be arranged in space. Since the notes were chosen randomly, it is unlikely that any two performances of the piece will be exactly the same.
I chose to directly control the aspects of timbre, amplification, and effects of the sound live. This changed the quality of the sound. I also chose to control the rate at which the random notes were chosen, so the arpeggiator could be sped up to produce notes at a faster rate, or slowed down, to produce notes more slowly.
In retrospect the show as a whole felt very successful. It was exciting to be playing in the dynamic environment of a coffee shop during an opening, and especially to meet Tom Cramer at the end of the show. He enjoyed the music immensely, and so it definitely felt like a successful collaboration between artist, musician and curator.
Photos by Shawn Patrick Higgins
