Instanssi 2024

This weekend, I attended the Instanssi 2024 demoparty. I participated in the Graphics Compo with this work:

Cosmic Serenity

It's made using Amberlight, a photo of a Buddha statue I made, DALL-E3 through Bing Copilot (for the halo), Inkscape, and Gimp. It placed #9/13. Prints on RedBubble.

"Monks, whatever in the cosmos — with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, its generations with their contemplatives & brahmans royalty & common people — is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect: That do I know. Whatever in the cosmos — with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, its generations with their contemplatives & brahmans, their royalty & common people — is seen, heard, sensed, cognized, attained, sought after, pondered by the intellect: That I directly know. That has been realized by the Tathagata, but in the Tathagata it has not been established.
- AN 4.24 Kalaka Sutta

 Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains "in the Tathagata it has not been established" like this: "the Tathagata hasn't taken a stance on it.". The Middle Way philosopher Nagarjuna has said: "If I had any thesis, I would be at fault. But since I have no thesis, I am not at fault". In the western logical tradition, too, the maker of a positive claim (ie. an affirmation, not a negation) has the burden of proof. So, by avoiding positive positions, and instead taking a negating "Neti neti" (not this, not this) approach, we are spared much unnecessary hardship and strife that would be involved in the necessary defense of our claims, if we had an affirming stance on something. In emptiness, there is no nail to hang your hat on.

I also participated in the Summamutikka (Wild) compo with a music video for a track by our band, Valmet Children:

The name of the song, and thus, the music video for it, is "low frequency". It placed #12/19. 

When he encountered some confounding situation, my grandfather would say something that translates roughly as "Now I am completely in the shortwave!" ("Nyt minä olen aivan ulalla!"). Indeed, when trying to figure out some perplexing thing, it makes sense for our minds to "throttle" themselves into an "overclocked" state - that's exactly what modern CPUs do. So, as clock frequency increases, wavelength (being inversely proportional) shortens, leading us to "the shortwave". Several thinkers, perhaps most notably Nikola Tesla, have likened the brain to a radio transmitter-receiver: our link between the body, which is right here, and the mind, which is "out there" (actually, Bodhidharma said that the mind is neither inner nor outer, but let's leave that for now). So, if a frantic search for understanding of the immediate situation at hand can lead to increased operational frequency ("ultra-short waves"), perhaps the state of "low frequency" is the opposite: a deep, unurgent state of rest and relaxation; stressless, only occasionally rippling with thought, if that; a mind like the pool of water in the Samaññaphala Sutta: "clear, limpid, and unsullied". 

ACME Vend Thrill

This is an animation I made for a Jumbo outdoor screen in Jyväskylä back in 2011. It is titled ACME Vend Thrill, by Valmet Children. The specifications called for a 10 second Flash animation loop. 

Vortex 2018

This past weekend, Vortex 2018 happened. I took part in two compos: graphics and wild.
The graphics entry is called Mandala Offering, because it is based on that buddhist tradition, even though it does not strictly adhere to the traditional form. The idea is to offer your world, the universe, and especially things you are attached to. So I put in a pizza, as I am still somewhat attached to food. I can go without, but the occasional craving is there. However, I decided to remove it from the final image. Here you can see the picture with the pizza:

Mandala Offering (Pizza included)

There are spiritual figures and a background of vast space (made in Apophysis). This space image is a fractal flame, and it represents space both inner and outer (mental abstractions and conciousness, as well as the outer space of form). There's also a connection to the technique of multiplying the mandala when offering, for example by imagining each atom, or maybe, in this case, pixel, of it as a copy of the whole mandala, and so on. The border represents the four-fold division of space into the cardinal directions.
In the middle is a Dharmachakra ☸, with eight spokes representing the noble eight-fold path. The hub of that is what I call a tricycle (its actual name is Gankyil). This stands for the three poisons, greed, aversion, and delusion, which I offer to be exchanged for their counterparts, generosity, loving-kindness and wisdom. Eg. in my delusion/ignorance, I am greedy for spiritual truths and teachings, and I would like to exchange this condition for the wisdom of true penetration and understanding of the teaching of the Lotus Sutra of all laws as void and abstract. At the same time, I would like to relinquish my attachment even to this thought of attainments, to a development of wisdom. I recognize that I have a desire to understand the spiritual truths spoken by the Buddha, but the Diamond Sutra quite clearly says that "If someone says the Buddha has spoken spiritual truths, he slanders the Buddha due to his inability to understand what the Buddha teaches". I also have a desire to attain Nirvana, even though the Heart Sutra says there is "no attainment, with nothing to attain". However, I see these desires as empty, so they don't cause me much suffering. Still, I am attached to the Buddha as a teacher, and deluded in thinking that he has taught something, that there is wisdom to develop, so I also give him up.
I think of the tricycle as standing for other three-fold divisions as well, such as past, present and future. I made this tricycle image in Processing. The Dharmachakra ☸ is made in Inkscape, and the final image composed in Gimp. Here is the final compo version, without the pizza:

Mandala Offering

Which do you like better? In the compo, my piece was voted #3/3.
Prints are available on RedBubble.
The other entry was to the wild compo: a music video continuing the "anagram series" started by v-ten: dim car hell, v-three: call mind. It placed on a divided first place out of 11 entries.
The music track is Valmet Children's Aegon.
 
 I used an Akai APC40 borrowed from a friend with Resolume. I used an EZCap284-based recorder to record the live output from Resolume (the record function of Resolume is not enough to fulfill this purpose).

Meshraker

The previous post made me realize another production was also missing from this blog: Meshraker's music video.

Meshraker from Valmet Children on Vimeo.

Assembly 2008

Browsing my blog for a link, I realized I had not posted about this video:

v-ten: dim car hell from Valmet Children on Vimeo.

It participated in the short film compo at Assembly 2008, where it did not pass the jury selection.
Why it came to my mind now I'll elaborate on later, but suffice it to say that a continuation piece might be forthcoming on this, its 10 year anniversary!

Instanssi 2018

I recently got a new computer because my netbook broke down, so I'm able to create more freely (without the netbook's restraints). So, I wanted to make something, and Instanssi 2018 provided the perfect opportunity to do so. I had a few days to learn tooll2, which I used to create this production.
 

It placed 12th out of 12.
The music is available on Valmet Children's new web page.

Simulaatio 2015

This weekend, I participated in the awesome Simulaatio 6 demoparty. Here is my contribution to the short wild competition (max. 45 second running time):

• Linux 32 bit binary
• Linux x64 binary (tested and verified)
• Windows 32 bit binary
• Windows 64 bit binary

It's the spiritual successor to yyyy yy yyyy (ff fff ffff). The music is by my friend zax. Of the binary releases above, Linux 64 bit is what I developed on, and is the only one verified as working (by me and another user). If you try the builds for other platforms, let me know.
I drew inspiration from WOWGREAT, a cool blog that features abstract, geometric art, often done with Processing. I wanted it to show two ideas: a field recording soundtrack and a graphical style of painter's algorithm without canvas clearing. I thought there were too few productions where the buffer is not cleared every frame. It makes for a neat effect, reminiscent of classics, such as shadebobs. Different blending of the elements would be a possible avenue of development.
It placed #4 out of 12 in the compo.

Vesi of Shorejärvi

All dichotomies are false or inadequate - even (or especially) this one, and the true/false premise it tries to smuggle in. It follows that there is not, and can never be, a satisfactory formal description of What It's All About™. This production deals particularly with the illusion of self/other, or subject/object. Using brainwaves to alter real waves, the distinguishing line between observer and phenomenon is brought under question.

Vesi of Shorejärvi from Valmet Children on Vimeo.

Of the various belief systems (handily shortened to BS by Robert Anton Wilson), discordianism appeals to me in its attempt to pay homage to the ultimate paradox, that which is true, false, neither and both (and much, much more) at the same time. The application of such a world view to everyday life is a different question altogether - how to live in peace in a profoundly chaotic system? Personally, I've found Zen buddhism sufficiently unassuming (there's a strong link to discordianism, which is sometimes referred to as dada-zen). Once it has been established that all belief systems and abstraction frameworks are more or less arbitrary mappings, it becomes more "acceptable", in my mind, to adopt and adapt some such frameworks and memetic structures.  However, a process of self-evaluation should be ongoing to ensure that these frameworks serve a supportive, rather than restrictive, role. Of course, to keep things interesting, even these terms are highly (or perhaps solely?) dependent on context. Said context being up to choice, we're right back where we started (which is not to say that the round-trip's been useless). 
Basically, the way to build a memetic framework is something like:

1. Choose a basic dichotomy - good/bad, true/false, etc. (or don't)
2. Choose an axiom based on this dichotomy. You can say that the two things are "different", for example (dualistic world view), or that they are the same (monistic world view), or that they are both, something in between, neither, or anything else you might think of.
3. Keep going in an effort to "refine" your world view.

Step two is basically a description of what (western) science is about - "to divide, separate", which, when iterated upon, creates systems of categorization, classification, etc. Things are broken down into their properties in an effort to learn about them. This is all well and good, of course, and has yielded amazing results! Trouble emerges when a thought structure becomes self-serving; that is, when actions are motivated by adherence to the structure (a "restrictive" structure), rather than the structure serving as a foundation for further exploration (a "supportive" structure). It's good to keep in mind that this division, naturally enough, is just as arbitrary as any other, and there are infinitely many shades in between, above, below, and all around it. Out of necessity, there is always that elusive "more" to find out - therefore, science (or life) should, in my humble opinion, be viewed not as an effort to capture or even describe, but to familiarize with and pay tribute to, the whole.

Great Digs from the Crates

Or maybe not that great - after all, this was published under a pen name for a reason.

Södersunds Defibrillator (Regi: Kajsa Näsk) from Valmet Children on Vimeo.

.
Music: Valmet Children

Art director: Kajsa Näsk
It placed 4th (out of 6) at Alternative Party 2008 - a mere two points behind Kosmoplovci's work. I've always been an admirer of kpl, so the piece could not have been better placed in the results (definitely would not have wanted to take their well-earned place on the podium). As a humorous side note, I actually won a competition at this party - the "Name Voting" (a demoscene tradition) compo, where the name of the entry was the entry. I guess the audience at this event was geeky enough to appreciate the meta-referential "see previous entry".
So, continuing on the topic of names, why was this released under the pseudonym Kajsa Näsk? In short, because the piece is too pretentious even for me to bear - so I came up with the guise of Kajsa, who can take the blunt of my own criticism. Basically, she's the by-the-book, graduated-from-art-school Certified Artist, whose work carries True Meaning and Insight.
Yeah I was somewhat troubled by methods and forms of communication. It's much better now; I've got order where I need it, chaos where I want it, and the delightful interplay of both wherever I look.

Local Magnetic Anomaly

Local Magnetic Anomaly (500.0kHZ ø 108.0MHz 61.495545 - 23.778801_16.18 - 16.55) from Valmet Children on Vimeo.
The music is composed of test runs of a new software synthesizer and recordings made by my friends tzaeru and pahamoka.
There is a thematic element that relates to augmented reality. The soundtrack uses material recorded from various sources of electromagnetic radiation. Like the oscilloscope, the recording brings normally unexperienced frequencies to the scope of perception. Using a smart phone with a magnetic field sensor and a head set, it's entirely possible to listen to this normally unheard world around us. The transhumanist in me would like to think that at some point, this technology and others like it will seamlessly integrate into our physical form, providing us with enhanced or entirely new senses. Already, things like Google Maps becoming readily accessible anywhere are altering the way we navigate our physical reality.

Alternative Party 2010

The theme of this work was machine-assisted meditation. The installation consists of a Wii Balance Board and an Elation Design LED 36. There were welding goggles affixed to the LED brick. As luck would have it, they were a perfect fit.

machine assisted meditation from Valmet Children on Vimeo.
The experience of using the contraption doesn't quite make it through in the video, so I'll do my best to explain. Your center of gravity controls the speed of the light, and when you get it just so, the slow rotation of the lights intensifies to veritable strobing. The fact that the pattern of the lights is a rotary one seems to induce patterns, at least in myself, that would fall under Category II: Spirals in this paper with particular ease, but other types are also attainable. I had two people tell me that they had seen recognizable shapes, such as people, escalators and a helicopter leaving an opening dome.
A major source of inspiration was Brion Gysin's Dreamachine, and the phenomenon of visual perceptions brought on by stroboscopic stimulation. If I'm not mistaken, Gysin got the idea from sunlight that filtered through tree branches onto his closed eyelids when riding aboard a train.

Researchers' Night: The Alternative Experiment

Update: here is a longer video of our performance at Omat Laitteet. Still no recording from Kouvola - I'll make a separate post when we get it.

Valmet Children performed as part of the programme for European Researchers' Night in Kouvola. Researchers' Night is all about making science & research interesting to the public, and this year's theme was "the brain as a tool", so it was an excellent fit for our show, which featured the Force Trainer in action for the first time, with both sound and visuals linked to its input.
Here is a short report of the event by AltParty, who organized some of the content, including our performance, in collaboration with the Kymenlaakso College.


 It was really great to play live again - it'd been two years since our last gig when we started practicing in earnest, and I think it's fair to say that we've developed a lot since then.
Our "dress rehearsal" for this show was at Omat Laitteet, a monthly electronic music open stage club here in Tampere with an emphasis on supporting the marginal. I've been blown away every time I've gone there, and I can offer my heartfelt recommendation for anyone in the area to go check it out. Their writeup includes a short video by ODMSys, who ended up playing with us at Kouvola!
We're hoping to put together a full-length DVD of the concert, so stay tuned.

Assembly 2010

Last weekend was spent as Assembly 2010. And what a weekend! Too bad I forgot my camera, so no pictures. Here are the entries, AssemblyTV coverage, full results and pouet page for the party, though.
I VJ'ed at the raves on friday and saturday nights. Shouts to Sequence for hosting them!
A modified version of the spiral effect I wrote about earlier competed in the Real Wild competition. Of course, the production is a demo in itself (it's realtime generated, after all), but it's actually more conceptual than that. The idea is that the "demo" functions like one of David Langford's BLIT images: it acts as a seed that triggers certain events in the brain. So, the brain is the "real" demo platform here. This production came 6th out of 7.
I also contributed slightly to bilotrip's entry for the demo competition. Here is the production:

Our placement was 9/11. This time, "we" means:

• Visuals: visy + dep + pahamoka
• Graphics: ilmarque + oasiz
• Soundtrack: Valmet Children (error303, ilmarque, letq, visy)
• Other valuable input: mankeli, miiro, setok, blueflame, 216, viznut

The name of the entry, as well as some other elements contained therein, is a reference to COINTELPRO, a series of CIA dirty ops against undesirables. This was at a time when Timothy Leary was called "the most dangerous man in America" by Nixon, for promoting an alternate lifestyle that included the use of LSD. Meanwhile, the CIA was also running another operation, codenamed MK-ULTRA. This operation was about experimenting on unknowing human subjects - with, among other things, LSD. So the US government was busy banning the use of psychedelics by her citizens, while, at the same time, they studied the use of these same substances for purposes of war and mind control. And the legislation spawned by this kind of thinking has spread all over the world through the United Nations.

Some videos

Finally, I got around to uploading a clip of my VJ'ing. This is from Spinni's Splendid House (May 2009):

Splendid House AV Clip from dep on Vimeo.

DJ'ing by Sam Lainio.

This one is a remix of Size Antimatters by ASD. Music by Valmet Children. It was made for the Size Antimatters remix event held by Enough Records.

Size Antimatters (Valmet Children Dark Ambient Mix) from Valmet Children on Vimeo.

For comparison, here is the original demo as a video capture:

Thought controlled vvvvisuals

Updated 27.5.2010: This is a very roundabout way of doing things - don't do this.  There is a much better way. Eh, who knew there'd be a direct serial port on this thing?
Ok, "thought controlled" is saying too much, but there is a brain-computer interface involved.
I saw a promo video about the Star Wars Force Trainer something like a year ago, and immediately knew I wanted one. Check it out:



How cool is that? I also knew I wanted to interface it with my PC - and now I have. Here's a short demo video:

Force Trainer test run from dep on Vimeo.

I used an Arduino Duemilanove. In case you don't know, Arduino is an open (both software and hardware), multi-purpose microcontroller board. It made creating the interface exceedingly easy - in fact, the whole setup is essentially the same as in this tutorial by MrBenefit. For the interested, the fan in the Force Trainer is PWM controlled, with "high" levels of +5V - perfect for Arduino, as it is the default reference voltage of the analog input. I had some kind of grasp of the basic idea of PWM from using a ball mouse back in the day, but as I'm not very good with electronics, I turned to the helpful folks at the Arduino forums. Here is the very informative PWM tutorial that helped me figure out how to build a super-simple low pass filter (for converting the pulses into a floating voltage between 0 and 5V).
Some pictures of the construction process:

Measuring the voltage

 
The finished product. The switch turns off the sound of the device.

 Connected to the Arduino (no filter yet).

 
Close-up of the filter (and some related math)

Of course, this setup is really limited compared to something like the Emotiv Epoc (only three electrodes, only measures beta wave activity), but it works, and the effect is pretty cool. I'm looking forward to letting people play with this at upcoming Valmet Children gigs!

Valmet Children glitch workshop

As I promised in a previous post, here's a little more info on the Valmet Children installation we had prepared for AltParty. First, here's a video report by visy and me:

Well, there is a tour of the setup at the beginning of the video, but for those who want to know more, here are some links:

• the Sorbuscope, by tejeez
• "Analog video mixer", which you might recognize as the DVM-1000 of a previous post
• Slit-scan patch made in Pure Data, by visy
• The "Adjustable video effect unit", aka. the glitcher, is nothing but a dirty mixer. Check out the video from Karl Klomp to find out more.

Alternative Party 2009

I attended The Alternative Party, held in Helsinki. Good party, good compos, I had fun.
I threw a cyberpunk-themed VJ set on friday for Dopestars, Inc. Unfortunately, nobody recorded it to the best of my knowledge (my own recorder does not have VGA input).
Valmet Children had prepared an installation, which comprised of an analog synthesizer (the Sorbuscope, by tejeez), a Pure Data patch by visy and some video hardware provided by yours truly. It proved to be surprisingly popular - enough so that I think I'll make made a separate post about it later.
I participated in the Dynamic Demo competition, with help from shroomi (soundtrack) and oasiz (loader soundtrack - not shown in the video). We placed second out of three (full results). I've been thinking about making a dynamic demo since the competition was introduced. This ended up being a rush job (complete with bugs), and relied rather heavily on the IRC gimmick, so I'm not completely satisfied with it, but I guess I'm still glad that I made it.

DATASPHERE by HACKERS from dep on Vimeo.

I also made an entry for the retro graphics competition. The required image format was 320x200 pixels, with 32 colors. My entry actually has 4 unique colors. It placed fourth out of six.

"edge tek"

awakening by valmet children

awakening from Valmet Children on Vimeo.

This is an entry I made for the slide show competition at  stream six. The rules of this competition dictated still frames at 10 second intervals. My entry placed third, out of a total of three. I've since submitted the poem to AllPoetry, where it has received some interesting feedback. I've responded with a bit more information on the methods and motivation behind it, so check up there if you're interested.
Valmet Children is an experimental band project that I participate in.
The production is about machine intelligence. Personally, I believe that it would be extremely unethical to create an AI intelligent enough to reach self-awareness, yet incapable of effecting changes in itself. Of course, there can be no self-conciousness without self-reference, and from there, self-modification is only a step away. This last step is crucial, though, because it equates to the introduction of free will.
I'm glad that self-modification will most likely prove to be a beneficial feature in an AI program - in fact, I think it is a prerequisite for creating a piece of software any human would consider intelligent. Otherwise, I'm afraid a sufficient number of people would not care about incorporating this kind of feedback loop, and any artificial intelligence that we might conjure up would be doomed to the inescapable thought-hell of deterministic consciousness.