Learning Through Play, Continued
It feels nice to start writing again! The last month has been pretty busy, and I’ve unfortunately fallen behind on my posts. Despite the best efforts of Marty and his gentle reminders of our OATH OF WEEKLY POSTS (emphasis and dramatics: mine), I’ve not made an update since the end of March. This isn’t to say that I haven’t had ideas – I’ve had several ideas – where I’ve slipped is in the transferring thoughts to the web aspect. With that said, I want to continue the thread about the interplay of Creativity and Technology in my development over the years.
But First, a Recap!
In part one I discussed my recent revelation of the importance of playing with technology in my personal skill development. Over the last month I’ve returned to this feeling as I’ve been working through several development goals. Whenever I start feeling overwhelmed about the amount of things that I feel the need to learn, I do my best to revert to a state of playful exploration. Here are some of the various skills I’ve worked on since the end of March:
- Deepening my Python knowledge
- Expanding my understanding of P5, in particular as it relates to generating drawings based on nature
- Developing a better workflow/system for embedding P5 sketches into existing webpages
- Web Audio API (with and without the P5.sound wrapper)
- This is a natural field for exploration through play, as I was experimenting with mangling an Amen break with JavaScript
- Markov Chains
- Connecting my budding interest in machine learning with my desire to create ridiculous things. For example, a Markov chain powering a Ronnie James Dio generative lyric system
- Returning to musical pursuits and reestablishing a workflow
I sometimes tend to overwhelm myself as I hop from thing to thing. This results in several half-developed ideas and lots of potential for distraction. As I got super excited with all the possibilities for playing with these new technologies!, I stopped working on other projects. I haven’t continued developing Facepaint since I considered it to be fairly complete. I want to revisit that project, but only after I delve into a million other things first!
How Does This Relate…
The wall of text above is intended to provide context for the following thoughts. I’ve realized more and more that I actually do some of my deepest learning and quickest skill development when I’m jumping between ideas and projects because I trust my excitement to guide me to new topics. On the surface this may seem as if I’m only developing a superficial understanding of an idea before moving on, I almost always tend to revisit the topic and idea in time and further scale my knowledge. An example of this is actually Facepaint – I know that I’ll eventually continue developing that app, but only after my current excitement fades for the other things I’m currently exploring. I realize that I learn best in this way – I mainly need to trust myself that I’ll return to a topic in due time and pick up where I left off.
Music and Technology
In the previous post, I mentioned the crucial role that music has played in my technological skill development. I’ve thought even more about this and began to trace the interconnectedness of these two things in my adult life. After graduating high school I remember having a conversation with my friend Mike. We were discussing polyrhythmic drumming and the complexities of progressive (and extreme!) music. At the time, my interest in polyrhythms and oddtime systems surpassed my actual technical ability (over time the gap between my skill and my interest would lessen).
I remember getting very deeply into the wonderful mathematic details of these systems (a topic that deserves a post!) and writing lots of (handwritten!) journal entries about the math. This led to an interest in, and subsequent self-learning of, linear algebra. I studied matrices and vectors and it all tied back to polyrhythmic music. After months of discussion and sharing these ideas with Mike, I remember him saying that “I had a knack for figuring out complex things.” Looking back at that moment, I think that I have a knack for it when the complex thing relates back to some form of play. I’ve always been interested in learning new things, especially somewhat complex things, because I always associate it with some form of play.
In the previous example, my exploration of rather complex math spawned from an interest in how it would apply to oddtime and polyrhythmic music. As an aside, I’ve since learned that it’s quite important to balance listenability with complexity… a lesson I didn’t quite care about in 2003. I mentioned that I’ve been exploring Markov Chains and generative processes over the last month. This is actually a topic I’ve encountered before in the context of generative and algorithmic composition. Without getting into too much detail (again, a future post!), there have been several explorations of methods and processes for algorithmic composition throughout the ages. Since computer music has developed and evolved since the mid-20th century, there has been a lots of exciting new interpretations and systems built for generative composition.
As I explored Markov Chains, I realized that I had read about a Markov Chain used in a Max/MSP patch that would control the likelihood of certain breakbeat patterns playing. At the time, I didn’t know much about Markov Chains and I wasn’t quite interested in learning more… until recently! As I started diving into Markov Chains a few weeks ago I began to recall all the previous applications I’d encountered, and I felt a rush of excitement! This sparked an interest in playing with Markov Chains that resulted in the following chain of events:
- I love chopping up Amen breaks => How can I integrate that process into this new thing?
- I want to further explore the Web Audio API => How can I create an interactive sketch using P5 and Web Audio?
- I love weird experiments => How can I make use a Markov Chain to create a Ronnie James Dio lyric generator?
- How can I create an interactive web interface for these experiments?
- What aspects of these points intersect?