Project Ruori

Project Ruori encounters electro-music, a suit of armor, and a fallout shelter

Project Ruori, a pseudorandomly generated collective of humans and machines, sent several delegates to this year’s Asheville electro-music festival. We came prepared with knowledge gained from last year, for example: if it smokes, unplug it. The human delegates — Steve Mokris, Melissa Egan, and Jaymie Strecker — now present their report of this year’s proceedings.

Paper Is Bad Records gets a makeover

Paper Is Bad Records, Inc.Paper Is Bad Records, Inc. was formed with no fanfare whatsoever back in 2005 by some of the people behind Tuesday Afternoon at China Wong Buffet as a venue for production and distribution of the resulting DVD. The DVD was a huge success and we all became rock stars. In our decadent complacency, we never got around to making a website for our one-hit-wonder.

ruori pure qc

Back when project ruori was working on PURE, I wrote several custom patches for Quartz Composer to enable us to use it to develop the controller software. Input came in the form of fifteen photocells, connected to the MIDIbox64 I constructed as an undergraduate project a few years ago. MIDI input entered Quartz Composer, was processed by a huge patch (going ten levels deep in macro patches in some places), and was output to:

Whiter than a Hatfield Family Reunion

[Editor’s note: This post (including the above title) was written by mradcliffe immediately following a day spent with project ruori. It is unedited and uncensored, and is presented to the reader as a demonstration of the deleterious effects of association with said collective.]

It was brought to my attention a couple of weeks ago that I would be “performing” with project ruori at PURE. I wouldn’t say “brought to my attention.” More like “forced upon my sleepy eyes as I sat entrapped away from my own home.” I had only planned on seeing Phung before he left, but poor logistics and fate led me to PURE.

"An interesting musical opportunity...

…is in your near future.”
    – fortune cookie from tonight’s dinner.

Near indeed.

The fortune I discovered in my wallet yesterday – “We are here to create / not merely survive” – was inspiring. This one was just scary.

We have a little over a week before we’re performing in Boston

Metasacrifice for Art

To the ruoriJews reading this: Shanah Tovah, and I hope you had a meaningful fast. To everyone else: Happy Monday.

My Yom Kippur was very hectic – I compressed this year’s atonement into a few hours this morning. Then for the afternoon, I headed over to the softpixel/ruori megalab to convert snack foods into mental energy and mental energy into a set of chaotic probability-driven sonatas for three theremin-like light-sensing instruments we’re almost done building.

So I guess I sacrificed my sacrifice for my art.