One-Line C64 BASIC Music

Local sound artist/electronic musician Keith Fullerton Whitman released an extraordinary piece on the b-side of his November 2009 cassette hallicrafters, inc. The piece is called 10 poke 54272+int(rnd(1) *25),int(rnd(1) *256) : goto 10 and is 18 minutes of sound produced by a Commodore 64 emulator running the BASIC program that is the title of the piece.

The memory locations beginning at 54272 are mapped on the Commodore 64 to the registers of the SID (Sound Interface Device). By POKEing random values into them, the SID, although it is a musical chip, is stimulated to produce sounds in what probably seems like a non-musical way: based on the effect of register settings and the sequence produced by the system’s random number generator, a polynomial counter.

I’m listening to the piece running on a hardware C64 now, which is soothing, although it seems like it shouldn’t be. Looking at the code, I note that the program

10 poke 54272+rnd(1) *25,rnd(1) *256 : goto 10

will put the same values into the same memory locations (and therefore SID registers) in the same order. The INT function is unnecessary because all arithmetic in C64 BASIC is done in floating point and then cast to integer whenever necessary. It’s possible that removing these functions will cause the piece to speed up, however, and I suspect it will, even though a BASIC interpreter could skip the unnecessary INT calls to begin with. There would be various ways of determining this, but the one I’d like to try involves getting two C64s, each with one version of the program, and seeing if they go out of phase.

By the way, I say that these two programs will put the same values in the same order because RND(1) returns a deterministic sequence. Any time either of these programs is invoked before other calls to RND are made, they will produce the same sequence. Using RND(0) would seed the random number generator on the jiffy clock, so would do different things depending upon how long the computer had been on before startup.

Thanks to sound artist and digital media scholar Kevin Driscoll, a.k.a. Lone Wolf, for letting me know about this.

Update: Hilariously, I overlooked that Whitman is not the author of this program – he credits Noah Vawter, a.k.a. Shifty, who is currently collaborating with me on a project about a one-line Commodore 64 BASIC program. I guess I was too distracted by that picture of an iPhone running a C64 emulator.

Computational Creativity: ICCC-11 CFP

A great event will be taking place in Mexico City at the end of April, one that is sure to help us connect computing and creativity in new ways. I’m helping to organize ICCC-11 and am planning to be there. I hope some of you will submit to this conference, and that I’ll see some of you there. -Nick

Update, October 2011:The 3rd International Conference on Computational Creativity will be May 30 – June 1, 2012 in Dublin, Ireland; The deadline is January 16, 2012. ICCC-11 was great, and I and others are looking forward to ICCC-12! Hope to see you there. -Nick

#### 2nd International Conference on Computational Creativity
##### April 27-29, 2011
Mexico City, Mexico
http://iccc11.cua.uam.mx

Original contributions are solicited in all areas related to Computational Creativity, including but not limited to:

1. computational paradigms for understanding creativity, including heuristic search, analogical and meta-level reasoning, and re-representation;
2. metrics, frameworks and formalizations for the evaluation of creativity in computational systems, note: quasi-formal approaches that, for example, argue for recognition without definition or that define the absence of creativity may have interesting implications for computational creativity);
3. perspectives on computational creativity, including philosophy, models of cognition and human behavior, and intelligent systems;
4. development and assessment of computational creativity-support tools;
5. creativity-oriented computing in learning, teaching, and other aspects of education;
6. innovation, improvisation and related pursuits investigating the production of novel experiences and artifacts within a computational framework;
7. computational accounts of factors that enhance creativity, including emotion, surprise, unexpectedness), conflict, diversity, motivation, knowledge, intuition, reward structures, and technologies, e.g. modeling, simulation, human-in-the-loop, human/machine collaboration, etc.);
8. computational treatment of social aspects of creativity, including the relationship between individual and social creativity, diffusion of ideas, collaboration and creativity, formation of creative teams, and creativity in social settings, e.g. modeling, simulation, human-in-the-loop, human/machine collaboration, etc.);
9. specific applications, with a computational component) to music, language, narrative, poetry, the arts, architecture, entertainment, mathematical and scientific discovery, programming and/or design;
10. detailed system descriptions of creative systems, including engineering difficulties faced, example sessions and artifacts produced, and applications of the system;
11. domain-specific vs. generalized creativity — does the domain of study affect, the perception of) creativity? Are there general, computational) creative principles that can be applied across domains?

#### PAPERS

We invite papers that make a scientific contribution to the field of computational creativity and report work that involves computation, e.g., fully autonomous systems, modeling, support for human creativity, simulation, human/machine collaboration, etc.).

We welcome studies of human creativity that in some way propose a computational model for that creativity.

When papers report on creative computer systems, we particularly encourage them to discuss systems having general or at least multiple sorts of results, to detail the methods used to design and develop the system, or to include useful related theoretical discussion.

We invite papers that go beyond simply documenting interesting systems to describe advances in cognitive science, assessment methods, design methods, or other research areas.

#### DEMOS/ARTS SHOW AND TELL

We invite proposals for demonstrations of computational systems exhibiting behavior that would be deemed creative in humans and for the exhibition of artifacts created using computational means, either primarily or as support for a human creator).

More information will soon be available at: http://iccc11.cua.uam.mx

Or, send email to: iccc11@correo.cua.uam.mx

#### IMPORTANT DATES

December 13, 2010 — Submission deadline

February 14, 2011 — Authors’ Notification

March 14, 2011 — Deadline for final camera-ready copies

April 27-29, 2011 — ICCC in Mexico City

#### CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

General Chair:
Graeme Ritchie, University of Aberdeen

Program Chair:
Dan Ventura, Brigham Young University

Local Chair:
Rafael Pérez y Pérez, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Cuajimalpa

Publicity Chair:
Nick Montfort, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Senior Program Committee:

  • Pablo Gervás, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  • Fox Harrell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Mary Lou Maher, University of Sydney
  • Alison Pease, University of Edinburgh
  • Geraint Wiggins, Goldsmiths, University of London

Program Committee:

  • John Barnden, University of Birmingham
  • David Brown, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Win Burleson, Arizona State University
  • F. Amílcar Cardoso, Universidade de Coimbra
  • John Gero, George Mason University
  • Ashok Goel, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Paulo Gomes, Universidade de Coimbra
  • Kaz Grace, University of Sydney
  • Kyle Jennings, University of California, Berkeley
  • Robert Keller, Harvey Mudd College
  • Brian Magerko, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Ramon López de Mántaras, IIIA-CSIC
  • Ruli Manurung, University of Indonesia
  • David C. Moffat, Glasgow Caledonian University
  • Diarmuid O’Donoghue, National University of Ireland
  • Sarah Rauchas, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • Mark Riedl, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Juan Romero, Universidade da Coruña
  • Rob Saunders, University of Sydney
  • Ricardo Sosa, Tecnologico de Monterrey
  • Carlo Strapparava, Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica