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Andy Matuschak

@andymatuschak.org

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More wonder, more insight, more expression, more joy! Currently exploring tools that augment human memory and attention. https://andymatuschak.org Twitter: andy_matuschak Mastodon: @[email protected]

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Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 28

After the critical failure of Merrily…, Sondheim thought about quitting music to make video games. I’ve wondered what they would be like. Today I found this email exchange—apparently, didactic?! Hard to imagine. www.nypl.org/blog/2022/07...

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 5

Was David Lynch describing the jhanas in his account of transcendental meditation? (from Catching the Big Fish)

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 5

Most recently, I thought about it when looking at this photo of me at age 3 playing with Kid Pix. So free! No need for the art to be great! The opposite of what Alan's talking about, and yet some of my happiest childhood memories.

Anyway. How do you grapple with this quote?

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 5

It's useful sometimes as a sort of pump: is there a deeper, more powerful version of this idea I'm thinking about?

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 5

In what senses is the quote true or useful? One thing I like about it is that it takes for granted that the listener (me!) can work on great ideas, make a great contribution. Most work doesn't even try. But it's worth trying. The sentiment makes me want to set my sights higher.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 5

It's also misleading: you can't "only work on great ideas" because you can't know ahead of time which seedlings will become great.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 5

Held as a lens, it really has pushed me to work on projects that have felt a lot more meaningful, long-term. But it's also corrosive: it crowds out playful curiosity, tinkering, etc. Alan's own history is full of that.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Aug 5

Alan Kay once said: "Turn up your nose at good ideas. You must only work on great ideas, not good ones." Inspiring, and exasperating. I've been grappling with it for years, on and off.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

BTW: I found this paper through Google Scholar alerts for SpaceInk, a paper with a creative marginalia design that I still really want in my reading software. buff.ly/Z6JK6wV

This paper shares two authors (Emmanuel Pietriga, Caroline Appert). I'm glad they're still thinking about these topics!

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

There's so much very thoughtful design work and writing in this paper! I really admire the commitment to modelessness, to informality, to the nonlinear realities of the creative process, to the expressivity of ink. I wish my reading and writing environments had half this thoughtfulness.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

Also supporting theme-and-variation: EtherPen can fuzzy-search for a selection (including only by pitch or duration). So if a sequence is repeated but transposed or doubled in time, that'll show up too. There's also a novel minimap representation.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

Notes (both engraved and handwritten!) can be selected and directly manipulated in pitch and time.

EtherPen also allows you to select only the pitches or durations of notes—useful for theme-and-variation. e.g. copy pitches and paste them over notes in a different bar without affecting their rhythm.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

On the "main" staves, engraved notes, handwritten notes, audio files all co-exist in continuous playback. So you can capture one section by humming, one section by drawing, and one through formal notation. (You can also take a photo and anchor it to a measure, but it won't yet be OCR'd!)

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

EuterPen can interpret handwritten music (e.g. for playback or manipulation) *without* needing to replace your ink with engraved notes. In fact, you can non-destructively switch between handwritten and engraved representations. This lets composers visually indicate what's still work-in-progress.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

Staves can be created within a pensieve, and they work just like in the "real" score: they can be played, manipulated, and copied into the main score.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

EuterPen relaxes many of those constraints, but it also offers dedicated scratch spaces, "pensieves", for non-linear exploration. Pensieves can be global or spatially anchored below staves (using a SpaceInk-like gesture).

The pensieve can hold ink, engraved music, audio files, imagery, etc.

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

The paper: buff.ly/CWYlNfP
A demo video: buff.ly/V9mbNQV

Music engraving software suffers from the tyranny of formality[1]: musical notation has to follow lots of rules (e.g. 4 beats per bar in common time). That really gets in the way when jotting down ideas.

[1] buff.ly/T9DXqcG

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 19

This is an appreciation thread for EuterPen, a multimodal music notation system by Vincent Cavez et al. It aims to support the non-linear process of exploration during composition.

It's the most sensitive and imaginative academic HCI design work I've seen in quite some time!

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 17

Assemble:
"The lunch rotation works this way: if you are present for a meal, you get one point. The people with the most points at the start of the week, at our Monday morning meeting, are allocated a day that week to cook. Every time someone cooks, we rub off five eating points from their tally."

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 17

Lots of details on process and logistics, but I particularly liked this sweet little system for figuring out who makes lunch (is there any creative-collaborative technology more enabling than a daily group lunch??)

Q: Can you briefly explain the lunch rota?
(cont…)

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 17

Or maybe the trick is just to spend enough time together so that our personal lives, experiences, and ideas merge into one another to the point that the question of individual ownership fades away on its own."

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 17

… We all benefit from being able to appropriate each other’s productions and opinions without having to credit each other, even though it is true that there is a fine line between appropriation and theft. It also allows more room to change our minds. (cont…)

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 17

Q: How did/do you feel about sharing the authorship of your art?

åyr:
"It is as annoying as it is liberating. When we try to write with individual voices, we end up editing each other to the point that the whole separation of voices loses its point. (cont…)

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 17

… A pregnant time, rich in possibilities and open to the unknown. What division of labour can these moments of fallowness have? It is here that a productivist reading of a collective faces a serious blockage. It misses the beauty and dilemmas of collective work."

Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · Jun 17

… We bring different affinities, skill sets and aptitudes to the process of making. These inflect the work. But a collective’s life is also between moments of making. A waiting, replete with fallow, unspoken, unwritten, lingering time. (cont…)