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April 15, 2004
Guided By Hamsters









Levy Lorenzo, a student at Cornell University, has created a MIDI device where the various parts of the song are controlled by hamsters. He describes it on his web site thusly:

Guided by inputs based on hamster movements, Markov chains were used to perform such beat and note computations. In culmination, 3 simultaneous voices were produced spanning 3 octaves and 3 rhythmic tiers. Each voice was controlled by two hamsters: one that was responsible for adjusting the rhythmic qualities of the melody and another that modified the note sequence. With all of these elements in combination, an output was produced with very musical qualities.All of this was implemented using an Atmel Mega32 microcontroller, distance sensors, a HamsterMIDI Controller, and 6 hamsters. Embedded C programming implemented the algorithms and computations within the sequencer.Overall, this project was successful. The control between the hamsters and the musical intelligence turned out very well.

There's a video of the hamsters playing the music, which may be the most delightful thing I've ever seen in my entire life, anywhere. And you know what? The music ain't half bad! Granted, MIDI being MIDI, it's not hard to pick a bunch of samples and melodies that inherently sound nice together; in a sense, it seems like the hamsters act mostly as faders, bringing the various constituent parts in and out of play. Either way, I've now put an MP3 of this on my main playlist in my player.


(Thanks to Boing Boing for this one!)

Posted by Clive Thompson at April 15, 2004 12:49 PM

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Comments

I've heard these things called birds too -- they make pretty good music.

But seriously, it is cool. I wonder if the hamsters are co-authors?

See http://nickm.com/writing/essays/coding_and_execution_of_the_author.html

Posted by: greglas at April 16, 2004 10:45 AM

Okay, that is totally fascinating! Thanks for the link ... I'm going to blog that as a separate entry!

Posted by: Clive at April 16, 2004 1:48 PM

I glad we can waste time with this crap.
How are the soldiers in Iraq? Are we going to have the Hamsters serenade that hamas in into throwing their weapons down.
Why dont we get Teddy (Fathead) Kennedy to sponser a billion $ grant for this crap too??

Posted by: Jim at April 16, 2004 4:19 PM

Easy there Jim....

Hammy and his buddies are kinda cute....and the "war" in the middle-east in all its glory is no less banale than these furry musicians. Besides, I'm sure the CIA has already assessed their potential military applicability and if there is money to be spent by the government, you can be sure its gonna be on military applications.

Posted by: Uncle Rob at April 18, 2004 7:45 PM

Well, I have been doing some "experiments" with hamsters, I have made a maze and the dorks can´t resolve it. I have tried many things with 4 different hamsters:
-One watchs videos of a little car using the correct path.
-one only feeds and sleeps all day.
-one has a wheel on the pen.
-The last knows how to play "hide n seek".
I will like they could think better, and use the better method for future experiments.

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Where can I follow up for more information

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Guided by inputs based on hamster movements, Markov chains were used to perform such beat and note computations. In culmination, 3 simultaneous voices were produced spanning 3 octaves and 3 rhythmic tiers. Each voice was controlled by two hamsters: one that was responsible for adjusting the rhythmic qualities of the melody and another that modified the note sequence. With all of these elements in combination, an output was produced with very musical qualities.All of this was implemented using an Atmel Mega32 microcontroller, distance sensors, a HamsterMIDI Controller, and 6 hamsters. Embedded C programming implemented the algorithms and computations within the sequencer.Overall, this project was successful. The control between the hamsters and the musical intelligence turned out very well.

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