media

AI-enabled Hi-Fi adventures

Gavin — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 16:14:51 +0000

I wonder if AI might actually help us actually break away from native mobile apps for a lot of things & ‘get back to the web’?

Many modern hi-fi amplifiers have ‘an App’. They are, uniformly (from what I can see), terrible.

In this post I show how I ‘fixed this’ in under an hour using ai to do something I would never, ever have got around to doing. Given how much I listen to music, I know it’s going to save me many hours of irritation. It even left me with enough time to write this post.

Let’s start with the challenge. In the UK we spend about £600M a year on hi-fi stuff: that seems like quite a lot. And the higher-end kit costs more than your PC. However, while they ‘try and be digital’, it’s like walking back into the 1990s as a user.

Here are some screenshots from the ‘flagship’ Marantz app starting up.

I should point out that not only is the user interface terrible (including trying to get you to sign up to their HEOS garbage) but it takes needless ages to start up and navigate. Those spinning disks spin for a long time, and then present with a page with a tiny round button for the volume and mostly meaningless other stuff that’s too small to consistently accurately tap. It’s really easy to accidentally turn the volume up a lot (which on a >3kW system can be alarming if you’re not expecting it).

Let’s say you want to turn the volume down (the #1 thing you do on an amp ‘instantly’), it can take up to 10 seconds to get there. This means you revert back to the remote control, or – heaven forbid – have to actually stand up and turn actual the volume control – there are plenty of other apps that tell us when we need to move . Further, to get into any granular controls such as changing sound processing, or changing the volume on individual surround channels is painfully slow (tens of seconds to get to, seconds for each change), cumbersome and, actually just unusable. I often want to do this for specific tracks when in a proper listening session.

Clearly in 2026 this really isn’t good enough. Fortunately this is now something (almost) anyone can fix without waiting for manufacturers to wake up and do something.

Googling around the docs there are some API standards and I’d done some previous command-line work to pull status and push things like volume to see if it all actually worked (it did).

But now, with the wonders of AI (in this case, Claude.ai) it is almost magically trivial to make your own interface.

In this post I show how easy (and things that can be frustrating).

Let’s start with a bit of magic: I asked Claude (thinking that this wouldn’t be enough)

> develop a web interface for the Marantz SR7015 using its API

It wasn’t just “enough”, it even styled the page with custom fonts and an image of a surround setup. To get it actually working (locally, on my Mac) I just had to give it the error I got

> it says "Cannot reach 192.168.1.46"

At which point the AI created a local proxy server, told me how to install it and some supporting packages (with copy/paste instructions). If I rewind to when I used to be able to actually code, I think this would have all easily taken me a day. Instead it took this aging hacker about 30 mins of faffing around. This was it – a fully working, way better visual interface and way better user experience (it loads instantly with no noticeable latency on the controls), and individual controls, all on one screen. And, against a black background as usually listening when it’s dark (or watching a movie).

I then spent a few hours playing around with layouts to see what was possible, then asked the AI to make a version I would run on my Pi-Fi (the Raspberry Pi I have that displays album art when Spotify is playing). Which, of course, it did at a similar pace.

This means I can access a web page on my home’s wifi network on my phone, laptop or desktop – as can anyone I give the web address to who is with me. I can use it as a remote for the amplifier, not just for volume, but including controlling all the parameters I actually want to access instantly, with nice big buttons and only the things I need. It still wasn’t able to do some things (like more nuanced reading/writing of custom fields).

I then added new functionality – to pair and group left and right speakers into ‘front’, ‘surround’ so I can control the top-front-side-back distribution more easily (unless you’re a sound engineer, you’ll be surprise how much more this varies than you’d think based on the mix and type of the music).

And, finally, for now, a joystick control to move the balance around between all 11 speakers. Which was done with a single prompt:

> create a joystick control to balance the audio between all the speakers

Next up I’m thinking of keying together listening room profiles per track, keyed into what’s playing on Spotify so the entire balance of the system can auto-configure based on what’s playing. This would then include custom listening profiles and sound stages I’d set up for specific favourite tracks. It’s almost as if one could take all this too far*…?

* Looking out at the hi-fi geek landscape, there is no end of completely stupid nonsense things people do (from £1,000 audiophile USB cables to ‘elevated speaker cable risers‘), none of which make a single bean of difference to anything but your wallet. Once you’ve got a basic system in place by far the biggest differences you’ll be able to actually hear are (a) treating the room with sound insulation, and/or (b) treating the distribution, balance and EQ of the signal itself in your space, which is what I’m doing here.

Bringing album art back to life (‘pi-fi’)

Gavin — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 22:36:40 +0000

So, after asking Spotify to treat album art properly for over a decade I ended up giving up and fixing it myself (and let them know).

I now have a nice 12″ x 12″ screen embedded in my wall that, when I’m using Spotify, gets the album art and puts it on the screen. And when it’s not in use, it defaults back to a clock

It’s rather lovely, I must say, and creates exactly the effect I was wanting it to.

And, in case you are wondering, the album cover above is from my album, Binary Dust (more on that at https://binarydust.org).

Here’s how

What kit? Not a lot…

1 x very old 4:3 screen (this one only had a VGA input) which I picked up for free. It’s nicely matt, and not too bright. I suspect a more modern monitor may actually be a bit too bright and shiny.
1 x Raspberry Pi Model B
1 x HDMI to VGA cable
1 x bit of old ply cut as a square-crop frame and painted with blackboard paint and a couple of strips of single-sided sticky foam tape stuck on the verticals (not essential, but helps mask the edges of the screen from light bleed)
10 x patience because I’m well out of practice on code

Cutting the square was ok (easiest if you have a multi-tool electric saw). Patience was needed for the code…

Setting up your Pi to be in kiosk mode

Make sure your Pi is up-to-date and installed with the Chromium browser. You’ll also need to install an extra so that you can refresh the browser from the command line, so add xdotool with

sudo apt-get install xdotool

and, we’ll need a version of ping that can wake up devices so that arp can find them, called fping

sudo apt-get install fping

Then we need to set it so that it boots directly into kiosk mode.

Edit the file /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart as follows

# Disable any form of screen saver / screen blanking / power management
 xset s off
 xset s noblank
 xset -dpms

# # Allow quitting the X server with CTRL-ATL-Backspace
 setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

# # get the IP of the amp
/home/pi/screen/scan.sh

# # Start Chromium in kiosk mode
 sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' ~/.config/chromium/'Local State'
 sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/; s/"exit_type":"[^"]\+"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' ~/.config/chromiu
m/Default/Preferences
  chromium-browser --disable-infobars --kiosk /home/pi/screen/album-cover.html

Note the path at the end to where your HTML file is, and the call to scan, which gets the IP address of the amp based on its unique MAC (hardware) address on boot and drops it into a file called hifi.ip. Note that to get the MAC address of the amp (00:06:78:14:0d:fa), I ran arp -a from my Mac laptop and looked through for the IPs to find the one that matched the one displayed on the amp itself.

scan.sh

#!/bin/bash

cd /home/pi/screen
hifi=`cat hifi.ip` # get the last IP used
up=`ping -c 1 $hifi  &> /dev/null && echo yes || echo no` # check if it's alive

if test "$up" = "no" ; then
# sometimes arp only recognises pre-existing things on the network if they've done something first. This hack uses fping to wake up everything on the subnet so that arp can find it 
fping -gaq 192.168.1.0/24 &> /dev/null 

# we expect arp does actually find the new IP, filtered out using the hifi's MAC address, and drop it into a file
arp -a | grep 00:06:78:14:0d:fa | awk '{print $2}' | sed -e 's/(//g' | sed -e 's/)//g' > /home/pi/screen/hifi.ip
fi

Now some fun. If you are using an old monitor, you need to force it to be VGA. This tripped me up for a while as I could boot the pi without the HDMI cable plugged in, then plug the cable in and it’d work, but if I booted it with the cable in from the start, it wouldn’t. Also fun fact: you can’t plug the HDMI output of your Mac into VGA (eg. using an adapted cable) . Mac blocks it.

So, in /boot/config.txt you need to set

hdmi_group=1:
hdmi_mode=1

Or, depending on your monitor, fiddle around with it. It also lets you rotate the screen (which I’ve used in other dashboard-like applications when mounting monitors on their sides).

You’ll also want to get rid of the cursor, so edit your ~/.bash_profile to

[[ -z $DISPLAY && $XDG_VTNR -eq 1 ]] && startx -- -nocursor

Getting the album image

I was expecting to have to go get the album art via the Spotify API, and slightly dreading that as my coding skills are now terrible, and so I was hoping to just ugly-hack it in shell scripts (and not have to open sockets and auth and APIs and such)… and … I lucked out as my amplifier (Marantz sr7007) has Spotify and its own (albeit truly dreadful) web interface.

This meant I could find a rendered image when the amp is on, at

http://[IP ADDRESS OF MY AMP]/NetAudio/art.asp-jpg

(the IP sometimes varies, see above).

So, hurra! Let’s get to the hack that works for me.

We need to get the image, but not have the browser screen refresh/flash every 2 seconds as that’ll be more than distracting. So, here’s a shell script that gets the image, tests if the image has changed from the last time it checked (using the md5sum of the current live image vs this latest one), and if it has, refreshes the screen:

test-refresh.sh

#!/bin/sh
cd /home/pi/screen 
hifi=`cat hifi.ip` # gets the IP address of the amp
albumart="http://$hifi/NetAudio/art.asp-jpg"
curl $albumart > nowtmp.jpg # gets the image, saves locally
mv nowtmp.jpg now.jpg # do as a two-step in case download latency leads to partial-download comparisons

x=`md5sum now.jpg  | awk '{print $1}'` # gets a unique number for this image
y=`md5sum live.jpg | awk '{print $1}'` # gets a unique number for live image
if test "$x"  != "$y"; then # if they're not the same
  cp now.jpg live.jpg. # update the live image
  ./refresh.sh # and refresh the browser
fi

Remember the autostart has already loaded the web page, so refresh just needs to effectively hit reload if the image has changed. Here’s a script to do that:

refresh.sh

#!/bin/sh 
export DISPLAY=:0
export XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority
xdotool getactivewindow
xdotool key F5

Yup, it does the equivalent of hit F5 on the keyboard.

So, now to the web page, album-cover.html which puts the image in the right place.

And the CSS is… interesting. Because [reasons that I’ve stopped trying to work out] …something about the 4:3 ratio, the HDMI settings, shoddy CSS coding, the way that chromium works on a Pi, who knows, I had to hack the CSS on the Pi to be different to my testing on my Mac (which worked fine without tweaking/stretching/etc). Much faffing around later… this:

album-cover.css

@charset "utf-8";  
#outerdiv
{
width:600px;
height:600px;
overflow:hidden;
position:relative;
border-width:0px;
border-style:none;
padding: 0px;
text-align: center;
align:center;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
margin-top: auto;
margin-bottom: auto;
background-color: black;
object-fit: contain;
}

#inneriframe
{
position:absolute;
top:0px;
left:32px; // manual tweak to the edge of the wooden frame
width:768px;
height:768px;
border-width:0px;
align:center;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
margin-top: auto;
margin-bottom: auto;
// now we unsquish the image because the Pi squished it somehow 
object-fit: contain;-webkit-transform: scale(.90, .81); 
-webkit-transform-origin: 0 0;
}

And so, now we’ve got the image, and managed to put it on the screen, and -just about- got it to fill a square with a square image.

Now I wanted to test if the amp was on/off and replace the image with a clock if Spotify wasn’t on. Nice blunt instrument here:

up-amp.sh

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/pi/screen/
hifi=`cat hifi.ip`
up=`ping -c 1 $hifi &> /dev/null && echo yes || echo no` # is it up?
if test "$up" = "yes" ; then # if it's up 
 if test `cat status.flag` = "no" ; then  # update the flag and the cover
	 echo "yes" > status.flag
  	 cp album-cover-live-safe.html album-cover.html
         ./refresh.sh
 fi	 
else # if it's not up
 if test `cat status.flag` = "yes" ; then # update flag and switch to clock	 
	 echo "no" > status.flag
 	 cp clock-analogue.html album-cover.html
         ./refresh.sh
 fi
fi
sleep 5

The code for the clock is at the bottom of this post – there are loads of examples out there.

Now, finally, we need to get the Pi to keep checking what’s happening on the amp, and since the Pi isn’t doing anything else, and I’m lazy, we’ll get a script to test/get the image from the amp every 2 seconds. But because cron doesn’t do less than 1-minute resolution, I wrote a script that can be run every minute that then runs the checking command every 5 seconds for a minute.

albumcron.sh

#!/bin/sh
i=0
while [ $i -lt 12 ]; do # run 12 times at five-second intervals in one minute
 /home/pi/screen/test-refresh.sh & # test for a new image
 sleep 5 # wait two seconds
 i=$(( i + 1 )) 
done

And so, finally, we can ask cron to do something! Run

> crontab -e

And enter these two lines

* * * * * /home/pi/screen/albumcron.sh > /dev/null 2>&1 # two-sec art checks
* * * * * /home/pi/screen/up-amp.sh > /dev/null 2>&1 # one minute amp checks

This checks if the amp is on once a minute and, if so, refreshes everything. The Pi also tries to get a new image every two seconds while it’s on and, no, I’ve not written* a thing to make it not do that when the amp is off because, unfortunately for it, it now all just works—in spite of shonky code and inefficient processes—and I have music to listen to and, frankly, no one cares (apart from my ego). Good enough.

*update: turns out I did as it was simple: just add if test `cat status.flag` = “yes” ; then around the albumcron.sh while statement.

The clock thing

I tried a few different ones, but liked the way this looks on the wall and it has a nice ‘glitchy’ second hand that makes it feel analogue.

Source: https://codepen.io/rodnylobos/pen/OJmZOx and my edited one below to faff move it into the centre, size is to as big as it’ll go, and set the background colour to match the blackboard paint hue.




  
  Clock Snap

A national archive fit for the 21st century

Gavin — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 00:00:39 +0000

Working with Dance Collection Danse (DCD) we are initiating a project to create a new national archive: a shared history that will be a co-created and co-managed collaboration between institutions, organizations and individuals.

We believe the idea of an archive in the age of the web isn’t just ‘creating a portal’ but creating an environment where everyone can contribute, access and share.

We are in the design phase, with an aim to connect records of Canadian dance from across the country into an accessible digital platform to enable engagement, contribution and reuse. The stories of dance and cultural heritage will be made accessible to the general public, as well as artists, educators, researchers, and beyond.

If you are interested in this project, please contact gea@dgen.net.

Difference trains

Gavin — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00:36 +0000

An experiment with an old track (2002) and more recent video (2018)…

[best watched full-screen & if you like repeating patterns with tiny variations]

Music – 2002 Gavin Starks, with guitar samples of Andrew Conway, Aidan Keane and Peter Clive
+
Video – 2018 Gavin Starks (using footage shot in Norway 2015)

Adventures in acoustic cosmology

Gavin — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 07:00:36 +0000

ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY PRESS RELEASE

RAS PR 17/30 (NAM 13)

3^rd July 2017

A project that explores whether there is a musical equivalent to the curvature of spacetime will be presented on Thursday 6^th July by Gavin Starks at the National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Hull.

Starks, who has a background in radio astronomy and electronic music, been working on developing an ‘acoustic cosmology’ for more than 20 years in collaboration with Prof Andy Newsam of Liverpool John Moores University. Their aim is to test whether mathematical relationships that describe cosmology and quantum mechanics can be applied to a sonic universe, or ‘soniverse’.

Starks explains: “If we look at the way that music has evolved from mediaeval plainsong to the algorithms that generate current chart-hits, we can see parallels developing in the way we describe music and descriptions of our perception of the universe. We can now create new types of sound from scratch – electronic sounds that simply couldn’t have existed before. It leads us to think about a digital sound world that we can’t enter, because it physically doesn’t exist. The question is – what next?

“We are starting to develop completely new forms of manipulating the microstructure of sound, as well as the macroenvironment in which we experience it. This raises questions about whether we can create a soniverse based on a set of fundamental equations, in the same way that we can create mathematical models of the universe.”

Starting with a single wavelength ‘sonon’, a fundamental particle in the soniverse equivalent to a photon, Starks has attempted to define its properties and the physics that may apply to it. The project’s initial model of ‘wave-time’ has three independent dimensions: the individual sonon wavelength, instrument time (the duration that an individual instrument plays) and performance time (duration equal to the length of an individual piece).

Some of the relationships explored to date are causal (i.e. the physics is consistent within the soniverse) and some are aesthetic (i.e. they describe a subjective musical construct). Many have direct parallels in the physical universe. For example, the listener in the soniverse is analogous to the observer in quantum mechanics: a sonon is only rendered musical or not when it is heard. A temporal gravity allows the clustering of sonons to create rhythms or musical phrases. Wave-time can be bent by clusters of sonons, in the same way that gravity distorts space-time in the universe.

Starks believes that bringing together cutting-edge science and understanding of musical structure creates the opportunity for discovery: “There’s a long common history between physics and music, for instance people built columns in cathedrals at a height linked to the resonant frequency, even before they understood the nature of pressure dynamics. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon that art and science are treated as different disciplines. By bringing them back together, and creating a common language, we can find different ways of interpreting and thinking about both music and cosmology.”

Newsam adds: “As astronomers, our experience of the universe is essentially visual – images, graphs, and so on. With the soniverse, we hope to create a new way to appreciate the cosmos, using our instinctive grasp of music and tone to explore relationships between different objects and cosmological models.”

Media contacts

NAM press office

Robert Massey, Royal Astronomical Society, rm@ras.org.uk

Anita Heward, Royal Astronomical Society, anitaheward@btinternet.com

Morgan Hollis, Royal Astronomical Society, mh@ras.org.uk

Science contacts

Gavin Starks, Dgen, binarydust.org, gavin@dgen.net, @agentGav

Andy Newsam, Professor of Astronomy Education and Engagement, Director of the National Schools’ Observatory, Liverpool John Moores University, andy@schoolsobservatory.org.uk

Multimedia

Blog post with embedded player, video and more information: http://www.binarydust.org/2017/05/18/listen-to-the-radio-cube-of-the-antennae-galaxies/

This data-cube is based on an optical image of the “Antennae Galaxies” colliding, as taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and a radio-image taken by ALMA. Each pixel actually represents a spectrum of frequencies across the electromagnetic radio spectrum

The data-cube works in two ways.

Firstly, the radio frequencies have been transformed into visible colours, so you can see a slice of the cube.
Secondly, the electromagnetic spectrum has been transformed into an acoustic spectrum. Remember light≠sound: the frequency of electromagnetic radiation (‘light’) has been transformed into a frequency of pressure wave (sound).

By clicking the image and moving your cursor around you can “play” a spectrum of the colliding galaxies. Underneath, you can see a visual representation of the frequency spectrum. Spend some time moving slowly around the red(redshifted) areas – there is a surprising richness to the harmonics for such a simple sonification.

Note: the data-cube is 8MB and could take between 20 seconds to several minutes to appear if you are on a slow connection.

Audio

Inspired by the discovery of the first double-pulsar system (ranked as the 6th most important scientific discovery of 2004), and specially written to celebrate the 10th anniversary of RT32 – a reclaimed 32m Radio Telescope in the middle of the Latvian forests (the VIRAC Radio Telescope in Irbene) brought to life over a decade, after being trashed by the Soviet military, as the only radio telescope in the world that is dedicated to both science and art.

The full name of the piece is ds² – series 1 (PSR J0737-3039B) http://www.binarydust.org/2010/01/04/ds2-series-1/

Further information:

Further information on the project can be found at: http://www.binarydust.org/2017/01/27/escape-into-the-multiverse/

Notes for editors

Running from 2 to 7 July, the RAS National Astronomy Meeting 2017 (NAM 2017, http://nam2017.org) takes place this year at the University of Hull. NAM 2017 will bring together around 500 space scientists and astronomers to discuss the latest research in their respective fields. The conference is principally sponsored by the Royal Astronomical Society and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

T: http://twitter.com/rasnam2017

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS, www.ras.org.uk), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

T: https://twitter.com/royalastrosoc

F: https://facebook.com/royalastrosoc

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC, www.stfc.ac.uk) is keeping the UK at the forefront of international science and has a broad science portfolio and works with the academic and industrial communities to share its expertise in materials science, space and ground-based astronomy technologies, laser science, microelectronics, wafer scale manufacturing, particle and nuclear physics, alternative energy production, radio communications and radar.

STFC’s Astronomy and Space Science programme provides support for a wide range of facilities, research groups and individuals in order to investigate some of the highest priority questions in astrophysics, cosmology and solar system science. STFC’s astronomy and space science programme is delivered through grant funding for research activities, and also through support of technical activities at STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre and RAL Space at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. STFC also supports UK astronomy through the international European Southern Observatory.

T: https://twitter.com/stfc_matters

Data as culture – summary

Gavin — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 00:18:50 +0000

In October 2012, as CEO of the newly-created Open Data Institute, the first work I commissioned was … art.

Why art?

For me, artists help to shape questions before we’ve worked out that questions are needed. They might not be able to articulate a precise question, but often indicate a shape of something emergent. Over the past 20 years, when I’ve been trying to understand what shape the future might take, what areas might be interesting, or what thoughts are converging to create something new, I look to art, collaborate with artists and help make works. Whether writing music, working with collectives such as AmbientTV, or with art-scientists at radio telescopes, these crossovers have been a continuous part of my own development, and deeply influential in the development of my ‘professional’ career (although I’m still not sure if there’s a boundary, or where it might be).

When creating the ODI I knew we would have to challenge perceptions (both within and outside our own community). We would have to work out what questions might exist, and what things might be possible. I also felt strongly that ‘culture’ was usually left to ‘later’, rather than being the reason you do things in the first place. To not express this culture through art seemed ridiculous.

Not that this didn’t raise the eyebrows of some of the new team, and indeed the board, and Number 10, at first. But the outcomes exceeded everyone’s expectations. We captured people’s imaginations. We transformed an invisible ‘geeky’ thing (data) into living, kinetic, organic, relevant, challenging and provocative conversations.

The nine works in the first collection created a remarkable linear narrative (from laughter to profound reflection), installed in our global headquarters, and set a high bar for future commissions. They changed the way politicians related to data, they encouraged corporate partners to sign up immediately, they stimulated debate in the team and in visiting groups, and created conversations inside and outside of the building: the Washington Post came to film the artworks as their lead feature when introducing the ODI. Visual communication in action.

Our second programme was a call for curators and included partnerships with FutureEverything and Lighthouse. It covered everything from surveillance to knitting.

Working with The Space (BBC + Arts Council) we also helped to commission original data-driven work, http://www.weneedus.org, which was presented at TEDglobal in Brazil, UN event in Columbia, Somerset House, and many other events.

Our third year saw the commissioning of artists in residence. Our fourth, the commissioning of a musician in residence.

2012 foreword

http://theodi.org/data-as-culture-2012

‘Data as Culture’ is reflective of our time.

The first public work I initiated, just 12 days into my new role (and on Ada Lovelace day), was a call for data-driven artwork that would sit in our new Shoreditch office.

That we received over 80 submissions in 2 weeks from over 20 countries was an amazing display of the emerging global consciousness.

As nations, organisations, and individuals from around the world embrace and release more and more open (addressable, structured, accountable, continuous) data, we can see that we are at the beginning of a new web – much as people asked in the early 90s “why should I have a website?”, today’s question is “why should I have open data?”. The answers are as difficult to enumerate, but no less profound.

In an age of data-driven decision-making, we are led to believe that data represents truth. Simultaneously our collective data shadows are revealing, in real-time, details about our personal lives, social groups, corporate interactions, and civic society.

Combined, these trends open many, many questions: whose data are we trusting? Who wrote the algorithm? Who wrote the code? What are the unexpected consequences of combining different data? If our personal, business, and political decisions are shaped by these data, is there dogma in the code?

Equally, our maker culture is re-emerging, as evidenced not only in events around the world, but in the art commissions themselves: only one of the nine works is screen-based. This concept of the web ‘breaking through the glass’ and becoming part of our physical world could not be more timely, and significant, to the work of the Open Data Institute: to catalyse the evolution of an open data culture that creates economic, environmental, and social value.

I would like to thank MzTEK for creating and running the commission, all those who submitted, and those who were successful: we will draw inspiration from your work. It is truly world-class.

Gavin Starks BSc MMus FRSA

CEO, ODI

November 2012

2014 brochure

http://theodi.org/data-as-culture-2014

The Data as Culture programme raises questions about the concepts and practicalities of open data. It explores the wider implication of the culture of open data on culture itself, to challenge our understanding of what data is, and how it may affect and reflect our lives.

Running the first commission as the inaugural ODI project in 2012 was a bold decision. We have been delighted with the outcomes: reaching over 100,000 people internationally, with features at TED.com, in the Wall Street Journal, the Churchill Room in Whitehall, and in dozens of presentations from Taiwan to Washington DC. Over 3,000 visitors to our UK office experienced the works directly, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

The first commission was an open call for artists which we curated with MzTEK.

This year we ran an open call for curators to expand our shared vision for open data culture. Shiri Shalmy had recently curated the exhibition Data at Contemporary Art Society, London and had a very strong and prescient concept for the second exhibition which centred around data ownership and access, public and private. Works for Data as Culture were selected for their physical presence and the exchange they enable between artist, artwork and audience.

This commission explores our relationship with surveillance, privacy, and personal data, taking a critical and sometimes comedic look at the power of open data. Works include pneumatic contraptions, satellite imagery, data collection performances, and knitted data discrepancies.

Data as Culture is for everyone. We want to ensure conversations about open data expand beyond specialist communities and through to the general public. Using data as a material increases awareness of what data is, how it can be used creatively, how it can inspire, encourage play and lateral thinking, and help people share stories and experiences.

To broaden our reach we have partnered with Lighthouse, a digital culture agency and gallery in Brighton, and FutureEverything, based in Manchester, who are critically engaged in technology, and run one of the longest standing media arts festivals in the world. The works will be exhibited across these locations and in London, at the ODI itself.

The Data as Culture programme will continue to develop relationships with arts organisations to expand the programme nationally and internationally, for artists and audiences – for everyone – everywhere.

Julie Freeman, Art Associate, ODI

Gavin Starks, CEO, ODI

March 2014

2015 artists in residence

http://theodi.org/news/natasha-caruana-joins-odi

http://theodi.org/news/thomson-craighead-natasha-caruana-art-odi-data-as-culture-programme

2016 musician in residence

http://theodi.org/news/alex-mclean-chosen-as-the-first-open-data-institute-sound-artist-in-residence

some themes emerging

Gavin — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 20:29:16 +0000

Thinking about the sea

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/sunday-review/protecting-the-untamed-seas.html

and webcasting

https://dgen.net/blog/ms-hans

and music

and long playing things

http://longplayer.org/about/

and cosmology/topology

and data

http://theodi.org/who-owns-our-data-infrastructure

Some interesting Venn diagrams emerging.

Updated archives

Gavin — Thu, 08 May 2014 00:26:53 +0000

Well, it’s been a while since I posted here (Twitter still winning), but here’s a long overdue synopsis of some of the things my first startup, Tornado, created. I’ll be adding to this from time-to-time as I get in touch with some of the old team.

The Guardian as damn-you-autocorrect?

Gavin — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 01:46:27 +0000

I know it can be hard sometimes to grasp and translate ideas in a single-shot, over the phone, but this Guardian “article” recounting their interview with me reads like it has been /auto-corrected/speech-to-text’d/ by an Engrish bot. Given it’s written in the first-person, I felt more than a little irritated by this.

So, in an effort to turn their semi-open-data into something you can read, I’ve turned the words in the article into something closer to what I actually said. I’ll try and keep as close to their format/structure as I can.

Where did your passion for open data come from?

I’ve always been involved in technology: writing software to create scientific models, analyse business data, or using the web create new services. At Jodrell Bank (the radio telescope), we were mapping large chunks of the Universe – helping to explore and understand its structure.

Throughout my career, from Jodrell Bank to AMEE (which calculates environmental impacts), I have been heavily involved in scientific modelling, data analytics and statistics (also now known as “data science”).

What their original article said:

“I’ve always been involved in technology-writing software and where that meets other disciplines, such as science and business. Working at Jodrell Bank, mapping large chunks of US feasability data – to take one extreme – was about tackling large questions around the structure and nature of the universe. In hindsight, that path – where technology meets larger questions about our surroundings – has been self-evident over my career; in Jodrell Bank, doing what would now be called data analytics, down to Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine (AMEE), my startup company, which calculates environmental impacts.”

Comment: the idea of a radio telescope mapping “US feasibility data” is quite entertaining (there is no such thing, and if there were it’d have nothing to do with astronomy). Never mind the spelling.

What will the Open Data Institute be doing?

We are facing some of the greatest challenges of our time. Whether social, environmental, or economic, I strongly believe that open data can act as a powerful tool to help us gain insight and act with confidence. For example, many large companies learned that simply by measuring their energy consumption (most were not), they can work out how to save substantial amounts of money and reduce their emissions. Open data can unlock insight and value.

The ODI is the first organisation focussing specifically on open data. Our vision is “Knowledge for everyone”. We are acting as a convening space for governments, companies, communities, and individuals who are already involved in this field.

Given the scale of opportunities, the ability to bring together different experts is important. We’ve seen over 700 people through our space in the last 3 months. These include NGO’s, Venture Capital firms, small business, artists, our own and international governments. To me this signifies that open data is a cultural phenomena.

I am very excited about the ODI’s potential to bring people together and catalyse innovation.

What their original article said:

“The ODI has the incredible position of being the first and only institute of its kind. We’re facing some substantial challenges – social, environmental and economic – and the institute will play a significant part in addressing those challenges, including bringing in efficiencies. For example, simply by measuring environmental impacts, 10%-20% of emissions can be saved by companies. That’s from having information in the first place – more information unlocks information.

National organisations and individuals are embracing more open data, and one potential for the institute is opening up knowledge for everyone, giving more insight across NGOs, capital venture companies, academics and so on. Cross perspectives and enabling people to learn is key. We’ve had in members of the Cabinet Office, small businesses, delegates from Asia and elsewhere – hundreds of people from all these different arenas, all interested in how we can move this agenda forward. Innovation and knowledge can affect social, environmental and economic issues – a triple bottom line, but also a very human side.

I see the Open Data Institute as an opportunity-capturing area, looking at how we can create something at scale, and I’m delighted to join in that.”

Open data – buzzword or game changer?

Open data is not new. The open web is the most successful information architecture in history, but it is not just a web of documents, it is a web of open data. In terms of timing, it feels like the mid-1990s – vast amounts of new information are about to be made available in a connected way, and the impact of this could be as game changing as the web has been over the past 20 years. This is particularly relevant as we increase our reliance on data to make decisions.

Working with world-leading experts, and the ODI’s co-founders, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, is an honour and their involvement signals the importance of our work.

What their original article said:

“It’s much like the web in the early 1990s. We’re at a tipping point where more and more information is available and so there’s more to unlock. I’m delighted to be working with some of the world leaders in this new movement, including Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt. This is the most exciting thing I’ve done. Projects in the past have included building Virgin.net‘s early web presence, a pioneer in that space, a web-streaming business, and the last, helping to create an ecosystem around environmental data. But for me the opportunity is different. We’re in an age of data-driven decision making, with vast amounts of data. It’s huge and transformational.”

Comment: I’m not sure what the rest of my background has to do with the analysis of buzzwords. And they switched the Knighthood… (congrat’s Nigel!)

With a degree in astrophysics and a masters in electronic music, did you see yourself doing what you do now?

What I’m doing now didn’t exist when I did my degrees. In 1993, my first paid job was to review all music software on the internet. If you Google that now there are hundreds of thousands of results. I enjoy research and exploring new ideas, especially if you’re not sure what the questions are.

What their original article said:

What I’m doing now didn’t exist when I did my degree. In 1993, my first paid job was to review all music technology and, if you Googled that now, there would be hundreds of them. In hindsight, none of those things had really taken off. It’s very exciting when we don’t know what the questions are and we’re tasked with finding out what those are – and then looking for answers.

What’s your leadership style?

In order to create, we need to explore many ideas. Developing a culture where experimentation is encouraged is essential: we all need to be able fail, sometimes frequently, while we work things out.

The whole team should be involved in the design of the organisation: we are developing coaching and mentoring programmes for everyone. This will help create a strong organisation as well as help anyone in our team provide support to the companies we are incubating, and to the broader community.

One model I find interesting is the “servant-leader” model.

What their original article said:

A lot of what we do is through trial by example and error. That drives me, learning itself – and from those around me. We’re building team empowerment to help our teams make their own decisions and developing a mentoring scheme for our energy and emerging markets team. It’s about how we can best serve our teams and stakeholders. MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] is doing research on the idea of the servant leader, and that’s what I try to do.

Comment: Given leadership is the theme of their series, this was to me the most disappointing part to read

What three things would you take to a desert island?

A piano, an internet-connected laptop (if that’s allowed?) and a painting by my friend Ulyana. (http://www.ulyanagumeniuk.com).

What their original article said:

A piano, an internet-connected laptop (although I’m not sure that’s allowed) and a book or a painting by one of my friends, Ulyana Gumeniuk.

Comment: Ulya doesn’t write books

Webcasting radio = innovation

Gavin — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 02:02:38 +0000

A big shout out to RinseFM who just got their FM license [Guardian, Evening Standard].

This is the second station I’ve helped with streaming that’s ended up with an FM license (the first was Resonance FM).

Having put Virgin Radio, Kiss FM and Classic FM streams online in the mid-90s, and then all of the regional Emap “Big City” stations online, it’s good to see webcasting acting as the catalyst for incubating, innovating, and enabling new talent and embryonic stations to grow.

The great folks at Emap gave me this brilliant quote after we launched their stations: “I would recommend them to anyone undertaking a project involving streaming media of any size�?. The fun stuff is to flex at the small end, not the large, and see if you can flip the dial (Rinse get a substantial online audience, not that far off what Virgin Radio got in its early days of streaming – and at that time, Virgin was the most listened-to station on the web).

It’s a process that takes many, many years and doesn’t fit with any kind of funding or related creative support structure that we have. There’s definitely a need (I’ve helped dozens of community-led projects get going), but very little in the way of useful infrastructure that works without getting in the way.