Pixelh8’s most recent work “Obsolete?” is a audio and visual study of the people, machines, history of The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park and looks closely at the themes of mathematics, logic, code-breaking and enciphering. The project was funded by the PRS Foundations new music award and commissioned by The National Museum of Computing.

The music itself is composed using some of the oldest and rarest computers in the world such as the WWII code-breaking machine Colossus Mark 2 Rebuild, and the 1960’s Elliott 803 largely used for mathematics and some of the more commonplace machines such as the BBC Micro. With over thirty machines studied and utilised within the music, it is a combination of both sounds from the internal sound chips and the external electro-mechanical sounds. In addition to this, the piece also utilises such items as the early non-electrical mechanical adding machines.

The project was comprised of twelves pieces of music and accompanying visuals and culminated in two performances at the prestigious Bletchley Park Mansion on March 20th and 21st, 2009.

As so many of you have requested them and you will have to wait a little while to hear the music again, I have uploaded some clips of “Obsolete?” in the mean time.

“Math” from “Obsolete?”

“Rewind The Tape” From “Obsolete?”

“Monster” from “Obsolete?”

Very pleased about being featured in the Spring 2009 issue A WHOLE PAGE!, yes I won’t say much about it but I am very very pleased electronic music is being taken a lot more seriously, thank you Musicians Union you have been incredibly supportive from the very beginning.

I am gonna write this right now, I am absolutely shattered but at the same time wide awake and excited. It was a success, people really enjoyed and I enjoyed it too. The museum was full after a sold out performance at the Mansion. The Elliott 803 was working and playing music!!! The ICL was spinning and the IRIS was on too, and there were volunteers everywhere talking and demoing the machines, so the visitors had the full audio/visual experience of it all.

It was great as I got to see alot of friends I hadn’t seen in a while and Imogen Heap made an appearance and we got to have quite a good chat about music, machines and things to come too.

There will undoubtedly be load of pictures from the event apearing on Flickr soon and I will link to them as well.

Thanks to all of the volunteers and staff of both The National Museum of Computing and Bletchley Park, it was a wonderful evening.

What can I say apart from it went, exactly as intended.  Pretty much a full house and everyone seemed to enjoy it. The room was pitch black apart from the visuals and I could make out faces every now and then, that were transfixed to the screen.

I had been up since 6.30am as I was so excited, so by about 10pm I was absolutely exhausted. I did Q&A afterwards and a tour of the museum.

I was interviewed by Dan Damon of BBC World Service, Future Music, Goldsmiths Radio, ZDNet.co.uk and several more did loads of photoshoots.  At the end I was happy it went well and I was happy to get back to the hotel, eat cookies and sleep. But I left the laptop on and got loads of nice emails and twitters, which I woke up to peek at every now and then.

More of the same tonight but with a full house, pictures will be about on the net soon, as we have a Flickr group arriving, and loads more press.

Just hanging out at The National Museum of Computing now and Just got to meet Peter Onion creator of the Elliott 803 emulator, a fantastic man who is very knowledgable about the 803. Also bumped into Dr Sue Black at lunch who has been helping raising awareness of TNMOC and Bletchley Park.

This message was transmitted from Bletchley Park.

Dazed & Confused Magazine

Check it out!, very pleased with this interview some interesting and challenging questions and even more interesting and challenging anwers. A little bit freaked out about being in both Dazed & Confused and New Scientist in the same week, not sure what that means, or if it means anything.

It was good fun to do though.

Out Now!!! This is what it looks like, commit it to memory.

Dazed & Confused Magazine cover reproduced with permission.

Also I have just been listed as guest of the month by the PRS Foundation you can read more here.

Did my interview with BBC 6 Music’s Tom Robinson :) but sadly I didn’t make it to the BBC, will definitely have to make sure I meet him in person soon and say, thank you, he has been a huge supporter of not just me and my music but but new music in general. The interview goes out on his show Monday @ 01:00 – 03:00 and you can find out more info here. You can listen again as well after the show from the BBC Website here t’s about 30 minutes through.

Also on March 16th be sure to check out BBC Radio 4 @ 16:30-17:00 I did an interview with the very excellent Rupert Goodwins of ZDNet.co.uk a for show called “Click On” it’s all about “Obsolete?” and The National Museum of Computing for more info visit their website here.

Also this just in!!! check out www.newscientist.com I am on the front page :)

Very excited tickets for the Saturday March 21st performance have sold out and Friday looks set to as well,  I have been in the studio making last minute tweaks and edits whilst receiving updates and it’s really great news.

I have to head off to London tomorrow to BBC 6 Music to be interviewed by Tom Robinson of BBC 6 Music who has been supportive of my music and played a few of my tracks over the last year, so it will nice to meet him in person. Eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new March 14th issue of New Scientist Magazine as well as the new Dazed & Confused, it’s all been great these last couple of weeks and met some really interesting people.

Be sure to check out BBC Radio 4 on the March 16th here I did an interview with the very excellent Rupert Goodwins of ZDNet.co.uk a for show called “Click On” it’s all about “Obsolete?” and The National Museum of Computing.

Well thats it for today!

Don’t panic, I know it’s all gone a bit quiet on the production front thats just cause I am so busy tweaking and doing the visuals. Very pleased, word is getting out about the performances and it looks like quite a few people are talking about it.

“More Math” has been extended and I have decided my current favorite machine at the moment is this the Brunsviga adding machine which is capable of a vast array of clicks and whizzes and is the main instrument in “More Math“.

So tomorrow I will be back at it, working on the visuals and tweaking the music here and there. I won’t be giving too much away in any of the blogs before the performance either you’ll just have to come along and see and hear it.

Decided to enlarge “Function” switch it up and introduce new ideas, which I am pleased with, will probably do more on it and “More Math” tomorrow if I have time.

Started “Monster” based around the PDP11 and the IRIS (Investigative Radar Recording System) also known as the Green Eyed Monster due to it’s scale and the two circular green screens. It’s to my left in the workshop always humming away and as I pass it back and forth in and out of the workshop, I get a very strong woooshing sound from the fans on the PDP11 so I decided to record several passes of it. Recording it this way gives it a really nice Doppler effect and panning, kind of reminds me of Ben Burts lightsabres in Star Wars. The piece also includes sounds of fans from the PDP8 and the power transformer humm from the Elliott 803.

Completely finished “20032009200″ which is great as it gave me a good outline for “21032009200″ and did a lot of thinking about the project in general. The more I get deeper into the piece I see that it is becoming more logical, more mathematical, almost like a computer program, not it’s structure but it’s themes it’s use of those ideas. The piece is about the museum and in preparation for it I looked into the history of the machines, the history of the building, the people, encoding, etc if I had just written it in without looking into it, it wouldn’t have the depth it now has, it is a study of The National Museum of Computing.

“Function” for instance does work like a function call in a program it appears later in the music, but it goes back to “Late at the office” (which also take rhythms from “Obsolete?” the final piece) and returns with additional rhythms. It also goes back to “Math” and does the same. Yes, I am aware composers have been sewing themes throughout pieces forever, but it’s new to me especially a piece in 3/4 briefly overlayed with harsh rhythms in 4/4 definetely stands out and it’s nice. I think I will draw a diagram.

“Math” has a very specific rhythm and I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head, it uses a –   – - -   – rhythm. In morse code it would approximately be E S E, that doesn’t stand for anything it’s just a rhythm that was in my head. Anyway, to me it sound like a typewriter slowly tapping out a message, which in turn made me think about the Colossus Typewriter, and then about the encryption or masking that the Lorenz used. If A is the plain text and C is the obscuring character then F is the cipher-text (you can find out more about this here at Tony Sale’s website). So I overlayed the rhythm with itself thus creating a different rhythm, again this is a practice used for ages by composers it just makes me think about it different when dealing with this subject matter as the rhythm could then be turned back into morse code with a different outcome. This doubled-up rhythm is then doubled again and makes an appearance in “20032009200″.

But thats all I am gonna give you, you’ll have to come and listen. Closely.