Brit Cruise

Khan Academy and Brit Cruise join forces

Posted in Uncategorized on January 13, 2012 by britcruise

Today I have some very exciting news. Over the holidays Sal Khan from Khan Academy expressed interest in my videos after viewing my YouTube page. The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit educational organization with the goal of educating the world for free (with some serious funding help from Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation). They are a small team with a big dream. Within 8 hours of his phone call I quit my job(s)…as of this moment I’m officially a full-time employee of Khan Academy. My job? “Continue making your videos”.

You can keep up with my latest videos by subscribing to my YouTube page here.

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Gambling with Secrets Chapter 1: Euclid, from a Cave Man Perspective

Posted in Uncategorized with tags Brit Cruise, euclid, gambling with secrets, history of cryptography, number theory on December 14, 2011 by britcruise

Finally, here are the opening chapters of the first Art of the Problem episode I’ve been working on all year:

Gambling with Secrets

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Mile high paper stack effect: Blender + Photoshop + FCP

Posted in Research and Projects with tags 3D composite, animated shadows, blender, CGI elements, composite, final cut pro, forest, photoshop, virtual lighting on October 13, 2011 by britcruise

How many five letter words are there? This many!…if you put one word on each page.

Finished an interesting 3D composite (and modeling) effect with for episode #1 of www.artoftheproblem.net. Working on this effect to help demonstrate the huge number of five letter word combinations if you enumerate them all with one on each page of paper. Planning to use Blender for the CGI paper stack. The idea is to have a stack of paper reaching 1.2 km high. Here was my process…. Read more »

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Art of the Problem – Kickstarter funding successful

Posted in Research and Projects, Video / Theatre with tags art of the problem, computer science, cryptography, educational web series, kickstarter, Shannon on April 1, 2011 by britcruise

I recently launched Art of the Problem on Kickstarter.com which is an interesting new crowd sourced funding network for creative projects. A total of 88 people pledged to the project and my $4,000 funding goal was reached. As of today (May 13th 2011) production work has commenced on the pilot episode titled ‘Gambling with Secrets’, soon to be available at www.artoftheproblem.net.

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Real Time Control of Emotional Affect in Algorithmic Music

Posted in Random Stuff, Research and Projects with tags "Computer Music", additive synthesis, algorithmic music composition, algorithmic music for video games, Algorithmic music synthesis, Amilcar Cardoso, Antonio Oliveira, aritifical orchestra, Artificial Intelligence, circumplex model of emotion, computer science, dimensions of emotion, douglas cope, Douglas Eck, emily howell, emotion control in generative models, Expressive performance algorithms, generative models of music, Generative Music, low-level music features, mood control, music affect, music and emotions, music and mood, music classification, sprecturm, subtractive synthesis, timbre, video game music on May 31, 2010 by britcruise

DEMO OF DYNAMIC INSTRUMENTATION:

Introduction

The purpose of this post is to propose a solution to the following future research directions offered in two papers on the Algorithmic Music Evolution Engine (AMEE) “A Flexible Music Composition Engine” and “Real-Time Emotional Adaptation in Automated Composition”, recently developed at UWO (Hoeberechts, Demopoulos, Katchabaw 2007)[10][11]. I’ve divided up the problems into two high level categories A and B: Read more »

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Robot 1.2 – new Direction

Posted in Research and Projects with tags "Computer Music", electrical engineering, microcontroller, rhythmic algorithms, robotic percussion, robotics on April 24, 2010 by britcruise

Last year, the development of Robot 1.1 was an experiment in electrical Engineering and the Psychology (In terms of
rhythmic human-computer interaction). It is a hardware interface which interprets ambient sound as structured pulses (using low pass filter, peak detector and tempo filter circuits) that are fed into a microcontroller which controls a solenoid powered drum stick (see previous post for video):

controlbox

I have been pondering both applications and new directions for this technology. One of the main questions I kept running into while working on this project, was the question of response time. In order for a rhythmic system to be interactive, it must operate in real time. The hardware aspects of Robot 1.1 were very effective at generating a real time response. Although, the functionality was limited: Read more »

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It’s ALIVE – Robotic Drummer Interacts With Humans!

Posted in Random Stuff with tags AI, Artificial Intelligence, autonomous drummer, Beat induction, Brit Cruise, computer science, Drum, Interactive Robotics, Mike Vance, Music, Musical robot, percussion system, Robotic Drummer, university of western ontario on March 15, 2010 by britcruise

After months of design and construction between myself & Mike Vance, we’ve designed and created a machine we never thought possible…..A robotic musician which can interact with human players. Our Intelligent Robotic Percussion system was presented at the Engineering Design Presentations at the NRC research facility this past Friday. Our system had never been operational until 9 hours before the presentation, we were a hair’s breadth away and ready to finally give up….

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Beat Induction and Analysis with Robotic Percussive Improvisation Systems

Posted in Research and Projects with tags Beat induction, computer science, improvisation, rhythm recognition, robotic percussion on November 11, 2009 by britcruise

This Report will explore the past and current research into the areas of Beat Induction, Rhythm Recognition and percussive improvisation.First we must ask, why? In terms of current robotic systems, most focus simply on sound production (Mechanically reproducing a set of static instructions) and rarely address perceptual aspects of musicianship, such as listening, analysis, improvisation and interaction with human input. There has been some breakthrough work done on improvisation and robotic percussion in the last few years which will be explored. First we will introduce the problem of beat induction and the varying methods by which it can be achieved. We will then attempt to clearly understand how this problem will be applied to our robotic system. Furthermore we will show how we can use state-of-the-art research into similar robotic systems as a guide and stepping stone for our project.

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Time & The River

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags Borges, Brit Cruise, eclipse, infinity, jorge, London Canadian Film Festival, luis, lunar, total, UWO Film Festival on September 22, 2009 by britcruise

This weekend I was awarded ‘Best Student Short’ at the London Canadian Film Festival for ‘Time & The River’. This work was also inducted into the Canadian National Screen Institute short film collection (link)

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Exploring Music Spaces – Computer Science Research Journal

Posted in Random Stuff, Research and Projects with tags Algorithmic music, Artificial Neural Networks, Borges, Brian Eno, computer science, Generative Music, Genetic Algorithms, Markov Chain, Music, Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, Swarm Music on September 15, 2009 by britcruise

A few years ago when I was introduced to Borges I was moved by the idea of a complete library. His short story, Library of Babel, most importantly reminded me of the difference between the infinite and the very very large. Read more »

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The Production of On The Menu

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags acting, behind the scenes, Grand Theatre, LOAF, London One Act, London One Act Festival, lyndsay simmons, making of, Theatre, Theatre tech on April 19, 2009 by britcruise

Last month Lyndsay’s play On The Menu was accepted into the London One Act Festival at the Grand Theater. So, out of the blue Lyndsay was responsible for casting, producing and directing a play within 3 weeks. This was a huge commitment, much more so than a normal hobby would consume….She kept up a journal of the process on her website.

Below are some photos of last weeks work:

Rehearsals were moved to our living room, where I set up a mock stage. This helped assist with staging since we had very limited time – and only a handful of rehearsals.

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Financial System Efficiency – Can we predict the stock market?

Posted in Research and Projects with tags Allan Timmermann, Allen Paulos, Andrew Lo, bachelier, bid ask bounce, Burton Malkiel, Carlos Goncalves, Charles Ling, claude shannon, complexity theory, Cooper, data mining, econometrics, economics, economy, efficient market hypothesis, emergence, financial market, financial system, fractal, J kelly, january effect, John Nuttall, kelly criterion, market crash, market prediction, markets, mathematics, options, poincare, recession, self organizing, Steven Johnson, stock market, stocks on April 14, 2009 by britcruise

How Efficient Is The Financial System?

This post has received a lot of traffic, It recently inspired me to start a cinematic educational web series called Art of the Problem. Check it out at www.artoftheproblem.net

Background

In 1948 Claude Shannon wrote a paper entitled ‘The Mathematical Theory of Communication,’ later expanding this into a book by the same name. Shannon’s work was the foundation to the stunning achievements of information theory. In many respects, Shannon’s work deserves recognition as the foundation of complexity theory as well. Read more »

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Escape – An Alien/Dog Abduction Fantasy

Posted in Video / Theatre on April 4, 2009 by britcruise

Here is the final cut of ‘Escape‘, a short film which was create this past year in London with the help of Cam Murray and Lyndsay Simmons.

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Lighting Setups & Cinematography ideas

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags cinematography, digital video, diy film, DVX100, film production, fresnel, HVX200, lighting, short film, smoke machine, video on March 29, 2009 by britcruise

Here I was lighting a variety of environments: daytime exteriors, night time sequences by flashlight, special effect lighting, twilight, different interiors etc:

1. Interior night time sequence:

Here I did a single tracking shot starting outside the bedroom and eventually close up on Lyndsay’s face. I replaced her bedroom lamp with a 200W practical bulb, and softened it up with a umbrella – The trick here was to soften the light more for the closeups (no harsh shadows on her face). I also tucked a 45W blue effect bulb to cast an eerie laptop glow onto her face.

picture-3