Perfect Secrecy & Pseudorandomness

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags , , , , , on May 4, 2012 by Brit Cruise

Check out my interactive exploration of random walks on khanacademy labs.

When someone rolls dice, or selects a card from a shuffled deck the best possible strategy for predicting the outcome can’t beat a blind guess. This is because each outcome is equally likely. When we apply random shifts to our messages it results in a ciphertext which is indistinguishable from any other message – it contains no information. The problem with this method of encryption (one-time pad) is that we must share all the random shifts in advance. What happens when we apply pseudorandom shifts instead? We can relax our definition of perfect secrecy and achieve practical security

Khan Academy Labs: Exploratory Exercises

Posted in Research and Projects with tags , , on March 30, 2012 by Brit Cruise

One of the most exciting aspects of joining the Khan Academy team, was the potential to explore new ways of integrating video and software. Continue reading

WW2 Encryption Machines – Key Spaces

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags , , , , , , , on March 13, 2012 by Brit Cruise

Over the past few weeks was editing a video which Continue reading

Public Key Cryptography: Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags , , , , on February 26, 2012 by Brit Cruise

Continue reading

2000 years of Cryptography in 8.5 minutes

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags , , , , , , , on February 14, 2012 by Brit Cruise

This video covers this history of Cryptography through the lens of Cryptanalysis. It takes us from the Caesar Cipher to the one-time pad…a daunting task in 8 minutes. My strategy for this was based on much reflection after completing a course in Cryptography last year…I was seeking out the kernel of what is required to understand the big picture. This brought me to analogies which connect the idea of a fingerprint to unique frequency distribution, and information leak to differentials in the distribution. Hopefully this lends some intuitive weight when I explain the strength of the one-time pad…which is a lovely concept.

Khan Academy and Brit Cruise join forces

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on January 13, 2012 by Brit Cruise

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 (which was a project I initially launched on Kickstarter). 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 am working for Khan Academy. My job? “Continue making your videos”. I look forward to some exciting collaborations…and maybe hybrid exercise-video adventures! Here is the first video I delivered to Khan.

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

Gambling with Secrets – Pilot Episode

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on December 14, 2011 by Brit Cruise

Finally, here are the opening chapters of the Art of the Problem pilot I’ve been working on:

Gambling with Secrets

[youtube-“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y3PH4SqmlA”%5D

Mile high paper stack effect: Blender + Photoshop + FCP

Posted in Research and Projects with tags , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2011 by Brit Cruise


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…. Continue reading

Art of the Problem – Kickstarter funding successful

Posted in Research and Projects, Video / Theatre with tags , , , , , on April 1, 2011 by Brit Cruise

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.youtube.com/artoftheproblem.

Real Time Control of Emotional Affect in Algorithmic Music

Posted in Random Stuff, Research and Projects with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2010 by Brit Cruise


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: Continue reading

Robot 1.2 – new Direction

Posted in Research and Projects with tags , , , , , on April 24, 2010 by Brit Cruise

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: Continue reading

It’s ALIVE – Robotic Drummer Interacts With Humans!

Posted in Random Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 15, 2010 by Brit Cruise

robot3.jpg

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….

Continue reading

Beat Induction and Analysis with Robotic Percussive Improvisation Systems

Posted in Research and Projects with tags , , , , on November 11, 2009 by Brit Cruise

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.

Continue reading

Time & The River

Posted in Video / Theatre with tags , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2009 by Brit Cruise
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)


Continue reading

Exploring Music Spaces – Computer Science Research Journal

Posted in Random Stuff, Research and Projects with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2009 by Brit Cruise

1

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. Continue reading