Week 1 - Two Cultures

Hi everyone, my name is Avinash Mittur and I’m a fourth year electrical engineering major. The idea of two cultures is something that I contend with fairly often. To put it as simply as I can, I’ve been in love with the technical aspects behind the creation of music since I high school. My first time in a recording studio was a wondrous experience. “How does this microphone work? What does a compressor do? How does this device affect what I finally end up listening to?”

That last question is something that I’m always trying to answer, and that is the tie between the two cultures that I always jump back and forth between: creative and technical. Music and engineering.  At UCLA, the classes I took early on often had little real-world context. Solve for the voltage here, find the output function, what’s the amount of charge in this cylinder… yawn. It wasn’t until I took the highest-level upper division courses that I really got to see the two cultures that I love become connected. This circuit distorts input signals, this filter cuts out nasty frequencies… awesome.

This limiting amplifier was probably used on songs you like.

One of the most public merging of the music and engineering cultures that I’ve observed was the Pono project from a few months back.^[1] Pono is a music playing device (similar to an iPod), but it plays back high-resolution audio. The idea is that high-res audio results in better sounding music. While I’m not fully onboard with Pono for a handful of reasons, the primary idea behind the development team’s vision is something that I mostly agree with- better engineering, better music.

That said, the clash between art and science presents a minor contradiction in that field. What if the song or the performance is simply poor? “…no microphone, EQ, or compressor can cure bad vocal technique” as Sound on Sound magazine noted in 1997. In music, the art must be strong in order for the science to prop it up.

According to Brockman, the merging between science and art ultimately is a new culture in and of itself.^[2] This is something that makes an astounding amount of sense to me. New technology was less complex decades ago, and so their applications were more immediately obvious. As technology grows more complicated and as scientific research becomes more esoteric, we require the creative perspective in order to see their uses and applications. We also require the creative inspiration to pursue new and exciting discoveries in order for the research and progress to be conducted at all.

This can be seen in the development of the memristor, a circuit component that was theorized over forty years ago, but is finally actually being developed at HP.^[3] I strongly feel that the creative intuition and technical brainpower of today’s “third culture” scientists are what is allowing the memristor to make progress today as opposed to forty years back. They are the bridge between classical science and the new wave of thinking that “will favor the irrational if it brings options and possibilities, because new experiences trump rational proof,” as Kevin Kelly states.^[4]

Going back to my original point in a way, the song below is from an album that I think represents a near perfect merging of the two cultures. Outstanding music that was given an impeccable engineering job.

Citations:

Bright, Peter. "HP Plans to Launch Memristor, Silicon Photonic Computer within the Decade." Ars Technica. Conde Nast, 11 June 2014. Web. 28 June 2014.

"Capturing A Good Vocal Performance." Capturing A Good Vocal Performance. SOS Publications Group, Mar. 1997. Web. 28 June 2014.

Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture." The Third Culture. Highwire Press, 13 Feb. 1998. Web. 28 June 2014.

Rowe, Duncan G. "John Brockman: Matchmaking with Science and Art (Wired UK)." Wired UK. Conde Nast, 03 Feb. 2011. Web. 28 June 2014.

Young, Neil. "Pono Music - Where Your Soul Rediscovers Music." Kickstarter. Kickstarter, 11 Mar. 2014. Web. 28 June 2014.