algorithmic composition

Donald Knuth explains at Stanford's CCRMA the constraint-based methods he is using to compose a major work for pipe organ.

A short clip of a track from Emily Howell, a computer program by David Cope that composes classical-style music, performed by human players. It is a sample of algorithmic composition.

AlphaPhoenix uses Monte Carlo simulation and annealing-style methods to draw North Carolina congressional district maps, both gerrymandered and fair. He focuses on the fascinating computational problem rather than the politics.

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science demonstrates an X-ray fluorescence gun that measures chemical composition, tears it down, analyzes its failure, and discusses a new XRF technology appearing on eBay.

A Technology Connections video essay arguing that algorithmic feeds make people passive about finding content, leading to complacency in how they seek information. It urges people to actively choose what they consume.

Seventeen-year-old Ray Kurzweil appears on the TV show I've Got a Secret in 1965, playing a piece of music composed by a computer program he built.

Chris Stucchio presents the ethical principles behind algorithmic decision making and shows with examples from lending, criminology and education that they cannot all be satisfied at once. The talk frames AI fairness as a set of quantitative tradeoffs.

A live-coded demo by Jonathan Blow showing how to get object-system-style expressiveness in a data-oriented way, covering structure-of-arrays layouts and composition. It shows features of his Jai language that make programs fast.

Microsoft's Brian Beckman gives an hour-long, whiteboard-style walk through monads, building from function composition and monoids using school-level math. It is aimed at practicing programmers rather than category theorists.

The first lecture in Bartosz Milewski's category theory series for programmers. It covers the motivation and philosophy behind category theory and why composition matters for handling complexity.

Brian Lonsdorf explains why Underscore.js falls short as a functional programming library, then introduces currying, composition and point-free style in JavaScript. He argues for data-last argument ordering.

Chris Ford builds up from a single sine wave through layered abstractions to a Bach canon, using Clojure and the Overtone audio environment. The talk shows music theory as a natural fit for functional programming.

Technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues that the machine-learning systems used to serve ads also decide what political and social information people see. She explains how opaque algorithms can nudge, segment and manipulate users, and warns that the real danger is powerful people using AI to control populations.

An Every Frame a Painting video essay on how Akira Kurosawa used movement, weather and composition to tell stories. It draws on clips and interviews with other filmmakers.

Douglas Crockford's Nordic.js 2014 talk on 'the better parts' of JavaScript and programming in general. He argues against `this`, `new` and ES6 classes, and for classless, composition-based object patterns, with some broader remarks on building better structures for the future.

Jon Purdy's Stanford EE380 seminar giving an overview of concatenative programming, from function composition theory and history down to low-level implementation and correctness benefits.

A Tiny Desk concert in which pianist Dan Tepfer plays with a Disklavier player piano driven by a program he wrote that responds to his playing. He performs four pieces from his Natural Machines project.

Viznut's third bytebeat video presents music generated by very short C programs and JavaScript expressions. It links to online tools and deeper analysis of one-line music.

A short 2009 amateur video showing an HP MediaSmart webcam whose face tracking follows a white face but fails to track a black face. The uploader presents it as humorous.

Rich Hickey introduces transducers in Clojure, a way to make map, filter and similar algorithms composable independent of the data source. This avoids duplicated implementations and intermediate collections across sequences, channels and streams.

Runar Bjarnason's Scala World talk argues that restraint and precision in components beat power and flexibility. Constraints on parts make them easier to compose into systems.

Viznut demonstrates bytebeat, experimental music generated by extremely short C programs. It is the first of a series of videos on the technique.

Adam Neely interviews Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin about their project to generate and copyright every possible melody as MIDI. The video explains their reasoning and how it bears on music copyright lawsuits.

Psychologist Robert Epstein presents a Stanford EE380 colloquium on how internet algorithms such as search rankings can manipulate opinions, purchases and votes at massive scale. He also describes a new monitoring system for tracking such influence.

A VPRO documentary on quantitative analysts who designed the mathematical models and high-speed trading systems behind modern finance. It features figures such as Paul Wilmott and asks what risks come from treating markets as a machine.

Composer Tantacrul explores how corporatism produces soulless background music, and how some companies use such music in propaganda-style campaigns. He composes several corporate styles to show their tropes, with some music theory along the way.

Lawyer and musician Damien Riehl argues that music is math with a finite number of melodies, and describes how he and programmer Noah Rubin generated every possible melody and released them under CC0 to avoid accidental infringement claims.

A clip from Little Britain in which a bureaucrat answers every request with 'computer says no'.

A short CGP Grey bonus video explaining the shortest-splitline algorithm, which draws electoral districts by repeatedly splitting a state along its shortest dividing line while balancing population. It is offered as a neutral, algorithmic fix for gerrymandering.

Vsauce's roughly 24 minute explainer on the Banach-Tarski paradox, building from infinity and set theory to the decomposition of a sphere into pieces that form two spheres.

Mick Gordon's GDC 2017 session on composing the Doom (2016) soundtrack. He details his compositional process, production techniques and the experimental instrument and synth design behind the music.

An Every Frame a Painting video essay on Michael Bay's style, 'Bayhem', covering his camera movement, composition, color and editing. It argues that even if you dislike his films, they teach something about visual perception.

A very long, detailed look at the A4/V2 rocket turbopump, the steam-turbine-driven twin propellant pump system. It covers the peroxide and permanganate catalysis that drives the turbine. This is part 1 of a series on V2 components.

Raymond Hettinger's PyBay 2019 talk on the mental habits behind effective programming, drawn from coaching, teaching and StackOverflow. He covers problem decomposition, chunking, managing working memory and getting unstuck.

Edward Kmett's talk to the NY Haskell User Group on the lens library, building from fmap and function composition up to lenses, folds and traversals. It shows how these composable combinators access and modify parts of data structures.

A long live-coded DJ set in which Sam Aaron creates all the music in real time by writing code in his Sonic Pi system. It demonstrates algorithmic electronic music performance.

Tom Scott's Royal Institution discourse on science communication in the age of social media, how recommendation algorithms shape popularity, and why view counts can matter more than truth. It includes a segment on parasocial relationships.

Eli Pariser's TED talk argues that personalized web services trap users in filter bubbles, limiting exposure to challenging information. He says this is bad for individuals and for democracy.

A score-following video of Iannis Xenakis's 1950s orchestral piece Metastasis, showing his graphic, mathematically derived notation as the music plays. It is a landmark of post-war modernist composition.

Matt Parker follows the community effort to speed up his slow Wordle-solving code, which ended up running hundreds of millions of times faster. He walks through the techniques contributors used.