Date: 21 November 2012
Time: 13.00-14.00
Place: NJ14 3-228 (Las Vegas)
In this talk, I give an overview of my dissertation research concerning the use of harmonics in audio/visual synthesis and composition. I introduce my main contribution to this area, the harmonic pattern function, a mathematical model capable of compactly describing a wide array of sound waveforms and visual patterns. The function is based on a rational function of inverse discrete Fourier transforms. In practice, however, sparse representations are more useful. For this purpose, a simplified notation for specifying non-
zero complex sinusoids comprising the patterns was developed. Additionally, the harmonic pattern function serves as a platform for formalizing relationships between myriad audio/visual pattern making techniques spanning from the 18th century geometric pen to modern digital signal processing.
Bio
Lance Putnam is a composer and researcher with interest in unified audio/visual synthesis, harmonic patterns, and perceptualization of dynamic systems. He holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and both an M.A.
in Electronic Music and Sound Design and a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2006, he was awarded a prestigious NSF IGERT fellowship in Interactive Digital Multimedia. He was selected as one of eight international students to present his research in media signal processing at the 2007 Emerging Leaders in Multimedia Workshop at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in New York. His work, S Phase, has been shown at the 2008 International Computer Music Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland and the 2009 Traiettorie Festival in Parma, Italy. From 2008 to 2012, he conducted research in audio/visual synthesis at the AlloSphere Research Facility in Santa Barbara, California.