Time for another interview! This time, with the genius-developer of one of my favorite software applications. A Palm application that, in resume, lets you make music with your sole device: Bhajis Loops. Bhajis Loops is marketed by Chocopoolp, a french brand depicted by a chocolate-eating pink pet octopus and founded by entrepreneur and Ph. D., Olivier Gillet (OG).
Olivier, as well as being an artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and signal-image processing whiz-kid, is an expressive photographer and music lover.
He introduce me to Paris for the first time, now let me introduce him with an interview about technology, ingenuity and music.
hZ: Does music loves technology? Or it’s technology that loves music? What do you think of their affair?
OG: I would say that there are two types of technology… There’s one kind of technology that music loves, it’s the inspired, aesthetic technology that makes beautiful instruments… I often have this lame discussion when people tell me that electronic music is not music because it’s not made with “real instruments” – yes there are still people around there who put forward such arguments. When I ask for a definition of “real instruments”, people tell me that they are not ”bits of technology”, and I reply that the piano, the cello, or later the saxophone were, in their time, technical innovations – frankenstein monsters — that took some time to be accepted as respectable instruments, and that they are “technology” the same way a synth is. There’s as much research, design, innovation in making a piano as there is in making a synth, and piano manufacturers would be indeed sad to know that people don’t view their creations as fine pieces of technology. I don’t see why very classic instruments, like the Prophet 5 or the Minimoog or the Jupiter 8 couldn’t be considered as authentic instruments. Music needs instruments, and the engineering, technology that goes into them. In french we have this word, “lutherie”, the art/craft of making instruments. Music needs lutherie, be it of cellos or Prophet-5s…
But there’s another side of technology… The technology as an ugly geek running after music, trying to seduce her with bling-bling. The technology that produces 40-items long menus in DAWs, VSTi reproducing the front panel of a synth in a pixel-accurate way, Autotune or the sonic Botox of an endless chain of mastering plug-ins. Music might have one-night stands with those guys, but it’s a short term story, a dead end. I think in a couple of years, we’ll all be laughing about all this technology, the same way we smile when looking back at an FM synth or bad virtual analog synths.
hZ: Coca-Cola? Wine? Champagne? What’s the ultimate beverage?
OG: I’m a teetotaler, so Coke. Plus, I have a low tolerance for caffeine - coffee gives me horrible migraines, so Coke provides me with the right amount of energy, an ok-ish caffeine dose and sugarrrrr to get me back on track in the morning. And I love looking lame and cheap instead of the “sophisticated french wine-taster” people happen to assume I am :)
hZ: Imagine the future of data indexation. What’s in it for the average citizen?
OG: If by “data indexation” you mean the kind of content analysis, information retrieval stuff that Google has become a champion of, I would say that the trend is in expanding the field of what we considered as “data” worth indexing. Documents, books, images, videos - it’s pretty natural to think of them as data… and we already index all of those. We do not do it well – you can’t search occurrences of faces or words in youtube videos the same way you can spot occurrences of words in web documents. This is going to be improved, but I don’t think those improvements will be life-changing… From where will the real innovation come from? The state of the physical world is data, too. Somehow, Streetview is an example of this generalization of the concept of data – and I suspect some of the heuristics used in deciding which website to crawl, at which frequency, could as well decide where and how often the black Opel Astras are sent… So the next logical step would be to map the buildings, the vegetation, what’s available in this store, the menus in restaurant, and to make all of this seamlessly searchable. The idea of creating a digital replica of the world is fascinating and we are going towards it, but SF and VR gurus were wrong: the purpose of such of a replica will not be to make people live in it. The purpose will be to make the reality searchable and data-minable.
Another frontier is your personal life, your memories… I can already answer the questions “what was the last song I Iistened to before I defending my PhD?”, or “what was I doing the day Obama was elected” by having a look at Last.fm or Google Calendar ; in a couple of years I will look with nostalgia at my friendfeed posts from 2008 (if they are still available). A digital copy of my life is out there, and the trend is accelerating. I don’t use Facebook but people who do are digitizing a great deal of information about their lives. There’s enough HD space on my desk to record non-stop 1 year of my life on video. It’s not unreasonable to predict that within a decade we’ll have the technology to create a complete digital archive of our lives and activities, and that people will be excited about doing it. We will deal differently with nostalgia (maybe realize that like most weddings, some of our precious memories look cheap and ugly on video).
This also means no more arguments with your wife about what you allegedly said that day. Domestic rows with action replay. I’m surprised there is no hollywood movie about it yet – or maybe I missed it…
hZ: Is there an everyday technology that keeps surprising you always?
OG: Since I am very curious about how stuff works and have always tried to recreate/emulate the technology that fascinates me — to learn how it works — this feeling of surprise often rapidly wears off. Sadly, I don’t remember any lasting “wow” I had recently regarding a piece of technology.
Still, I sometimes wonder what would happen if, following a massive catastrophe, all our existing technology, computers would be destroyed… We would have to rebuild everything from scratch, but
how? Even if we assume that all the blueprints and knowledge is preserved, how to “boostrap” this technological reconstruction? And whenever I think about this I realize to which extent computers / technology are “self-leveraging”. We have great computers because we had – a generation before – great computers to design the chips, simulate the circuits, develop OSes, develop very advanced machines for manufacturing and quality control. You cannot build modern technology without already having slightly inferior technology to design and fabricate it. So I am really amazed by all this – the fact that today’s everyday technologies could not be recreated directly, the fact that we would have to go through all the previous iterations. We are really standing on the shoulders of giants…giants standing on a 4004.
Otherwise, I have always been impressed by buildings, bridges, freeway interchanges. I have no absolutely no idea about how these things are designed, built, and how they stand. They always look to me more complex and mysterious than the most complex software projects – even BigTable.
hZ: “Think outside the box”. How do you do that? What hints would you give to the IT novice?
OG: You don’t really have to think outside of the box if you never allow yourself to stay in a box :) Don’t get used to things, don’t repeat yourself, always try to learn new languages/platforms, try to implement solutions you would have rejected just to learn more about them. Whenever you start a project, always ask yourself whether this is something you really want, or whether you do it just to follow the trend or to make easy money.
hZ: Was there a special moment in your life that let you knew you were ‘made’ for computers? What else would you liked to do for life?
OG: I don’t remember any particular ‘aha!’ moment. It’s easier to remember moments when I really hated computers and wondered why the only tools to play with data, symbolic reasoning, or to organize abstract ideas were those horrible machines. I use computers because they are the best tools for doing what I am good at, but I don’t really like them the way they are. You ugly machines complaining about missing dependencies, I hate you!
There are two things I would have really loved doing: directing films (as it is a mix of many things I like – writing, photography, designing/organizing stuff, and I love film in general); and designing buildings.
hZ: Five places of Paris that make you remember a song, what do they make you feel or remember?
OG:
- The platform of the CDG airport RER station
Belle & Sebastian – Dear Catastrophe Waitress.
I was listening to the album the day my girlfriend arrived for the first time in France. This was a moment I had been waiting for, for a long time. I was feeling all mushy and teenagy and awkward, just like B&S’ music.
- Rue des Poissonniers
Micachu – Golden Phone.
That day I was walking and taking photos in the area, stumbled accross this song I had just downloaded from a music blog and never checked before… and was immediately hooked! It made me super jumpy, like when mario finds a Starman. I played it in loop almost 15 times while walking the street up and down. The photos were not good.
- Rue d’Alésia
The Modern Lovers – Walk up the Street.
I had recently moved to a new apartment and everything went wrong – real horror story. For a couple of days I had no place to stay and spent most of the day walking in the streets. This song says it all.
- Boulevard Ney & Boulevard McDonald
Movietone – Star Ruby.
I remember that during my PhD I was sometimes leaving the lab for 3 or 4hr, during long computations or because I needed time to distance myself from a problem. I usually went walking in random parts of the city, which brought me one cold and grey winter day to this crappy boulevard with parking lots, warehouses, junk yards. The whole album ”The blossom filled streets” by Movietone still made it look beautiful, in a strange, eerie way.
- Boulevard Suchet
Pavement – Shady Lane.
Another long walk – I started in Porte de Saint-Cloud and wanted to walk until I found the solution to a problem… This song popped out of nowhere (well, out of the “shuffle” mode of my ipod) and it was suddenly the only thing I ever wanted to hear at that precise moment. The lyrics didn’t make much sense but at that moment I instantly loved it and didn’t want to hear anything else.
