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Music, performance and robotics

Sarah Angliss is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, roboticist and sound historian
whose work explores acoustics, cognitive science and English folklore.

Posts tagged "magic"

Can you guess how Telepath reads your mind?

rabbit in a hat“Finally someone has released a rather fantastic mind reading app that genuinely triggers that “wow – how did you do that?” response.” Phillis, Derren Brown Blog.

Ever wanted to read someone’s mind?

With Telepath, you can convince almost anyone you’re a mind reader. Telepath is a new mind-reading iPhone app that the talented Richard Wiseman and I are releasing today. The idea is simple:  Someone chooses a picture and mentally sends their thoughts to the iPhone. When they turn over the iPhone, they’ll be astounded to discover their thoughts on the screen.

Here’s Telepath in action …

Telepath

I hope you like it! This is my first foray into the worlds of app development, Objective C  and ESP.

As we say in the video, Telepath can also be used to predict numbers, cute animals, cards and dates – so can even improve your love life. Feel free to guess how it might work – and if you buy the trick from the app store, let us know what you think (but please don’t give away the method!).

Update: Thanks to all of you who have mentioned the app and given it a try. We’re so glad to hear so many of you are enjoying it. And we’re really chuffed with all the positive feedback from magicians around the world.

We’re now getting to work on an Android version – news on that very soon. Meanwhile, the lovely people over at Derren Brown Towers (which features all things magical, scientific and wonderful) would like to see some videos of you performing the trick. Can’t wait to see your magical powers in action!


Live theremin AV controller

The theremin AV controller enables me to scrub audio and video samples live, using the pitch and volume aerials of the theremin. I created this simple but highly unusual controller using Max/MSP + Jitter.

I perform with vocalist Jenny Angliss (and sometimes with guitarists Mike Blow and Ben Kypreos too), under the band name Spacedog. If you’ve been to a recent Spacedog gig, you’ve probably seen the theremin controller in action. Here’s a video of me using the device in a rehearsal. As you can see, I’m controlling the speed of audio and video clips with the pitch antenna. I can also control volume of the samples using the volume antenna.

The music in the video is Willow’s Song (Paul Giovanni), as featured in the British classic horror film The Wicker Man (1973). Here, it’s being mixed with a sample from Hammer classic The Devil Rides Out (1968), plus a 1950s parakeet training record. I’m controlling the hypnotic voice of actor Charles Gray. Jenny is on vocals and Ben on guitar. Mike, in the green teeshirt, is cueing up the various samples I’ve prepared, as the song progresses.

Apologies for the lame sound of the ‘straight’ theremin this video – you’re hearing the sound through the desk. We were monitoring live and the gallery was so reverberant, we had to ditch every hint of vibrato to avoid complete chaos.

using the theremin AV scrubber

using the theremin AV scrubber

This version of the Willow’s Song was first performed at Atters’ Other World, the Brighton Festival Fringe, June 2008, then our sell-out show at the Sanctuary. Here, you’re watching an excerpt from a live playthough of our set in the Blank Gallery, Brighton. Lighting conditions in the gallery prevented us from filming the projected video live, so keen-eyed observers might notice that we’ve added that after filming.