Beer-Coated CDs are Optical Biocomputers 298
commodoresloat writes "A DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's some of his research, and some media samples which include mp3s of the distorted music." Yes, the term biocomputer is used in the loosest sense.
can you influence the fungus (Score:4, Interesting)
can you influence the fungus that it does something useful and not only distort the data randomly...
might be useful for encryption if you could find a way to restore the original data with a secure "key"/method/anti-fungus-spray/whatever.
Re:No visuals? (Score:3, Interesting)
There IS visuals... See the paper here [swin.edu.au] (see page 5). It's a 9 MB PDF file. That paper also mentions that the fungus DID impact the error correcting part of the CD. And it mentions on page 7:
To begin with, each computation was started by placing one disc into a stand-alone CD or DVD player and pressing play. In all cases so far, placing treated discs into computer-based, CD, CD-RW and DVD players has caused the computer or laptop to crash. For this reason, this study focused only on CD and DVD players that are modular. In most cases the disc was recognized and begain playing. If the player failed to recognize the disc, it was necessary tor emove some cell material using soft cloth [...] Note that cells were completely removed from the innermost region of data at the beginning of the disc, since this is header information necessary for the player to mount the disc.
Then it goes on the snapshot of the "treated" DVD playback on figure 6 at page 9.
Doesn't seem all that impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see that this is terribly impressive. I mean, he's done a fair bit of research, wrote several papers, and uses big words like "nanoscale chemical filter" and "Boolean string re-arrangements," but in the end, all he seems to have done is pour chemicals on CDs and make them skip. I could do the same with a brillo pad. Why is that impressive? He makes a lot of noise about computing, but is any usefull computing actually going on? What are the practical applications of this "technology"?
Taking a look at the media samples, it doesn't strike me that he's stumbled on a cool new artistic technique at all (it should be mentioned that the artist Oval [allmusic.com] has been scratching up CDs in the name of art with much better results for years). This is the same thing anyone has gotten when they accidently scratched up a CD or DVD. There's no art to it, and frankly it sounds terrible.
I can understand why this would be important if his techniques yielded predictable, useful results, such as achieve a specific, desired audio or visual effect. But basically all that he gets in a broken file. The same could be done by randomly flipping an arbitrary number of bits inside a mp3. Nothing usefull is being computed or done at all. So why is this important, or even relevant?
Fungus coated coasters (Score:3, Interesting)
Two issues with this story, one is the fact that if you indeed get the 'perfect' mold grown on your disk it is very difficult to freeze the err, data in a static way.
The number two thing is why are people researching this 'Fungus-effect' rather than say, rubbing crayons onto cds with a far more reproducable effect?
Bio-cds perhaps?
Not to mention the health hazards are also greatly reduced with crayons. Of course you will still have to deal with the issue of the foreign matter of your choice clogging up your CD drive.
Also the offbalancing in that 100x drive you picked up at costco for twenty bucks. is going to cost you a trip to the return line.
It's your hardware, please do as you wish. (Just let us know what happens) Visions of mold based prior art dance through my head sorta like the SCO executives.
Personally I vote to wait and see what the community will come up with the 'New Mold sound' and then start a fund to blast it from afar into BG's compound.
The Karma Killer: This was indeed posted on Fark.com a day ago. To be fair. Fark takes great pains to acknowledge any scoops from
They even show the
It kinda ticks me off that we can't even acknowledge a odd story news gathering site with a tech bias. Fark is zero threat to
Slashdot is depth. Fark is popcorn.
Sometimes popcorn needs to be chewed in depth.
And sometimes depth has to be chewed by popcorn.
Thank you for reading my semi-off topic rant that I am sure to pay for in the morning.
The last possible shield for my slim castle of karma: I showed this article to a fellow co-worker when we were both under a very tight deadline (He moonlights as a DJ, Biggest cd collection I have ever seen. 5000+ collection)
He just started laughing and laughing. I know that is sorta creepy but it was a relief sort of laugh, not one of those ones in the very scary under-reported storys thread.
That kind of stuff is hard to refute.
I work in the Media and that thread gave me great pause.
One nice thing I really like about Slashdot is the fact that I might take a verbal tongue lashing from the literati, I don't usually get my lug nuts pried of my car because I think different. I am using a metaphor for having my car stereo ripped off a long time ago. What I learned was don't keep expensive stuff in your car. (Basic knowledge 101)
Re:Music? (Score:3, Interesting)
These kind of musical dice-plays where in fashion in Mozarts time, the oldest known is from 1757: "Johann Philipp Kirnberger: Der allezeit fertige Polonoisen- und Menuettencomponist, Winter. Berlin 1757.".
You can find more info (in german) on this page [schott-music.com]. There is quite a list of pieces and books...
Re:Music? (Score:3, Interesting)