[email protected]

The Sound of Spam

SpamJamm is an experimental art installation that generates sound and video from spam emails. The idea arose from the fact that every time I have set up a website/message board or foolishly put my email address on the Internet for some reason this has resulted in me receiving copious amounts of unsolicited email for everything from Viagra to porn to dodgy business deals.

SpamJamm was created in Cycling ' 74 's Max/MSP/Jitter as part of the BA Sound and Music Production degree at the University of Plymouth . This is an effort to generate something creative and hopefully enjoyable from one of the annoying inconveniences of modern day life.

SpamJamm converts the text from the emails into music and video using several different methods. Various algorithms are triggered by the ASCII (numerical) representation of the letters in the email. In turn these algorithms and their parameters are altered in real time by the ASCII codes. In addition any image attachments are downloaded and used to generate video, the video effects being triggered and altered by the text of the email. I used the following generative music algorithms in the piece:Cellular Automaton. A one-dimensional cellular automaton is started and the rules and speed are altered by the ASCII. The cells are transposed into MIDI notes; a live cell plays a note and a dead cell is silent. The ASCII will also change the voice and pan of the MIDI voice.Sample triggers. Samples are triggered by certain letters, and the playback rate is changed by the ASCII codes.Markov Chains. Markov Chains are used to create walking patterns in certain scales. The ASCII controls the speed, voice and silence. ASCII to pitch. The ASCII numerical values are translated directly to MIDI pitch values. Dodecaphony. A dodecaphonic (serialist) note generator. Speech. The Text to Speech synthesiser built in to a Mac or PC is used to read out certain spam keywords (viagra, porn etc).

The piece dips from seeming randomness into passages of musicality and quite complex arrangements. This is entirely dependent on the content of the email. An email with lots of capital letters will tend to be lower pitched, an email with lots of punctuation will trigger more drum loops and an email with more space will be quiter and sparser. I am still developing the piece to allow for the real time loading of different samples.

I am currently adapting and developing the core of SpamJamm to create a piece of software that allows sound and video artists to email clips for the piece to play with. This will be a massive online anonymous collaboration.

The email address is:
[email protected]
Please feel free to send whatever you want to this address (text and images) and SpamJamm will turn it into music and video... The tracks on this page were generated by unsolicited emails and are named after the email subject - enjoy.

See SpamJamm

SpamJamm made its international debut as part of the Faculty of Arts Final Show, at the University of Plymouth in Scott Building Room 106. Should anyone wish to have SpamJamm installed as part of their project/exhibition please contact me through myspace. Be aware that the email address receives a LOT of spam, so if you try to contact me through it I may well miss it.