200 Rubyists do it together with the lights on
posted by pete on August 6th, 2009
If you’re ever at a gathering whether a significant number of Rubyists are in attendance, don’t be so surprised if the room spontaneously erupts into a cacophony of vowel noises that sound vaguely like a Gregorian chant. This hmmmmmmm might gradually transition into “hissing and shushing” or arrhythmic rubbing and snapping noises which can be made with one’s hands.
Last year at RubyFringe there was a very important moment during Nick Sieger’s amazing Jazzers and Programmers presentation. Nick was playing short clips of jazz music as a way to illustrate the history and evolution of the art form, and how many concepts like improvisation and being in “the zone” are remarkably similar to coding. Back stage, I was genuinely terrified that people in the audience would be walking out; they came for talks about Ruby, and here we were teaching them about jazz.
Yet when I peeked out from behind the stage, everyone was paying rapt attention. When Nick played music, the majority of people closed their eyes and listened. I had a powerful epiphany: these people can learn new APIs on their own, but they came here to find meaning and be inspired. I no longer feared retribution!
My very first instinct as FutureRuby curator was to contact Misha Glouberman, a local artist, instructor, facilitator, and all around trickster. He’s best known for his long running Trampoline Hall lecture series, but what had captured my imagination was a video I’d seen online from his birthday party.
I asked Misha if we could collaborate on a version of these “Cobra” experimental noise workshops for the FutureRuby audience. This was a very risky creative decision, for both of us. As a musician and appreciator of sonic oddities, I see many connections with the spirit of the event, with Nick’s talk, with the nature of wild experimentalism that fuel folks like why the lucky stiff, whose Poignant Guide to Ruby drew me to this community in the first place.
Photo by Christian Metts
However, all of these roads go back to John Cage. He’s likely most notorious for 4’33”, a composition for piano which consists entirely of musical rests. That’s right, it’s just four and a half minutes of silence. However, his influence goes far beyond making fun of his wealthy patrons.
Could this whimsy be captured at FutureRuby? How would a room full of Rubyists respond to being told to put away their laptops so that they could make primitive, guttural noises for an hour?
Now, while I would never pick favourites I really think most attendees will agree that this session was a huge success. Not only was it a lot of fun, but 200 Rubyists did it together with the lights on. Go ahead and click on Misha to start the video.
I strongly suggest that you set aside an hour, put on a good pair of headphones, and blow this bad boy up to full screen so that you can get into the mindset. It’s pretty awesome; we had about 6 cameras going, and a really nice set of mics to capture stereo sound. You can really hear things moving around in space. I guarantee that you’ve never seen anything like this before, and certainly not with the faces of Yehuda Katz, Nathan Weizenbaum, and the jadedPixel crew in the audience. I don’t want to encourage anyone to jump around, but at 21:00 Misha succeeds in executing a sonic version of Conway’s Game of Life.
Thanks again to Misha for being an excellent performer, and thanks to the FutureRuby attendees who trusted me enough to let this happen. If you’re interested in making these sorts of noises again, Misha occasionally offers workshops through his Misha Glouberman School of Learning which I highly recommend.
Comic by Nick Wolfe of Name Removed