互联网与文化linusakesson.net
A Mind Is Born（2017）
A Mind Is Born (2017)
2017 — 2021，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这是 Linus Åkesson 2017 年发布的 C64 演示程序《A Mind Is Born》：整个演示只有 256 字节，在 Commodore 64 上同时生成视觉画面和音乐。旋律由线性反馈移位寄存器（LFSR）生成，作者花了大量时间调校随机过程，使其在音乐上令人满意；画面则从谢尔宾斯基三角形等分形图案逐渐演变，象征“心智从混沌中诞生”。
为什么经久不衰：它把极致的代码压缩与程序化生成艺术结合在一起，既是技术壮举也是艺术作品，多年来反复打动 HN 读者，至今仍是“少即是多”的经典范例。
HN 评论精选
提供在浏览器模拟器中运行该演示的具体步骤
通过在线 C64 模拟器体验会更好一些：下载这个 256 字节的演示程序，打开模拟器网页，滚动到“drop file”处，关闭自动加载，上传演示文件，打开声音和全屏，然后点击“load”按钮。
tyingq查看英文原文
It's a little better experience via an online C64 emulator. Download the 256 byte demo: https://hd0.linusakesson.net/files/a_mind_is_born.prg Go to the emulator: https://c64emulator.111mb.de/index.php?site=pp_javascript&lang=en&group=c64 Scroll down to "drop file", turn off autoload, upload the demo , turn on sound and fullscreen, then click the "load" button.
认为这是堪比古典音乐的伟大艺术作品，程序是混沌与秩序结合的种子
我以前在 HN 上见过它，之后多次想起却记不起名字找不到，很高兴再次看到。我个人把它视为伟大的艺术品，就像某些人看待伟大的古典音乐那样。这个 256 字节的程序不过是一颗“种子”，演示（以及那个“心智”）从中绽放。它小到在内存中实际执行时占的空间反而更大，而在 YouTube 上观看又比这大几个数量级——所有看过它视频的人传输了多少个 GB？画面从谢尔宾斯基三角形开始，象征分形看似混沌又有序的本质；随着乐曲播放，分形变形为线条、尖角和偶尔的团块，让我联想到大脑的褶皱或电路图案。旋律随机生成，却由简单稳定的低音节奏支撑，同样是混沌与秩序的结合。
tombh查看英文原文
I'd seen this before on HN, and thought about it many times after, but couldn't remember the name, so couldn't find it :( I'm glad to see it again. Personally I see this as a great work of art, perhaps in a way that some people consider great classical pieces of music. Here's a comment from the linked page that poetically reflects that sentiment: This demo is not just technically impressive but I found also evocative of thought and emotion. This isn't just a programming triumph, but an artistic one. The program itself, at 256 bytes, is little more than a "seed" from which the demo (and the Mind) blossoms from. It's so small that the actual execution in memory takes up more space, and watching it play out on YouTube takes up orders of magnitude more; how many dozens of gigabytes were transmitted by all the people who've watched videos of this demo? But what about what we actually see and hear? The visuals start off as Sierpinski triangles, symbolic of both the endless, seemingly-chaotic nature of fractals as well as their order. As the song plays, the fractals become morphed into other shapes. Lines, sharp corners, and occasionally blobs show up, evoking in me images of wrinkles in brains or circuit patterns. The melody is randomly generated but backed by a simple, steady bass rhythm, a similar marriage of chaos and order. The song's climax (at 1:42 in the video) impresses upon me a march of progress as the Mind finally takes shape, formed from random matter and energy and into an entity. We observe the formation of the Mind from the ether not just visually and aurally, but also in the form of the 256-byte seed expanding into the demo flower, eventually taking shape as the C64's home screen.
从程序化作曲专业角度赞赏其技巧，并回忆早年极小代码竞赛传统
我很喜欢程序化作曲。我 90 年代初拿了电子音乐的 MFA，60、70 年代尤其是 80 年代（Mac 上的 MAX）这类创作比今天多得多。他巧妙地利用 DSP 的伪影来制造鼓声，老式廉价卡西欧键盘就是靠过滤毛刺来发声的。旋律生成则类似于采样保持电路从随机前馈中产生“旋律”的方式。我记得当年《Nibble》杂志每期都举办两行 Applesoft Basic 竞赛，看谁能用两行代码做出最厉害的东西，Beagle Brothers 甚至出过一张单行程序磁盘，非常惊艳。
SavantIdiot查看英文原文
I love procedural composition. I got my MFA in the early 90's in electronic music and there used to be WAY more of this happening in the 60's, 70's and especially in the 80's (with MAX on Macs) than today. Clever that he exploited artefacts of the DSP to create the drum sounds. That's kind of how old cheap CASIO keyboards work, by filtering glitches. Sweeping tight filter on you DSP is a trick modern electronic music uses to create a sense of variety in a repeating line. The melody generation is similar to how a Sample-and-hold waveforms create "melody" out of a random feed forward. I remember when Nibble magazine used to have a 2-liner contest at the end of every issue for who go do the most with 2 lines of Applesoft Basic. Beagle Brothers even released a disk of 1-liners, which were really impressive.
类比 Pitfall 用 LFSR 压缩地图的做法，说明这种技巧的历史渊源
LFSR 生成的音乐让我想起老雅达利 2600 游戏《Pitfall》。游戏必须装进 4K 卡带，放不下 255 个房间属性的查找表，于是用一个 31 字节的 LFSR 生成描述整个地图的比特流。
EvanAnderson查看英文原文
The LFSR-generated music reminds me of the old Atari 2600 game "Pitfall". The game had to fit in a 4K cartridge, so a lookup table of the attributes of the 255 "rooms" wouldn't fit. Instead, an LFSR (that fits in 31 bytes) generates the bitstream that describes the entire map. (Background: http://www.samiam.org/blog/20130606.html)
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