iTunes Autograph

http://www.jasonfreeman.net/itsm/

Jason Freeman’s ‘iTunes Signature Maker’ analyzes music collections to create an audio collage that represents the owner’s personality. I guess I was hoping my ‘signature’ would be a little more upbeat. Instead, it has a ‘life flashing before my eyes’ feeling–it is, after all, composed of the aural fragments that endlessly float through my subconscious. Recent online services, such as the Music Genome Project, have started recognizing users’ music tastes. Pandora.com, powered by the project, will rather effectively suggest music based on submitted artists and song titles. These technologies suggest that our musical tastes are based on a set of common formal styles, rather than memories, marketing, or subcultural and historical associations. However, Freeman’s Rhizome-commissioned Signature Maker creates a ghostly sampling of songs, abstractly conjuring the psychological and personal parts of our eclectic music collections. – Matt Wolf