“ time in Nodal is not necessarily linear and so standard tick style measurement of time does not occur in the same way that it does in a DAW or sequencer. This is both a technical and an interesting aesthetic issue. The problem becomes apparent when you turn off the grid quantise and have networks with non-metrical time intervals. For those of you addicted to slicing up time like a loaf of bread you might consider trying this as a kind of antidote to meter. In sequencers, time is measured according to the resolution of the smallest timing unit - a tick (or similar name). If you have timing events that fall between ticks they are quantised (tocks become ticks). This is not an issue if the resolution is fine enough and in a linear flow of a temporal structure small errors are not noticeable, however in Nodal it can be. It is possible to have a network of loops that have small differences in their timing. These differences can’t be quantised in the same way as is done in sequencers because quantise error will become cumulative over time. Looping (in parallel, series or in nests) requires that loops behave in a proportional manner - as do humans who actually sense time rather slice it! By proportional I mean that time is measured in ratios, eg; 3/4, 3/8, 15/16 or in the case of a possible ratio in Nodal, 154/155. Computers can’t do all ratios eg 1:3, which is .3333333… at some point digital requires a discrete rounded number. This illustrates a profound limitation of the digital medium and reflects a concern that I have that time is a somewhat misunderstood concept because in computers we have come to pin events in time onto a digital lattice. Aidan will be able to explain the technical aspects of this issue in more detail but the way time is calculated is actually different because it is a non-linear system. Cumulative rounding error is not completely eliminated but he was able to come up with some clever solutions here. All this means that to sync every aspect of Nodal’s behavior is not a simple question.
August 15, 2008
