The IBM Glass Engine enables deep navigation of the music of Philip Glass. Personal interests, associations, and impulses guide the listener through an expanding selection of over sixty Glass works.

The engine is currently compatible with MS Internet Explorer (4.5+) running on Windows 98, ME, 2000, or Apple OS 9, OS X platforms. Medium to high-bandwidth Internet access is highly recommended, but not absolutely required. Problems? See Frequently Asked Questions, below.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I click and click and click, but nothing is happening.
A: Click down on a bar and drag it back and forth, holding your mouse button down.

Q: All the other bars slide when I am just trying to slide one bar.
A: That's because all the bars contain the same things (works or tracks from works); they are just sorted in different ways (by title, by date, by length, etc.). When you slide to a work on one bar, all the other bars will slide to show you the position and value of the same work on the other bars.

Q: What are those little vertical stripes on each sliding bar?
A: Each vertical stripe represents a piece of music (a single work or a track from a work.)

Q: In certain areas, the vertical stripes are so dense I find it difficult to slide from one to the next without overshooting.
A: Try using the buttons located above the bar you are using. These will advance one work at a time.

Q: How do I get to operas only?
A: At the menu bar on top of the screen, pull down 'View: All works' and select 'Operas.' This will hide all works that are not operas.

Q: I am interested in looking only at slow pieces. Can I change the minimum and/or maximum values for a given bar?
A: Yes. Click down on the 'High' label on the VELOCITY bar and drag it toward the center. As you drag it, the faster works are filtered out, leaving the slower ones. (Note: You can do this on multiple bars to identify, for example, all the slow, happy pieces.)

Q: Why aren't there links to Amazon?
A: We're working on integrating additional content, such as reviews, interviews, set and costume designs, and links to Amazon.

Q: I don't understand the difference between the works that turn orange on rollover and the works that turn blue on rollover.
A: Orange stripes indicate that you are navigating works or tracks that are related to a single work. Blue stripes indicate that you are navigating through all the tracks from all the works. ('Blue navigation' is often used by people looking for a track with certain qualities to synch to a film or video.)

Q: The white squares on top of the track bars? What are they telling me?
A: The number of white squares indicates the value a track has on a given bar. A single white square indicates a very low value. Ten squares indicate a very high value.

Q: Who decided how to assign the subjective values (such as JOY) to the tracks? Was this done by a computer?
A: These values were assigned by Philip Glass's longtime producer and sound designer, Kurt Munkacsi.

Q: How is it possible for a track to have high amounts of both joy and sorrow?
A: Music can contain two conflicting emotions, just as a human can.

Q: How do I mark a work I want to come back to?
A: Use the Favorites pulldown on the menu bar. When you mark a work as a 'favorite,' it will put a small notch below that work and add an entry to the pulldown. To return to the work, pull on the lowest area of a bar and it will snap to the notch. Or, use the Favorites pulldown and select the work's title off the pulldown list; the bars will move to identify that work. Note that currently you can only mark an entire work as a favorite, not an individual track.

Q: The applet is not loading after I press LAUNCH, above.
A: The glass engine works ONLY with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5+ with Java enabled.

If the applet does not load, please check the following:

Internet Explorer 4.5+:
Select View from your menu bar
Select Internet Options then the Security tab
For the Internet Zone, select Custom and click on Settings
Scroll down to the Java area of the list
Make sure that, under Java permissions, that 'Disable Java' is NOT active
Set this to low, medium or high security instead
Scroll down to the Scripting area of the list
Under Scripting, set Active scripting to Enable, and set Scripting of Java applets to Enable
Click OK to return the Security Settings, then click Apply, and then OK Internet

Explorer 5.0:
Select Tools from your menu bar
Select Internet Options
Click on the 'Advanced' tab
Scroll down to Java VM
Check the box labeled 'Java console enabled (requires restart)
Click OK, and restart your machine before starting up the glass engine

Mac users: You may require Mac OS Runtime for Java (MRJ), which can be dowloaded from http://www.apple.com/java

AOL browsers: You must be using 32-bit version of the AOL 4.0 browser for Win 95, which comes bundled with Internet Explorer. If you are not using the latest release of the AOL software, contact AOL for a free upgrade.

It is also possible that you are accessing the Internet from behind a corporate firewall that filters out Java. Your Systems Administrator may be able to allow Java coming from our IP address.

Contributors

At IBM:
Margaret Chan, Elisa DeJesus, Robert Hoch, Mark Podlaseck, Christian Richard, Doug Riecken, Edith Schonberg, Susan Spraragen.

At Euphorbia/Dunvagen:
Hector Castillo, Philip Glass, Jim Keller, Kurt Munkacsi, Michael Riesman.

Thanks:
Harry Hochheiser, Bonnie Scranton, SPALAB, Marina Zurkow.

Feedback/Contact

The glass engine is an ongoing research project at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. We welcome your feedback.

Mark Podlaseck
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
19 Skyline Drive
Hawthorne, NY 10532
podlasec@us.ibm.com