ibm glass engine, infinity edition

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 6 & 7, and Firefox 2 on Windows, and Safari and Firefox on Mac OS X. Medium to high-bandwidth Internet access is highly recommended. Problems? See Frequently Asked Questions, below.

Internet Explorer 7 users - After clicking the Launch button above, you will have to click on the pop up window to activate the Glass Engine.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Infinity edition – huh?
A: The new “Play” pulldown lets you choose continuous play of tracks along the current slider bar or random play of all the tracks that are displayed.

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: Where is all the new music?
A: The folks at Looking Glass Studios are doing their best to update the music in the glass engine.

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: 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, while eating several pounds of chocolate chip cookies.

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

Q: I see a window that says loading, but nothing else happens –or- I get a message saying that I am missing a plug-in.
A: The glass engine requires Java to support the user interface. All the supported browsers will give you an option to download and install Java if you don’t already have it.

Q: The display for the glass engine loads, but I don’t hear any music.
A: The glass engine requires QuickTime to play music. All the supported browsers will give you an option to download and install QuickTime from Apple. You do not need to install ITunes.

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.
Infinity edition: Andy Abreu, Robert Hoch, Mark Podlaseck.

feedback/contact

The glass engine was developed at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in 2001. We welcome your feedback.

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

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