Culture Crunch: 2006

Generative Software and download by i am the mighty jungulator

A global zeitgeist engine, a crystal ball with a cassandra complex, munching content from multiple channels and pooting out a sickly broth of ‘where we’re at’. The bastard son of the the online jungulator project – inspired by the science fiction motif of extra-terrestrial, and super-intelligent beings ‘understanding’ humanity through simultaneous viewing of multiple telematic transmissions

download it here for a mac

download it here for a  pc

Here are the release notes from the time…..

This is something we’ve been trying to organise since 1999, we almost nailed it in 2003, but in 2006 we had the technology and the ideology in place to actually pull it off . . . previously we were held back by bandwidth, modem speed, feet of clay, etc . . .

Essentially, Culture Crunch Online is a little downloadable virtual television set, which sits on your desktop and plays a random stream of found sound, snippets of video, endlessly evolving, but never repeating . . .we were inspired by the recurring sci-fi motif of alien beings learning about earth by watching our TV broadcasts, usually on many screens at once, or as a cumulative montage (like David Bowie’s character in ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, or the aliens in ‘Explorers’)

so . . . what you are watching is the world’s first live generative streaming TV channel . . .  whereas our previous attempts at getting this beast online foundered on the rocks of ‘not enough money’ this time everything is in place . . . the aim is to give you the user the definitive monged-out post-everything tv channel experience . . . broadcasting from a disturbed near-future a mixture of infotainment, blipverts, beauty and bullshit . . . all juxtaposed accidental comedy, pathos and new meaning.

The first Culture Crunch worked by mashing four randomly chosen bits of footage together like a big omelette, whereas the newer one (below) splits the screen into four, and randomly cycles through a folder containing around six thousand snippets of video…the way we hope to go with this as the site gets fully operational is to throw it open to the public, where anyone if so inclined can upload a bit of sound or video, which is then added to the ongoing generative mix…kind of like a global zeitgeist jukebox, or if you’re feeling pretentious, a “juxtaposition engine”