If music is patterned sound, then it kind of makes sense that algorithms whose task is to relentlessly forge order out of chaos might generate interesting music.

This could be an alternate soundtrack to The Shining, it could be where dubstep hasn’t taken us yet. It could be Kraftwerk. For me, the black/white/red color scheme clinches it. In any case, it’s utterly mesmerizing.

More info on the video. Not surprisingly, there’s been a lot of work done on the “audibilization” of sorting algorithms. Here’s a different one.

Here’s a breakdown of the “movements,” for want of a better term:

Selection sort 0:00
Insertion sort 0:10
Quick sort 0:39
Merge sort 1:06
Heap sort 1:29
Radix sort (LSD) 1:55
Radix sort (MSD) 2:11
std::sort (intro sort) 2:33  
std::stable_sort (adaptive merge sort) 3:05
Shell sort 3:37
Bubble sort 4:00  
Cocktail shaker sort 4:18
Gnome sort 4:34
Bitonic sort 4:53
Bogo sort (first 30 seconds) 5:17

Ending with “Bogo sort” is a wonderful little joke, somewhat like the Beatles sticking “Revolution 9” at the end of side 4. A bogo sort is a phenomenally inefficient sort that amounts to not sorting at all. As Wikipedia explains,

In computer science, bogosort (also stupid sort or slowsort) is a particularly ineffective sorting algorithm based on the generate and test paradigm. It is not useful for sorting…. If bogosort were used to sort a deck of cards, it would consist of checking if the deck were in order, and if it were not, throwing the deck into the air, picking the cards up at random, and repeating the process until the deck is sorted. Its name comes from the word bogus.

Oh, and the YouTube comments are silly and nerdy, too.
 

 
via Dinosaur Party

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Douglas Rushkoff: Program or Be Programmed
Leonardo Da Vinci’s incredible mechanical lion and history’s first programmable computer