Art, technically

Seed magazine interviewed Matmos, ostensibly about their use of an enigma machine in their forthcoming album, although their conversation turned more generally to their use of "scientific" sources in their music. Who knew that one of the fringe benefits of getting Ph.D. in English would turn out to be access to the vaults of a cryptography research company?

Matmos, as well as their more well-known collaborator, perform a truly amazing feat; they produce art that is positively brilliant and at the same time accessible. I suspect that this ability comes out of having impeccable technique and formidable instinct while having the ear steeped in popular musical culture.

Wrapped in a riddle

Slashdot has reported on a project to decode three original Enigma messages intercepted in 1942. The method employed is, of course, brute force distributed computing, combined with statistical methods and some clever optimization tricks.

I had thought that the Enigma had been completely unraveled; as it turns out, even with today's computers, very sophisticated computational tools are required to answer some of its questions.