it’s a shame when such great talent is wasted on a project like this.
“REDCAT decided to co-commission a full-length work, along with the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. The project got a kick-start when Portland philanthropist Leslie B. Durst offered to fund a three-month residency for Cloud Eye Control in her city. She stipulated that the work be related to the North Pole, because of her personal affinity for polar bears.
“It was kind of perfect because we’d talked about our next piece but hadn’t actually locked in,” says Oxygen. “It was a great starting point, there’s so much that can come out of what the North Pole is.”
“We had pretty random ideas at first,” says Yang. “Then one thing that focused us was that we heard a radio show about an Arctic seed vault that was opening up.”
“I propose that all academics with research specialties, no matter how arcane (and nothing is too obscure for Wikipedia), enroll as identifiable editors of Wikipedia. We then watch over a few wikipages of our choosing, adding to them when appropriate, stepping in to resolve disputes when we know something useful. We can add new articles on topics which should be covered, and argue that others should be removed or combined. This is not to displace anonymous editors, many of whom possess vast amounts of valuable information and innovative ideas, but to add our authority and hard-won knowledge to this growing universal library”
“My previous employer just blogged about the need for a “health care solution that will enable a healthier place for all of God’s children.” Longtime readers of this blog will get the irony: While I was an adjunct there, I couldn’t get health care through my employer. Maybe that sentence should read “all God’s full-time, tenure-track children.”
“Betty. Betty, Betty, Betty. I’m not going to recap your various travails here. I’ll leave that to the experts. But I can give you a few concrete pieces of advice (or plot developments, or whatever) that might exponentially increase your happiness. Ready?”
“DavidDavid Weekend fun: Citysounds 2.0 “Exactly one month ago, we introduced you to Citysounds.fm, a really cool mashup created by Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud during the London Music Hack Day. Citysounds is built on top of the SoundCloud API and makes it easy to browse through SoundCloud tracks from a specific city around the world. Today, Henrik and David inform us about a big update they just launched and let me tell you that it’s pretty exciting. They’ve added a great set of features and we think that the current look & feel is a big improvement. So what’s new? Show more tracks from one city: when selecting a city on the frontpage, you’ll be able to click through to the city overview page where it will show you more tracks from that city:”
“SoundGrid aims to be the most advanced matrix sequencer for iPhone / iPod Touch to create stunning audio-visual performances in a moment and wherever you are. It was inspired by famous Yamaha Tenori-On and popular ToneMatrix webapp by André Michelle. Even if you never composed music you will find SoundGrid simple and exciting to play with and will start creating brilliant compositions in minutes with just the tips of your fingers. Then easily share them with other users and in turn browse, download and rate their creations. Or you can record composition to audio file, upload it directly to SoundCloud or export via email. You can even create your own unique ringtones!”
Here it is: my crazy summer project to reinvent desktop human-computer interaction. This video examines the benefits and limitations inherent in current mouse-based and window-oriented interfaces, the problems facing other potential solutions, and visualizes my proposal for a completely new way of interacting with desktop computers.
“Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather”
“Spotify employs P2P software, that’s why it’s so damn good. It takes 2-5 seconds to ramp up each and every song, which has reduced bit rate during that window, but usually that’s a relatively dead window and the listener isn’t paying close attention anyway. Yes, there are tricks. Only seventy five percent of the song is downloaded, an algorithm provides the remaining twenty five percent. This is how they all do it, it’s de rigueur. And the files don’t only come from Spotify’s servers, bits and pieces come from other users with the software installed on their computers. Net effect? It feels like you own the track. Usability is equal to iTunes. You can fast forward, rewind, there’s no lag time. Well, that’s a bit different. You see then Spotify depends on the network. Which is why they’ve limited sign-ups in the nations they’ve already launched in. They want the streaming experience to be perfect on your mobile device, after all, you’re depending on it…”
“Most composers notate a piece to perfection — hoping for a masterpiece, perhaps — and then move on. But Riley is a dabbler. “I’ll present a piece before it’s finished, then it will be different at the next performance,” he says. “Then after 10 years it will take a new shape that I’m happy with and maybe change again after 20 years. It’s because I improvise so much.” …his roots in jazz and Indian ragas should both come through on Saturday. To him, the term improvisation seldom means starting from nothing and just seeing what happen “They’re improvisations but built on existing structures, maybe not chord progressions (as with jazz), but modes and rhythmic cycles and looplike patterns,” Riley explains. “We’ll have a little rehearsal the day before (at Bard), but also a bit of flying by the seat of the pants. I like that and I think these players do, too.”
“Welcome to the official site of the 2009 BROWN LIST, brought to you by the Hollywood Temp Diaries. As you’ve gleaned from my postings and your own experiences, there are a lot of people in Hollywood who are a real pain in the ass. Oddly enough, there are some decent people in this town too (they probably won’t make it too far, but that’s their problem). Anyhoo, I’ve compiled a list of people’s MOST-LIKED and LEAST-LIKED entertainment industry executives in something I’m calling the BROWN LIST. Click on the .pdf below and enjoy the read. Thanks to everyone for participating.”
“On the fifth floor of the Los Angeles Theater Center in downtown L.A., the members of Cloud Eye Control are trying to create poetry out of collaborative technology. On one end of the large studio, makeshift tables hold laptops and electronic equipment, with a cluster of musical instruments nearby. The middle of the room is dominated by two free-standing screens… It’s only days away from the debut of the full-length version of “Under Polaris” at REDCAT, and there still are snags to work out, transitions to be smoothed. This performance combines live action, recorded animation, multiple projectors, mobile props, and a five-piece live band, so there’s still much to do. And, in the spirit of what Chi-wang Yang, the director of the group, calls do-it-yourself aesthetics, they somehow pull it all together.”
In spring 2008 i started writing Requiem for a High Homicide Enclave which is a deconstruction of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary (1694) that is based on excerpts from the from the LA Times Homicide Report which documents every murder that takes place in Los Angeles County using blog posts, comments, and Google Maps.
we (sylvia desrochers (soprano) paul cummings (bass) bruce gallegos (electric guitar) and myself (laptop and kaossilator) premiered the piece at the REDCAT Spring Studio in may 2008.
i am planning to record the piece in spring 2009 and are scheduling performances for 2009-2010.
video is under construction and shall return soon. until then you can listen to the audio of the premier performance