View current page
...more recent posts
"Bonsoir Bonaire" [mp3 removed]
The Pro 53 (softsynth) has a nice e-piano sound. Here it's layered over a bed of growly autopanning sawteeth and random bipolarly tuned snares. Will eventually run out of Caribbean islands to use as titles, but I like that Google translates Bonaire as "good surface."
Some excerpts from Alan N. Shapiro's forthcoming book TV’s "Lost": The Crash Out of Globalization into the World:
In my media studies writing on Lost, I continue my project of inventing the literary genre of theory-fiction that I began in my book Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance...writ[ing] first-person phenomenological narratives of what each of the 14 major characters of Lost is feeling, perceiving, thinking, and experiencing from moment to moment. [...]Woven into Shapiro's cyber-fanfic sketches are autobiographical passages, a hilarious Marxist takedown of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and an aeronautic prequel channeling Charles Lindbergh's first Transatlantic voyage, all relating to Lost's themes of flight, trauma, and survival (having only read the wildly un-linear excerpt we trust that the author will pull all this together). The close reading of episodes and willingness to see beyond their TV trash status to bigger issues is what made the Star Trek book so successful--it's the viewpoint of a skeptical fan, perfectly situated to explain why these series have become contemporary mythology, for bad or good. On the "unexamined psycho-biographical wound" that Jack wakes up with after the crash:
All of the[m] - male and female - are my sexual identity avatars. They are virtual reality body-suits that I freely robe and disrobe. I inhabit their bodies and clothing as I choose. I exist inside their semiotic silhouettes. [...]
As the Pilot Episode begins, I wake up from oblivion as Alpha Male Jack Shephard, supine and homeless alone in the woods after a devastating aviation accident. It is my very first arrival in this particular virtual party-experience scene-space, a personal appearance financed by part of my Cable-TV subscription monthly fee, and enabled by the technological meat-machine interface of my image-saturated commodity mind. I exit the transient wormhole-like void of precision-instrumented passage between worlds quantum-leapt into an initiatory moment of surprising arousal. From now on, whatever Jack sees, feels, touches and hears, I see, feel, touch and hear. I am Jack. Jacked in.
Countless contemporary TV shows and Hollywood films portray America's exemplary heroes: emergency physicians, homicide detectives, attorneys for the defense, secret service agents, counter-terrorism specialists, life-risking firemen or beat cops. These daring occupations encompass weighty responsibilities and are undoubtedly among the noblest of vocations in today's society. But the omnipresent virtual realities of the media propagate an iconography of the trained practitioner who "does good" or "helps others" that half performs the commendable service of showcasing worthy role models and half does the disservice of manufacturing a manipulative mythology of the obligation to make excessive macho self-sacrifices for the public interest.The Crash Out of Globalization, then, is, among other things, landing on the island and confronting this compulsive workaholism of a life that no longer exists. One's only fear is the series may be overwriting the writer as it morphs in Seasons 2 and 3 from a post-technological survivalist narrative to a Lost in Space-like scenario teeming with abandoned spooky gear, spacetime abnormalities, and a steady stream of weird visitors that manage to heat the rat race right back up. Shapiro's challenge is to make his narrative so powerful that people will only think of the bucolic, pre-Dharma episodes when they envision the series.
The small and big screens hook us seductively into the pervasive workaholism corresponding on the level of the individual to what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger - in his 1936 essay "The Age of the World Picture" - correctly diagnosed as being the plague of modern times: the characteristic bustle or constant "industrious activity of mere busyness" of our oppressive institutional existence. Permanently enchained by the everyday life ideology that constrains me to make my contribution to business, family, nation, or the accumulation and spending of money, I operate nonstop in a pumped-up feverish caffeine-assisted trance of work and consumerism in order not to face myself. I never have to ask the terrifying question of what I would do with my life if I were truly free. Especially as a man, I steer clear of contact with my own feelings and emotions, evade looking sincerely into my own psycho-biographical pain, and fail to develop real self-love...
Related, more solipsistic Lost thread--one man's lonely vigil.
Jacqueline Humbert, Brainwave Etch a Sketch, 1974. "One person's Alpha waves control the movement of a dot along the oscilloscope's X axis, while the other person's are responsible for movement along the Y axis. The resulting form of the drawing depends on the degree of cooperation, sensitivity and agility in consciously controlling brain signals that the two participants are able to achieve with each other." (Quote and photos from Biofeedback and the Arts, 1976, ed. by David Rosenboom)
A blogsitter over at The News Blog while Gillliard is in the hospital (Get well Steve!) has floated a "best science fiction/fantasy books" list that seems a bit heavy on old "hard science" dudes such as Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke. In the comments yours truly tried to add some dystopian/visionary/cyberpunk spice (including a scattering of books written after--gasp!--1980) with these suggested additions:
A.A. Attanasio - The Last Legends of Earth, Radix
Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons - Watchmen
Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop, Hothouse
Philip K. Dick - Ubik, Martian Time Slip
J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World, High Rise
Pohl & Kornbluth - The Space Merchants, Wolfbane
Bruce Sterling - Schismatrix Plus, Heavy Weather
The Strugatskys - Roadside Picnic
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Greg Egan - Quarantine
Greg Bear - Blood Music
Octavia Butler - Earthseed novels
Michael Swanwick - The Iron Dragon's Daughter
Doris Piserchia - Doomtime
John Brunner - The Shockwave Rider
Lem, Butler, Pohl & Kornbluth, Brunner, and various Dicks already had their indignant supporters in the comments--just tossing in this blog's two cents on those authors. Cordwainer Smith would be on the list except his best work is in the short story format. H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau are some late thoughts.
"Mouse Party 2" [mp3 removed]
Back to the sampler--these are sampled drum hits from the Vermona rhythm synth, using the "kit" made last summer. Tried a couple of new things: making midi controller curves change the snare's pitch and tuning a "chime" (itself a chord) so it could be played like a piano (the melody's pretty basic). A few effects added here and there. Most of the rhythmic interest comes from the "claps."
Update: Discovered this was clipping slightly. Fixed that, and fattened up the sound a bit.
Interesting sounds/patterns/glitches by Mary Benedicto: Loops, Flowers, The Swarm, others... The music is in the Pole/Boards of Canada spectrum (albeit fragmentary) and the visuals are consistently psychedelic/oceanic but also cut up electronically so that you are not allowed to completely "sink into" them.
Also, thanks to Nasty Nets East for introducing me to Silicious (Kathleen Daniel), who rules YouTube with pleasantly deranged music and video of her own creation. The tunes are especially accomplished, melding classic R&B crooning, ESG-style electro-funk, Sun Ra tonal adventurousness, and garageband. (Check out Georg--that Giorgio Moroder bassline with the "la di da di/we like to party" chorus is to die for). I prefer the videos with free-floating Bryce or Poser characters to the obvious Photoshop filters, but it's all pretty great--Henry Darger-esque but with a heart and a conscience and healthy as opposed to brutal sexuality (and in 3D and 4D as opposed to 2D and 4D).
["Planetesimals" video removed for now--these captures are the "piece" (I think it works as a full-sized video but I wasn't happy with the Quicktime).]