slow

I remember reading about slow food, then I was applying to a conference and encountered a category for slow new media, what in the world is that I thought... I tucked that in the back of my brain for a while and today my brain came up with a rationalization. I am working on a new piano piece and had the idea to combine different translations of the same material. I have had Ben Folds on the mind since waiting in the cell phone lot at General Mitchell International Airport while baritone Nathan Krueger made his way across the tarmac. I was thinking about aging, our long friendship and the energy of summertime and youth. The piano piece will use my translation system where I and the various algorithms I employ create beautiful omissions and arrangements of a soundfile. Ben Folds seemed like a great starting place; summer, energy, philosophy, undergraduate music training and piano all swirling about my psyche. I started with using Grooveshark to pull up some recordings and hoped that while I vacuumed the living room starting place would emerge. Settling into a position of retina glued to the screen and ears focused, I decided on a starting place. Instead of grabbing a digital version (note, not a copy, but VERSION!) I thought, hay I have all these on CD, so I started through my ten 1000 plus cd binders and began to marvel at the ordering. I remember spending entire days reorganizing my cd's thinking through the logic and changing the rules. Looking back, those are afternoons of another era or another life. Reveling in the archeological dig through my own psyche, I thought, why not just grab the digital copy with a simple search, then I realized how much I was thinking about my choice and how embedded in my own history that choice resides. This paging through page after page was suggesting new avenues of investigation, the aethetics of the album cover, the visceral of holding and flipping through pages, perusing notes and performers. I was consciously engaging with the project in a slow manner. My dissertation highlights the differences between human and digital routines in the production of art. Each plays a role, I have instinctively known that, now the term slow media actually has a place in my approach. I am working on another project involving Twitter and am involved in a conversation about the types and ideas of conversation. The opposition that Twitter seems to highlight is conversation according to Millennials versus Baby Boomers. Well, here I am in the middle of that spectrum, able to see both. Slow and hyper both have there places/uses. I now know that my aesthetic values employe tenants of both approaches (It is interesting that I structure this as ends of a paradigmatic space). In the physical realm, I have been trying to figure out how the LasuDax project is slow media. I initially thought that project fit the category, but I couldn't say why. With this definition emerging, I am considering the role of the Dax in the project as an object of control in expression and subversion of the Lassus. (I will describe more on the project as it takes shape, for now, know there are Daxophones that are filtered and follow the lines of a Lassus duet). The slow is the control mechanism of the hyper, each playing a role the other is not suited for.

piano, electronics and visuals

Gesualdo

wikiHouse

results in ideas ringing in my head citizens only as consumers… a fundamental assumption with a problem democratization of production'

Bach visualization - Brandenburg Concerto 4

This is an interesting visualization. It forgoes the readhead representation in favor of animated shapes that shrink in size to convey duration. The animation of the shape provides a cue as to the continuity of the line (as if color wasn't sufficient) by moving to the next note (I keep having to remind myself that this is not a pitch bend or gliss). The violin line (in yellow) has a connective line which seems a bit better. There is certainly an advantage to this view as one can easily (more so than traditional notation) follow an individual line and the voice crossings. The use of color greatly adds to this ability to distinguish individual parts. That said, the color also has a side affect of misrepresenting the aesthetic of the work. Are the timbral colors of these different instruments so decidedly unique? I think a more muted version would convey a more realistic version of how we hear the completed work. That would imply a sort of analysis and visual representation that is more design minded than this approach. It also implies a greater degree of analysis and the visualization being a statement exploring that analysis and this is not what I believe the authors intended. I find it an interesting step and am curious to see where it goes. Interestingly, midi representations have been around since the 80's and this is not that far a step from them.

Lassus Project

The day began with transcriptions of the Lassus 2 part Motets (considered didactic, but decidedly idiosyncratic in their unique leaning toward style, not generic counterpoint). Having transcribed Beatus Vir and then sung and played (on violin) both parts. I moved on to other tasks. Later in the day it was off to the library to read about the life, times and music of Lassus. The idea in my mind (from reading Umberto Eco writing about his own process and the Design Interaction outlined in the video of the previous post) I am endeavoring to design the architecture and aesthetic of my orchestration of Lassus. Having read for several hours I began the walk home. On the way back magical alignment asserted itself. I paused to listen to a choir rehearsing 16th century polyphony in the chapel here on Stanford campus. The cool breeze set the tone as the harmonies unfolded. The sun completing it's showing for the day and a rich perfume scenting the air, I became transported in time and aesthetic place. Still very much in the present, but also in the 16th century, three white robed monks walked across the main square. As I watched, listened and drank in this feast of the senses, the architecture of the piece began to form in a nebulous sense. I continued my walk and one of the robed initiates asked if I knew where such and such building was. I replied that I did not, but where is it relative to other things I might know? He recounted an address of 520 Lasuen... Close enough for m poetic sense I thought.

Design Interaction

Aesthetics Space Time Behavior create distance - enable consideration and possibly reflection on the item as itself, not as kitsch fetishistic forms of design - Interaction Design capturing the shadow of a butterfly as it passes by - on acquiring the @ symbol, it is in the public domain and can not be captured.