Turntablism: Radical Phonograph Effects

Katz, in chapter 6 of Capturing Sound writes about “The Turntable as Weapon” and how DJs battle each other making music by scratching older records. The art has been called Turntablism and it is a radical example of how a “phonograph effect” where a recording technology like the phonograph has effects on that which is records. In the case of turntablism, the phonograph has the radical effect of becoming an instrument for new music to be performed. See also BBC: History of Vinyl.

Ironically on the djbattles.com site they have a PDF on how to transcribe turntable moves – a system for scoring and annotating what is supposed to be a live and combative art.

Katz: Capturing Sound

I supervising a reading course with Sean Luyk on Music Technology where we read Capturing Sound by Mark Katz. Katz proposes a frame work for understanding what he calls “phonograph effects” which are the effects on music by technologies like the phonograph. The framework is built around the physicality of performance and looks at:

  • Portability: phonographs change how music can travel
  • (In)visibility: recording technology makes the performers invisible
  • Repeatability: phonograph records and later digital sampling allow a performance to be fixed so that it becomes canonical – repeatable – influencing even the original performer. Recording fixes performances and with sampling allows new music to be made out for samples
  • Temporality: technology changes the length of tunes as artists fit their music into the medium like the 10 inch 78-speed record that could hold a max of 3 minutes 15 seconds.
  • Manipulability: recording technologies then allow users to create new sounds manipulating recordings

Continue reading Katz: Capturing Sound

Jefferson on free ideas and light

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

This quote, from a letter by Jeffereson to Isaac McPherson, appears widely in discussions about copyright and technology. Interesting how it connects ideas, instruction and light (not to mention “tapers” or tapors.) See for example, LIBREria.org’s Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. I also came across it in Mark Katz’s Capturing Sound where he discusses MP3s and Napster-like technologies. (See page 163). Katz in turn finds it in an article by Barlow. In short, the image of lighting one taper from another provides a metaphor for “nonrivalrous resources” – resources where possession and consumption by one person doesn’t diminish access by another.
Continue reading Jefferson on free ideas and light

Mental agility and video games

“The people who were video game players were better and faster performers,” said psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a research professor at York University. “Those who were bilingual and video game addicts scored best — particularly at the most difficult tasks.”

According to a story in The Globe and Mail on February 9th, 2006, research at York shows that playing video games has a similar effect on mental abilities as bilingualism. The story by Carolyn Abraham, Better living through video games?, is based on research by Professor Bialystok that will be published in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Biology. The research looked at 100 university students in Toronto.

Prof. Bialystok suspects video gamers, like bilinguals, have a practised ability to block out information that is irrelevant to the task at hand.

This explains why my kids don’t hear me calling them for dinner.
Continue reading Mental agility and video games

Gaitskill: Veronica

Veronica.gifJoanne, my hard cover muse, lends me books that win prizes (or almost win.) Veronica by Mary Gaitskill is one of the most brutal she’s lent me. Insight like Gaitskill’s into the slow death of women with AIDS is hard to put down. Like hepatitis it taints the Saturday you read the book. It frays the couch you lie on (yes, I know I should take off my shoes.)

Cinematography of Anh Hung Tran

greenpapaya.jpg Can a camera caress water? Anh Hung Tran is a Vietnamese director whose slow delicate movies seem less stories than excuses to collect drops of leaves. I’ve now seen M?i du du xanh – L’odeur de la papaye verte (1993) (English is “The Scent of Green Papaya”) and Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000). In both the camera dwells on the textures of everyday life. Both take place in the outdoor kitchens where the women cook and wash in the many basins that seem to populate Tran’s movies. At times the camera moves across surfaces just to caress the painted wood as if we aren’t important, but our homes are fine landscapes for the closeup eye.

Could one build a site for moving textures? A Flickr for clips.

Juxta

Juxta has just been released. This is an application for comparing and collating multiple witnesses to a single text. It is open source and has an elegant and clean interface. It was developed at the University of Virginia by Applied Resarch in Patacriticism with funding awarded to Jerome McGann from Mellon.

iSIC: Sonnification of network traffic

iSIC is a neat research project into the sonnification of network traffic. The system makes music out of live activity on your network (or some other complex system) so that you can attend to the system without staring at a screen. When the music changes you hear the change. This project is led by William Farkas, a friend and neighbor, who teaches at Sheridan. Very neat. Listen to the music it produces.