August 2009 – Page 3

Images of the Week: Nic Collins’s Group Hacks

August 23, 2009 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Thumbnails of just a few of the numerous images posted by Nic Collins of the Hardware Hacking Workshops he’s run since 2004:

Image sets at flickr.com/photos/nicollins. Found via twitter.com/lampo.

Quote of the Week: Deleted Culture

August 22, 2009August 23, 2009 / By Marc Weidenbaum

From an interview by Andrew Dubber with David Sanjek, “former head of archives at BMI in the US, now a professor at the University of Salford”:

1) A record that is not in circulation but only exists as an archival copy in a vault effectively doesn’t exist;

2) The archival copy in the vault may not exist either.

The interview was part of Dubber’s ongoing research at his website, Deleting Music (deletingmusic.com), which is subtitled: “How the music industry is erasing culture in the digital age.”

Original post at deletingmusic.com. More on Sanjek at salford.ac.uk.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

August 22, 2009August 22, 2009 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Morning sounds in Los Angeles: hotel's air conditioner provides foley soundtrack for the distant but muffled freeway traffic. #
Excellent. Now have Windows 7 on my laptop, and the tablet software is fully functional. All that the latter took was a little auto-update. #
One vote in Windows 7's favor: installed at last minute before trip to LA, and aside from tablet support on my Fujitsu, it's working well. #
Late-night office sounds: traffic, photocopier, fluorescent lights. #
Headed to LA this coming weekend. Will be downtown & car-less thru Sunday afternoon. Visiting @crewest & @lacma — anything else going on? #
Weekly Tuesday siren: when it came to a close today it sounded like a record player slowing down after someone inadvertently pulled its plug #
Night sounds: the odd bus, distant car activity, ringing ears, grumbling stomach. #
RIP, musicologist David Drew (b. 1930), early proponent of the music of Olivier Messaien: http://is.gd/2lw5I #
The Eno/Byrne free remix compilation I put together just passed 29,000 downloads: http://is.gd/2lwIa #
Via @peterkirn a wise call to add a "music" category to the iPhone/Touch app store: http://ow.ly/kkEp #
Unscientific test: Which iPhone music app appeals most to my 14-month-old nephew? FingerBeat, followed distantly by Bloom in second place. #
Great fun last night at opening party for newpeopleworld.com in San Francisco's Japantown. Highlight: meeting manga-ka Yuichi Yokoyama. #
RIP, Carleen Hutchins (b. 1911), violin maker and associate of spatial composer Henry Brant http://is.gd/2jFqI #
RIP, producer and musician Jim Dickinson, master of the sound of Memphis (Big Star, Replacements). http://is.gd/2jFtc RT @defjaf #

A Symphony of Locative Sounds (MP3)

August 21, 2009August 22, 2009 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The Suffolk Symphony is an old-school take on locational art — no snazzy geocoded uploads, no virtual-environment overlays. It’s an audio-visual construction based on materials from a specific place, in this case Aldeburgh. The materials — sonic and visual — were collected in a week by noted figures associated with the Touch record label: Philip Jeck, BJNilsen, Jon Wozencroft, Philip Marshall, and Mike Harding. They’ve posted a rehearsal recording of what is to be performed live on August 22. It’s a sprawling piece (MP3), to say the least (the recording is audio-only), with opening timpani and strings making the “symphony” aspect feel real, but with electronic effects, field recordings, and an overall lush minimalism eventually subsuming the more traditional orchestral patterning.

[audio:http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/TouchPod/Radio43.mp3|titles=”The Suffolk Symphony”|artists=Touch Records]

More details, and tons of photos, at thesuffolksymphony.net, and at the website of the originating podcast, touchradio.org.uk.

Mediated Field Recordings by D’Incise (MP3)

August 20, 2009August 21, 2009 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The true keeper on Morsure Souffle, the new album by d’incise (aka Laurent Peter, is the final track, “plusieurs altitudes” (MP3). It’s a long, rich sound journey, built initially on a torrent of chimes, a whirling, full-bodied flood that sounds like an orchestra of bells. This is slowly subsumed by surface noise, at first sounding like vinyl, but then, in time, exposed to be the effect of wind and motion on a microphone, because out of those endlessly ringing bells come voices, and footsteps, and motion — all manner of natural sound caught up in d’incise’s sampler.