Thanks to Tim and Karim Haddad at Ircam for helping me out! :-)
In addition: a two days seminar April 29-30 featuring David Toop (GB) Anna Karin Rynander (Se) Bjarne Kvinnsland Maia Urstad (N) Jørgen Larsson (N) Fast Forward (USA) and myself.
There’s more info here.
The Max patches reminds me of Halli‘s description of his first Max project done during a sonology course in Copenhagen with Andrew McKenzie. He was creating a huge patch with lots of patch chords metros buttons and toggles. It wasn’t supposed to do anything but blink in different ways sort of the mad professors fascination with machines.
On my way back home an ambulance passed my car. It turned out that someone was attempting to or already had jumped off the Sotra bridge.
Checking in at the blog reviews that the students of Jill has been writing Terje Urnes’ review of the blog of Ivan Pope subtitled “My life as an artist” catched my attention. I didn’t find Terje’s review particularly useful but Ivan’s blog certainly is interesting. It’s mainly made up of images of works in progress. They are not necsessarily commented on but I find it fascinating to see how the material is evolving as time passes. Here’s a self portrait with computer.
Ivan is also maintaing a minimalist blog called Can’t code won’t code. It is supposed to address issues around the idea that it is worthwhile for artists to learn to write software code in order to control what they do.
I drove through Nikel a little more than ten years ago and that was a pretty depressing experience too.
Currently I’m creating a new skin and modifying css and dhtml settings to get a more customized look. If you see all kind of strange colors bear with me for a while I hope to be done in the next couple of days.
KwMap is a different search engine. Based on current keywords it suggest related keywords. Here’s one of my first tests searching for sound installation. It’s surprising that so many terms and names relating to the Norwegian art scene pops up:
Here’s notes I’ve been writing while trying to figure out how to customize the look of lostlog.
There’s a very brief description here but it’s far from sufficient for what I want to do.
Yesterday I spent most of the time making a scetch for what I want lostlog to look like in the future. Here’s a scetch as plain html.
If I can use css for customising the layout instead of modifying css and heaps of dtml files I definitively prefere that.
Apart from that Klaus pointed out what I was doing wrong when dealing with CoreBlog skins.
My website is named “musikk fra stillheten” roughly translated to “music from stillness”. This term has been a framework for my thoughts on music and my own music for 20 years now ever since I first got concerned with the ambiend music of Eno and several years before I first learned about Cage or Satie.
The website design was created last year by German design student Moritz Tredup during an internship at BEK. He intended the digital drawing images to be but a rough scetch for further design development but I really liked them the way they were and asked him to use them. I’m quite happy about his design it leaves silence and room in the web pages the illustrations are simple. My music tends to be the same. Even if it can be technically quite complicated the complexity is a mean for me to create life and variation but the overall expression is quite simple and minimalistic.
What is the visual parallell of auditive silence or quietnes?
Black?
White?
Space?
Low spatial frequency of information?
For me the curent default blog layout is aestheticly inadecvate in a number of ways.
It’s totally text based and it’s densily packed with text. In addition the fonts used are rather large IMO making the text pretending to be “big thoughts or statements”. I’d rather want the blog entries to be “small” and open-ended.
Will I have to blog in a different way as well in order to achieve this?
What is textual silence?
I don’t fancy the heavy emphasis on dates and times. Days with no blog entries simply disappears in the blog apart from being present in the calendar as days of no entry and thus seemingly waisted or unproductive. Why is it so important to emphasise what day and what time of the day the blog entry was made? Do it make the thoughts any different? To me it’s more distracting than relevant.
I don’t like the condensed perspective on time that the blog currently presents if I’ve been away from it for a day or two. That might possibly be the most important days but the blog is denying their existence.
To a certain extent it’s OK that there’s a trace of how the my projects thoughts life and blog developes over time but the date shouldn’t be to prominent or become the framework of all the blog entries. I’ll proberbly leave the sidebar calendar out. Furthermore it’s tempting to remove date and time for listings of recent entries comments and trackbacks in the sidebar. Instead I’d like to add a list of books I read and music I’m currently listening to.
By Matthew Aidekman.
Nerd stuff… :-)
Below is the patch itself.
max v2
#N vpatcher 0 44 1020 768
#P window setfont “Sans Serif” 12.000
#P comment 226 55 100 196620 by: me.
#P comment 226 39 130 196620 bored erotic fiction.
#P window setfont “Sans Serif” 9.000
#P newex 160 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 108 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 78 86 61 196617 sysexin
#P newex 165 153 32 196617 swap
#P newex 43 218 27 196617 pipe
#P newex 3 218 33 196617 pink~
#P newex 350 110 40 196617 peak
#P newex 3 86 32 196617 offer
#N movie 100 100 400 400
#P newobj 3 43 40 196617 movie
#P newex 40 86 35 196617 metro
#P newex 118 110 45 196617 groove~
#P newex 3 63 45 196617 forward
#P newex 50 63 35 196617 dialog
#P newex 126 175 50 196617 degrade~
#P newex 297 110 16 196617 in
#P newex 319 110 29 196617 out~
#P newex 264 110 29 196617 out~
#P newex 244 110 16 196617 in
#P newex 3 24 38 196617 begin~
#P newex 57 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 37 110 41 196617 touchin
#P newex 42 175 79 196617 teeth~
#P newex 393 110 35 196617 spray
#P newex 82 110 35 196617 poke~
#P newex 167 110 41 196617 plugin~
#P newex 3 153 34 196617 play~
#P newex 3 153 33 196617 pink~
#P newex 211 110 29 196617 out~
#P newex 3 175 33 196617 kink~
#P newex 3 110 29 196617 grab
#P newex 86 153 40 196617 drunk
#P newex 42 153 40 196617 date
#P newex 37 197 33 196617 asin~
#P newex 127 153 35 196617 buddy
#P newex 3 132 49 196617 bangbang
#P newex 3 197 29 196617 anal
#P window setfont “Sans Serif” 12.000
#P comment 226 22 100 196620 the date
#P pop
Helge Gaarder died a month ago but I only learned about it yesterday while reading Ballade.
I started playing instruments when I was 7 but I didn’t get seriously involved with music until I was a teenager. At that time punk and new wave hit Norway. After at least 10 years of mediocre Norwegian pop music with bad lyrics in English singing in Norwegian became an important part of the “nyrock” movement as it was called. For several years I almost exclusively listened to Norwegian nyrock e.g. The Aller Værste Gjennomslag Stavangerensemblet Kjøtt Montage Circus Modern Program 80/81/82/… Can Can and Alle Tiders Duster. Helge Gaarder was the vocalist of Kjøtt.
This era is often reconned as the second gold age of Norwegian popular music (there was some good music made in the late 60s as well) with a lot of exciting stuff going on. I was to young to be allowed in at concerts but I listen to the music as much as I could often together with friends and I played in a band myself named MuzAk (with an anarchy circle around the A). That’s where I first started making my own music.
While at high school we had to do a rather large analysis of litterature and I chose to write about Norwegian nyrock lyrics analysing texts by Gjennomslag The Aller Værste Alle Tiders Duster Kjøtt and Circus Modern. The lyrics of Kjøtt and Circus Modern were the ones I focused the most on. The lyrics for both of the bands where mainly written by Helge Gaarder and for some years he was proberbly the one artist that influenced me the most. Later on I discovered Eno and got stuck with him.
The analysis was close to 50 pages all written on a typewriter dating from 1920 or so. It was supposed to be able to write black and red letters but most of them ended up being a bit of both. The resulting look felt perfectly right for the general feel of the subject at hand.
For some strange reason I’ve since working with and befriended several of my past heroes. The first LP I ever bought was by Program 81 featuring Maia Urstad on keyboards. Fellow BEK-er Gisle Frøysland played the guitar for Alle Tiders Duster and Jøran Rudi at NoTAM was the guitar player of Kjøtt. I never got to meet Helge though.
I tried to embed the video for “Beat Allegro” from Jørans Kjøtt web page as a homage to Helge but CoreBlog didn’t like the idea so I’ll have to make do with a link:
Nei det ekke lett men valget er ditt
hva vil du gjøre med livet ditt
vil du kremeres eller begraves i kristen jord?
RIP
On April 27 at 3 o’clock in the afternoon I instantaneously mastered to perfection all languages Such is the poet of the current era I am here reporting my verses in Japanese Spanish and Hebrew:
iké mina ni
sinu ksi
iamakh alik
&ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp zel
GO OSNEK KAID
M R BATUL’BA
VINU AE ESEL
VER TUM DAKH
&ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp GIZ
&ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp &ensp SHISH
Russian Futurist Aleksei Kruchenykh in Explodity (1913).
Quoted in Douglas Kahn: Noise Water Meat pp. 370-371.
The quote reminded me of a mail sent by Lisbeth to the internal mailing list for members of Verdensteatret as we were about to start development of what would gradually become “Konsert for Grønland”:
The 18 th of November 2003 the wind change over night and it become winter
Last November we tried to make decisions on several technical solutions for the production so that we should run into less problems in the middle of the production. This involved the decision of moving to Max for OSX and testing out Jade as a way to make it easier to capture settings for audio and video processing when improvising. The development is a rather non-linear process even if we end up with the production being a quasi-linear and dramaturgically predefined sequence of events.
The mailing list for some weeks were mainly used for discussions of technical matters. Lisbeths mail sort of marked the transition into the production itself and the shift of focus from tools to the artistic process.
Also futurist and dadaist litterature seems relevant to our attempts in the last two production at processing voices in real time often to the point of completely destroying the capability of semantic communication.
I’m planning a different approach to earlier workshops that I’ve been delivering. Instead of doing a systematic introduction to Max and MSP I’ll try to link the workshop to whatever projects the students are currenlty working on and would like to apply Max for. Hopefully it will not just be an introduction to a rather major topic but instead give them an impresison of whether Max can be of any use to their artistic projects and if it’s worth spending time getting to know or not.
I’ve sometimes considered making an intro-level Max mailing list in Norwegian. There’s quite a few persons around Norway digging into Max and the main Max list might be a bit heavy for newbies.
nedsetter han en komité.
Three meetings today and almost no time for anything else. Gert Lovink was visiting the school but I didn’t get to much time to talk to him. Also an interesting meeting on a project that might happen this autumn.
I’m thinking of using a multi-speaker setup with all loudspeakers hidden behind a discrete surface and all on one very long line. Sort of the total opposite of the project in kristiansand where loudspeakers where used for embedding the whole of the room in sound.
Long mail to Kurt this afternoon. I have to send one for Willem as well.
Also spent some time showing video for this and other projects to Jeremy and discussing upcoming projects and documentation of past project.
Preparing for the Max workshop has been a hassle. At BEk I knew the system it was a small organization and to me at least easy and fast to do what had to be done. At KHIB I’m amazed at the number of people I have to get hold of in order to know what room to use make sure there’s funitures power supply computers projector headphones you name it. I’ve spent several days trying to organize the workshoop and I’ve been very frustrated in particularly when I didn’t get admin passwords for the Macs so that I could install Max. So far onle the tech staff has known passwords for the computers. In my opinion the teching staff has to be able install programs in the Application folder system folder etc. Installing and updating programs is part of preparing for this kind of workshops.
I’m doing a quiet revolution though (well there’s a bit of shouting and yelling involved). As I get hold of passwords I’m changing to the same one for all the computers and forward to the rest of the teaching staff. I was so mad yesterday at 23:00 when I had still not managed to set up the computers. No-one dared refuse me anymore….
Topics covered for the first day:
We also talked about:
The problem about the current Max/MSP documentation is that it’s aimed at musicians. Art students don’t have the musical knowledge nor the will to work their way through 45 MIDI-based max tutorials and then on to MSP and/or Jitter.
Program
30.03.04: Arkitektur og litteratur: Forfatter Kjartan Flagstad i samtale med stipendiat ved AHO Mari Lending.
27.04.04: Arkitektur og teater: Scenekunstnerene Lisbeth Bodd/Asle Nilsen i samtale med universitetslektor Jon Refsdal Moe.
11.05.04: Arkitektur og fotografi: Fotokunstner Eline Mugaas i samtale med kunsthistoriker Ida Kierulf.
Samtalene om arkitektur i Villa Stenersen er et forsåk på å nå et publikum utover en avgrenset fagkrets og vi tror at Villa Stenersen vil utgjåre en spennende ramme for vårens samtalerekke. I tillegg til at Villa
Stenersen kan regnes som et av funksjonalismens hovedverk i Norge er boligen et eksempel på et radikalt prosjekt igangsatt av en samtidskunstinteressert byggherre med stor respekt for det selvstendige kunstverk. Rolf Stenersen engasjerte arkitekt Arne Korsmo i 1937 en av datidens mest avantgardistiske arkitekter i
Norge.
Klokkeslett: 1800
Sted: Tuengen allé 10 c Vinderen
Inngang: Kr. 40 -
www.villastenersen.net
Tonight is the opening of the graduation exhibition of students at the Academy of Fine Arts. The opening of the exhibitiontakes place at Bergen kunsthall at 20:00.
Afterwards there’s a party at the Art Academy. As you can see from the poster this will be a dark and stormy night…
Darwin Grosse one of the developers of Mode has a blog at CreativeSynth.
interaction.
More info posted at BEKdot.
I’m not all that experienced on HTML and CSS so it will proberbly take a while to get it all right. In the meantime the blog might look really messy at times.
On Monday April 26 between 4 and 5 pm European Continental Time (10-11 am Eastern Seaboard Time) take simple action against WIPO by taking part in a 1-hour “netstrike” (blocking WIPO’s website).
More info here.
via “So Sue Me” Jon’s blog
The look of the blog is slowly getting closer to the desired look but at the moment it still looks like it’s caught in transition. It reminds me of a song by Talking Heads:
Seen and not seen
He would see faces in movies on t.v. in magazines and in books….
He thought that some of these faces might be right for him….and
Through the years by keeing an ideal facial structure fixed in his
Mind….or somewhere in the back of his mind….that he might by
Force of will cause his face to approach those of his ideal….the
Change would be very subtle….it might take ten years or so….
Gradually his face would change its’ shape….a more hooked nose…
Wider thinner lips….beady eyes….a larger forehead.
He imagined that this was an ability he shared with most other
People….they had also molded their faced according to some
Ideal….maybe they imagined that their new face would better
Suit their personality….or maybe they imagined that their
Personality would be forced to change to fit the new appearance….this is why first impressions are often correct…
Although some people might have made mistakes….they may have
Arrived at an appearance that bears no relationship to them….
They may have picked an ideal appearance based on some childish
Whim or momentary impulse….some may have gotten half-way
There and then changed their minds.
He wonders if he too might have made a similar mistake.
Asbjørn Flø’s remix of Norway remixed is scheduled for the 5th of September.
Amazon.com is taking preorders on it and has a scan of the cover.
Hilsinger plays all the instruments (using no keyboards synths or samplers) combined with Caroleen’s expressive voice – leads to a very organic and original take on this Eno album.
Eno heard the album and remarked “I was very moved by your versions of my songs…It’s strange and enlightening… I enjoyed your version of my LP.”
Via the Darkshark mail-l.
Item Information
Artists Name: HILSINGER DOUG with CAROLEEN BEATTY
Title: BRIAN ENO’S TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN BY STRATEGY
Format: CD
Label: DBK WORKS
Catalog Number: 111
UPC Product Code: 646315011128
List Price: 17.98
Musical Category: ROCK/ROCKABILLY/PUNK
Release Date: 5/18/2004
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Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Norway License. |