DES_RES_TRALALA

Friday, April 20, 2007

Explosions in the sky and fire in the eye

It was great to see them live finally....just missed every time they
came to town last few years, even last month in Camdem, now they are
a headlining band. Last months show at Koko was like a triumphant 2nd
homecoming so I've read and heard - check out the live music archive,
thanks to the tapers :) another social music revolution. But, not
without incident: the Koko stage invasion is now legendary. There was
some expectation about what this follow-up London show would bring.
I think EITS kind of figured this, they went for something a bit
different. A more varied selection of songs, and some new kind of
segways between them.
Mid way to the end...a bit of a slow burning set, I was
thinking....now realising that it's their new set :p - more songs off
the new record like 'Catastrophe And The Cure', 'Welcome Ghosts' and
even 'Its Natural to Be Afraid' including piano which was a new
texture...

The sounds were a bit muddy thats typical of this kind of London
venue, but the playing of EITS is spot on.
I'm wondering if when at full tilt their sound is closest to the kind
of expressway drone of a sonic youth bad moon rising/evol era,
there's not many that got to that kind of 1000 bells tone without
just falling into sludge.

So what about to the fire in the eye? The set lifts for a finale as
we get the classic 'The Only Moment We Were Alone' to fill our
hearts. The heat and intensity rises through the familiar strumming
and melodic intro.
Then the fire starts - literally - just before getting up to full
tilt in the song smoke starts billowing out of Munaf's rented (i
guess) Marshall amp. To the bands disbelief, but quiet amazement, and
the song was halted.
'oh, this was gonna be the last song, anyway.. but i guess thats it'.
I was thinking before in gearhead mind, why he's using a Marshall,
when I associated their sound so much with Fender amps, maybe thats a
karma clue, go back to Fender?
Well a replacement amp was found and 'The Only Moment... lifted up
again, complete with a roused crowd now clapping along...
It was the last moment with EITS for now too, no encores here, so
you have to wait until their next triumphant challenge headling ATP
vs the Fans or a second chance offer on their postponed Manchester gig.
I would say take any take offer and mode of transport to get to see
them.

jimw

[album artist=Explosions in the Sky]All Of a Sudden[/album]
[url=http://www.archive.org]live music archive[/url]

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Bruce Sterling at Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign, Postdam

from the talk of Bruce Sterling on SPIMES

Coming through the convergence of technologies, are the Spime. 6 qualities distinguish them:

1- they are conceived and designed within a network,
2- they are given a unique (digital) identity distinct from the others,
3- they are physically fabricated as opposed to manufactured in a factory. They are not made until they are sold,
4- they can be tracked through technologies of geo-localization,
5- they can be searched out through network search engines,
6- they are designed for disassembling.

- then there's a 7th one: they leave an historical trace behind them, a valuable pool of metadata.

via WMMNA

Gillian Crampton Smith questioned by Boris Muller at Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign, Postdam

Boris Muller asking questions to Gillian Crampton Smith on the "craft of interaction design"

...It seems interaction design has become much more powerful in terms of creating prototypes. ..And those tools like Processing and Arduino, you can really do more than just static prototypes, you can really create experiences that really work. Do you really think it would be possible to have to ?$?$? evolve and really become craftsman that its able to go to a designer and say ok I would like to have this, and then they craft this?

I think one of the things that happened is because the pace of invention has been so rapid, and the technology is changing all the time that is very difficult for people to keep up with the craft, there isn't enough time that you need to get to the experience you need with the particular technologies. So I think that's one problem.

I think another thing is - to be a crafts-person you have to understand the medium, and that for us does mean understanding something about how the underlying technologies work. So I think there's an interesting er tension between a way of thinking that is more a program(er) way of thinking and a way of thinking that is more a holistic, if you like way of thinking, which is what traditionally the craftsman, designer, uses in their work, and I think we haven't resolved that yet.

That's probably because its so..... If we think of the web, Web 2.0 something really interesting has happened ..suddenly data becomes available, and kind of Flicker opens up an API, so just anyone can just create his or her very own Flicker viewer and I think if this would also happen in the physical world, a new way of...for design objects could emerge.

Yes, Well I think the whole thing of platforms - where a certain level of complexity is done for you, and then you can work on top of that. I think that web 2.0 is, in a way a lot of hype, but I think it has opened up a fantastic opportunity, really, to break the monopoly of Microsoft. (laughs) Im sorry if its one of your sponsors... But I think before it was very difficult for anyone to design new types of software because they just had such a grip on the market. But now I'm using a software on the web called 'Basecamp' and its been written by 3 people, and it suits me fine..so i think there's a tremendous opportunity for innovation again, just suddenly now, so I'm very excited.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Department of Experiment

1972 Department of Experiment (later known as the Department of Experimental and Electronic Art) at the Slade in 1972.

http://www.chart.ac.uk/chart2004/papers/mason.html

whatever happened to computer arts....

"...In general artists do not exploit or engage with the possibilities offered by real-time technologies. If artists do use new technologies, such as video or image processing, it is usually to produce the kind of static, unchanging object that can be easily accommodated in a museum or gallery."

Gere, Charlie. 2006. Art, Time and Technology. Berg Publishers Ltd.

old school computing

...1981 was also the year that IBM released the PC and, by the mid 80's affordable computers with lots of "user friendly" software were on the market. Ironically the art mainstream, who had never endorsed the work of the systems artists, fell over itself to accommodate the neat little postmodern appropriations that were created using digital darkroom software (and with a singular lack of consideration for the unique and intrinsic capabilities of the computational metamedium). Baudrillard said it was OK and postmodernism, in its guise as romantic self-indulgence, concurred.

(from http://www.paul-brown.com/WORDS/EMERGENT.HTM)