View current page
...more recent posts
Have been listening to more music by composer Paul Lansky, since encountering his work on the OHM "electronic music gurus" CD/DVD. His mp3 page is here. In some pieces he uses the computer behind the scenes, "automatically" writing scores that humans would find difficult or impossible to play. Other works are found sounds, like traffic noises or conversations, quantized or processed tonally. He's a musician as much as a geek, very melodic and modern at the same time. Be sure to check out "Odd Moments," scored for traditional instruments, reminiscent of Copland and Ravel, with a hint of Michael Nyman, but with Lansky's characteristic "smoothness," not in the sense of smooth jazz but in the unusual, somewhat melancholy feel he gets by eschewing harsh attack sounds.
"Sensor Readings" [27 MB .mp4]
This is a sketch. My plan is to brighten and crispen the image, but since that will involve custom tweaking about 50 frames, I'm procrastinating. Batch processing only gets you so far. I might play around with the erratic "cursor" movement some more, but I'm resisting point-to-point, "follow the bouncing ball" closure here, in case that's not obvious.
Update: Having said all that, now I'm working on the timing. I don't want to use a ruler, so I'm matching clips to beats by eye. In this consumer program I'm using, any deletion in the timeline shortens the whole timeline (i.e., you can't use markers to pin your finished work in place), so it's taking a ridiculous amount of time. It's harder to make something clunky than something slick, in my experience. The image is brightened up, at least; I batch-processed the panels using "auto-contrast" and then finally figured out how to uniformly crop each panel in Photoshop using "snap to grid." I now have a GIF where the cursor rolls more smoothly than in the motion captures used in the above .mov, it's just a question of chopping it up in a way that accentuates rather than distracts from the tune.
Update 2: As discussed, the file has been brightened and the timing is tighter now. I replaced the old file--it's about 10 MB bigger.
sunaba - renge no atama (beefheart/henry cowish--nice!) [YouTube]
Bad Brains "At the Movies" (live, 1979) [YouTube]
Washington DC band during their punk phase. Loose, proto-MTV intro with White House in background; Dr. Know rocks out; HR does a backflip at the end--Yes!
"Sensor Readings (Audio)" [mp3 removed]
Update: this is now a vid soundtrack so I retitled it from "Wow and Fluster" to its current name.
"With drafting pen in hand, and who knows what in mind, [Daniel] Brush spends countless hours penning the same line. The works he thus composes are nearly 10 feet tall, and, I think, imposing. Delicate yet dreary, humble, yet while humble pompous, they seem the work of someone who finds liberation through enslavement. The trip is his, not mine." --Paul Richard, Washington Post, 1975, reviewing "Five Washington Artists" at the Corcoran Gallery. Brush now lives in New York and makes intricate work with gold.
This flood of home video trash that's hitting the Net via YouTube, Google Video, etc, is funny and all but I'm not sure how closely I want to look at the freaks. I recently watched a video some Net-heads have labeled "Dad scares kid with computer."
I don't really like practical jokes, especially ones that involve startling someone. We all have autonomic reflexes, they're embarrassing, big whoop. Here, a Dad is playing a game or teaching his boy something, probably from a computer in another room in the house, while simultaneously monitoring the kid with a webcam. The kid is about 8. The game is boring, and the kid is asking his Dad questions about how to proceed. Suddenly Dad puts a horrible monster face--it reminded me of the subliminal demons from the Exorcist, eyes and mouth opened wide--on the kid's screen, which simultaneously emits a loud roar.
The kid screams and goes into utter panic, literally pushing the screen with the flats of his hands to make the monster go away. He looks up at the webcam lens, crying, his face a mask of utter fright, mingled with betrayal that his Dad would do something so shitty to him. He can't turn off his emotions, and the camera continues to impassively record his wracking sobs, while you hear his Dad's meek little doughy voice saying "heh-heh...heh-heh." The Dad offers no words of apology or consolation, and the sobbing goes on a while.
I was reminded of the film Peeping Tom, 1960, where a father, a scientist studying fear, puts reptiles in his son's bed while the child is sleeping and films the child's frightened reactions when he wakes up. In the film the boy grows up to be a psycho killer.
I'm not linking to "Dad scares kid with computer," sorry.