A music generator in a CD case.

he got boingboinged today! so cool. he's performing tonight at the frying pan, and presenting at dorkbot next week. --mr

from The Nonist via Dangerous Chunky:

a nonist public service pamphlet
there is a growing epidemic in the cyberworld. a scourge which causes more suffering with each passing day. as blogging has exploded and, under the stewardship of the veterans, the form has matured more and more bloggers are finding themselves disillusioned, dissatisfied, taking long breaks, and in many cases simply closing up shop. this debilitating scourge ebbs and flows but there is hardly a blogger among us who has not felt it's dark touch. we’re speaking, of course, about blog depression.

[...]
below you will find a 6 page pamphlet meant as a public service to help educate bloggers about this growing problem. feel free to download the complete pdf and disseminate this work to those you know and love. otherwise click each to see the larger version. "the more you know..."

this reminds me of daniel greenfeld's work.... --mr

yay!!! brought to you by the good, good people of botmatrix... --mr

read --mr

the photos that are coming out today / this evening are crazy. --mr

Christopher Scheidel has been hard at work cleaning up his sophisticated Apple Logic Pro Environment template, which he uses to manage his guitar + keyboard + Mac Mini rig while performing. He's been nice enough to share it with us: Logic template (http://createdigitalmusic.com/downloads/Logic_Live_Template_v1.3.zip) [Download] See Christopher's site (http://www.heavyliftmusic.com/archives/2005/08/logic_live_envi.html) for further information. He promises more soon, including a full walkthrough with screenshots; I'll try to offer some additional tips of my own. Sure, you could just run Ableton Live as your only performance rig, but with the Environment it's easy to switch guitar effects, synth presets, and, of course, to play Logic Pro-only instruments like the fantastic Sculpture. Previously: Christopher's custom rack-mounted Mac Mini music rig (http://www.createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=766&Itemid=44)

admittedly relevant to probably very few of you....but im excited.. --mr

The broken levee


Governor says entire city needs to be evacuated

there is no shortage of coverage of the hurricane, but this photo is astounding. -mr

Xeni Jardin:

In the LA Times, news that intelligent design evangelists are buying up kitch roadside dinosaur landmarks around the country, then co-opting them to promote creationism. Won't someone please think of the pteradactyls?!?!

Dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden, and Noah's Ark? Give me a break," said Kevin Padian, curator at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley and president of National Center for Science Education, an Oakland group that supports teaching evolution. "For them, 'The Flintstones' is a documentary."

Link (Thanks, Zed, and Pesco!)

"An ostrich who busted out of a cargo van checks out the territory around the Golden Gate Bridge."

Oregon Trail!

Topless virgins vie for king in AIDS-hit Swaziland
More than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to become the King of Swaziland's 13th wife on Monday in a ceremony which critics say ill befits a country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS rate. King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, arrived dressed in a leopard-skin loincloth to watch the Reed Dance ceremony, which he has used since 1999 to pluck new brides from the girls dressed in little more than beaded mini-skirts. Wielding machetes and singing tributes to the king and queen mother, also known as the Great She-Elephant, the girls danced around the royal stadium in the hope of catching the eye of the 37-year-old monarch. "I want to live a nice life, have money, be rich, have a BMW and cellphone," said one dancer, 16-year-old Zodwa Mamba, who wore a traditional brightly colored tasseled scarf.

The research team has developed a surface that is covered with synthetic molecular "shuttles", which move up and down by a millionth of a millimetre when exposed to light. After most of the shuttle molecules change position, this prompts a change in surfa

an exibition to show the power of maps

Only 5 Per class each.

Awesome

Blog where people send in weird postcards expressing their dark secrets

Just a funny picture series...

We have a feeling the police detective who laughed at John Clennan’s not going to find it too funny that major media’s starting to pick up the case of the Long Island native’s stolen Sanyo SCP-5500 cameraphone. Sure, devices get swiped daily, but Clennan’s figured out who the perp is—because the guy persisted in uploading pictures of himself to the device’s Sprint photostream. Apparently the thief and phone’s former owner have even traded barbs with one another online, but Clennan can’t exactly track the guy down other than literally posting pictures around town, and on the Internet.

[Thanks, Exbzurg]

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© 2005 Weblogs, Inc.

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Google Blogoscoped performed an interesting experiment using a search URL to bring up random blogs hosted by Google’s Blogspot, then evaluating those sites. Any auto-written site was tagged a splog, andy any blog with original writing was tagged as a normal blog. The result? 30 of 50 randomly generated blogs were splogs. A small sample, and not scientific, but eye-opening nonetheless. Blogger.com, which operates Blogspot, has soaked up a lot of criticism for failing to crack down on rampant splog.

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honestly, i didnt know there was such a thing as a spam blog. i wonder if other spam bloggers hang out and read their buddy spam blogs...in a show of solidarity. --mr

For some of the most bizarre and unusual music-sound installation art, look no further than Burning Man (http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/). Burning, indeed: this desert-based event has in the past featured Eric Singer's Max/MSP-controlled pyrophone (http://www.createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=69&Itemid=44), a propane-powered flaming sound organ. (And, incidentally, that installation is making a repeat appearance this year.) And what better activity when in the middle of the desert than tweaking knobs and producing strange electronic grooves? That's the idea behind improbable orchestra (http://improbableorchestra.com/index.shtml), an interactive table full o' knobs for collaborative soundmaking. Build one yourself: check out the copious design notes (http://improbableorchestra.com/design.shtml). Basic specs: the free Pure Data (http://www.puredata.info) graphical multimedia development environment is running sounds, gutted Pentium PC with custom power supply, custom circuit board connecting the knobs and fiddly bits thorough a Parallax basic stamp board (http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=BS2SX-IC). (Lots more specs on their site, missing only details of the Pd patch.) "But," says you, "I hate knobs. Give me lasers, man." Sure! You obviously want the interactive Aeolian laser harp (http://www.blueink.com/BmanLaserHarp/index.htm), which suspends a series of laser beams through which you can walk to trigger sound. It's the creation of former NYU ITP faculty member Jen Lewin (http://www.blueink.com/), now based in Colorado and doing interactive sculpture full-time. She has other fantastic projects like interactive butterflies (http://www.blueink.com/butterfly/Butterfly.htm). Are you going to Burning Man -- or have a project of your own you want to tell us about? Drop me a line (http://www.createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_contact&Itemid=3)! improbable orchestra (http://improbableorchestra.com) Laser harps (http://www.blueink.com/BmanLaserHarp/index.htm) Pyrophone (http://www.createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=69&Itemid=44) [ CDM ] Art of Burning Man (http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/) [burningman.com]

From 1895 to 1955 DeMoulin Bros. Co. produced paraphernalia, costumes, gag devices, and furniture for lodge organizations and fraternal orders.

In 1930 they issued a Fraternal Supply Catalog No. 439 selling gross items such as a Ferris Wheel Coaster Goat, trick guns, bird cages, a guillotine, etc.

Via Campheatwole.

I know this was boingboing'ed, but i couldnt run the risk of folks not seeing it.... --mr

Of particular note in this sad article:
"A sentence in the existing policy saying 'the Service will strive to preserve or restore the natural quiet and natural sounds associated with' the physical and biological resources of the parks was eliminated in the proposal, as was mention of natural sounds like 'waves breaking on the shore, the roar of a river or the call of a loon.'

A big, shapeless, half-art, half-science show at Mass MoCA explores the subject of how we relate to species other than human.

Readers have been served a double helping of pirate books in the last couple of months, for reasons that defy analysis.

yar!

Okay, enough of these interactive tables and multi-touch tablets and whatnot. You know what you want: a throttle. A really big throttle. The RailDriver Desktop Cab Controller (http://www.raildriver.com/index.php) is what computer music should look like. They say it best: "RailDriver Train Cab Controllers put levers, switches, and buttons in your hands to make you feel like you're driving a train, not a computer. Programmable keys put commands on the RailDriver, so you can put the keyboard away." Now we're talking. (Via (http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/25/modelrailroadsim_con.html), but this is old news; looks like the news is that they're ramping up production) So, while it's been asked before, let's ask it again -- how might you interface this with MIDI? Anyone handy writing their own USB drivers? Max/MSP externals? I believe that this blog should commit itself to either writing a driver for this beast, or building our own absurdly overblown controller. Who's with me?

i passed on reblogging this from boingboing when it was just about trains...but now that theyve gotten good and geeky computer music-y with it at create...im on board. --mr

“Crawford’s pieces combine the strange homogeneity of public spaces pictured by Andreas Gursky, the complex cinematic ambiguity of Jeff Wall’s photos, and even the lovely light and titillating urban voyeurism of the Impressionists.”

Direct the Media Lab. (Academic stature warranting the rank of Full Professor at MIT is also essential.)

of possible interest to some of you. --mr

a blue taffeta & black velvet party dress that represents the real-time stock market situation by lowering or raising its hemline. a computer-controlled stepper motor & a system of cables, weights & pulleys are attached to the underside of the skirt: when the stock price rises, the hemline is raised, when the stock price falls, the hemline is lowered. this concept is based on the 'Skirt Length Theory' which describes that skirt lengths are a predictor of the stock market direction: if skirts are short, it means the markets are going up & vice versa. [vacuumwoman.com & investopedia.com]

i think my cats would do less damage this way.... --mr

Clashing colonies of sea anemones fight as organized armies with distinct castes of warriors, scouts, reproductives and other types, according to a new study. The sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima lives in large colonies of genetically identical clones on boulders around the tide line. Where two colonies meet they form a distinct boundary zone. Anemones that contact an animal from another colony will fight, hitting each other with special tentacles that leave patches of stinging cells stuck to their opponent.

when i was on vacation last week we saw some beautiful and *huge* sea anemones...as soon as i get the pics i'll upload one. --mr

I'll admit to being slightly biased here...but really fun and engaging work. Im increasingly interested in the reaction to digital media in works produced using traditional media(which some of these are - though not the one above). Be sure to check out the stakeball and play-ground series in particular. She has work up in two shows in Denver right now, if anyone is in that area. --mr

of particular interest to me are the Ricky Gervais / Nancy Franklin discussion and the Charles Burns / Chris Ware masterclass. Now if each thing weren't $35...but oh well. --mr

Eh-Wire writes "The University of Florida has a short article on the "morphing wing" drone they are developing for a small aircraft that can swoop through parking garages, dive into alleys and land on balconies. Close-up video of seagulls in flight was the inspiration for the design of the drone. A still image of the drone shows an aircraft that looks surprisingly gull-like. A video shows the "wing morphing" in action on a static mounted drone. There is also a link to quite a few more videos in the article but it's not real obvious. Some guys get all the phun jobs!"

sweeeet. --mr

i continue to find this guy bizare and fascinating. --mr

what exactly am i supposed to be doing here anyway?

Could this be the start of a new space for podcasting...through your cell?

If present trends continue, the current melting will accelerate, driving the Arctic to a new seasonally ice-free state unlike any the Arctic has experienced in the last million years, according to a report in the Aug. 23 issue of Eos. The research team could not identify any natural systems that would act as a brake on the increased warming and melting.

sweeeet...think of all the new shorefront opportunities available to us... --mr

P-Mate! --mr

pretty great looking blog all about circuit bending. we do an annual circuit bending festival at The Tank, am im always looking to see whats going on in that world. some pretty fun stuff. --mr

The piece that is currently up in the back room of this space is really exciting. Its a series of maybe 20 CRT monitors that have this weird glass tube stretched over the front of them. the very small image on the screens themselves appear to have these dancing indonesian shadow puppets in front of old scientific slides...difficult to explain, and i had a hard time convincing myself i knew how it was done. the simplest answer is a video source with everything pre-recorded, but i'd like to think its something more complicated/strange than that. if anyone checks it out or knows how he/she works, do let me know. --mr

It Knows Where You Are

"This tiny electronic prototype, called an Node Explorer, detects exactly where I’m standing within the 850-acre parkland surrounding Ashton Court, because it’s equipped with an internal Global Positioning System (GPS) based on satellite signals, accurate to within about three yards.

On screen, I see myself as a little red dot moving slowly over the grass. Depending on where I wander, an entirely different heritage or cultural story is presented through a combination of pictures, sound effects and narrative, all related to where I’m standing and what I’m looking at.

I walk to the bottom of the lawn. Ping! With the sweeping façade of Ashton Court spread like a film set, the screen shows me how the building has changed over the centuries, images building upon images as a voiceover explains why the place looks as it does now.

The tone of the script is light, brief but serious - a cross between Radios 2 and 4. (Later, I discover that the material has been written by an ex-BBC producer and narrated by a local radio presenter.)

I move 50 feet towards some flowerbeds and… ping! I’m urged to look up at the fourth window from the left where the 19th-century stunner Emily Smythe - “the most beautiful woman in the West of England!” - once gazed from her bedroom at the rural landscape stretching to the city. The screen shows me her picture. It tells me that men used to swoon at the sight of her. It shows me her bedroom. I walk to the front of the building. Ping! I learn that the writer CS Lewis was a patient here during the First World War, when this became a military hospital." [via It knows where you are... and pasta and vinegar]

mmm...i like this because it seems like some distant future of museum audio tours...the potential for bizarre experiential art to be made with these sorts of technology is quite enticing... --mr

CSound is good stuff, and free. this is a decent tutorial for folks looking to delve in. --mr

Outback surveillance

Aussie famers desperate to leave their cattle stations and nip the couple of hundred kilometres to the nearest net-enabled boozer to down a few cold ones might soon benefit from an internet remote-monitoring system which allows absent Outbackers to keep an eye on things back at the ranch.…

internet laziness = a good thing for the whole world. --mr

short and sweet article, touching on a lot of things i spend a lot of time thinking about. --mr

new show from the writer of The Office. not faux-documentary style, but fucking hilarious and painful, with a slightly more sympathetic point of view. --mr

some web 3.0 futurism from kottke

an interesting summary of a growing school of thought. --mr

i just saw this show last weekend. if you are in seattle its worth checking out. very cinematic/theatrical layout for a sculpture show, which actually worked for me...held my attention more than it may have otherwise. --mr

i never use these things for anything. but i imagine they made a good one. i liked the google rumor that they were pulling out 4 billion dollars to build a space elevator. maybe its not too late. --mr

The first recorded story of a person being shot from a cannon was in England, circa 1877. Unfortunately, during one of her performances, "Zazel" broke her back and spent the rest of her life in a back brace. Since then, dozens of persons have been propelled from cannons at speeds up to 90 mph and as far as 201* feet at a height of 100 feet. More than half of these entertainers were killed while performing their act, most by missing the net. Picture gallery.

More links in Tacky Times.

Ever since McDonald's invented the Extra Value Meal™, I was a spirited supporter of the "two cheeseburger meal," a.k.a. the "Number two." Suffice to say, I was distraught when it mysteriously disappeared off their menu a little over a year ago. I think they probably lost a small percentage of their market, but those little cheeseburgers couldn't be profitable anyway. I started eating Big Macs.

Last night I was determined to relive my childhood and eat the "Classic #2,"** so I order two cheeseburgers, medium fries, medium coke. The manager who was hovering about swooped in and asked, "Would you like the value meal?" Of course I answered yes, of course I want to save money. I scanned my value options, no two cheeseburgers with a number. I asked the manager what number it was. "Oh, there's no number, just a button. They deleted the meal but kept the button."

So all this time I've been settling for a Big Mac, my server has been staring at a button that says TWO CHEESEBURGER VALUE MEAL? What other kinds of discontinued products do they buttons for? Can I get a McDLT just by asking for it? How about some New Coke with that?

We've all heard of In-N-Out's "secret menu," which offers crazy items like "burger wrapped in lettuce," or a suicide milk shake. But I never pegged McDonald's as an easter egg kind of company. Or maybe they're just trying to minimize their losses from us disenfranchised number 2 people. I'm ready for some answers.

** The new school number two is a Quarter Pounder with Cheese™, hardly a replacement for a classic.

wow. the reblog feed has just too much information. i used to eat these, and i therefore actually find this somewhat interesting. how odd. --mr

between his death and moogs' its been a sad month for electronic music. --mr

this is important. my bike seat makes my balls hurt, and that makes me very nervous. time to buy one of them "special seats"... --mr

Digidesign (http://www.digidesign.com) has acquired virtual instrument / soundware / effects maker Wizoo (http://www.wizoo.com/). [via (http://news.harmony-central.com/News/2005/Digidesign-Acquires-Wizoo.html)] No big deal, right, since Digidesign's M-Audio unit already distributes Wizoo products? Think again -- Digidesign claims this is a very big deal: think Digi-branded, new products. From the press release: "We plan to deliver powerful integrated synthesis and sampling instruments that provide the highest levels of quality and reliability for music creation, post production and sound design. In addition to the great products Wizoo currently offers, we look forward to delivering new products for the Pro Tools platform that will be equally as ground-breaking as Turbosynth and SampleCell were earlier in our history. The addition of the Wizoo R&D team's expertise will allow us to continue to drive innovation, creativity and unique capabilities on the Pro Tools platform." -Dave Lebolt, Avid VP/GM of Digidesign Furthermore, the Wizoo website headlines with "Digidesign Acquires Wizoo to Advance Music Creation Tools & Sound Design for Post." Note the words, for the Pro Tools platform. So it looks like Digidesign's thinking was to make Pro Tools-exclusive products -- just as its purchase of M-Audio had the benefit of making Pro Tools for M-Audio audio hardware. Now the question is, what products? Digi says they like the intelligent instruments Wizoo has done (think Virtual Guitarist), but innovating in the soft synth world in this day and age is no small challenge. Further, Wizoo's recent Drum & Bass Rig and Key Rig for M-Audio were decidedly lackluster. Stay tuned.

wow, this is great news. digidesign has really fallen behind with Pro Tools in terms of audio insturments, something that Logic has been kicking their ass with lately. its just nice to see them doing *something*. if anyone wants to donate their old m-box to me...im tax deductable... --mr

so i just got back from a vacation on a small island called Lasqueti off the north east coast of Vancouver Island in BC. there's no utilities there, and the cabin i was staying in was run completely off solar panels and propane. I had never experienced this sort of thing first hand and its gotten me quite interested in alternative energy sources. so you'll probably see the effects of that interest in these few weeks im here....

there was a link to a japanese equivalent a while back on BB...nice to see some good ole 'merican ones too. --mr

Could save a fortune

We'd never really considered this, but a third of Brits want a 99p coin tackle the menace of the £XX.99 pricing strategy, which a Virgin Money poll says wastes £11m a month in discarded 1p pieces.…

Hello all. Excited to begin digging in to the reblogging experience, but im fresh off a red-eye from Seattle and think it would be best to start fresh tuesday morning. By way of introduction (and to confirm to myself i know how to use this thing) heres a link to my website.

Sarah, thank you so much for guesting these past two weeks. And now it's onto Mike Rosenthal, a sound artist and Eyebeam teaching artist who also is one of the founders and artistic director of The Tank, NYC. Go for it, Mike!

Cory Doctorow: Darren sez, "The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has locked out 5500 workers -- producers, on-air personalities, engineers, etc. Tod Maffin, a freelance broadcaster with the CBC, is doing a great job offering coverage of the labour action. Locked-out CBC producers plan to create shows and serve them as podcasts over the Web." Link (Thanks, Darren!)

And with that, my last reblog post, I say thanks for reading and posting me worthy content to reblog. I've had a great time. And now back to work for my usual authorities. --sarah

A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light -- both slowing it down and speeding it up -- in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be published in the August 22 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could have implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.

ambient awareness devices as physical pyramids made out of touchable translucent white silicone that enhance 'awareness amongst a closely collaborative workgroup' via ambient information display. the prisms use embedded microphones & accelerometers as input & LEDs lights as output to reflect activity level around the other prisms. for instance, sound in the vicinity of one of the 'red' prisms will be displayed on all other devices as a pulsing of the red light in rhythm with the sound. in addition, users can shake one the prisms (result: 5s color activitation on all others) or move them together (result: animated rainbow effects) to provoke motivational feedback. see also audio cubes & networked objects. [uci.edu & uci.edu(pdf)]

Yamaha Motor has developed an imaging system that can quickly identify a person's gender and age group.

When a person stands in front of the video camera of the system, the PC analyzes the image of the face and extracts data such as shading and surface features. The data is compared with the database of some 10,000 human faces to determine the person's gender and their age group in just two to three seconds. Age is classified into five groups.

Tests showed that the prototype system, gender was determined with an accuracy of around 85% and age with an accuracy of around 75%.

Yamaha Motor envisions the system being used for such purposes as in marketing to identify the people attending exhibitions of its motorcycles.

Via Nikkei.

I suspect it will have other uses than merely trade shows. --sarah

Irresistible and super-star designer Marcel Wanders has created for HE (Holland Electro) a home cinema set, a music set to play music from your mp3 player, transmitters, speakers and a microwave that has an integrated TFT screen in the door and dvd player.

Via dezain.

For any of you out there who would rather frolic in the summer sunshine instead of sitting behind your desk all day long: we have got something for you. Designed to help restore a work/life balance for people who work...

Summer sunshine? In the UK? --sarah.

Summer blazing heat can be used to prevent roads from icing up in winter.

In a trial, polyethylene water pipes have been buried at a depth of 12 centimetres below a section of road in the UK. The asphalt absorbs the heat of the sun and warms the water in the pipes. This is then pumped for storage to a second array of pipes which are insulated by a 1-metre-thick layer of polystyrene.

In winter, when sensors detect that the temperature of the road surface has fallen to 2 °C, the warm water is pumped back to the pipes under the road where it warms the ground and prevents ice from forming on the road surface.

The trial by the UK's Transport Research Laboratory is due to last two years. The same technology could also provide underfloor heating for office blocks.

Although Austria and the Netherlands have similar systems for clearing snow, the storage tanks have to be buried 20 metres or more underground, making construction far more expensive.

Via New Scientist.

Blazing heat? In the UK? --sarah

From our friends at Moog Music, www.caringbridge.com/visit/bobmoog (www.caringbridge.com/visit/bobmoog). Bob's family has established The Bob Moog Foundation dedicated to the Advancement of Electronic Music in his memory. Many of his longtime collaborators including musicians, engineers and educators have agreed to sit on its executive board including David Borden, Wendy Carlos, Joel Chadabe, John Eaton, David Mash, and Rick Wakeman. For more information about the foundation, contact Matthew Moog at mattmoog@yahoo.com. We'll miss you Bob. The folks at Moog Music have arranged some thoughts on the site, as well as links to the Moog Archives (http://moogmusic.com/bobmoogarch.php). As "Moog's Body Leaves Us" is the headline, however, already in the form of the Moog Foundation and the ongoing gifts his instruments give players, his legacy couldn't be more alive.

For those of you who missed the headline, Moog died yesterday. --sarah

Patricia Waller's crochet work.

Via andreaxmas (thanks Ashley)

check the robots and computer game screens. --sarah

Light_&_sound, by Natalie Bosco, transforms light waves into sound waves and back, creating an informations loop.

Turning sound into light: microphones capture the sounds, which will be changed through an electronical controlpart and sent to the LEDs. Every microphon turns its own LED-line. The intensity of the lights are defined by the loudness or/and frequencies of sound – then louder is the sound, so more LED are going on in one line.

Turning light into sound. The light of LEDs will be taken by solarbatteries and changed through an electronical relay in to the sound, that will produced by loudspeakers.

Both parts of the system react to each other.

The system also reacts to the sounds and shadows of spectators. Observers may in turn react to the sounds and lights of the system, making different moves and noises, dancing in the light_&_sound r