Happy F’n Pi Day
March 14, 2006 | Filed Under big ideas, funny haha, god bless the internet, happening, music | Leave a Comment
y’all gonna love this (witcha spkrs on)
Really Awesome Robot Videos
March 11, 2006 | Filed Under big ideas, god bless the internet | Leave a Comment
Boing Boing linked to this video of a robotic “pack-mule” designed by Boston Dynamics. It’s really amazing, and kinda funny, especially when the scientist dude kicks it and it stumbles sideways and regains it’s balance. I explored the other robots on their site, and they’re all pretty great.
I love how robot designers are taking cues from animals and insects in their designs, and it’s really nice to see the things actually work. I’m sure this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we’ll see in our lives, and I like the fact that these utilitarian, functional, and totally practical robots happen to be such funny and fun-to-watch creatures. It’s officially the future, and the robots are kinda adorable. The Videos:RHex - weird thing that can walk on anythingBigDog - pack-mule quadrupedLittleDog - small quadruped for locomotion researchRiSE - a tree and wall climber
Point Schmoint
March 6, 2006 | Filed Under big ideas, music, video / film | Leave a Comment
I don’t know why I had never heard The Point!(w.) by Harry Nilsson until a few days ago when Paul Clifton loaned it to me as possible material for The Wonderful to cover, but please allow me to officially go on record that I find it to be delightful. All I really knew of Nilsson until recently was “Everybody’s Talkin’“ from the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. I used to have it on vinyl and it’s a good song. But The Point! is something completely different and unexpected.
Apparently, the original incarnation was an animated made for tv thing, which I’d love to see, (even tho the cover art looks baaad) but I didn’t know about the film at first, and the record stands on its own. It’s basically a concept album in the form of a children’s story. Nilsson narrates the story over background music, which, on every other track turns into a song.The story is a (very) thinly veiled allegory about non-conformism featuring a kid named Oblio who is the only round-headed person in a land in which everyone is pointy-headed. Oblio’s mom knits him a pointy hat so he’ll fit in, but it doesn’t work and he gets banished to the Pointless Forest, where he encounters a Pterodactyl, among other weirdos. (Nilsson pronounces it terro-dac-TILE(!) He then wanders back to the town he was banished from, where they let him back in and everyone’s points melt off.The whole story is ridiculous and it’s pretty obvious that it was conceived on an acid trip, (Nilsson says this: “I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, ‘Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn’t, then there’s a point to it.”) In spite of all that, though, it’s got that real 70’s children’s programming feel to it: drug-inspired, sort of socially educational, slightly subversive, wholesome and totally sincere.It’s so representative of the stuff I used to listen to on the old fisher price record player when I was a little kid that it brought back a lot of those memories even though I had never heard this particular story/album. I remember loving those kind of records; stories mixed with music that you could fall asleep to and have really nice dreams.and the songs are really good.
Aesthetic Phoneticism
December 14, 2005 | Filed Under art, big ideas, poetry, projects | 2 Comments
Here’s an attempt at an explanation of Aesthetic Phoneticism, an art idea that I came up with all by myself:The basic concept is to produce a picture accompanied by a series of words that, when taken as a whole, simply look and sound nice on a purely aesthetic level with no inherent meaning or symbolism. It’s kind of a boiled down, superficial (shallow? visceral?) form of art. It can be done in any medium that conveys imagery with sound. (look, hear, eye, ear). So far, mine are mostly drawings on paper.The compositions are not planned out ahead of time; they’re in the same neighborhood as automatic drawing, but with a little more conscious control. Words are (supposed to be) chosen strictly for their phonetic relation to each other rather than for meaning. It’s not exactly like dada poetry, in which sound is emphasized, because the words are not selected at random. I am (usually) trying to make combinations of sounds that are separated from their definitions, although since it’s a form of free association, associations do appear, (and are permitted to hang around). I tend to use near rhymes more than actual rhymes, because I like the idea of subtle sound and syntax connections and evolutionary changes in the sequences.There’s a dualism to the process for me, in the sense that the rules and constraints that I set for myself force me to work within this framework of non-meaning, while it’s pretty much impossible (at least for me) to really adhere to that construct. My mind is constantly trying to insert symbolism and meaning into the drawings and words. I like that conflict, though, and really, it’s a major part of the appeal for me. So I end up at kind of a halfway point between sense and nonsense. or calculated randomness. Non-representational representation. or something. Anyway, I like it that way; I find it to be more interesting, funnier, and somewhat revelatory.In the interest of full-disclosure, many of these drawings were created after drinking a lot of beer, and two of them are in japanese.
So here are 20 drawings from the aesthetic phonetic sketchbook.
Does Sufjan Ever Sleepjan?
December 13, 2005 | Filed Under big ideas, good lord, music | 1 Comment
Sufjan Stevens is so prolific - he must do a song a day to be able to put out so much material. I wonder how many artists/musicians have said half-jokingly or even in all seriousness that they would like to do a Christmas album - while they’re still relevant in the music world - and then never got around to it or chickened out or weren’t allowed by their labels. Well, Sufjan not only got around to it, but he recorded 3 e.p.’s worth of the stuff. Holden emailed me a link to this dude’s blog where you can download all of it. (I know this is possibly old news to a lot of people… I think a lot of this stuff was released a while back… It sounds more like Seven Swans than Illinois… But I just got on it, and I got excited.) I love Christmas music. Sufjan’s great. It’s a good match. Here’s the tracklist, and you can click the titles to download the stuff.
Vol. I Hark! Songs for Christmas01 Silent Night02 O Come O Come Emmanuel03 We’re Goin’ to the Country!04 Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming05 It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad06 Holy, Holy, etc.07 Amazing Grace Vol. II Hark! Songs for Christmas01 Angels We Have Heard On High02 Put the Lights on the Tree03 Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing04 I Saw Three Ships05 Only at Christmas Time06 Once in David’s Royal City07 Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!08 What Child Is This Anyway?09 Bring a Torch, Jeanette, IsabellaVol. III Ding! Dong! Songs for Christmas01 O Come, O Come Emmanual02 Come On! Let’s Boogie to the Elf Dance!03 We Three Kings of Orient Are04 O Holy Night05 That Was the Worst Christmas Ever06 All the King’s Horns07 Ding! Dong!08 The Friendly Beasts
The Clock of the Long Now
October 23, 2005 | Filed Under art, big ideas, god bless the internet, good lord, music, mysterious, space, time travel | Leave a Comment
This project is pretty awe-inspiring — This guy, Danny Hillis, and his team have created a design (and two prototypes so far) for a “clock” that will run for 10,000 years. The final version will be over 60 feet tall and embedded 10,000 feet up the side of a mountain in Nevada. It will display the time in several different modes, including the positions of the planets in orbit around the sun. It’s essentially a digital clock, but it works mechanically (using pins in or out) to represent ones and zeroes. It was named by none other than Brian Eno. This is one of the most impressive and well thought out ideas I’ve heard of in a really long time, and I like it. The concept of creating a monument on this scale (physically, symbollically, and temporally) is something I’d like to see more of. Let’s build us some pyramids! Here are links: the Discover Article, the Project’s website, and a page about the 1st prototype.