Harry Partch’s Kooky Orchestra of DIY Musical Instruments

in History, Music, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | August 9th, 2011

Com­pos­er and instru­ment inven­tor Har­ry Partch (1901–1974) is one of the pio­neers of 20th-cen­tu­ry exper­i­men­tal instru­men­ta­tion, known for writ­ing and play­ing music on incred­i­ble cus­tom-made instru­ments like the Boo II and the Quad­ran­gu­laris Rever­sum, and lay­ing the foun­da­tions for many of today’s most cre­ative exper­i­men­tal musi­cal instru­ments.

In this Uni­ver­sal News­reel footage from the 1950s, Partch con­ducts a stu­dent music per­for­mance on his instru­ments, built with insights from atom­ic research and Partch’s 30-year obses­sion with find­ing the elu­sive tones that exist between the tones of a reg­u­lar piano. The set­ting is Mills Col­lege in Oak­land, CA. The unortho­dox orches­tra per­forms music tuned to the 43-tone scale Partch invent­ed, rather than the usu­al 12-tone, even though indi­vid­ual instru­ments can only play sub­sets of the scale.

For more on Partch’s genius and sem­i­nal inno­va­tion, see his excel­lent 1949 med­i­ta­tion, Gen­e­sis of a Music: An Account of a Cre­ative Work, its Roots, and its Ful­fill­ments.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­est­ing­ness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Desig­nOb­serv­er, and spends a great deal of time on Twit­ter.

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Hear Voices from the 19th Century: Tennyson, Gladstone & Tchaikovsky

in History, Media, Technology | August 3rd, 2011


Head over to Sound­Cloud, and you’ll find 10 audio files that span three cen­turies. It’s a fair­ly ran­dom col­lec­tion, we’ll admit. But two record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry imme­di­ate­ly stand out.

First we have Alfred Lord Ten­nyson (1809 – 1892), Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed King­dom dur­ing Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s reign, read­ing “The Charge of the Light Brigade” on the wax cylin­der in 1890.

And then we get to hear echoes of the voice of William Glad­stone, the four-time Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain (1809 — 1898). Here, Glad­stone’s voice was record­ed by Thomas Edis­on’s phono­graph cylin­der (1888), the same device that lets us lis­ten to Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) chat­ting with his friends. Some have doubt­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of the Glad­stone record­ing, but it still remains gen­er­al­ly accept­ed.

For more on record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry, we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with a five-part BBC series called Gramo­phones & Grooves. It takes you into the ear­ly record­ing indus­try and lets you hear count­less oth­er voic­es.

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Time Capsule: The Internet in 1995

in History, Technology | July 29th, 2011

On Jan­u­ary 27, 1994, the Today Show ran a hilar­i­ous seg­ment try­ing to unrav­el this crazy new thing called “The Inter­net.” A year lat­er, how­ev­er, it looks like the media had it all fig­ured out. Check out this 1995 MTV trend piece by Kurt Loder: We got a kick out of the clunkiess of the old new media (Com­puserve! Dial-up! Netscape!), but Loder also touch­es on hack­ing, inter­net pornog­ra­phy, pri­va­cy, and free­dom of speech issues that still haven’t been resolved. The biggest shock­er of the clip is not how much things have changed but how much they haven’t.

Oh, and also, Moby had hair?

via The Awl

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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The Persecution of Daniel Lee

in Life, Technology | July 29th, 2011

A sto­ry appear­ing in July’s Stan­ford Mag­a­zine begins with the cap­tion: “An Inter­net smear cam­paign near­ly destroyed the South Kore­an star, but he fought back with the only weapon he had: the truth.” And, from there, you’re launched into one of the more flab­ber­gast­ing sto­ries you’ve read in some time. Give The Per­se­cu­tion of Daniel Lee a read, and you’ll see that we’re not being the least bit hyper­bol­ic.

The inter­net can be a won­der­ful place. We all know that. But, as with any oth­er place humans inhab­it, it has a dark side, and that’s what we encounter here…

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Metropolis II: Chris Burden’s Amazing, Frenetic Mini-City

in Animation, Science, Technology | July 20th, 2011

In his 2007 New York­er essay on per­for­mance artist Chris Bur­den, the crit­ic Peter Schjel­dahl wrote that most of Bur­den’s oeu­vre con­sist­ed of “pow­er­ful works that deal inge­nious­ly with aes­thet­ics and ethics of pow­er.”

Schjeld­hal added that “you needn’t like them to be impressed,” and then described some of Bur­den’s more infa­mous pieces:

He spent five days in a small lock­er, with a bot­tle of water above and a bot­tle for urine below; slith­ered, near­ly naked and with his hands held behind him, across fifty feet of bro­ken glass in a park­ing lot; had his hands nailed to the roof of a Volk­swa­gen; was kicked down a flight of stairs; and, on dif­fer­ent occa­sions, incurred appar­ent risks of burn­ing, drown­ing, and elec­tro­cu­tion.

Bur­den’s more recent â€śMetrop­o­lis II,” which might seem tame by com­par­i­son, fea­tures over 1,100 mini­cars careen­ing through a maze of inter­con­nect­ed free­ways. It’s still pret­ty chal­leng­ing, even in dilut­ed video form:  The noise and con­stant motion seem cal­cu­lat­ed to wreck your nerves, and accord­ing to this brief seg­ment on the piece, at least one car spins off the tracks every hour. The city may be sur­re­al, but the stress feels as famil­iar as your last bad rush hour.

You can find a fas­ci­nat­ing on-stage inter­view with the artist in LAC­MA’s Direc­tor’s Series, as well as a wealth of infor­ma­tion about Bur­den’s life and work on the muse­um’s web­site.

H/T Fast­CoDe­sign

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Pong, 1969: A Milestone in Video Game History

in History, Technology | July 5th, 2011

The world’s first video game, OXO, was invent­ed in 1952. As the title sug­gests, it was sim­ple tic-tac-toe, and you could only play it on the EDSAC com­put­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. (Watch it in action here.) The fun did­n’t real­ly get start­ed until the late 1960’s, when Robert Baer, Bill Har­ri­son and Bill Rusch devel­oped a ping pong game you could play on your tele­vi­sion. The above video shows Baer and Har­ri­son play­ing the game on the “brown box” — the pro­to­type for the com­put­er con­soles that would make the 70s and 80s such won­der­ful, seden­tary decades to be a child.

Baer insist­ed on detailed note-tak­ing, with the hap­py result that you can now read all of his team’s ear­li­est notes and mem­os at the online archives of the Lemel­son Cen­ter for the Study of Inven­tion and Inno­va­tion. Or you could just play Pong.

via Matthias Rasch­er

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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iPhone Magic by Techno-Illusionist Marco Tempest

in Apple, iPhone, Technology | June 29th, 2011

No more top hat and hand­ker­chief. Mar­co Tem­pest uses iPods and iPhones to cre­ate mag­ic for the 21st cen­tu­ry. He calls him­self a tech­no-illu­sion­ist. “I explore the bor­ders between tech­nol­o­gy and mag­ic,” says Tem­pest, “between what’s incred­i­bly real and incred­i­bly not.” Orig­i­nal­ly from Switzer­land, Tem­pest now lives in New York City. He was fea­tured in the inter­na­tion­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed tele­vi­sion series, The Vir­tu­al Magi­cian, and his work can be viewed on a YouTube chan­nel of the same name. His newest release, “iPod Magic–Deceptions,” fea­tures an appli­ca­tion he devel­oped to syn­chro­nize video play­back on mul­ti­ple screens. The App is called “Mul­ti­Vid.” You can down­load it for free here, and learn how to use it here.

via Dar­ren Brown

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The Elements of Creativity

in Art, Creativity, Technology | June 22nd, 2011

The Ele­ments of Cre­ativ­i­ty. They come down to this: Copy. Trans­form. Com­bine. Noth­ing is tru­ly orig­i­nal. Every­thing is a remix, more or less.

Direc­tor Kir­by Fer­gu­son first traced this idea through lit­er­a­ture and music, then through film­mak­ing. Next up? Tech­nol­o­gy, com­put­ers and user inter­face. Above we have the third and penul­ti­mate install­ment in the “Every­thing is a Remix” series. (You can watch it in large for­mat here.) Look for the final seg­ment to appear this fall, and con­sid­er sup­port­ing the project here.

Nice work Kir­by and h/t Brain­Pick­ings.

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