All posts in Ephemera
Concrete Music
I’m gearing up to start another project with Second Land. To help with that, I’ll be gathering some useful bits, here on NoCategories, so I can more easily share project notes. The first one: “concrete music“.
Musique concrète (French for “concrete music” or “real music“) is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as “musical” (melody, harmony, rhythm, metre and so on). The theoretical underpinnings of the aesthetic were developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the late 1940s.
Boredom
Boredom often serves a useful function: as an opposite to excitement and as a means of bringing emphasis to what it interrupts.Dick Higgins , See essay "Boredom and Danger" (Summer 1966).
Writing with Audio
I’m interested in adding audio equipment to my writing toolbox. So, I think I need some gear. I’m posting this to solicit any advice from musicians, technicians and writers: what works and what doesn’t? How can I do these things sufficiently well, on the smallest possible budget?
- I have a decent XLR microphone. I have a computer with a decent sound card. What is the best way to connect the two?
- I want to manipulate voices. Is that done with a vocoder? Do I need hardware or software for that?
- I want to be able to edit recordings. I’ve used Garage Band, and it’s nice, but I don’t have a mac. Is there something that is comparably user-friendly for the PC?
- With all of these things, I don’t want to get overwhelmed by tinkering with equipment. The point, for me, is to get down to creative work.
Random Exhibition Title Generator
Now, at the push of a button, you can make up the title of your very own art exhibition, with a real colon and everything!
Mine was Postcolonial Dreams: John Waters and Too Many
Dinner Parties. That sounds nice.
Most Literary Publications are Sexist
Incendiary headlines aside, take a look at this research. They counted authors and book reviews in most of the major literary publications. The results show that men get published and written about more often than women do.
How do we fix this?
Mysticism and Narcissism…
It seems to me that [spiritualism] encourages self-involved people to become more self-involved. Spiritual types often talk about the “universe” in the same way that a certain kind of Christian or Jew sees the hand of God in every banal event, or a certain kind of New Yorker broadcasts every little conversation he’s had with his shrink. And while these examples may show that narcissists are drawn to whatever feeds their narcissism, I do think that spiritualists are more likely to confuse causality with their own egotism. I’ve never heard of anyone visiting a psychic in order to learn how to be more generous with other people.Gordon Haber, The False Science
Recipe for a Litany Poem
This is a recipe for a poem I wrote. Now you can write a similar poem. Enjoy!
- Choose a word at random. (Maybe a noun?)
- Using that word, generate a set of “is” statements. (For example, if your word was “boredom” then these would be phrases that begin “boredom is”.)
- Copy the phrases and paste them into a word processor.
- Do a find-and-replace to replace all instances of the randomly chosen word (“boredom” etc.) with a new, meaningful word of your choosing.
- Repeat steps 1-4 above, selecting different words, until you have 100 lines or more pasted into your file.
- Read all your new phrases.
- Keep the ones you like.
- Make up new phrases to replace the ones you don’t like.
- Shuffle the lines. Or order them however you like.
WORMS, Feb. 16 2010
WORMS
If you don’t know what WORMS is, you’re about to. WORMS is an interactive literatary magazine in 3D. WORMS is The Champagne of Beers of Literary Readings. Do I have to spell it out for you? Ok. It’s spelled W.O.R.M.S.
Anyway, the next installment of WORMS is next Wednesday. It will feature the words, faces and voices of Erin Gleeson, Jesse Heffler, Ashlie Kauffman, Robert Schreur.
That’s WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16 at The Bell Foundry (1539 N Calvert) in Baltimore. Admission is free, but you’ll want to have some $ on hand to buy independent publications, concessions and the like. Oh yeah. Wear a nice coat.
Vieux Carre’ by The Wooster Group
This weekend, I saw a performance of Tennessee Williams’ “Vieux Carré” by The Wooster Group. The Wooster Group is an ensemble of experimental theater artists. They are based in New York City at The Performing Garage in Soho, and their productions tour nationally and internationally.
The video, from the groups video blog, is a mashup of text from reviews of the play, script and stage directions.
The text below is their description of the play (I’ll try to add one of my own to this post sometime soon).
Like Williams’ first big success The Glass Menagerie, Vieux Carré (1977) is a “memory play,” set in the boarding house in New Orleans where Williams himself stayed as a young man during the Depression. The young writer, as narrator, remembers his artistic and sexual awakening there. Inhabitants of the house swirl up out of the writer’s mind as archetypal Williams characters, longing for release and haunted by thwarted dreams. In The Wooster Group’s version of Vieux Carré, the Group experiments with new modes of expression for Williams’ lyric voice.
Ten Basic Space Age Pop Albums
I want to figure out this crazy “space age pop” look. These aren’t the ten best album covers, but here’s a start. My source for this list was an article calledTen Basic Space Age Pop Albums. It claims these albums set up the definitive sound for the genre. That might not be exactly what I’m looking for either, but I’ll save that for a different post.
The images are linked to more good stuff.
Space is the Place
Sun Ra had registered as a conscientious objector when drafted to fight in the Second World War, citing the absence of African-Americans on the draft board as his reason. After witnessing endless post-war civil rights abuses from his vantage in Birmingham, Alabama, Sun Ra came to the conclusion that Earth was a no-win situation for Black people, and that the future would inevitably see a new African diaspora—in outer space.
This prophecy followed a vision Sun Ra claims to have had in the late 1930′s:
He was transported to Saturn where aliens advised him to drop out of the college he was attending back on Earth and become a sort of musical prophet who would shepherd the world through an upcoming period of great chaos.
Hipsterssss iiiiiin Spaaaaace!
More daft, less punk.
Space Age Pop a Go-Go
I’m working on a play. It is inspired by this kind of silly “space age pop”, so I’m collecting examples of it. If you have any of this kinda stuff, I’d love to see it.
Video of “Mr Bradley Mr Martin Hear Us Through The Hole In Thin Air”
A video interpretation of William S. Burroughs’ “Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin Hear Us Through The Hole In Thin Air” created by Eclectic Schlock.
Semantics
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."Lewis Carroll -- Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6