October 31, 1999

Warmest Halloween I've ever seen--80 degrees.

Music For Cars

This presents an interesting creative challenge for sound design. It makes a vehicle a new 'medium' that make new messages possible. Many aspects of electric vehicles will be downloaded off the internet. The car will be more of an electronic device, like a smart phone, and will spin-off various accessories and 'apps'

clipped from www.bloomberg.com “We fought for so long to get rid of that noisy engine sound,” said Tabata, Nissan’s noise and vibration expert. With electric cars, “we took a completely different approach and listened to composers talk music theory.”

September 9, 1999

9999! Is synchronicity more probable today?

Interview on NPR with Kris Kristofferson. Surprising that he is a Rhodes scholar, when his film persona is more of redneck. When asked how he accomplished so many things (actor, musician, football player, boxer, helicopter pilot) he imagined doing those things and being successful at it.

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Watched PJ Harvey on Sessions at 54th. She's very theatrical but maybe too much so. (Part where it sounded like guitar cord got pulled out. I suspect that was added for cognitive dissonance effect. This is a good way to get people's attention--"something's wrong here.." (After a while people see only the differences--like a frog's eye.)



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9/9/2009: If I had a choice, I'd choose fortuity over synchronicity. As I like to say, 'pretending precedes becoming'. In this context being called pretentious is not pejorative.

Sonic Memories

Observation: When you hear something for the second time, your mind returns to 'memory landmarks' set on first hearing, and are automatically recalled on second review. Try this yourself: listen to a program with a mobile audio device, such as a podcast, while taking a walk or traveling somewhere. Play the program a second time, and you will recall locations (encoded visual memories) directly associated with various parts of the program. These landmarks tend to fade over time, but if emotionally charged at time of encoding, may become more salient, especially if repeated along the same path. This could be useful for developing memory capacity in general, or for modifying memories by listening to something in specific places, then listening to it again to recall the memories. Apparently places are the 'adhesive' for sonic memory, and could be useful in changing unwanted memories by replacing them with new ones through the process of binding them with specific places.

iPhone Photography

The iPhone is really not a phone--It is a really fun camera. (New photos added 8/21/09)

These are taken with 'Sepia Camera', 'Quad' and 'Photo Sketch'. Sepia Camera applies the same effect to every capture, while Quad and Photo Sketch have more options.

Digital photography allows for endless editing and treatment in Photoshop, but the spontaneity of having the effect printed at capture is creatively inspiring and liberating. Unencumbered with camera settings, focusing, etc. you are free to think about how the camera effect will grind up your subjects and create interesting images, blow-outs and all.

Woodstock at 40

Woodstock at 40, 40th anniversary of the lunar landing, 40 years since the Beatles break-up, 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon, the death of Les Paul, Michael Jackson, remembrances ad infinitum. In a sense these are smaller versions of millennial thinking, i.e. that our lives are intimately organized by arbitrary increments of time, and beginnings and the endings of things.

We are intricately woven into the cycles of dying, forgetting and remembering. Like standing on the surface of the moon, watching our contemplative thoughts spin in our minds as we gaze back at earth, reminding ourselves of where we really are. Remembering Woodstock must be like that: looking up at the moon thinking 'I was there looking back at where I am now' and then getting back to the mundane flow of time, meaningless and intractable, like the blackness of space.

On Experimentation

On alternate tunings: When you play in strange tunings over long periods, standard tuning becomes strange, and seems new again when you come back to it. The notion of something being 'standard' implies that it was once abandoned and returned to with a new perspective. It reminds me of something Brian Eno once said about going to an extreme then retreating to a more traditional approach. That's the payoff of experimentation.

Design in Film

Films are more interesting when designers have a greater contribution. Films should have longer edits and more montage scenes that set the mood or emotional contours based on the expectations baked in by the genre. This is something that is below-the-radar in most films, but is powerful in how it affects subconscious perception. It works almost exactly the same as sound design, where sound (usually) embellishes the narrative.

Some basic ways to map out where design is most effective: