Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Kode9
Interview with Kode9, aka London academic Steve Goodman, one of the smartest people (making sexy music) I've ever met and whose ear I unfortunately couldn't bend for long enough. I'll just have to read the book.
Sonic Warfare: sound, affect and the ecology of fear, by Steve Goodman, MIT Press 2009. ...
"traces a history of sonic warfare, from biblical times to the present. It samples minor events, scientific discoveries and technological innovations, demonstrating that the drive to use sound as a weapon is not new, and that innovations in sonic weaponry are often the result of a warped but highly developed form of creativity."
And the value and function of random acts of sonic violence?
-Don’t have too much time just now for random acts of sonic violence. I would distinguish violence from war, and stress a war tactics of “fighting without fighting” — camouflage and stealth. Seduction is often a more effective strategy than violence.
Sonic Warfare: sound, affect and the ecology of fear, by Steve Goodman, MIT Press 2009. ...
"traces a history of sonic warfare, from biblical times to the present. It samples minor events, scientific discoveries and technological innovations, demonstrating that the drive to use sound as a weapon is not new, and that innovations in sonic weaponry are often the result of a warped but highly developed form of creativity."
And the value and function of random acts of sonic violence?
-Don’t have too much time just now for random acts of sonic violence. I would distinguish violence from war, and stress a war tactics of “fighting without fighting” — camouflage and stealth. Seduction is often a more effective strategy than violence.
Mark Rothko, Orange on Red
See here.
Lynn Emanuel's poem "The Sleeping" was the first thing that came to mind when I saw Mark Rothko's 1956 oil painting Orange on Red, a gift from Jon and Mary Shirley in the new Simonyi Special Exhibition Gallery. Imagining that her parents shared a building with the painter in the '40s, Emanuel wrote, "That is the wonderful thing about art/It can bring back the dead/It can wake the sleeping/As it might have late that night/When my father and mother made love above Rothko/Who lay in the dark thinking 'Roses, roses, roses.'" The nearly 5-foot-tall by 3-foot-wide painting is composed of three supersaturated blocks of color on a canvas painted in flesh tones: a deep sunset orange and a blood red, separated by a fat smear of pink that brought up those roses. Their hazy delineations are created through multilayered washes, giving the whole an illusion of glow. Another of SAM's Rothkos, #10, also glows, with green edges like agates or sea glass, but looking at Orange on Red is a less soothing experience. It's arousing, almost exhausting. The New York School painter might not have approved of my connecting it to a poem, since Orange on Red was made at the point in his career where he named works by color or number. He's quoted as having said, "Silence is so accurate." But for me, finding multiple meanings (and memories) in someone else's creation is another wonderful thing about art.
Written by me, May 29, 2007, in Seattle Weekly
Lynn Emanuel's poem "The Sleeping" was the first thing that came to mind when I saw Mark Rothko's 1956 oil painting Orange on Red, a gift from Jon and Mary Shirley in the new Simonyi Special Exhibition Gallery. Imagining that her parents shared a building with the painter in the '40s, Emanuel wrote, "That is the wonderful thing about art/It can bring back the dead/It can wake the sleeping/As it might have late that night/When my father and mother made love above Rothko/Who lay in the dark thinking 'Roses, roses, roses.'" The nearly 5-foot-tall by 3-foot-wide painting is composed of three supersaturated blocks of color on a canvas painted in flesh tones: a deep sunset orange and a blood red, separated by a fat smear of pink that brought up those roses. Their hazy delineations are created through multilayered washes, giving the whole an illusion of glow. Another of SAM's Rothkos, #10, also glows, with green edges like agates or sea glass, but looking at Orange on Red is a less soothing experience. It's arousing, almost exhausting. The New York School painter might not have approved of my connecting it to a poem, since Orange on Red was made at the point in his career where he named works by color or number. He's quoted as having said, "Silence is so accurate." But for me, finding multiple meanings (and memories) in someone else's creation is another wonderful thing about art.
Written by me, May 29, 2007, in Seattle Weekly
Fox Fur, a Unicorn, and a Christmas Tree
Astronomy Picture of the Day
This one was for this Christmas Day.
Fox Fur, a Unicorn, and a Christmas Tree
Credit & Copyright: R Jay Gabany
Explanation: Clouds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The wide mosaic spans about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies at the upper left, bright variable star S Mon immersed in the blue-tinted haze just below the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula at the far right. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape traced by the stars appears sideways here, with its apex at the Cone Nebula and its broader base centered near S Mon.
This one was for this Christmas Day.
Fox Fur, a Unicorn, and a Christmas Tree
Credit & Copyright: R Jay Gabany
Explanation: Clouds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The wide mosaic spans about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies at the upper left, bright variable star S Mon immersed in the blue-tinted haze just below the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula at the far right. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape traced by the stars appears sideways here, with its apex at the Cone Nebula and its broader base centered near S Mon.
Hermes 1991
From Wiki: Hermes (Greek, Ἑρμῆς, IPA: /ˈhɝmiːz/) is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunning of thieves and liars.[1] His symbols include the tortoise, the rooster, the winged sandals, and the caduceus. The analogous Roman deity is Mercury.
The Homeric hymn to Hermes invokes him as the one "of many shifts (polytropos), blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods."[2]
Detail:
It's my dream to find one of these at a thrift store. I'm thinking up a story about a woman of creative means who has no family heirlooms. No one was a collector of beautiful objects. She volunteers at the ballet, symphony and opera so she can attend. As an usher she takes tickets, sees the show, and helps clean up. Sometimes she commands the coffee station, but she likes cleaning up best because of the amazing things left on the seats. She sufficiently charms her bosses and they tell her, if something you like isn't claimed in a year and you're still here, you can have it. An Hermes scarf, a diamond stud, a silver cigarette case, etc. She volunteers for 20 years...what else does she find as the times change?
Soda
The creature asleep in my lap. A living, breathing, twitching, dreaming thing. Inspired by: breakfast and dinner, strategically-placed rays of sunlight, wine corks, feathers (turquoise, green, purple or red) on a long string, squirrels, the view from the armchair, Stacy's approaching footsteps, Al Franken (neighbor cat), closets, and--I like to think--Sugar Minott Live at Studio One.
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