Caspar Oh Wun

On Social Regurgitation

My handwriting is terrible. I don’t know what it is, but the pen has never sat comfortably in my hand, and it never does quite what I want it to. Underlining something with a flourish usually results in a crossed-out word or phrase somewhere in the sentence.

This means I’m slightly in awe for people who can do justice to a piece of paper and a pen. I really enjoyed Max Gadney's recent Design of Understanding conference, but/and was mildly blown away by Amanda Wright's sketchnotes, which she was committing straight to paper in my peripheral vision.

What was (also) impressive was the multitasking and on-the-fly editing, which I (also) can't do. And judging by the hashtagged tweets that issue forth from many conferences, neither can a lot of other people.

It’s difficult enough (for me) to take decent notes. It’s almost impossible to listen to what is being said, think about it, decide it's worth sharing with the world and condense it into 140 characters, while still keeping one ear and lobe looking out for the next titbit of ‘social currency’ to enrich the lives of the friends, pornbots and listing sites that make up your twitter followers. Which leads to tweets like ‘people like stories #socconf" and 'Amazing talk from Sven. Social means sharing and open'.

Which are unarguably true. But stripped of the insightful and enlightening build-up, they can be so obvious as to not be worth sharing. Which is social.

(PS I’m as bad as anyone at this, so I’ve just stopped trying to tweet and drive listen.)

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now floating above L.A.

Some things were just made for each other even if they weren’t...you know...made for each other.

Dubstep and US Hip-Hop. Poached eggs and muffins. Chinese food and 12 hours in the fridge.

You’re right, of course. I have forgotten an important pairing: slightly melancholy music plus bursts of static-y voices talking important-sounding nonsense over the ether. Which is why youarelisteningtolosangeles.com is so brilliant.

Its a stream of random ambient tracks from Soundcloud plus a live feed from LAPD radio. That’s it. It doesn’t need anything else*. 

One of the best things about it is the ephemerality. Before recorded music, every piece of music was a fleeting glimpse of smoke and sunlight. No piece of music ‘existed’ beyond it’s moment of performance – only the metadata (or score) had a life beyond the moment, and that’s how it had been for thousands of years. Suddenly (in the last hundred year s) the concept has emerged of the ‘original’ – a recording of a performance that is inextricably linked to a composition and against which all other versions or performances are judged.

What I love about this is its use of technology to bring some of that back – whatever combination of police static and floaty chords you hear is never going to be repeated. If a phrase and change in the music work well together – congratulations, you’re probably the only person on earth who’s experienced that moment. You could record the output to play later...but why not listen live? You never know what’s going to happen next…

 

*apart from maybe a massive Amen drop every 3 hours to blow the cobwebs away

Ultra Definition, Targetted Fridges and the TV Horse.

I went to an interesting talk today about CES 2011, the consumer electronics shindig that causes the lights to dim on the main Vegas strip as a million power-supplies are plugged in at once (probably).

Some things struck me.

1)      The ENORMOUS push that 3D is getting from the manufacturers is only slightly tempered by the fact that there’s very little content to show on it. It’s a case of putting the cart before the horse…only it’s not, because the cart is the thing that contains content…and the horse that brings you the content/cart is therefore TV in this analogy.

I’ll try again.

This is a very real case of the horse being pumped up with steroids and being forced to bolt off in a direction that doesn’t seem to be towards all the consumers happily waiting at the market for the TV horse to bring them the content cart, as my old gran used to say.

OK, the customer is not always right, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." etc. We shall see, possibly in 3D.

2)      This was on show:

(A million drug dealers and recently divorced middle aged men suddenly look interested)

Yes, you can forget High Def, this is ULTRA Def. Ultra Def 3D, no less. Your puny HD BluRays will now doubt be like sandpaper across the eyeball from now on. It’s like ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ mixed with Film 2011.

The main barrier to this brave new world is that there is currently no camera that can film in 3D UD. How’s that for futuristic?

3)      Connectivity of household items has been talked about for ages, but this year it seems to have gone overground, with several manufacturers getting in on the act. That this is moving from your Bang and Olufsen types to mass market is brilliant (until the next solar storm wipes out your ability to make toast), not least because of the possibilities for crowd-sourced wisdom, recipes, tips etc. Perfect cooking times and recipes could be automatically shared and used, so one person’s muffin nightmare saves a thousand other home chefs from dry muffin hell.

Another thoughts that struck me is this: if you have a screen and connectivity on a fridge, it can serve you content…so how about ad-supported fridges? Would you pay £100 for a £400 fridge that suggested what juice you should put in it, and offered to order some for you at the touch of a button?  Maybe weight loss ads or anti-drug messages if you open the door between 11pm and 6am?

Maybe not.

In the mix...

Today, I mostly can’t get enough of Studio Multitracks, a blog of isolated multitracks harvested from YouTube (which has to be the best specialist music search engine out there).

Granted, this may sound a bit geeky but you really can’t go wrong with 60s soul vocalists going at it a capella:

 

 

If you do want to let go of the side and swim out into the deep end of geekery, there’s a lot of great stuff:

 

 

For the record: assuming you're using the standard formula of quality x mass appeal x funkiness, 'I Want You Back' is undoubtedly the ultimate wedding reception tune.

It’s such a pleasure to hear something properly for the first time even when it's already hit your ears a thousand times before – but here you can feel  the human presence: the squeaking frets, coughs and mis-hit snares all telling you that you’re listening to someone.

It’s also great to hear the mistakes and fluffs that are normally ironed out these days, those little specks of grit and dirt that you don't really notice until they're gone and everything's shiny and a bit bland. They're like the condiments of recording.

Apart from the fun of playing a game of aural join-the-dots with a song you love, what’s really special about this is hearing talent (or whatever else you want to call it. Quality? Tao?) in the raw. These are people who’ve done their 10,000 hours and then some more, and these are the parts that are going to combine with others to create something…I can’t bear to the type the cliché, but I think you know what I’m saying.

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr-0CreXEL8&feature=player_embedded

From the Land of the Thunder Dragons to the Warrior Kings

A map of the etymology of country names. A little window into a time when men were strong self-rulers, rivers were full of shrimp and Madagascar was the end of the earth.

Let's make a deal...

I'll show you this video of a slightly speed-up (but deeply beautiful) twilight landing at LAX, you watch it on full-screen and then you can buy me a drink in return.

Deal?

Fric-a-Frac

Stunning fractal video from Richard Montalban  made using Mandelbulb 3d, a free (PC only) fractal program. More info at Fractal Forums.

  

 

But....but....it's *CHRISTMAS*

It's an old one, but I love this graphic from David McCandless's Information is Beautiful blog:

In case you missed it, the information is found by searching (you can say 'scraping' if you want, it makes me shudder a bit) Facebook status updates for the phrase "We broke up because".  What can we learn from this graph?

1) that the high relationship churn of students (and Facebook's roots and high usage in US colleges) means Spring Break is overly represented.

2) that Christmas Day offers some, but not total, protection from being dumped

3) that Valentine's Day is a surprisingly popular day on which to get dumped.  I have a nasty feeling that may be due to a combination of '1' and 'Punk'd'.

4) my favourite - that a really shitty weekend, where you've had it up to HERE with their shit for two whole days, leads to lots of angry muttering under your breath on Monday as you tap away at your keyboard, rehearsing the mighty dressing down and break-up for later that night.  The break-up, when you do instigate it, will actually be 300% politer than the diatribe you've been angrily preparing all day.

TFI Music Friday - Eskimo

Mindbending treat from the Ninja Tune peeps.

 

TFI Music Friday - Iron & Wine

Very few songs are as lovely as this.

 

7 minutes, no chorus. Amazing.