The Glim-Dipper Glim-Dropper

AKA and I improvised this little ditty last weekend. I feel my instrumentation (bass especially) is a little too Boards of Canada. But that's never a bad thing, right? We should shape it up: give it some structure, shorten it a bit. But it's a good start, and I loooove the backwards-forwards on the bell sample.

Here it goes.

Beat Research!

Beat Research!
Originally uploaded by lovers v haters

Went to Beat Research at Enormous Room tonight.b to see Ghislain Poirier! Vid by Paper Rad! Hooray!

Share.tv finally went up!

One down, six to go! Share.tv premiered on CCTV tonight on channel 10 and on the internets in front of an audience of at least 15 people.



I'm mentally exhausted-- the show definitely did not go up "without a hitch." There were some gaffs and slip-ups, but we chugged ahead, without there being a moment of dead air. Turn-out was... well, it could have been much better. Noah and I played the entire time, which was something neither of us really wanted to do. As for me, it's really hard to perform on the floor, and serve as a floor director as well.

The point is, I survived. Plus, I'm really excited to make the next episode 100% better than this one. I think my crew is pretty enthusiastic about being part of the project, and their support is what counts.

Pics, video, etc coming up tomorrow afternoon... are up! Check out: hotsocieties.com/share/?page_id=3, otherwise known as the "Gallery" page.

Cool Beans!

at home again

I had quite a weekend last weekend. Went to NYC to shoot part I of my feature on DJ Rupture for the first episode of Share.tv. Rupture has a pretty sweet space in Sunset Park: cozy and neat, with not nearly as much intimidating stuff/gear as I would have expected. In fact, Rupture was a real adult, which was a relief. I'm editing now-- there's plenty of good bits in our interview about beat-matching and dj-ing, software, and what's more exciting, intellectually stimulating discussion about the need for visual feedback in electronic music, emotionally honest performance, and risk vs. spectacle onstage. This should be good! Tune into the show on February 17th to see it in its entirety. Big thanks to Thenji for her expertise on the shoot, and I hope I get to work with her again...

I stayed with Craniv, which was so much fun. Craniv and I have been friends since we were 4 years old: our parents are best friends, and we grew up in eachother's households together-- one of our parents holding tight to both of our hands as they whizzed us around the city everyday from one afterschool program to another (piano, German, painting, dance, circus arts).

Craniv was there when I got the chicken pox, when the house caught on fire, when the dog died, when I started smoking, when I graduated, when I graduated from the next thing, and now here we are today. Cranny Boy is an amazing painter and sculpter, who just returned from his first residency at this gallery in Maine, where he spent one month getting paid to paint and be adored. (His website is in the works, but here's where it's temporarily parked. Better pics of his works will be up within a few weeks.)


It was an incredibly positive weekend. I got our parents together, who spent all of Saturday evening giggling like two schoolgirls. Not only was that adorable, but I was so unspeakably moved to see my mother so happy. On Sunday, Craniv introduced me to his friend, fellow painter and video artist Kevin Yang, and we went to an opening on East Broadway.

Nothing much was happening there, except for a free beer, so the three of us chilled on the couch (which was the installation... all of it...) and watched some of Kevin's vids on his computer. (Was this rude?) They were pretty good, so I whipped out my thumb drive, and took them for my show. The transaction was unnaturally zippy and no-fuss: I wondered if he thought I was being pushy. But maybe that's just how Civilization 2.0 is supposed to work.

Got to catch up with old friends, and meet new ones. Was totally surprised to see Kentl at the Odessa Cafe, and glad to know her arm is healing nicely, foot-and-a-half long scar notwithstanding.


Next weekend, I come back. This time to shoot at MTAA's Over the Opening, where Kreigspiel premieres. Also, it's WYNA's BIRTHDAY so we're probably going to eat lots of meat in celebration!!!

Oh and BTW, I got the best shoes evar.


Bis bald...

OMG: The Totally Wired panel at the Brattle yesterday

Yesterday evening, I went to go see a panel hosted by the MacArthur Foundation and MIT Press, heralding their new 6-book volume laying the foundation for that shiny new pedagogy: Media Literacies. Participating in the panel were king of kings, Henry Jenkins of MIT's formidable Comparative Media Studies Program, Howard Gardner, the man who taught our generation's teachers to teach (and held his own on the topic pretty well despite being a self-professed luddite), and Katie Salen, who is not only a game designer, educator, and media literacy advocate, but one of those strange and beautiful creatures born as the seamless fusion of all three. Suffice to say, it was a very stimulating discussion, and I'm very excited that I was there for the "ceremony" where media literacy as an official educational discourse had finally "come out" to the rest of academia.

Henry started out by making an interesting correlation: he brought up the (somewhat cliché) image of the "good parent" who takes his/her kids out to art museums, fosters dinnertime conversation, etc., and compared that to the image of this century's "good teacher". We understand; the deeper an investment one makes in stimulating a child, the better formed that child will ultimately be.

When Jenkins made that leap, I immediately thought of that chapter in Stephen D. Hewitt's Freakonomics about the formula for "good parenting". The question was raised: if you bring your child to the art museum on a regular basis, will they be more successful than a child who was never taken? Ultimately, the Freakonomists concluded that a "good parent" doesn't get points for taking the kid to the art museum; a "good parent" is one whose natural notion of parenting is built around including their children in activities that they can enjoy as a family, that will stimulate the child to take part in family discussion, and that ultimately socializes the child in the world around him/her. I believe the quote is: "it isn't what the parent does, it's who the parent is" that makes the difference.

Similarly, you can't give a teacher some new software to teach, or a new device, or a Facebook group, and expect them to make a miracle out of it. A "good teacher" will use their unique ability to see possibilities in the contemporary, insanely digitized world, and use those in a way that will bolster a positive classroom environment. The panel did seem to do a good job of making this distinction. However, there's always the danger that this notion of greater investment could translate directly into "how about I make a game out of MySpace?" or something. (I don't want to do the whole night the disservice of glossing over the key issue; don't get me wrong, it was more nuanced than that. But, there's always that risk.) I can only hope their audience "got it". Some of the questions from the audience made me doubt. ("Have you seen these Webkinz your grandchildren are playing with?")

Sitting there, I wondered if twelve years ago these same people would have been talking about how Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is going to bridge the achievement gap. Or if, twenty-five years ago, they would have been singing the praises of Sesame Street. In any case, it boils down to an attempt by an older generation to intercept and rework the younger generation's attachments and associations with media. Older discourse has always been too quick to call this kind of enterprise "the Answer", and it's always misleading because there are some places adults cannot go, some spheres of play that can never be controlled, harnessed, or emulated. However, I have faith that the panelists are very much invested in this discourse, and will drive it in the direction it needs to go.

Betta Splendens (2)

It's COMING!

I, Harlo Holmes, have discovered irony.

What dollar bill are you going to put my face on?

Amon Tobin shakes his butt!

Oh wow oh wow I saw Amon Tobin at the Grammercy Theater last nite with Jonny and Heather!!!



This was such a great show, and everything was perfect, even down to the minute details, such as not having to wait on line to use the restroom at all, and nobody had peed all over the toilet seat either! Good times! Amon was amazing; it was my first time seeing him live, and I had no clue how adorable he is performing. DUDE, he SHAKES HIS BUTT to the beat! Opening for him was P-Love, who was kind of a n00b, but he did really well, and chatted up the crowd throughout his whole set. It was kinda like how, in college, there was this kinda nerdy audio guy who lived down the hall, and sometimes you would stop by his room and he would spazz out trying to impress you. It felt more like that than an actual DJ set. It was cool.
Amon Tobin played a set with 7.1 surround sound, which was mind-blowing. Like, every so often, you'd hear this small shout, and you'd think it was coming from the crowd, but then it would grow and morph, and take flight and flutter around you. I don't know how he was doing that, but maybe it had to do with this mysterious glowing blue box he had on stage that seemed to have no other purpose in his show other than to fuck things up.



After the show, Jonny, Heather, and I went to this bar at the Chelsea Hotel, where I saw an interesting looking switchboard from the golden days of telephone operation. Only at the Chelsea.



Jonny and I, true to form, got into a drunken fight about the merits of creating software that applies a detailed taxonomy to the myriad sound samples in your library, so you can call them up on-a-whim while improvising. I doubt it was interesting to anyone but us, and maybe to on-lookers totally miffed at these two idiots screaming about file-naming protocol.




My fotos of last nights event aren't really that great, but you can check them out on my flickr if you'd like. So instead, I'll leave you with a picture of this random-ass parade float I found on 116th street and Lenox avenue.



I think it has something to do with maintaining family values in the Community. Wait-- is that an ELECTRIC CHAIR? Hottt.

Bizzy come een like a mascot at that boasie place!

Last night, Vicki and I went to Gelsinger's friend's art show cum poetry reading. It wasn't that bad, but Vicki and I were acting rude, kinda on purpose. (Sorry!)



Gels' friend Ian has his art shown at the Johnathan Shorr gallery; his art is really intricate, as if he was painstakingly recreating graph paper out of wood and gold foil. I liked it a lot.



Gels did some poetry about memories of the Carribbean. (I think?)



In a very sing-songy voice, he shared his Carribbean memories of salt folded into the sea like scent folded into a woman's body, NaCl, memories, the Carribean. I don't know, I just don't know.



I love Gels a lot, he's a great friend and he's super smart and talented, but last night, sitting there, I felt, well, ejaculated on; it was a self-centered, ostentatious, boasie kind of poetry jam, and I wasn' feeling it.

Vicki is crying, because to laugh would have been rude.






Then Damian (who's an amazing guy) read some of his "disposable" poetry from this awesome book he pressed himself. (Damian does his own pressings, and I really love his poetry-as-objects stuff. I'm a fan.)



His poems were quite good, and funny in his Damian-sort-of-way. However, I know that if I rose to Damian's challenge of mashing down his purported "disposable" poetry, his little object books, he would totally cry. So I didn't appreciate his pyaka. He was straight fronting. I didn't call his bluff, but I was tempted, and one more glass of wine and I might have really embarassed myself.

Robert Kochik, whom I've heard read before, and greatly admire, was there; it was good to see him, but after having sat through Gelsinger's song poetry with a (semi-) straight face, I couldn't pay attention to Kochik's reading. I guess this is an appology to Gels, if he's reading. I just couldn't sit through that stuff last night. I was like a total pinky; it was that bad.

China Update No. 1

Now, in an attempt to boost my readership, I have enlisted the help of my friend Adam Lanphier to bring you all the latest updates from our friends-to-the-north: China. Adam is a freelance journalist for the biggest expat rag in Beijing, called "That's Beijing", or "That's BJ" for short. I had a look at That's BJ's local event listings for interesting "assignments" for Adam to document, all in the name of greater cultural understanding.

Here's a little info about Adam: He's tall and lovely to look at. He's a virgo. No fatties need apply.

I selected, as his first assignment, something billed as the "Fourth Minimal Dance Party" at a bar called Big Ben or something, I don't remember. Anyway, here is the photo of the place; it is, for some reason, called the "Sweet Smelling Village".



Adam actually hasn't told me what it was like, other than that it was not as minimal as he thought it would be, and that the DJ was cute. Now Adam is fighting with a real estate agent, which I suspect is another story waiting to unfold.

This isn't really a "cultural update" of any particular interest. We're still working out the kinks. Update #2 will be better.

us v. them, over and over again.

Hello non-existant reader! Hello future generation!

Last night, I went to the Warper Party all by myself because Vicki stood me up. (Bizzy why!!!!?? Bizzy, come ON!!!!)

I knew I shouldn't have gone, given my only experience with the Warper crew has included some nasty Furries shittily covering that "back with another of those block-knocking beats" song, fist-shaking rage over Microsoft-Malfunction, and some ridiculous Yahoo v. Google argument that AKA still won't let me live down. That being said, I don't know why I went. But I went. Here are some fotos.



I took this picture of the video being reflected in the mirror behind the bar. This was the only pleasant thing about this evening, however, because what you can't here, reader, is the disonnant screech of some asshole blowing a trumpet into a microphone hooked up to some Max/MSP patch that causes consistantly growing feedback. This is where I started to grow deaf.

Then, this guy came out. I know, you're all like, WOW! And I was, too. At first.



Look at that guitar! It seems like this dude took the strings n shit off of his electric guitar, and glued it to a shitty tablet PC! Then he took the wires n gears and whatnot, and plugged them all into some patchbay that is plugged into the tablet PC! This is a pretty hot idea! Look, here's a close-up:



So, you have to give props to the man, okay. This is pretty cool. However, let's just say, the music he was playing sounds exactly like the college-dorm-shroom-trippy Windows Media Player "acid" visualizations swirling around on that damn tablet PC.

To reiterate: cool idea. Given. But come on, why does that shit have to sound like the soundtrack to some mid-90s soft-porn on Showtime? I took audio, but it was pretty shittily recorded, so I won't post it here.

So anyways, after that aural onslaught, I booked it out of there and hit the King.



I ate a STACKER.



More pics on my Flickr page, if you're interested. It's in a set called "The wackest shit I've ever been a party to". They're all taken from my camera fone, so they're super pixelated. However, I'm starting to really love the way the fotos come out looking like I ran them through some old Print Shop pointillation filter first...

TMNT

Shredder taught them to be ninja teens, but who taught them to cut a rug like this?