So I’m starting to catalog and place online the vast — and I do mean vast — archives that Jesse and I have collected over the years. As I was sorting through some audio, I came across a tape that Jesse Glass had recorded with Martin J Rosenblum and Steve Nelson-Raney in the spring many decades ago.
So, we’ll offer the full audio up here shortly — but what really struck me (just glancing at the photo) was how much a grizzled Jesse looks like a grizzled Joaquin Pheonix.
If ever a biopic were to be made of the Glass life — I’d cast Pheonix in the lead role.
Thought this might be interesting to our readers—what with Jesse contributing so much good work on poets and movements in Wikipedia.
The above graphic, courtesy Nikola Smolenski, illustrates the physical size of the English edition of Wikipedia. Using volumes 25cm high and 5cm thick (some 400 pages), each page having two columns, each columns having 80 rows, and each row having 50 characters. Note that this is a conservative estimate, as it doesn’t include images, tables etc. which take up more surface than the text which describes them.
Hey all, Jesse wanted me to pass along the info on this year’s edition of the MUTEK Festival— looks great, going down at the end of may in Montreal.
MUTEK 2007 brings to Montreal over one hundred artists. According to their site they offer astonishing showcases that will surely prove unique and sophisticated. Each of these talented explorers brings to the Festival their own brand of electronic music and digital creativity. Check them it all out here.
DIGI_SECTION PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES Thursday May 31 and Friday June 1 Presented by MOOG AUDIO
Returning with a new title this year, the professional segment of the festival offers an invigorating and incisive panel and workshop series that is dedicated to issues pertaining to electronic music and digital creativity. These activities will be organized jointly with the following partners: ROLAND, ABLETON, M-AUDIO, DIGIDESIGN and MODUL8. At HOTEL GODIN, EX-CENTRIS and the SOCIETY FOR ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY
PANEL 2 | SIDLEE PRESENTS PICTOPLASMA: CONTEMPORARY CHARACTER DESIGN AND ART THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 5PM | HOTEL GODIN – BAR GODIN | $7* Participants: Lars Denicke & Peter Thaler (Berlin)
PANEL 3 | VJING, LIVE CINEMA + BEYOND: BREAKING BARRIERS IN THE AUDIO/VISUAL DIVIDE FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 11AM | HOTEL GODIN - BAR GODIN | $7* Participants: Boris & Brecht Debackere (Brussels), Clinker (Edmonton), Randy Jones (Seattle), Semiconductor (London), Skoltz_Kolgen (Montreal) Moderator: TJ Norris (Portland)
PANEL 4 | WEB 2.0 AND THE GLOBAL MARKET: MYTHS, REALITIES AND VIRTUALITIES FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 2 PM | HOTEL GODIN - BAR GODIN | $7* Participants: Hasham Ahmad (Samurai.fm/Tokyo), Emily Griffin (Zune/Seattle), Ronny Krieger (Beatport/Berlin), Matt Laszuk (Iris Distribution/New York), Sam Valenti IV (Ghostly International/Ann Arbor) Moderator : Stacey Van Buskirk (MUTEK/Montreal)
DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE PRO TOOLS M-POWERED 7.3 SOFTWARE & TORQ DJ SOFTWARE THURSDAY MAY, 31 | AT 11AM, 2PM & 4PM | HOTEL GODIN - SALLE JARDIN | FREE PRESENTERS: Michel Dumont & Cristobal Urbina
MODUL8 WORKSHOPS (in French only):
ATELIER MODUL8 1 PRESENTATION DU LOGICIEL DE VJING MODUL8 THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 10AM | SAT | $20*
ATELIER MODUL8 2 TECHNIQUES AVANCEES MODUL8 THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 2PM | SAT | $20* PRESENTERS: Boris Edelstein & Matthias Grau (co creators of the software)
DIGIDESIGN WORKSHOPS:
PRESENTATION OF THE LATEST DIGIDESIGN INNOVATIONS IN MIXING AND MUSIC PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE PRO TOOLS ENVIRONMENT THURSDAY MAY, 31 & FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 10AM | EX-CENTRIS - FELLINI ROOM | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOPS & SHOWROOM:
ROLAND OPEN SHOWROOM THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 10AM - 5PM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOP 1 ROLAND RHYTHM EXPERIENCE - RHYTHM PROGRAMMING FOR ELECTRONIC MUSIC FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 10AM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOP 2 V-LINK - PERFORMANCE VIDEO FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 1PM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOP 3 OLD SKOOL - NEW TOOLS FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 3.15PM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
PRESENTERS: Jeff Lyons & Adrian Marsi
ABLETON WORKSHOPS:
ABLETON WORKSHOP 1 MUSIC PRODUCTION WITH ABLETON LIVE: TIPS & TECHNIQUES FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 11AM | SAT | FREE
ABLETON WORKSHOP 2 MUSIC PERFORMANCE WITH ABLETON LIVE: TIPS & TECHNIQUES FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 2PM | SAT | FREE
PRESENTERS: Matt Moldover & David Cross
NOTES: * Tickets available at the door only. Free for MUTEK_PASSPORT holders.
This tidbit comes courtesy John Whiting. Whiting regularly contributes articles about food, and diatribes on the state of the arts and society, to European and American publications. Now in semi-retirement, he was until last year the News Editor for Fine Food Digest, the trade journal of the Guild of Fine Food Retailers.
The first London performance of John Cage’s Solos for Voice 93-96, 1988, commissioned by Electric Phoenix, took place in in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on March 15th, 1990. Eric Mottram, poet and professor at King’s College, University of London, was in the audience. I had given him a recording of our studio rehearsal with Cage and he wrote this poem shortly thereafter. This is the text as he typed it and gave it to me:
Jesse’s going to expand on this in a future blog posting. More shortly!
Daniel Bradley provides a little context on his reading with Gustave Morin:
Included is gustave morin and i reading from last fall (scroll to the bottom of the page) this actual isn’t the famed torched village anthology portion of the evening . . . that was held in the parking lot where things can burn, but the reading is pretty good, sound is great and there is even audience participation
We sat next to Gustave Morin, Rob Read, and Daniel Bradley at last month’s Small Press Book Fair in Buffalo. We didn’t see them light anything on fire.
Although, if I recall correctly John W MacDonald had some evidence of the guys burning Ottawa down here.
Writes Gustave Morin in MacDonald’s comment stream:
There is for me something beautiful in the ephemeral nature of firecrackers that i will always love.
Well anyway — check out the readings courteosy of House Press:
Okay, I’m getting killed at work, so updates have been few and far between this week. However, here’s a selection from all of the folks on Flickr who were at the show. It’s a random selection of 10 photos, so feel free to reload the page to check out new photos. More soon — Dan
Just wanted to let everyone know if I am slow on responding to any emails or comments this would be because we are in the middle of getting all of the ducks in a row on moving over to a new dedicated server.
Hopefully this won’t take too long, but it seems to me our “moving guys� have bricks in their shoes.
— are being migrated to a new home. As the DNS changes propagate you will begin to have access to the sites on the new server.
DNS propagation can take up to 48 hours to fully complete for servers, so some users may experience problems in site access. If so, then keep retrying, as your browser will query alternative name servers during the 48 hour transfer period.
Domains should resolve normally by Tuesday morning but please let us know if by Tuesday you still have problems connecting to a domain—it would be greatly appreciated.
I like what he had to say about how publisher’s should not fear the internet as a threat to print publications, but view them, rather, as a complement. He contends that publishers and authors who make publications available online (Ahadada, for instance, and its authors), are best poised to reap its rewards.
He contends that we (publishers, authors, readers) all win from online publishing, and that online publishing is an integral part of the ongoing viability of the creative process. It is a “vast, cheap new system of publicity generation� that will help to sell more paper books at a time when fewer and fewer people buy them. It is, in effect, a manner by which to grow one’s readership.
Imagine two kids, each with their own drink stands on a hot July day. One is selling distilled water in those tiny paper Dixie cups your dentist uses for a buck a cup. That’s print publication; it ensures quality, but leaves too much control in the hands of the publisher and limits audience growth.
The other kid will let you drink for free full-blast from the nozzle of the firehose that she’s hauled out the window of the school next door. That’s unrestricted digital publication, which gives you more than you can possibly use, with no guarantee of quality and no obvious revenue stream. For those committed to the idea of becoming or remaining a professional writer or publisher, the Creative Commons hybrid approach to publishing is the best compromise between two equally untenable approaches to handling content. What writers and publishers need to realize is that the internet isn’t a threat to or a substitute for print, but a complement to it. But in order to reap its rewards, everyone is going to have to unclench a little.
So, it’s up to independent publishers to strike a compromise. We’ve got to figure out a way of getting those dixie cups in the hands of a thirsty audience without losing our grip on the firehose!
Work here at Ahadada Toronto continues after nice holiday spent with family and friends, culminating last night with a New Year’s eve dinner at the excellent Room Forty One in Hamilton.
The food at Room Forty One definitely the highlight. Everything was wonderful. The quail and chowder was was unlike anything I have had before—light and creamy. The presentation was exceptional; everything looked to good to eat. The desserts were beautiful and finished the evening off perfectly.
Presenly, we are working on Yoko Danno’s translation of the Kojiki. Of all the mass of Japanese literature, which lies before us as the result of nearly twelve centuries of book-making, the most important monument is the work entitled Kojiki or “Records of Ancient Matters,” which was completed in A.D. 712.
The Kojiki is an important work because it has faithfully preserved the mythology, the manners, the language, and the traditional history of Ancient Japan.
Presently, am just working on text reflow after hacing added in all of the images!
Syphilis had many different names . . . Because of the outbreak in the French army, it was first called morbus gallicus, or the French disease. In that time it is noteworthy that the Italians also called it the “Spanish disease”, the French called it the la maladie anglaise - the English disease and “Italian” or “Neapolitan disease”, the Russians called it the “Polish disease”, and the Arabs called it the “Disease of the Christians”. (source: Wikipedia).
Well, according to The Chambers Dictionary, the name “syphilis” was originally the title of a poem written in Latin by Girolamo Fracastoro in 1530 whose hero, Syphilus, had the disease. Fracastoro was an Italian physician, poet, astronomer, and geologist—a contemporary of Galileo—who proposed a scientific germ theory of disease more than 300 years before its empirical formulation by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. Indeed, he put forward the idea that diseases are like seeds that can be transferred from one person to another.
He wrote a poem entitled ‘Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus’ and devised a myth, giving the name syphilis to a fictional shepherd. The poem describes how Syphilus (‘pig lover’), a pastoral shepherd is stricken with syphilis, albeit somewhat harshly given the circumstances, for having ‘offended’ Apollo:
A shepherd once (distrust not ancient fame)
Possest these Downs, and Syphilus his Name;
Some destin’d Head t’attone the Crimes of all,
On Syphilus the dreadful Lot did fall.
Through what adventures this unknown Disease
So lately did astonisht Europe seize,
Through Asian coasts and Libyan Cities ran,
And from what Seeds the Malady began,
Our Song shall tell: to Naples first it came
From France and justly took from France his
Name…
On sixteenth-century representations of syphilis in poetry, see Margaret Healy’s “Anxious and Fatal Contacts: Taming the Contagious Touch” in Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture, ed. Elizabeth Harvey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
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