Do NOT Deny Science!

Just watch this. Then share it.

Panic Or Something!

This one's a compare and contrast, my dear readers.

The article and essay below feel, to me, like they're making a lot of the same considerations. [Am I being too hasty, or is the impending "panic" essentially just a bad reaction to the realization that we've behaved like morons for far too long? Or is it a mixture of both?]

T.R.O.Y. claims, "I think a key ingredient is a sense of practical hope, a real feeling based in experience that what one is doing matters." I suspect Sterling might agree, since his writing seems to come from a similar sense of hope based on experience and "what matters". Read the pieces below and decide for yourself.

Bruce Sterling - "2009 Will Be A Year Of Panic"
[article]

-- vs --

T.R.O.Y. - "The Challenge Of Utopia"
[interview w/ link to .rtf]

Thoughts? (Post a comment.)

Cut Chemist's 360-degree Big Break

Okay, this might be a more entertaining way to ease your mind into a ten-dimensional weekend, if such a thing is possible. I am honestly not sure how I missed this when it was first released, considering I've seen Cut Chemist perform multiple times since then. But we can all watch it (in HD here) now, it all its 360-degree glory.

Reminds me of this video for Meat Beat Manifesto's "Spinning Round Dub", but with a much better execution of a 360-degree view formatted to a single, flat screen.

Google & Radiohead Build House Of Cards

Here's a nice companion to my last post: Radiohead's new video for "House Of Cards". No cameras were used in the making of it. Google Code has a page dedicated to it, where you can download said code and mess with it yourself, and check out the making-of footage. That's pretty cool, and very "open-source" of them.

Here's the video.



Here's the making-of.



It's worth noting that this is not just a Radiohead promotion. This is a significant marketing move for Google, tying a major international rock band to a variety Google properties like YouTube, iGoogle, Gadget Ads and Google Code in one succinct effort. Smart stuff, even if the song's lyrics seem to contradict the actions of the Google empire.

"On To Something" Coming Soon

Music Thing links to a trailer for the new Raymond Scott documentary On To Something, produced by Scott's only son, Academy Award winning cameraman and editor Stan Warnow.


Documentary Trailer for RAYMOND SCOTT: ON TO SOMETHING from Stan Warnow on Vimeo.

If you're not familiar with the innovative genius that is Raymond Scott, odds are you'll recognize his music - courtesy of one cartoon or another. If you've had the pleasure / displeasure of living with me in the last ten years or so, you know that the only way I can watch professional sports for any duration is with the broadcast's sound turned down and Reckless Nights & Turkish Delights playing loudly instead. (Try it; it's especially great with basketball.)

See also:
Manhattan Research - Book / 2-CD set detailing Scott's early, hand-made electronic instruments - which he often used in commercial work. This collection includes a collaboration with pre-Muppets Jim Henson and notes about the room-sized computer Scott used to essentially generate a click track.

Soothing Sounds For Baby - a three-part series of tone-poems designed to lull your little ones to relaxation, using instruments Scott created himself (in the lab featured in Manhattan Research, no less). Minimal, ambient music with a pop sensibility, years before Brian Eno or Kraftwerk.

R.I.P. Albert Hofmann, LSD Inventor

Albert Hoffman Autograph, originally uploaded by strikerr.

What's left to say about this man that isn't already being said by the likes of BoingBoing and Wired? His research was influential on a lot of people who were influential on me. Especially during my college years. Nuff said.

Hoffman was 102 when he died, just ten days after the 45th anniversary of Bicycle Day. While those numbers will surely inspire fits of numerology amongst fans of psychedelics, I'm inspired to pick up a copy of LSD: My Problem Child in his honor.

Dr. Hofmann Stencil, a graffiti tribute spotted in Lisbon last year by yours truly.

R.I.P. Sir Arthur C. Clarke

His influence has had an effect on all of us in one way or another, whether we realize it or not. So rather than tip your proverbial forty, just drop a little science today for the recently departed Arthur C. Clarke.

Below is a clip of Clarke's latest reflections, recorded on his 90th birthday.

Guitar (NOISE) Hero

Wandering through Wired's blogs over coffee this morning, I didn't stop on anything until I found this on The Underwire. As soon as I think of a name for the band I want to be in with Scopeboy, I'm emailing him. His Tesla-coil guitar, my chopped-up samples... it could be the kind of sweetly hellish noise that makes men weep. Wicked.

Album Art = More Than Mere Packaging

More people buy music digitally now than ever before. The demise of DRM-crippled product makes digital purchases all the more appealing. But some folks - the kind who make money designing static album art, coincidentally enough - complain about "loss of the importance of album artwork." But, contrary to the lamentations of these naive suburbanites, nothing is lost. I think they're simply missing the bigger picture.

Album sleeves were originally intended to protect the analog disc, and preserve the quality of the music encoded on that disc. Every release was packaged essentially as a white label until Alex Steinweiss came along. He's the guy we have to thank for album art as we know it today:

In 1939, 23 year old Alexander Steinweiss proposed to Columbia to make a change in the presentation and packaging of the 78 RPM record albums and to use original artwork (drawings and paintings) on the covers. The new look skyrocketed the sales of an already very popular composition. From that day on the artistic packaging became an important part of the record.

But it's been a long time since album art was limited to the sleeve around a disc. In fact, album art is so important that it transcends packaging. It evolved to include merchandise, concert stage sets, web sites and interactive experiences -- all of which allow an artist to elaborate on the concept(s) of an album. Consider these examples: Pink Floyd Amon Tobin, Air, Kraftwerk, or even the White Stripes. The visual art of an album can be, and for many artists already is, so much more than packaging. I would argue that it's more important than ever.

Wait For It

I just read on the Captivate network (elevator news at work, piped in by Gannett) that scientists are trying desperately to develop an anti-aging pill. A pill that fights the affects of aging.

A pill that fights the affects of aging? We've had that for years already. It's called birth control. From the moment each of us is born, the one thing we all do is age. The only way to stop that is to not be born. Fact is, we're already living longer than we were biologically meant to. Let's not forget that living longer doesn't mean living better - we still fall apart as we get up in years. Think of how much of your life is spent just making a living. Now imagine that going on longer than you ever imagined. And with silly elevator news snippets that remind you of your inevitable mortality.

To be fair, despite Captivate's sensationalized paraphrasing of some actual news, the true development appears to be related to longevity and life expectancy, judging from this recent Wired article. But living longer is not the same thing as not aging, is it? We all have to wait at least another ten years to see if these pills even do anything.

Meanwhile, maybe contemplate your life in terms of quantity versus quality.

[Photo from AmazingAbilities.com]

How To Have A Number-One The Old-Fashioned Way

Taking time to talk pop reminded me of something I meant to post a while ago, yet I never got around to. That something is The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way. Long out-of-print and impossible to find, this book was hugely influential on my early forrays into the music industry. The K Foundation's combination of discordianism, Illuminatus references and unabashed pop sensibility stuck with me. I've followed the further exploits, musical and otherwise of Jim Cauty and Bill Drummond. I've had The Manual in my Amazon wish list for years, never to see it actually "available". I loved it when I read a friend's copy in college, and always wanted to have my own copy. Now we can all have it.

A relatively recent BoingBoing post about the KLF links to a PDF version of the manuscript. So while you miss some of the illustrations and the tactile sensation of holding this adorable little case study, full of instructions (which were guaranteed to work, BTW, if you followed them to the letter), you can still read it.

It's worth knowing that The Manual did in fact work, too. The Austrian Euro-trash band Edelweiss found #1 hit status with "Bring Me Edelweiss" - a song they claim was created by following the instructions in The Manual. And this was some time before you could use a MySpace page to collect friends or distribute a new single. Of course, with theories like The Long Tail afoot, it's probably not so much about having a number-one anymore.

Does anyone feel like telling Kanye?

Seven Hills Of Time Displacement

It's been forever since I posted anything. As if you couldn't tell by looking at the date of my last post. I'm in Lisbon for work this week. While I was here, Chicago turned up on Google Street View. Nice to be able to check on the place while out-of-town.

Rounding out the time in Lisbon with a bit of a head-cold. Thought it was allergies, but allergy meds are doing nothing to relieve the symptoms. Somehow, in the haze of jet-lag and work-related hang-overs, I am at this moment in the throes of time displacement. Why else would I by trying to get a new post up at a time like this? Rhetorical question. More photos posted once I get home. For now, see what I feel like while walking through the city of seven hills, on sinus medicine.

What to do with Chicago's water tanks...

According to the Trib, the Chicago Architectural Club recently announced winners of a contest seeking ideas for what to do with the city's rooftop water tanks. There are some very cool ideas, my favorite is the winning idea from Rahman Polk (PDF), which uses the tanks to harness wind power and support a city-wide Wi-fi network (an idea that's got some people talking already). Let's hope the best ideas prevail.

To Yahoo!, from the streets

Wooster Collective reports that Michael Oliver has created a cool hack combining Flickr (a Yahoo! property) and Google Maps to create a dynamic map of street art snapshots as uploaded by users. Of course, Oliver's hack isn't working right now... but there's a similar hack that does work - using geotagged Flickr images and Google Maps - here (though there isn't much that's been mapped yet).

Hey, Yahoo!, maybe it's time to get your map application in shape enough to compete with Google's? This "hack" creates a combination of tools that are not unique to street art afficionados; wait until the travel industry and its journalists pick up on this... if they haven't already.

Innovation begins with "in"

My first post on PYLB was fuelled by the frustration of trend-watching being just another trend in and of itself - a futile one that never seems to help persuaders-by-trade innovate in any significant fashion. Douglas Rushkoff recently captured this frustration and put it into more neutral terms:

But this endless worrying, wriggling, and trend-watching only alienates companies from whatever it is they really do best. In the midst of the headlong rush to think “outside the box,” the full engagement responsible for true innovation is lost. New consultants, new packaging, new marketing schemes or even new CEO’s are no substitute for the evolution of our own expertise, as individuals and as businesses.

Indeed, for all their talk about innovation, most companies today are still scared to death of it.

This quote is from the flap copy for Rushkoff's new book, Get Back In The Box. Those of you who know the clients I work for already know that I face the crippling fear of true innovation on a daily basis, at an institutional level... and cannot wait for this book to come out.

R.I.P. Bob Moog

Musical inventor and luminary Bob Moog died yesterday. Music Thing has the details I would have only retyped here.

But let me refer you to the recent Moog documentary. My favorite scene shows us a man who saw little fundamental difference between the circuits in a machine and the plants in his garden; his view of the world imparts the wisdom with which he invented and inspired so many musical innovations.

I think I'm going to watch the documentary again tonight, then make a donation to the Bob Moog Foundation.

Pimp my hybrid.

A California man spent about $3K pimping his Prius, adding extra batteries that recharge via plug in a wall outlet. Now he could get up to 250 miles per gallon of gas. It's not cost-efficient just yet, but it is an eye-opener.

Oblique Strategies

I recently rediscovered Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies when they were made available as a Widget for OSX Tiger's Dashboard. These "one hundred worthwhile strategies" are a lot like Zen Buddhism's koans - only with fewer religous overtones. You can get your hands on a hard copy via Eno's online shop, or check out several other digital versions. I've got to admit, I put them to use on some new business I'm working on, and they definitely helped get the (mental) wheels turning. You business types out there might employ Oblique Strategies to arrive at the proverbial Purple Cow that Seth Godin is always talking about. Or you could carry on being unremarkable.

Is Not Magazine

Is Not Magazine would be a magazine if it weren't published as a poster. There's a lot of talk in the persuasion industry about "invented media", and this is a good example. It's a nice, simple idea. I especially like that the site does not duplicate the content, but instead offers information about the editorial staff and the means by which Is Not is produced / published. You get a glimpse at the recipe for this invented media, and you still have a reason to be on the loookout for a poster (next time you're in Melbourne, anyway).

[via Kottke]

The Recombinant

Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do. All of us. Though not all of us know it - yet.

William Gibson romanticizes our recombinant tendencies and cut-and-paste culture in this Wired article.

I've always liked the word recombinant - ever since first learning it during a genetics chapter in grade school science class (a truly remarkable occurrence for Catholic school). I wouldn't apply the term to my creative output for at least another ten years, once I learned to study culture in terms the meme (parallel to the gene in biology). Now it's a challenge to describe my work (and recreation) without using the "r" term, or some synonym of it.