Hi,
So how was your week? Mine managed to keep me entertained.
My favourite quote this week came from an interview between Wired and Derek Sivers (the ex owner of CD-Baby).
Wired asked him the question: “What is the most broken aspect of the music business?”
Sivers answer? “The disconnect between the music, as a final product, and the musician, as a person going through an ongoing creative process.
There are plenty of millionaires who would pay millions to hang a Van Gogh painting on the wall, but hardly one that would have ever had the crazy nut over for dinner. I feel like the big companies are like that with musicians. They’ll say, “We love music! It’s all about the music!” — but if a musician shows up at the door, they call security. ”
Absolutely priceless. Well I think so.
The interview is at http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/cd-babys-derek.html
Derek’s Blog is at http://sivers.org/blog
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This is my favourite thing for the whole week though. My views on copyright are pretty well known but this is just a glorius hack of a bad law.
Here is the background.
If you want to register a song at GEMA (RIAA, ASCAP of Germany) you have to fill in a form for each sample you use, even the tiniest bit (No fair use provisions over there). On 12 Sept 08, German Avantgarde musician Johannes Kreidler will -as a live performance event-register a short musical work that contains 70,200 quotations with GEMA using 70,200 forms.
The legal specialist in the video says that usage must be licensed even if the fragment is too small to be identified. That’s like saying that, if I print out some Escher images and recycle them into a new sheet of paper, then I need a license to exhibit that sheet of paper. I really really really hope some one challenges GEMA to prove unlicensed usage – I so want to see them attribute one single waveform cycle to the original song. As one blogger wrote a “bureaucratic comedy” of monster proportions.
http://www.kreidler-net.de/productplacements-e.html
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Let’s do BLAME.
Kalene C really deserves it for this contribution.
“I am not sure if this was spotted by your crop- circle detection. It is from 2004 perhaps your security filter was set a little too high for this
http://www.circlemakers.org/hellokitty.html ”
and then followed up with this one
“Hi
I found something that truly made me feel inadequate as a crafter.
http://www.ramenramenramen.net/2008/08/02/knitting-with-ramen/
I can’t even knit with my fingers with very fat yarn that i spun myself, So unfair! So upsetting!
Kalene ”
And Jools found this
“A couple from Bosnia & Herzegovina turned a Volkswagen Beetle, into a wooden sculpture. Incredible work, and it even runs. ”
Love, Jools
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM1Et_DvEYc”
but her highlight was
“Oh yes, someone having way too much fun. MMI alert. San Fransico Tourism apparently. I’d go there.
Love, Jools
http://current.com/items/89204971_death_star_over_san_francisco ”
Bloody typical, Melbourne gets Fashion Week and San Francisco get Star Wars ships.
What do you mean it’s fake?
I saw it on YouTube. they never fib. Do They?
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Speaking of not real, check out Emily. Jools also spotted this one and talk about mind blowing.
To quote the Times article.
“She is considered to be one of the first animations to have leapt a long-standing barrier known as ‘uncanny valley’ – which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.
Researchers at a Californian company which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a ‘control system’. ”
Read the article and check out the video. Damn my reality just got even more confused.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4557935.ece
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/copyright-monke.html
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Given my rant about the turkey that was the last Star Wars movie, Craig H sent in this
“Thatch,
Star Wars in ANSCI. Bought to you by Star Wars fans with way too much time on their hands (is there any other type of Star Wars fan?)
From Start|Run in Windows type this address and enter:
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
Regards, Craig”
Gotta say, it’s a better story than “The Birth of Asthma Man”. Does this class as CGI (Computer Generated Imagery)?
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A yummy new edition of Edge is out.
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge255.html
Clay Shirky in one article pursuing his ideas on “social software” entitled “GIN, TELEVISION, AND COGNITIVE SURPLUS”. Shirky is on of those people who drive you crazy for about a week after you read his stuff and then you have this “Aha” moment read some more and then repeat the process. Good stuff
Also in this issue, John Pareles’ (one of my favourite music journalists) NYT article on David Byrne and Brian Eno’ new collaboration, “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”. Their followup album to 1981’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”. 27 years. talk about “the difficult second album”. Must be a record {sorry}.
By the way NPR has a podcast at http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510019 which has some of the music. It really sounds even better than Ghosts.
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It’s the “Duggup was a lot of fun this week” bit. Jools covered Regina Spektor and Concert TV. I was really taken with “king tebbutt & whistler” and “Moving Hearts”. RTE had some live concert audio of them and it was wonderful. Head over to http://duggup.com.au/
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Flash Game Dept: Impediments to Productivity is a the name at the top and it’s Monday so lets bring capitalism to it’s knees (unless you happen to be one of my clients in which case this one is blocked at the firewall.. Just kidding).
By now you will have worked out that I am a fan of science and I find it depressing when all the shows on the tele always have the technician came out yelling “the experiment was a failure” when quite obviously it was a success because you they have just proved that one part of their hypothesis is provably wrong. BUT the rest of it is untested. Failure can be a good thing. “Fantastic Contraption” this weeks Flash game will allow you to prove that for yourself.
This games goal is really quite simple: Don’t go crazy, no wait that’s not it. try this one. Assemble your contraption in the work area (the light blue box) and propel the pink wheel into the pink box. You get a small selection of components – wheels, a water-drive rod, and sticks. Using these bits you pretend you have somehow acquired MacGyver’s genes assemble them into some brilliant contraption, solve the puzzle, soak up the crowds adulation and then move onto the next level and do it again!
If you register it allows you to create and save levels, and you’re given given a url that links directly to your creation so you can frustrate your friends. Unfortunately, playing other user’s saved games requires a $10 registration fee, but you’ll have plenty of fun playing the free levels.
Trust Me. http://fantasticcontraption.com/ (thanks to those of you who sent this one along)
Well that’s enough for this week. Hopefully there will be a more reliable publishing schedule in the weeks to come. Have a good one.
thatch
{Currently listening to Oh Laura and Dragonforce (which is even more brain damaging than last weeks combination) }
{Currently reading: Still on The True Game series by Sherri S Tepper }
{Quick Status Check: Still writing documentation and it’s still absolute Hell}
{Crop Circle Status: Total for August so far is up to 16 and the Oliver’s Castle one is a ripper.
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/2008.html }