(For Dray & Tim)
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Mickey Hart: How can we record the cosmos?
Grateful Dead fans may remember the lyrics, "Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes." Mickey Hart, a drummer for the Dead, is still thinking about the cosmos, and he recently contacted Smithsonian Under Secretary Richard Kurin to arrange a discussion with distinguished astrophysicist Margaret Geller of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, science historian David DeVorkin and ethnomusicologist Atesh Sonneborn; I also participated. Our question: How might Hart perceive and record the "music" of the universe? Can lightwaves reaching Earth after traveling hundreds of millions of light-years speak to our creative, as well as our scientific, selves? Geller answered yes, and offered ideas for how Hart might translate what we observe into music. She suggested that a musician she knows—a person who also has superb computer skills—could help Hart convert strings of numbers representing star formation, gamma ray bursts, black hole binaries and other astrophysical phenomena into music. In an e-mail, Hart reacted to his Smithsonian visit: "Exciting....As Soupy Sales would say, 'My brains are falling out.'" Such intersections of science and the arts occur frequently at the Smithsonian. At a recent materials science workshop, Julian Raby, the director of our Freer and Sackler Galleries, described the ongoing collaborative research being conducted on ancient Chinese metalwork and ceramics by the Freer and Sackler with Chicago's Field Museum and China's Shaanxi Research Institute for Archaeology. And at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Freer and Sackler conservators have created a lab to treat the museum's collection of bronzes; a U.S. exhibition of some of them is being planned. The Freer and Sackler Galleries have also partnered with our Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) to analyze the paint on sixth-century Buddhist sculptures. Currently Freer and Sackler staff are using radiography to study Japanese writing boxes. Used by aristocrats between 1392 and 1868, these intricately decorated lacquer boxes all stored calligraphy tools, but they vary in construction. Is it because of their function or their date? Radiography may help answer the question.
With the National Museum of Natural History, the Conservation Institute is also helping preserve, in their natural settings, Mongolia's deer stones—3,000-year-old plinths carved with elaborate flying "spirit deer." MCI specialists are also capturing pictorial information about these monuments with 3-D laser scanning. And Conservation Institute director Robert Koestler is helping investigate rapidly growing soil mold that threatens one of the world's great treasures—the Paleolithic cave at Lascaux, France, and its nearly 2,000 animal images painted 16,000 years ago. Science and the arts are unusual partners at most places, but not at the Smithsonian.
(Thanx BillT)
Animal Collective sample Grateful Dead on new single
Animal Collective have confirmed details of a new EP, 'Fall Be Kind' which will be released digitally on November 23.The five track EP will also be available on 12" vinyl and CD from December 14 and is the band's first new material since releasing the highly acclaimed
album 'Merriwether Post Pavilion' in January.
The track "What Would I Want? Sky" features a sample from The Grateful Dead's "Unbroken Chain" - it is the first time the 'Dead have officially licensed a sample to anothert artist.
The 'Fall Be Kind' track list is:
"Graze"
"What Would I Want? Sky"
"Bleed"
"On A Highway"
"I Think I Can"
Download new Carbon/Silicon album
Mick Jones has made the fourth album from Carbon/Silicon available as a free download via the band's website this week (November 14).The band, whom the former Clash man formed with Sigue Sigue Sputnik's Tony James are renowned for publishing their material online for free, and latest album 'The Carbon Bubble'
Download your copy of the album here:
CarbonSiliconInc.com
Tracklisting:
'Fresh Start'
'What's Up Doc?'
'Reach For The Sky'
'The Best Man'
'Unbeliebable Pain'
'Make It Alright'
'PartyWorld'
'Shadow'
'Don't Taser Me Bro!'
'That's As Good As It Gets'
'DisUnited Kingdom'
'Believe Or Leave'
Is there anyone out there with copies of the three previous albums "A.T.O.M", "Western Front" and "The Crackup Suite"? I did have them but cannot find them at present and they have been removed from the band's site. If you can help please get in contact. Thanx
Peter Schmidt: artwork for Eno's 'Before & After Science'
The four watercolours on this page were done by Peter Schmidt were originally printed as lithographs and included in the very first copies of Eno's LP "Before and After Science." Later, they were available for purchase through EG.
They're briefly described in an article in Melody Maker article from January of 1977:
This evening I visited Peter Schmidt (the painter who did the cover for Tiger Mountain and Evening Star, and with whom I published Oblique Strategies).He has just returned from a holiday in Madeira, and we look at the 12 watercolours he made there. The last three of the series are quite exceptionally beautiful - a tiny road winds down the side of an almost vertical mountain whose peak is lost in the clouds.
Peter describes his walk from the top of the mountain, and says it was frightening since there were man-sized rocks fallen on the road. We discuss the idea of fear as an aid to perception. I describe an experience I had in Scotland recently where I climbed a very steep hill at twilight - absentmindedly not paying much attention to where I was going - and came to a halt, breathless and exhausted, on a small plateau near the summit. For the first time I looked to see where I was.
The plateau was covered with dead ferns, which glowed a brilliant fiery orange in the dusk. I was tired enough not to try to reduce the experience to words and concepts, so I just stood open-mouthed for some minutes.
This was an instance of exhaustion as an aid to perception - presumably the conscious mind resigns this continual obsession with classification and the attendant reassurance at times like this, and so the quality of the experience is unfiltered.
Later in the evening we talk about the work of Die Brucke, the group of German painters active between 1905-25, who impressed us all so much in Berlin. I particularly liked Otto Mueller and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff.
Peter posed the question: "What could one do now that would have the sense of daring which those works had?" I reply that I think the answer must lie in doing things that are very quiet, which make no assault, and perhaps do not obviously trade in novelty. Like watercolours. At a time when drama is at a premium, reticence and delicacy communicate best.
Before I leave, we discuss the possibilities of marketing visual objects in the way that records are sold. We both agree that this would drastically alter the nature of contemporary painting, since it would once again put it in touch with demand on the level of a genuine response to the work itself, rather than to its "value" (be that financial or "cultural").
I walk from Peter's in Stockwell to Victoria station. It is a cold, exhilarating night. I am thinking about writing a song called "Man Making Measurements And Dancing." I can't sleep until 4.00 am because I have a flurry of ideas which won't wait their turn. It is most annoying.
See also Eno's appreciation of Peter Schmidt and more on 'Oblique Strategies' here.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Drug clans take control in shanty town where Madrid's politicians fear to tread
Two men are asleep on a filthy mattress under the weak autumn sunshine. Another, in ragged clothes with his skin stained dark by the sun and dirt, lies motionless on the concrete strip surrounding the small church of Santo Domingo. In the dusty, rubbish-filled esplanade in front, dozens of addicts sit among the garbage, shooting up doses of heroin.On the outskirts of Spain's capital city, Madrid, one of Europe's biggest drug supermarkets thrives in a precarious settlement of some 30,000 people strung along an old cattle-herding path, the Cañada Real Galiana.
About 10,000 drug addicts come every day to this stretch of shambolic housing, where lawlessness has grown in a legal void that local politicians have failed to tackle.
Addicts stumble down the Cañada's wide main street, looking for their dose. Others, employed as look-outs and hustlers, call them in past the high metal gates of the compounds owned by the drug clans.
Thickset men sit out on fold-up picnic chairs, watching their business enter the compounds, which – in some cases – are dominated by huge houses built with money from heroin and crack cocaine. The odd police car drives past, but little disturbs the relentless business of buy and sell...
Get sick of saying it, but the answer is so obvious...you might want to listen to this!
Ketamine drug use 'harms memory'
Frequent use of ketamine - a drug which is popular with clubbers - is being linked with memory problems.The University College London team carried out a range of memory and psychological tests on 120 people.
They found frequent users performed poorly on skills such as recalling names, conversations and patterns.
Previous research has suggested the drug may cause kidney and bladder damage. Experts said users should be aware of the risks.
Ketamine - or Special K as it has been dubbed - acts as a stimulant and induces hallucinations.
It has been increasing in popularity, particularly as an alternative to ecstasy among clubbers, as the price has fallen over recent years...
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