definitely interested.

Posts Tagged ‘audio’

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I Can Has Radio Lab

In various on November 20, 2008 at 6:20 pm

On dkg’s advice, I picked out an iAudio 7 for my birthday present (N. had solicited said advice and provided it in a birthday card) and I’m hoping to get all my podcasts onto in advance of my transcontinental flight home so I can listen to Radio Lab and that famous TAL episode about the economy.

That is all I wanted by the way — something for travel, to plug headphones into and wrap myself in on long train trips and bus trips. So far so good: it launched rhythmbox when I plugged it in. Now to sync it …

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Theater. Like, plays. And stuff.

In various on September 18, 2008 at 2:05 pm

My cousin is coming to town and she wants to go to a play. Fair enough: I live in New York City. I ought to be able to hook that up. Only, I don’t go to plays and the people I know who do fall into difficult categories. Either they love Broadway (I don’t) or they are so immersed in theater that they don’t have a good answer. They don’t know what to recommend because they don’t know what to suggest. No one knows how to say “Well, I’ve been wanting to see …” There’s no Good Reads for theater, where I can skim my friends favorites. Which is part of why I can count on one hand the number of staged performances of anything that I’ve seen in the last decade. Actually, that is totally not true. I see more live performing arts than that.

It is too easy to say “gahh, not Broadway” but what I really mean is that I don’t want sparkly musicals. When I was 10 I loved Cats. I also loved Les Miserables. I probably would have loved anything other big bang musicals at that age. It was like the circus, only better. People like what they like and there’s nothing wrong with that (she says with a snicker) but it won’t make me happy to go see Cats today.

Broadway is more complex than that. I saw Angels in America with May and Kiffy. I don’t actually know if it was the Broadway cast but it was a short run in San Francisco. It was great and I’d see it all over again. On Broadway if that is where it was playing.

I loved the Berkeley Rep production of Bright Room Called Day. I do like more than just Kushner, honest. If someone were to stage a production of The terrible but unfinished story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia I would probably faint. I would certainly go. I came across it ten (sneeze. really? yes. ten.) years ago when Jason and I tried to write a play about Cambodia that got as far as Henry Kissenger before we discovered that we weren’t very good collaborators just as our respective lives were intervening to flummox the project anyway. He went on to become a famous playwright. Me, not so much. Pipe Bomb Sonata was excellent, though I never saw it staged, just read it. If I were a more dutiful friend I would have more to say about the rest of his resume but … oh nevermind.

I would have loved to go see Tanque on stage. I don’t actually know why I didn’t. Ganso bought tickets. A whole posse went. We’ll get back to that, later, my inability to just plug in when I know I’d have a good time.

To entertain my cousin I have to look forward, not back. It doesn’t have to be straight theater. Performance art is cool. I’d gladly take Gabriela to see the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea sail down the Hudson, but the flotilla’s nearly mothballed by now. Once upon a time, I went to some spaghetti dinners at PS 122, where I first saw Coco Rosie. They made me weak in the knees. Great Small Works last updated their schedule in 2003, so I’m guessing there are no spaghetti dinners coming up. Everyone else might be over her, but I still think that Laurie Anderson is a genius. Moby Dick was genius. Actually, it wasn’t. It was just good, but I loved it.

On the other hand, family friends took us to see Love, Janis in the West Village whenever it was that it was plastered all over busses and playing in the West Village. It was painful. I might have loved to read her letters home, but seeing them staged all sugar coated was just weird. Also, no one sings like Janis Joplin. Staging a performance based entirely around covers of Janis Joplin is bound to be agonizing. I don’t think better singers or better acting would have improved it. I still think about it a lot. I have it filed away with The Cockettes in my personal history of the San Francisco my mother lived in when she was my age. Except she wasn’t my age yet. She was a lot younger. She’s going to call me up and tell me that actually her life wasn’t nearly as tragic or arty or drug addled as Janis Joplin or Sweet Pam, but I still like to imagine that San Francisco swirling around her. What I’m trying to say is that I got a lot out of Love, Janis, but I would come up with about eight excuses to avoid seeing it again.

Glengary Glen Ross, which we really did see on Broadway, was excellent. But I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have because we saw it on Broadway and I wasn’t in the mood for the neighborhood and the whole sensibility of going out for proper theater. Plus there isn’t anyplace that I’d want to eat anywhere near 42nd Street. It isn’t a scene that works for me. It wasn’t for me, though. It is N’s favorite play and the tickets were his birthday present. So I shouldn’t be whining. Plus, on account of it being his favorite play, we own the DVD and I’ve watched it a hundred times and it isn’t my favorite play so the 101th viewing was just that.

I know that atmosphere matters to me. So does location. I don’t want to be treated like royalty, I don’t want to feel like I’m dressed all wrong or everyone around me is going to drive back to Connecticut later. I’d like to be able to see the stage. I’d rather not be way the hell up town. Brooklyn would be great. Some of these things are contradictory, I realize. There’s as much society at the Soho Rep as anywhere on 42nd Street, but it is a society I feel a lot more comfortable with. Or a little more comfortable with. Walking distance from home trumps everything else. BAM or a smallish downtown theater, is what I’m saying.

Facebook reports that Jason is planning to go see Oh What War, and Tanque has tickets for A Kite Cut Loose in the Middle of the Sky which is damn useful information to have. Jason’s blog is useful, too, he posted about Blasted at the Soho Rep. Only Oh What War is an option for 9/26.

Creative Time has a whole festival in progress coming up. Some talks about art and politics, which isn’t exactly theater but it is something to do. Good luck figuring out when anything is happening, their website is to sexy for a schedule.

Eyebeam (also too avant garde to offer a usable website. Though they do have a decent calendar.) has some interesting work up but they’re art, so their openings are on Thursdays. Lucky for Gabriela, they won’t be hacking Linux onto PDAs until later in October. I’d ditch her for that. I want a mood tracking database on my Treo.

Between the Lines is back at BAM. Let me know if you want to come: Oct 16, Nov 6, Dec 18.

Other places I sometimes go but haven’t in a while, most of which don’t have anything on tap for the 26th:
Galapagos,
Free103point9, Not an Alternative (okay, NaA is different but I can’t take a cousin to Jelly. BAM

Seriously, though: back to theater. Where do you look? Are there plays or other staged performances you’ve been wanting to see? Thinking of seeing?

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Hearing Voices (do this)

In various on August 27, 2008 at 5:28 pm

VOICES OF AMERICA
Aug. 25, 2008 – Nov. 5, 2008

free103point9 is pleased to host, Voices of America, a participatory Internet radio project that reflects on the media spectacle of the 2008 US Presidential Election through the lens of the Voice of America Radio Network, a US government broadcasting service intended for an international audience. The new site and custom application will launch in late August, 2008. Here’s how it will work:

* RECORD up to one minute samples of election coverage on an over-the-air Voice of America station
* UPLOAD and TAG your recordings
* DOWNLOAD from the searchable pool of available recordings
* REMIX the broadcasts and UPLOAD them back to the website
* LISTEN to the recordings and remixes online anytime or to the radio broadcast at the Audacity of Desperation exhibition at the Sea and Space Gallery in Los Angeles on Election Day

Voices of America (VoA) is created by Lee Azzarello and Sarah Kanouse. VoA is happy to be a participant in The UnConvention, a project of Art Through Technical Alternatives, Carleton College, Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies, and the Walker Art Center.

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If I Didn’t

In events, various on June 4, 2008 at 2:27 am

have a meeting to go to (there better be cookies!), I’d be at this on Thursday …

Floating Points 2008 Issue Project Room

This Festival, in its third year, (formerly points in a circle) explores the versatility of ISSUE Project Room’s Innovative house speaker system, designed by Stephan Moore.

In the hands of these diverse performers and sound artist, this fifteen-channel installation of hemisphere loudspeakers radically changes the concert experience for both performer and audience.

Each of the hemispheres radiates sound in all directions, activating the acoustics of this unique concert space. Immersive sonic environments are generated, electronic sounds take on the characteristic intimacy of acoustic instruments, and location is liberated as a musical dimension.

Thursday June 5

title: /body-in-pieces/
performance and installation by tianna kennedy and chad laird

/body-in-pieces/ is a partially pre-recorded, partially improvised performance riffing on two immediately recognizable themes from the horror genre: Bernard Herrmann’s cue to the first murder in Alfred Hitchcock’s /Psycho/ and John Williams Main Title theme from /Jaws/. Both reworked samples reside in popular culture as sonic tropes instantly signifying ‘horror,’ or the anticipation of immanent peril or violence to the body. By isolating, fragmenting, and manipulating these familiar soundtrack elements in space we hope to underscore the process by which sound and mise-en-scene in horror often not only prepare and condition the viewer for violence, but stand-in for or displace the traumatized body itself. /body-in-pieces/ also finds its way through thematically linked material such as Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major (written for a pianist who had lost his left arm in World War I) and motifs from Alice in Wonderland. Additionally, our installation/performance will be set to projections of abstract light sequences culled from 60s Italian Horror films.

Tianna Kennedy is a cellist, sometime-artist, and Brooklyn Program Director for free103point9. Chad Laird teaches art history at FIT and makes zombie movies.

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no Rio Building Fund Appeal

In various on August 13, 2007 at 2:13 pm

It is a scary thing when a bunch of DIY punks start trying to find a million dollars, but here we are, looking for exactly that. Scary like daunting, like an uphill climb, like where on earth are we going to get money like that.

The older I get (yeah, yeah) the more I realize the importance of no Rio not just as an arts space for the likes of me, but as an all ages punk venue. That doesn’t exist in New York City anymore (did it ever? dunno.) — a place were 16 year olds can get together and make music, see shows, be both safe and unsupervised. I think that is immeasurably important and it is a tiny slice of what happens at ABC no Rio.

So I think everyone should join me in supporting the building fund. Read the rest of this entry »

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Art Radio

In various on August 8, 2007 at 5:21 pm

For the first time in a decade, the FCC is opening up an application window to distribute much of the remaining Full Power FM spectrum to non-profit groups, but Free 103 is thinking about applying for a license, which is truly exciting stuff:

In October, the Federal Communications Commission will allow applications for full-power educational radio stations. free103point9 has been working with a few national non-profit groups to see if there is room on the dial in upstate New York for such a station.

We recently got back a preliminary engineering study that shows that there is room for such a station covering almost all of Greene County, and about half of Columbia County, and the very south part of Albany County. The signal reaches very close to Ulster County, especially near I-87 and the Hudson River. The cities of Cairo, Hudson, Catskill and Coxsackie are all well-covered, and the area extends all the way to Chatham and the Taconic Parkway.

That’s all the good news. The bad news is we have very little time, and need to raise a good deal of money quickly to apply for the frequency. To apply, you need to have a full-fledged engineering report done, and you need a broadcast lawyer to fill out the application (the FCC throws out applications if even one line is filled out incorrectly). This costs between $5000 and $8000.

So we are asking you to pledge whatever you can to help bring an art radio station to upstate New York. Anyone pledging money will be in on the first decisions that will shape the station. You want to do a show? No problem. You want to help decide what shows are on, and what direction the station takes, then donate now.

free103point9 will make our new Study Center in Acra, New York the studio for the station, and we want to make sure it is an important voice for local artists of all types, as well as meeting educational, journalistic and musical needs in the community.

Please e-mail Tom Roe at tr @ free103point9.org to make a pledge for whatever amount you can promise. We will only collect on the pledges if we raise enough money to pay for the engineering study and the broadcast lawyer. There’s no guarantee we will get the station just by applying — a church group or a public radio giant could be stiff competition — but we think we have a good chance and the payoff is worth the risk.

We will hold an organizational meeting for anyone interested, this Thursday, Aug. 9, at 7 p.m. at free103point9′s Wave Farm, in the Study Center, for anyone interested in helping organize these efforts. We will stream the meeting on the internet if you cannot attend in person, at www.free103point9.org.

Basically, by Aug. 15 we need to have the money raised, and get the engineers and lawyers working to meet the October deadline.

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a grave injustice wrought upon the english language

In various on May 16, 2007 at 2:07 pm

I recently had the opportunity to meet a famous radio host who happens to grossly overuse the phrase sea change. I hadn’t ever really noticed the trend in his show, but while I was in his office I overheard not one, but two show producers, interviewing potential guests on the phone, ask whether a sea change was afoot.

I thought I knew what the term meant, I even explained it quite confidently to my future mother-in-law (a bit more complex than simply when the tide turns, something about tidal estuaries) but then my upstairs neighbour asked me the same question and insisted that growing up on Puget Sound he’d never heard the term used to actually refer to tidal changes in the sound. We were looking for specifics when we discovered that the Famous Radio Host is wrong, as are so many more.

According to World Wide Words, the phrase comes from The Tempest

Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

And has nothing whatsoever to do with tidal anything. Say what you will about normative linguistics and living languages. I’m jumping ship. I’ve always thought it was self indulgent to ask, over and over, “is this the moment when everything changes? what about now? or now?”

[tags]letters_home, art, audio, learning[/tags]

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Listen Up (for future reference)

In various on May 7, 2007 at 4:13 pm

It is no secret that I’m kind of flummoxed by audio on Brahms. I recently got annoyed enough to send a moderately unhelpful “someonehelpmefixthisplease” query to a list I’m on. I got some response to the tune of “read the Ubuntu forums” which prompted me to try a friendlier list (and to threaten any forum-deflectors with a swift kick to the shins). Maybe it was the threat of violence, maybe it was just that radical techies are good people, but I got some great responses, which I’m filing here for future reference.
Read the rest of this entry »

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AIRtime

In various on December 21, 2006 at 9:44 pm

How much would I love to head to the Wave Farm?

OPEN CALL:

free103point9 AIRtime residency applications due April 1, 2007

Coined by free103point9, “Transmission Arts” is defined as a conceptual umbrella that unites a community of artists and audiences interested in transmission ideas and tools utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum for creative expression. Transmission practices harness, occupy and/or respond to the airwaves that surround us. There is an inherent “liveness” to this work. In a performance-based setting, audience members are newly engaged, becoming
participants rather than passive viewers and listeners. Installation or sculptural transmission works are often dependant on the present, reacting to whatever occupies the surrounding frequencies in a single instance, or changing that information by adding new signals to the spectral environment.

The AIRtime workspace residency program at Wave Farm provides media artists with valuable space, physical and intellectual, to concentrate on new transmission works and conduct important research about the genre using free103point9′s resource library and equipment holdings.

The AIRtime program serves artists by providing space for research and creation with technical support, and audiences through the presentation of works developed during AIRtime in conjunction with free103point9′s exhibition program PETS. Selected artists and projects are invited to install long-term outdoor installations as part of free103point9′s Transmission Sculpture Garden. The
free103point9 Dispatch Series provides distribution for selected projects completed during AIRtime residencies. Artists-in-residence also interact with free103point9 Online Radio, presenting live on-air programming during their stay. free103point9 shares resources regarding preservation and archiving models with our residents. Artists are encouraged to archive recordings and other reproducible media with the free103point9 study collection.

Ten artists (or collectives) are selected from an open application each AIRtime season. Residency durations are flexible based on the schedules of participating artists, but typically last one week. The program is active July – October.
Residents are provided with a stipend of $150. Meals are provided by free103point9 as well as local transportation for supplies. One resident is on-site at a time. Both program directors are available on site during the residencies for technical assistance and critical feedback.

Artists are required to archive completed works related to their residency with the study center research collections. A performance and exhibition program from works made during this residency period will be held at Wave Farm in Oct., 2007.

For a complete list of equipment, resources, and technical support associated with the AIRtime residency program, see:

http://www.free103point9.org/airtime.php

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Noise and Cars and Stuff

In various on November 13, 2006 at 4:48 pm

Meredith brought me a copy of the zine her third graders put out last week. They’ve been taking photos and writing about their neighborhoods in her afterschool program. Diamond likes math, puppies and kittens. Bryant doesn’t like bricks (too hard) and Jayne doesn’t like the cement (it hurts). What stands out, is that over and over, these kids are longing for some peace and quiet, and a patch of dirt someplace to play on. Lenin (yes, Lenin) doesn’t like that there is a lot of noise in his neighborhood, because he can’t sleep at night. Daniel doesn’t like the cars because they make too much noise. “When you want to sleep, you cannot because the car makes too much noise.” Same with Jayne, “I do not like the cars because they make noise.” Analley doesn’t like how cars crush people: “A me no me gusta los carros porque podrían ser peligrosos porque podrían machucar a la gente.”

It reminded me of a story Karen told me a few years ago, about the Recycle-A-Bicycle peace quilt project. The idea was to do a summer program about oil and reuse and recycling and bicycling and tie it all together with a quilt. Later, when I finish moving the RAB site, I’ll link to the quilt itself. They started off, though, with a discussion about peace. What do you think peace is? That kind of thing. Apparently, the kids just took it and ran. She put out the first question, “Okay, so we want to make a peace quilt, here is the peace quilt movement, let’s talk about peace.” and the kids kicked off with:

“Well peace is like when it is quiet.”

“And there aren’t any car alarms.”

“Yeah, and there aren’t people honking all the time.”

“Especially at night, because you can’t sleep when the cars are making noise all night.”

And went on in that vein for a while. They concluded that it would be more peaceful if there were more bicycles because bicycles are more quiet. Less loud. From there, the quilt was an easy sell.

I was thinking about all of these things last night, as I was lying in bed thinking I might never actually sleep again because planes flying low over head were way too loud and I was wondering what I always seem to wonder when the planes fly low and I’m wide awake at 1 am, I was wondering what it would take to make a city like New York livable. What is livable? Quiet nights. Space to run.

I’ve toyed with going to planning school for years, but everyone I meet (and I meet a few) with a planning degree seems visionless. I worry that what city planning teaches you is that going against the grain is hopeless, and I don’t have the energy for that. Not at all. Just in time for my birthday, I’m stumped all over again.

What I do know is that I’m going to unveil a new thread soon, about a few things that are at least tangentially related to this question. And I’m still looking for where it is that I fit.

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sounds like i need to understand

In various on November 6, 2006 at 4:56 pm

I am continually mystified by sound and my laptop. It is one of the small handful of things that doesn’t just work and that drives me somewhat nuts. For the most part I can’t get any sound in Flash. That means I can’t watch YouTube. YouTube is primarily a distraction, I tell myself. I do not need YouTube, I tell myslf. But Arif just posted a piece about organizing videos online and I’d like to watch the KFTC video that he talks about. I’d like to hear the narrative while I watch it. I think that might be a good use of my time.

UPDATE: I forgot that half of what got me started on this is that I recently tried to explain to someone that I don’t get sound out of Flash and I did get sound at that moment. That really flumoxed me. And made me look silly.

I have more interesting audio projects that I thought I’d be working on, but if I don’t fundamentally understand how to control the audio on my laptop, I don’t know how much audio I’m supposed to do.

So that is a project for the coming weeks. I’m going to tackle the sound system and try my very best to understand it. If you already do, I could use some guidance.

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adventures in anarchitecture and atmography

In events, various on November 18, 2005 at 11:44 am

When: Sunday November 20, 2005 4am

Ends: 12pm

Where: free103point9, 97 South 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY (between Bedford and Berry) 2nd Floor

Link: http://free103point9.org

During the ungodly hours of 4am – 12pm Sunday Nov 20 cultural counter-intelligence agents TMP will launch the next phase of their unobjective research in the fields of anarchitecture and atmography.

Street sounds from seven cities (Zurich, Frankfurt, Nantes, Athens, San Francisco, Lima, New York) will be channeled through the free103point9 space in Williamsburg and into the surrounding streets. Read the rest of this entry »

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About Audio

In learning, various on October 20, 2005 at 3:05 pm

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Truth is, I have been trying to figure out how to edit audio on my computer for five years. Maybe more. First I got a cd burner, figuring I’d need a place to store large digital files. I got a discman. I got SoundForge, but it turned out that I didn’t have the right sound card. I don’t understand about sound cards, but it wasn’t going to work. I even interned at a radio station and learned how to edit analog audio, mark with chalk, slice with razor, tape together, transfer to cart. But I can’t figure out how to do it without a whole radio station at my disposal. I’ve drifted since then, but I keep coming back to this project and I want to make it work. I really do.

But I don’t get it, I don’t understand. There are terms that mean nothing to me, and these terms, they seem to be core to my being able to do this.

I have a sony mini disc walkman with a line out. I have recordings of different things and a general idea of how I want to edit and arrange them.

I want the audio on a computer. I also have a tape deck and record player that I want to use to create digital content, but that is a later issue. Except that it isn’t.

Also, I have a little bitty mic thing that I got at radio shack because I couldn’t find the mic that Lex loaned me. I am not sure whether it is capturing very quality sound.

I have the following computers at my disposal:
* a powerbook g4 with osx 10.3 and garage band (gregory suggested this might work)
* an unreliable xp dell that has audiology on it (unreliable in that Dell support has confirmed that it has a bad motherboard and that is why it can’t be counted on to turn on when you go to turn it on. for now, we just don’t turn it off. i don’t want to get too attached)
* a powerbook g4 with ubuntu — my fantasy was that I could use this machine but after spending about five minutes on the skype forums I have established that skype doesn’t make a build for PPC, I am suddenly wondering whether architecture is going to be an issue

I have no external sound card, nor do I have a way to import audio (I spent some time on the mac today, trying to figure out where to plug the line out into, couldn’t get garage band to hear the audio).

I think that I need these things:
* a better external sound card — the apodio guys seemed to think that I could get “a decent” sound card for < $100, but I have no idea what a decent sound card is. How do I know?
* a better mic — this can wait, or maybe I’ll pick Tianna’s brain about this at some point. I want a better mic for future projects. First I want to get what I have onto the computer.
* software to import audio — what do you use?
* software to edit and manipulate audio — what do you like and use?

I am hoping that you kids can help orientate me. I don’t want to buy anything that will be Mac specific, because I don’t plan to have the mac forever. I know that a few of you have pro tools, I am hoping that you can at least suggest something else.