sound
To carve a volume into the void of darkness
The arbitrariness of the sign
Auditory Hallucinations from Offworld Megafarms
Most important of all are the pauses
Japanese music is above all a music of reticence, of atmosphere. When recorded, or amplified by a loudspeaker, the greater part of its charm is lost. In conversation, too, we prefer the soft voice, the understatement. Most important of all are the pauses. Yet the phonograph and radio render these moments of silence utterly lifeless. And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines.
The distance of a whisper.
Silence
A Book by John CageSonic architecture
An Article by Daisy AliotoBrian Eno is well-represented in iOS. His other apps like Bloom, Trope and Air invite listeners to touch the screen to make their own composition. Reflection ($30.99) is different, there is no interaction for the listener. The interface has three buttons: a pause button, a sleep timer, and AirPlay. Reflection produces endless permutations of Eno’s 2017 album, an hour and five minute long title track.
“Just calling it an app is akin to saying Falling Water is just a building,” writes one app store reviewer. “I would not call this an app,” agrees another, “Between the music and visuals it’s more like sonic architecture.” The visuals consist of slowly morphing rectangles that only seem to change in the split second you look away from the screen.
drawing.garden
A Website by Ben MorenGardening, but with emojis and less time.
tree.fm
A WebsiteTune Into Forests From Around The World. Escape, Relax & Preserve.
An audio professional's take on vinyl
An ArticleThe analog-digital debate in audio is a longstanding one, and while it is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, I thought I might be able to offer some background as a longtime audio professional and musician. Recordings are a beautiful mix of technical and aesthetic concerns, and this post will attempt to tease out how to navigate these two framings of music recording, especially with regard to the often-oversimplified distinction between analog and digital recordings.
A Library Demand List
A Website by Robin SloanThis visualization takes the current New York Times Best Sellers list for combined print and e-book fiction and scales each title according to the demand for its e-book edition at a collection of U.S. public libraries, selected for their size and geographic diversity.
Makespace.fun
An ApplicationIn today’s software, live video feeds are stuck inside static rectangles that can’t go anywhere. MakeSpace flips all that on its head. Your cursor is your live face, and you can roam free, controlling who and what you want to be close to.
Picking locks with audio technology
An ArticleThe series of audible, metallic clicks made as a key penetrates a lock can now be deciphered by signal processing software to reveal the precise shape of the sequence of ridges on the key's shaft. Knowing this, a working copy of it can then be 3D printed.
A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics
Listings and jottings
Most likely to succeed in defining Japanese aesthetics is a net of associations composed of listings or jottings, connected intuitively, that fills in a background and renders the subject visible.
Process vs. product
...more concerned with process than with product, with the actual construction of a self than with self-expression.
We have been given a standard
We have been given a standard to use. It is there, handy daily: things as they are, or Nature itself. This makes good sense, the only sense really—Nature should be our model.
Merely ornate
There is nothing merely ornate about nature: every branch, twig, or leaf counts.
No words to describe
If there is no term for something, it might be thought that the commodity is of small importance. But it is just as likely that this something is of such importance that it is taken for granted, and thus any conveniences, like words, for discussing it are unnecessary.
Mimesis
Realism played small part in the realities of life as experienced by the traditional Japanese artist. The expectations of the artist's cultivated sensibilities did not demand mimesis. Rather, indication, suggestion, simplicity took the place of any fidelity to outward appearance.
Cherry blossoms
Cherry blossoms are to be preferred not when they are at their fullest but afterward, when the air is thick with their falling petals and with the unavoidable reminder that they too have had their day and must rightly perish.
Immortality, in that it is considered at all, is to be found through nature's way. The form is kept though the contents evaporate.
Wabi-sabi
Sabi is an aesthetic term, rooted in a given concern. It is concerned with chronology, with time and its effects, with product.
Wabi is a more philosophical concept, a quality not attached merely to a given object. It is concerned with manner, with process, with direction.
How painful life here would be
A mountain village
Where there is not even hope
Of a visitor:
If not for the loneliness,
How painful life here would be.— Saigyo (Donald Keene translation)