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.
Ruins, Rub-outs, and Trash
Tracing paper into palimpsest
Kahn's preferred medium was charcoal. He liked to use the side of his hand to rub out the thing he was drawing in order to draw it over, and over again.
Turning the tracing paper into a palimpsest; where some trace of each previous marking is still there, only blurred out and faded back by Kahn's rubbings-out and re-renderings, so that in what he made there is also the record of how it was made.
Charcoal on trash collected over time acting as ersatz animated film recording how Kahn's ideas developed.
So insufficiently palimpsestic
I worry that unlike Kahn's process and tools, the processes and tools we use are aimed at helping us satisfy the demand for moving fast and breaking things, not to be good, or to better ensure the doing of good work.
My son Gerrit told me about a YouTube video from a conference where the presenter asked for a show of hands from video game developers in the audience who could produce or successfully compile their own code from the previous quarter. Or from the previous year. Or from two years ago. And by that time the point had been made: nobody had their hand in the air.
Good for the next man
Lou Kahn said that a house is only good if it's good for "the next man."
He knew that the likelihood of its spaces and places continuing to be loved after "the first man" has come and gone requires the kinds of attention to detail you'd have to be paying if the next man and the next-next man were embraced as stakeholders from the onset.