LonelyStreets.com
News from Apple
There was an interesting article posted to Apple’s front page today - basically an interview with Paul Van Dyk focused on his use of MacBooks and Logic in live performance. Worth checking out if you’re interested in any of those things (personally I’ve been a fan of Van Dyk since I first picked up electronic music in the late 90’s).
In other cool Apple news, you can now rent movies from iTunes! $4 gets you a new release, $3 for old titles. You pay up, the movie downloads in its entirety, and then you get a month to watch it (but after you start, you have to finish watching it within 24 hours). I’ll be interested to try this out - I’ve gotten a little tired of NetFlix’s online catalog only containing indy films and B-movies. That’s convenience! Now if only it were cheaper…
And a couple random trends I’ve noticed to the point where I shall now make a prediction:
- 80’s style synth-pop is coming back and will start to hit the mainstream in the next couple of years. This is sad because, as a general rule, I find this style of music extremely boring.
- Leggings as pants are back. This is horrible, but true. Tights under a skirt have been popular for a couple years now, but now the skirts are disappearing, leaving just unattractive leggings (often, but not always, capris). Let’s hope this doesn’t last.
January 19th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CoolHunting, Music and Movies | No Comments »
Gondry Videos
In Golan Levin’s Audio Visual Systems course yesterday I was introduced to the music videos of Michael Gondry, a well-known music video director. Specifically, we watched two classics: Chemical Brothers’ Star Guitar and Daft Punk’s Around The World. I was blown away! The detail with which each of these visualizes the music is stunning. If you haven’t seen these before check them out NOW!
Around The World Vid on MTV.com (they show an ad but the quality is better than YouTube).
January 17th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | No Comments »
Start Again
The first two days of classes are done and things are looking good! Our studio project this semester will be a joint project for Motorola and Microsoft, and though we haven’t yet received the actual project brief, it looks to be something to do with learning using contextually aware mobile devices - pretty cool. Seminar is being taught by Jodi Forlizzi, who has a joint appointment between HCI and design, so it looks like our readings will be much more centered on the nitty-gritty of interaction design and less on the broader conceptual issues surrounding Design. Tomorrow we’ll be getting a visit from the legendary Dan Saffer, an alum of the program, and probably its most vocal proponent (almost all of us read his blog from his time here before we chose the program). I’m really quite looking forward to finally meeting him in person. In Golan Levin’s Audio Visual Systems and Machines we began looking at examples of interesting and diverse visualizations of music - we basically spent the entire three hour class watching cool movies (including a little porn - pretty funny). Here’s a short sampling of what we looked at:
- Autechre’s Granz Graf Video - This entire thing was animated by hand! (i.e., it’s not algorithmically generated!)
- Marcus Coates’ Dawn Chorus - This is cool - the artist slowed down the sound of birds until they were in the human vocal range, had people sing them, then sped up the videos of the people to the speed of a bird. Crazy!
- Phil Worthington’s Shadow Monsters - This is cool too - sensors recognize the shapes of people’s hands and a projector adds everything else.
- Reactable - One of the coolest instruments I’ve ever seen - Bjork apparently now uses this on tour.
- Sesame Street Casino - Just damn funny! (warning - lots of cursing)
- Norman Mclaren’s “Dots” - All the sound in this was made by hand painting on the “optical sound strip” used in early film reels - this is basically pre-synthesizer sound synthesis, wild!
- Pablo Valbuena’s “Augmented Sculpture” - All of the lighting on the sculpture is coming from a projector located on the opposite side of the room, prety wild.
Though Golan will not be teaching Processing or Max/MSP as I’d hoped, it looks like it will be a really interesting exploration of the connection between sound and image. This is particularly good for me, as I am more and more thinking that my thesis project will be an exploration of how we can create better graphic user interfaces for software synthesizers and digital signal processing effects (most of which are still built to look like the hardware they emulate - hardly an effective use of the computer). Dick Buchanan’s course Design, Management and Organizational Change also looks exciting - we’ll be exploring the relationship between organizations (which pervade modern life) and design. All in all it’s going to be an absolutely crazy semester, but a lot of fun too, I think.
January 15th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CMU, Music and Movies | No Comments »
New Track
I spent what little time I could find in the past few days having a blast with my new music software - the Ableton Live Suite. And I do believe I just made my most dance floor friendly track ever. I mean, this track is killer! I am so damn happy with this cut - I couldn’t stop dancing to it while I was mastering it! This one’s going platinum (or at least it would if I ever sent my stuff to record labels - if any record label execs out there are reading this feel free to call me, I’m not taken!). Anyway download this now:
And since I got called out (Yikes! That’s never happened before - people actually read this thing?!) I should add to my last post that the guy who introduced me to Tycho was Bo - a great designer with kick-ass musical taste who was in my Design Computing course. :))
January 13th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | No Comments »
Great Music
While pulling an all-nighter in the studio last semester I was introduced to the music of Tycho by a Belgian undergrad who was hanging out in our vicinity to get Flash help from one of my groupmates. Tycho’s music is incredibly beautiful electronica of the decidedly ‘blissed-out’ variety, and it turns out he’s also an incredible graphic designer (under the name ISO50, check out the About section of his site to read some great thoughts on Design). Anyway, I discovered a wonderful live set of his available free online go download this now!
Also, BPM magazine partnered up with Scion this last week to offer a set of three hour-long or so packs of music downloads. Pick them up free by going here and answering the silly questions (depending on your answers you’ll be offered one of the three downloads - download it, then answer differently to get the other mixes).
Cheers everyone!
January 13th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | 2 Comments »
So Long Free Time
Only two days of break left! It’s sad, but given that the break I just had was longer than my entire year’s vacation last year, I suppose I shouldn’t complain - it’s amazing how easily I’ve slipped back into the life of a student. It really is an easy life.
I got the Ableton Live 7 Suite, and have been banging around trying to start some new tunes (mostly just having fun with the built in synths and sampler though). I’ve also been working on a portfolio, as I’ll be applying to internships next month at Confluence, the design school’s annual recruiting event - which is attended by all the cool companies (Google here I come…).
Have I talked before about how much I love Google? I mean, it’s like these guys just sit around all day trying to invent new ways to make everyone’s lives easier for FREE. They’re positively the only company I know that provides all of their products free to consumers - they make all their dimes off other companies. AND they refused to comply with the administrations attempts to violate our civil liberties. That’s cool.
I’m really excited about starting classes again though - I just can’t wait to see what kind of awesome projects I’ll be a part of. That, I think, is proof positive that I’m in the right place. I loved going to econ class as an undergrad and hearing lectures, but I’ve never before looked forward to doing homework. I think it’s going to be a good spring.
January 11th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CMU, Music and Movies | No Comments »
Long Time No Blog
Well, it’s certainly been a long time since I’ve written anything here. The semester ended, winter break is now more than half-way over, and I’m finally going to put up some more stuff. Wish I could say I was taking a NOSO, but the truth is I just haven’t been blogging.
Break has been great - got to see family in Chicago and St. Paul, have been using my free time to work extra hours at my job with the CMU Office of Campus Design (I’m trying to save up enough to purchase the Ableton Live 7 Suite), and have finally gotten to work on a little music.
The fall semester ended on a less than perfect note, with one of my group projects more or less falling apart, but such is life (and life with people). I’ve experienced similar things in the working world as well as the complete opposite (both working and in school). On a brighter note, my final paper for Richard Buchanan went over very well - “One of the best papers in Design theory that I have seen” Dick said, and nothing could have made me happier. Now I just need to work at translating my thinking into more effective and powerful designs (for anyone who is interested, you’re welcome to check out my paper Systems of Thought and Relevance in Design). My group in Shelly Evanson’s Basic Interaction course managed to pull everything off beautifully - we were in fact the only group to show up to the final crit with a fully functioning prototype. If you’re interested, you can see the video sketch we put together and the online prototype at one of my group-mate’s website (this group mate - Lee Byron - is an absolute wunderkid, poke around the rest of his blog to see other great stuff he’s worked on/done).
And for music - please take a listen to these two new tracks and let me know what you think. Both are things I tinkered with over the course of the semester in my (relatively scarce) free time.
January 4th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CMU, Design Thinking, Music and Movies, Seminar I | No Comments »
The End is Near…
Semester one is almost over. We had our last class yesterday, and now it’s all about finishing up projects. I’m currently in three groups working on three separate projects, and it’s nonstop work for the next week to see them all through to fruition, but I feel good about it. After that I’ll be able to go back and post a number of things I simply haven’t had the time to put up here.
Looking back on this semester, I feel good. I didn’t learn many of the things that I thought I would when I came here (mad software skills, for instance), but I’ve had my mind opened up like I never imagined possible, and I feel that I can stand up and say “I am a designer.” It feels good. I’m already looking forward to next semester, when I’ll be taking some really cool sounding classes of my own choosing, including one on generative sound and visualization taught by Golan Levin (an artist who is currently making some of the coolest stuff I’ve ever seen), and a course in ‘Mapping and Diagramming’ taught by Karen Moyer, in which I hope to continue improving my visual skills.
And, since I’m not offering up any of my own work today, check out the following link - this is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time, I just wish I knew how he did it: http://tinyurl.com/2j3nrv
Also, I just have to say, for anyone interested in electronic music, go download Daft Punk’s new Alive 2007 album, which was recorded live on their North American tour this past year. It is absolutely incredible - I’ve been listening to it nonstop for a week, which is a really long time for me. Get it on iTunes for the extra track (it’s a really good one). They basically remix all of their songs from the past decade into eachother on the flay, and it sounds incredible.
December 7th, 2007
Posted by Paul in CMU, Music and Movies, Photography | 2 Comments »
Podcasting Starts Now
I recently began DJing with Ableton Live, the music sequencing software I like, and realized that it is perfect for putting together beautiful DJ mixes. So, I’ve decided to start podcasting a DJ mix. I hope to do this weekly, but we’ll see how much time I have. For now I’m only promising ’semi-weekly’ (whatever that means). Anyway, here’s the first installment:
Friday Night DJ Set (sorry I’ve taken this link down).
And the tracklist:
Fort Knox Five - Blowing Up The Spot
DJ Sneak - Sneak’s a Freak
Bob Sinclair - World Hold On (David Guetta and Joachim Garrard Remix)
Dee - She’s Expensive (Kid Loco’s Pocket Full of Green Disco Mix)
Karmatronic - Sweetest Girl (Wyklef Jean Club Mix)
Robert Babicz - Weekend
The Green Men - Blink (Main Mix)
Zoot Woman - Gem
Silver City - Shiver (Ewan Pearson Remix)
The Sad Piano - Justin Martin
Flykkiller - Flykkiller
Alex Metric - Whatshewants
Dave Spoon - Bad Girl (At Night)(Club Mix)
Andy Caldwell - Warrior (Andy Caldwell’s Electric Re-Dub)
Also, in order to allow folk to download the podcast the way they would any other, I’ve switched my RSS feed to FeedBurner. You can get the feed here. If I’ve screwed anything up, please let me know - RSS is not one of my strong points. To have iTunes download my podcasts whenever I put them out, go the the “Advanced” menu in iTunes and select “Subscribe to Podcast…” and put the following (minus the quotations) in the window that pops up: “http://feeds.feedburner.com/lonelystreetscom” Enjoy the mix!
October 10th, 2007
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | 1 Comment »
Last Week’s Projects
Just because I love to share, and because I’m enjoying cataloging my own design development, Here are the three projects that made last week so work-heavy.
First, and most importantly, my self portrait poster. This poster was printed at 44″ wide by 33″ tall, so you won’t be able to see it all that well in this pdf, but please take a look anyway. It’s self-explanatory for the most part, you just have to examine it for a little while. I spent a couple weeks developing this, and I’m quite fond of the results.
And next up, my ambient device. The file here is a Flash slide show I showed while giving a spoken presentation (which I don’t have the energy to type up here). Suffice it to say that This is an ambient device to help folk remember when to take their medication. Just click to move through the slides - this requires Flash Player 9 or higher.
And finally, my new MIDI controller prototype. I would have liked to actually build this prototype physically, but it was made for the Design Computing class, so Flash it was. The idea here is that current MIDI controllers have lots of different controls (faders, wheels, knobs, etc.), but we can generally only adjust one with each hand at once. It seems to me that it might be helpful to have a controller that combines a number of different interactions, allowing for independent adjustment of separate MIDI parameters simultaneously with a single hand. This control thus combines a fader, a knob, and a velocity sensitive pad-control in a single device - I know I’d use it.
September 22nd, 2007
Posted by Paul in CMU, Flash, Music and Movies, Typography | No Comments »