I'm just GIVIN' IT AWAY

I have embarked on a great new shift in my work: all of my music is now downloadable for free.

Just go here: http://www.kether.com/audio/

and get it for yourself. I've even included simple CD covers for jewel cases.

Since my Great Computer Failure in May, I have become much less enamoured of digital video - I lost all of the edit files - 5 years work down the tubes. I have the finished product on DV tape, but my DV camera/deck up and died about a year ago. So: computer back up is uncertain, the files are too big for even a DVD (miniDV compression is 13gigs per hour) - WHY THE FUCK should I bother? Who am I making this for? I also lost a bunch of audio, which I had to re-digitised from Cassette and then denoise and re-process. I lucked out on the audio, but only just.

So, as a response to my own internal questioning, I have put ALL of my music up on the web, for FREE DOWNLOAD.

My ideas on this are fairly complex, as I see it not as an act (as a friend of mine put it, in a jesting manner) of desperation because no one listens to me anyway - but more as a *professional and concerted response* to what it means to be an electronic musician in a contemporary context and faced with the realities of file sharing and a globalised media/entertainment industry.

The only thing the rich sharks in the penthouse can't completely eat is live performance, and the poor rats in the basement will always steal anything that isn't nailed down. Hence: anything that is (by its nature) computational will (also by its nature) want to be free. Therefore: all fixed digital assets shall be given away for free. The only thing that matters is performance - that evanescent thing of being with another human who is making something for you at that moment.

It requires time to experience music and it requires time to provide that experience. Employers don't pay you for your work - they pay you for the results of your work, which comes at the expense of your time. How Much Is Your Time Worth? That is how much you get paid.

This puts music back where it began, where it existed first as an object of performance.

And as file sharing becomes increasingly ubiquitous in terms of video, video itself is brought into an entirely new context, one that is largely identical with music - where one doesn't make a "video" that is built and distributed like a "movie", but more that "video" is a performance situation of experience - and any records of such like shall be released for free as digital assets.

We all know about people like Nam June Paik. But how many people have even SEEN one of his videos? And try to buy one - HA! Five figured dollar amounts. I think that is ridiculous. There are any number of "fine art" film makers whose work is completely unviewable due to the exigencies of the gallery/museum industrial complex. Hollis Frampton - go down to even the Finest Video Shop you know of and see if they have anything by Hollis Frampton. Heck - until Brakhage's incredible art finally killed his ass and they came out with the Criterion Edition DVD of his collected works, his stuff was only viewable by renting a film at a (only *somewhat* less than an extortionate) price from Cannon Films here in SF, or actually go down to Cannon and pay major $ for a private viewing there. It's ABSURD.

If it's so all fired important as culture and for people to see the stuff, *then give the examples away for free.* If viewing a work occupies such a high point in culture to the point where viewing it is a moral imperative, then GIVE IT AWAY.

From my calculation, the only thing that is TRULY rare and precious is a performance with all the risks and terrors associatedwith it - and with video, an even rarer moment yet... THAT MOMENT is something that cannot be given away - that is something that requires an attentive and present audient to work with. A dream of mine for a while was to improvise video with a musician (say, Robert Fripp, doing his soundscapes, f'rintance) in a series of shows. Each show would be recorded DIRECTLY (from the audio and video mixers to a recorder) and eventually released as free DV assets.

The expense would be in attending a show...

Then I realised that I could do the music myself! (I'm not even a scintilla the guitarist that Fripp is, but I'm one helluva better synth programmer and sound designer) I'm still open to the idea of working with others, but I don't feel a great necessity in doing so. Digital media is driven by Moore's Law and is becoming increasingly compact and generating said media increasingly inexpensive and simple. Music, due to its lower bandwidth constraints, is leading the way.

In China, the only way musicians make a living is by performing because 90% of the CDs for sale are pirated. For some better and a lot worse, China is the future, in more ways than one. While the piracy is deplorable, I think the adherence to antiquated business models is pathetic.

So: All My Music is now free. This doesn't mean it will always be free, or that everything I do will always be free, but what I have is now yours.

Soon: All my video will be free.

Eventually: it will all be public domain...

HW

I'm Baaaaack!

Dear Friends-

A thousand apologies for being away. Shortly after my lastpost, I went into rehearsal mode for a show in the LA Area.

The day before the performance my laptop died and was not covered by the warranty. $3000 down the drain... Two weeks later, my desktop machine had a complete motherboard failure. that's another few grand out the window. In the process of these two tragedies, I lost a lot of work. As I can't afford to throw $5000 at computers, I went to a local computer builder, TopTek, and had then build me a VERY nice Intel box.

How could I do this? Go to the Wintel side of things? Easy: This machine outperforms ANY macintosh at its price point: $910.

The best machine I can get for that is a MacMini, which is slower and doesn't have anywhere near the feature set that this has

MacMini:

1.42 gHz G4 PPC
• 1GB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 80GB Ultra ATA drive
• 4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• 56K v.92 Modem
• Mac OS X - U.S. English
$924.00

My Wintel Box

3.2gHz P4 processor
1 gig DDR 533 SDRAM
120 gig SATA drive
128 meg ATI PCI-X video card
multichannel audio out
CDRW/DVDROM
DVD+/-RW
USB2
Firewire
$909.42


The downsides:

1. It runs Windows. Which is, without any doubt or hestitation in my mind the crappiest Operating System EVER. I console myself as best as possible thinking: when you're inside an Application, the OS doesn't really matter that much...

2. It's FREAKING HUGE. It's in a full size 6 slot tower. It's black and silver, so it's not really ungly, but it's not really beautiful, either...

3. it sounds like a B17 at take off. I'll have to get some better fans for it, or get longer cables and put it in the garage...

Does this mean I am going to STAY in the Wintel world?

No. What it does mean is that I am truly an OS agnostic. In 2 years the Macintel machines will arrive. I will get one of those, and then this box will be turned into a Linux experiment...

SO: in short, I am FINALLY back on something resembling even keel. May was a truly difficult month for me. I was very depressed for quite a while. But now I feel rejuvenated.

I have much to discuss. Note: I may be moving this blog over to BLOGSPOT.COM - just to simplify my life a bit, and hopefully find a larger audience for SPARK.

best,

HW

WOW - time flies...

I've been nutty busy again - working at Orange part time has eaten a lot of my time up for other more creative pursuits.

I played a short set at the Now Nothing Gallery. The films we played to were great. The group I played with wasn't. Individually, these were all good fine people and capable musicians. But it quickly degraded into a blowing noise mess - formless audio chunder. I couldn't hear myself, and I was directly in front of my monitor, which was cranked to 11. If I couldn't hear me, then that meant others couldn't hear me either. And given the abandon with which it was all played, I don't think active listening and musical communication was high on the agenda.

This left me very angry - I felt I had wasted a perfectly good evening.

However: I have two great things that came of this:

1. I now know about the Now Nothing. It's a nice place.

2. I am in contact with a couple of the players and I believe something could come of that.

Other Important Goings on in the World of Warwick:

1. I will be playing at Cal State University at Long Beach on April 29th with the soundCommons orchestra. I will play laptop, and if my lungs are strong enough, duduk.

2. I procured Ableton Live version 4 and, very simply: it TOTALLY FUCKING ROCKS. I've been merrily banging away on the thing, and it has been great fun. It Still Doesn't mix mp3s (BOO HISS!!!), but the MIDI functionality is wonderful.

3. Beth and I are making plans to go to Paris in July. We are excited. I'd like to play a show there...

4. In spite of less than useful practices by a few of the contributors, the next YLEM journal will be out soon. After that we do an audio edition.

So, things are fairly good. I am still deeply depressed about the Human Prospect, but today I have pushed such problems away from my mind for the time being.

I watched the movie "Woodstock". At the end it said something like:


WOODSTOCK GENERATION

19xx - 20xx

R.I.P. it up
Tear it up
And have a great time...


It's that kind of attitude that has been the cause of so much sufffering.

The section of Jimi Hendrix playing the National Anthem to a sea of garbage left behind by half a million hippies was more insightful than I care to think. I really admire Hendrix's work there.

On a positive note, the performance by Crosby Stills and Nash was amazing - you could tell that they were "doing something important" and they knew it too, and they were spot on in their playing. It really nice to see people at the top of their game.

HW

The Future, part 1

I often think of what life will be like in the future, and I look to my relation to the past as an example of what may hold in the future.

The near future of 10 years (very likely much the same)
The not so near future of 20 years (very likely a good bit different)
The future of the next generation of 50 years (very likely very different)

and then larger distances:

100 years (recognisible, but full of things so different, we can hardly imagine)
200 years (a world of people that likely can speak the same language as myself, but who lead lives that are quite different)
500 years (where the ability to speak the same language starts to break down)
1000 years (which might as well be on another planet.)

From here, I look to the future in the in the same way - in ten years things will be much the same, with some added new things. Ten years ago, the Internet really kicked off with Netscape. Now, you are reading this courtesy of that technology.

20 years ago, you would not have been able to do that, unless you were geared into a BBS at some horrifically low baud rate - blogging was not possible, and hyperlinks weren't happening, and P2P wasn't even a dream. 20 years ago, life was a good bit different. Not so much as to be unrecognisible - and certainly not so different that the devices that made the differences weren't present. Also, politically, socially, and economically, things were different, but not that different. The capitalist industrial Centre was beset by the adversary of a failing Soviet Union, but overall, the American Empire was in full swing, and continues to be so to this day. 20 years ago people were enamoured of the latest trend in theory - this "postmodernist" thing. Now, the postmodern (Derrida, Baudrillard, et al) has given way to the hypermodern (Virilio), and that is giving way to the Permanent Contemporary (Warwick and others), as even the notion of Modernity as a point in time is dispensed with.

50 years ago? World War Two had only been over for 10 years - the destruction of that time, from Nanking and Pearl Harbour, to Auschwitz and Hiroshima, it was all reverberant in the immediate cultural memories, as those born after that disaster hadn't yet made cultural artifacts of their memories which would not, obviously, have any specific memory of the horror and holocaust - they were only ten years old. No computers in homes, cars with tailfins and jet ports, virulent anti-communist paranoia, segregated drinking fountains, it was a significantly different world 50 years ago.

100 years ago? There are television shows that show just how incredibley different, and to us in the 21st century, truly difficult, it was to live in an age before radio, television, dishwashing, clothes washers,refrigeration, and the other conveniences that the age of petroleum has afforded us. Women couldn't even vote in the USA. 100 years ago was only 40 years after the Civil War ended chattel slavery. 100 years ago, women wore complex and heavy clothing. Everyone wore hats. Automobiles were rare, slow, smelly, and expensive. The streets reeked of horse manure and urine. There were many common things - language was similar, but the lexicon and accents were slightly different.

500 years ago? People 500 years ago had more in common with people who lived 2000 years ago than they do with us.

I look to the future with the same vision and hope. I hope that we, as a species, will be around in 2000 years. I have my doubts. And that is the problem - there is a good chance that we are headed to extinction. I see several broad scenarios for the Human Prospect:

1. Swift Extinction: through a combination of ecological disasters, biological and nuclear wars, the human species is largely wiped out in short order, and the remaining individuals who do survive the initial horror can't survive or bring offspring to survive the radioactive, polluted, ruined landscape. I don't see this as likely, but it is certainly a strong possibility, especially given the Bayesian mathematics behind it.

2. Not so swift Extinction: Calamities strike. we use up whatever resources are left. We lose access to metals. Humanity slowly erodes back to a neolithic existence. A Not So Swift Extinction could come to an abrupt end by way of a sparse neolithic race on a ruined planet contending with an asteroid strike or supervolcano.

3. Swift Extinction with Issue: Through some incredible breakthrough in genetic science, humans break the genetic code, and are able to easily and quickly manipulate the human genetic code so we can develop ourselves into homo futuris. At the same time, we collectively reduce our population either voluntarily (like everyone getting a CLUE and not having more than one kid) or involuntarily (through various forms of slaughter and / or disease) or a combination of both. In any case, the result could be that within 150 years, homo sapiens will have disappeared, replaced by homo futuris. Homo futuris would then set about setting up the Galaxy with life.

4. Gradual Extinction with Issue: This would be where the species forks: homo sapiens remains, with homo futuris evolving side by side. Very likely, there would be great warfare between the groups that develop homo futuris (scientific secular societies) and those that oppose homo futuris (clueless fundamentalist retards, luddites, and others) on some nutty notion peculiar to whatever bizarre religiousc / ideological dogma du jour they cook up. This conflict would also happen with scenario #3, but in scenario #3, the objections are dispensed with quickly due to failures of society as promulgated under conservative ideologies of greed, warfare, ecological destruction and religious bigotry in the face of massive breakthroughs in genetic engineering.

In this scenario, #4, the calamities are less acute, and the genetic engineering breakthroughs less forthcoming. Therefore, it takes longer for homo futuris to arrive, and would arrive so gradually as to simply assimilate into the end-game human culture, as a new culture based around their own capabilities is developed. This scenario would have homo futuris taking several hundred years, if not a few thousand years, to become the dominant species. This would entail a depopulation of the human numbers through other means in the short term, resulting in fewer people being available for the research, creating even greater delays in the development of homo futuris. Once people get over themselves as a species, and we have the technology to completely master the genome and then develop custom genomes, we can then set about developing intelligent species for specific environments, such as the vacuum of deep space (at one extreme) or for planets that have been made marginally inhabitable. I see it as quite possible that we could evolve various sub-species for survival on a planet like Mars - homo martia?

What would such a "human" be like? A wookie?

Meanwhile, homo sapiens could continue to exist and even be left behind. As homo futuris sets up life throughout the Galaxy, homo sapiens are left to live a more moderated existence on a depleted world. Eventually, they would elect for genetic treatment and their children would be homo futuris. They each would live out their lives as homo sapiens, until the that day when the last one is gone. she would be buried with great respect by her children, who all live to be 1000 years old, have IQs that are off the charts, are innately at peace with themselvesand the universe, and they have heavily enhanced brains with highly interoperative multi-corpus collosia, and biolinks to various machine intelligences, and: they are all incredibly healthy and beautiful. But then, everyone thinks their kids are beautiful, right?

I see scenario #4 as the most positive.

But to get there will take an enormous amount of work, and the deck is stacked against us.

How? Resource depletion due to over-population.

If we don't fix the problem now, it won't get fixed, and we will have sealed the fate of life in this solar system. It takes a lot of power to get out of the gravity well, and to do that we need metal and resources. We need the resources that are presently being pissed away on war to be used for reducing human suffering, and building our gateway to the stars. At the same time, we must use our cultural production systems to educate the planet and get people to stop having kids.

How to do that will be the point of another essay. Word of warning: It might not be nice or pretty.

Some notes on Cage, Minimalism, and :zoviet*france:

What follow are some notes and opinions on some types and aspects of music.

I think that the works of John Cage are pivotal - not necessarily for what they are as sonic events or experiences, but more for what his creative practice did historically.

Cage's challenge was to take the insight of Music Concrete (MC), where all sound is fair game, and translate it into a notational performance context : hence: 4'33", four minutes and 33 seconds of notated rests. This throws the sonic texture out of the instrument and into the present moment of pure sound of the concert hall itself - the material that MC would record as grist for their compositional practice centred on the tape recorder.

Xenakis took this further, and used clusters of notational objects to create sonic densities in time. Both act as an end game of the Western Chromatic Expansion - begun in the 13th century with polyphony, right through the Romantic Chromaticism of the 19th century and the "liberation" of each note according to the strict rules of serialism in the 20th. Cage et al took this to the logical conclusion, and I believe that much, but not all, minimalism, while interesting and valuable, was a failure of nerve.

Minimalism retreated from the challenge of sound itself - they wanted "players" to play music. Minimalism's failure is to not comprehend the full impact of the machines that helped make it come to be. Early minimalist music was often centred around the tape recorder: Terry Riley and Steve Reich both were early and active users of the machine, and using it for looping processes. Both artists went back to instrument playing: Reich with his ensemble, Riley flipping things about with In C. To their credits, both occasionally have some focus on releasing music that contains some looped audio (Reich's City and Riley's re-release of You're No Good).

In this way, I see Glass and Adam's careers as beautiful but not very important side lights to the thrust of musical development that I find most critical. Adams's and Glass's musics are much more conservative than the pioneering efforts of Rley and Reich. I consider Riley and Reich greater composers, even though their output is mostly based around small ensembles, solo performance, or tape composition. And this is why I see ZF as an important historical actor: ZF - an inherently ensemble-based collective - used a combination of the minimalist process of short repeated motifs that are composed of audio clips - very much in line with paleo-Music Concrete practice, while often avoiding the necessity of tape by using various electronic delay systems; all the while using the liberated function of sound from Cage (radio broadcasts, scraped notes, processed instruments, etc.) Blown through a pile of electronic effects, the sound of ZF stands as a bridge between a post-minimalist composition systme and what is happening now with contemporary loop-based software products, such as Ableton Live.

These products, which include but do not need, a "recorder style" interface are conceptually predicated on just the aesthetic juncture described above. What is very interesting is that it provides a compositional practice completely alien from the classical notational tradition - and is much more in line with the practice of Music Concrete. What is quite amusing is that this practice is independent of style: it can be used to make "avant-garde" music (viz: my CDs K.2, Live) or pop-dance music (viz: The Skeptics - everything@once!)

This shows that this aesthetic, which stands as a direct refutation of Stockhausen, actually has more practical and creative traction. Unique, non-repeating sounds (as dictated by Stockhausen) DO repeat, as long as they are presented in simulation. Something that exists as a representation of a sound, i.e., a recording, can be replayed, again and again.

The last inherently unrepeatable point is that of live improvisation.

Hence, the beauty of my CD, LIVE, where I consciously involuted that process, and used pre-recorded non-original samples and loops from both commercially available CDs (by Robin Storey and others) and from the internet where many sounds can be had for free, and used them in am improvisational and live manner - in fact, I even used material from previous CDs of mine as "grist" for the performance / improvisation mill.

Now: the goal is to do this with Video - which feeds directly into principles of Performance Cinema. VJ with brains and purpose. Where narrativity is not abandoned or embraced - where everything exists as data to be used for whatever creative purpose the artist deems necessary.

All of this requires a completely different notion of intellectual property and a much more nuanced sense of copyright. Not boundaries and borders as presently understood - but permeable membranes of practice and use. Given the present political climate, which is teetering on acute fascism, I don't see this happening soon, but technology requires it.

Our tools imply a freedom of information as data - where data can be acquired, processed, and output. It is to what end that this data is used that remains a major and contentious point in contemporary composition practice, and goes quite beyond plunderphonic artists like Oswald and Negativland, but includes them and their necessary art, as well more recent efforts in this direction such as Danger Mouse's "Gray Album".

I think an important point is to avoid simple formalism: it's important to provide meaning, and how we go about acquiring meaning from a piece and how we intend with the development of a work still remains critical and primary to creative practice.

What is also very liberating about this is that it doesn't mean that "players" are excluded - virtuosity on an instrument is a very useful thing: it's one kind of music that can only be had through a dedicated and regular practice. However: unlike the previous umpteen thousands of years - it's no longer the only game in town. I discussed this in terms of hypertypes in an old SPARK column back in 2000.

In conclusion: the music of ZF (and Robin Storey, in particular) is, I believe, an important link and moment in musical history, whose development is similar to my own. I believe that ZF's relative obscurity is a travesty, but not uncommon in the world of music: it took Mendelssohn's PhD to resurrect the music of JS Bach to its rightful place as a linchpin of 17th century European Musical development.

The Gig Is On

After conferring with my associates, the gig I am playing at on the 29th is still on, and it is on the 29th after all.

It is at the New Nothing Gallery, 18 Sherman Street, off Folsom, between 6th and 7th Street, here in SF CA, 94110.

The Show starts at 8 pm. Apparently, I will be playing with these other musicians for only 11 minutes...

Oh well. It'll be fun!

Be there or be painfully square.

On other points of amusement in my life:

I finally finished a project that was years in the making and is now so hopelessly out of date, it's amusing, and - I won't even be keeping it.

Back in 1999 going into 2000, I decided I wanted to make a series of CDs that had one song from each CD in the Warwick Music Archive. Right around the letter "R", I gave up as I decided that it would be wiser to turn the entire collection into a set of MP3s and abandon the CD route. So, I left off at the letter R. And I soon had my entire collection as MP3 files on a hard drive. The CDs had nice little covers and were in nice little jewel cases, and were soon set to moulder in a nice litttle corner of my garage.

A few weeks ago, I came across that box as I was searching for some extra jewel cases. I thought: what a waste of time. A great idea, but a waste of time. And such nice jewel cases....

In moments I was tossing the CDs and covers in the recycle bin and stacking up 34 CD jewel cases. I thought: what a sad waste - it took me a long time to make those CDs - it seems a shame to waste them.

Then: I remembered an old friend of mine, Vicky, was given a new car from her elderly cousin - a fairly new Nissan Maxima, which has a CD player and is the nicest car Vic's ever owned. I can attest to this as I had spent many hours traipsing about Wasington DC with her back inthe 1980s, looking for a place that sells batteries for her ancient Rambler American and was open on a Sunday Morning. The Rambler that didn't have working windshield wipers unless the engine was warm enough to draw vacuum... This clunker, painted in a prematurely sunbeaten shades of copper and streaks of rust, was replaced by a more reliable, if equally nomadic Honda Civic that she made last longer than is normal or reasonable for such a vehicle. The Honda has given way to the Maxima, so now, dearest Victoria has got some stylin' wheels.

And these wheels have a CD player - but she hasn't that many CDs to play...

So I boxed up those 34 CDs in cheaper slimline cases and shipped them off to her. She called me the other day, and told me how happy these CDs have made her. This made me feel good. She also wondered what S - Z sounds like...

And I wondered too! After all: this was as much a conceptual project: determining which song I wanted to listen to from a given record. So often, that would NOT be the most popular song, as such a tune would be too familiar and soon grate on the nerves. Sometimes, that would be an appropriate choice - especially if the rest of the record was pretty weak - but usually not. So there was a different kind of choosing made on these CDs. And I had to get back into that kind of thinking to Finish The Job. I had to Finish The Project I started in December 1999. And I have succeeded. Including what I have already sent her, the collection now totals 55 CDs. The last CD I reserved for :zoviet*france:, as I have so much of their material, and it make a good bookend - iTunes sees :zoviet*france: as the FIRST group listed in alphabetical order in the Library.

So, now she will have way more music than she will know what to do with for a very long time. I will have finished the projectd, and it won't sit in my garage, and that particular obsession can now be laid to rest. Everyone is happy. What's cool about this is she's already considering a shopping list to buy CDs of new music she likes that she has discovered on the CDRs I've sent her. It's all good.

For those who don't know - I'm a total freak that way. I develop these completely obsessive projects and eventually I do them. My art is like that as well. That's why I like to work in Series - it gives a theme to the chaos of creation. I feel so completely adrift and chaotic right now, this was a good centering "feel good" thing to do. That it helps a friend in need is a delicious icing on the cake.

HW

Big things afoot, Cowards Running IMAX

So: I know there are only a handful of people out there reading this. I hope this will change. Soon. There are a number o' things that I am working on with the site. for one thing - I have decided to abandon CD manufacture, and go directly to mp3 downloads. Yes: you will still be able to order CDs. But I will be implementing an mp3 download system that will make CD procurement redundant, as I am sure you can burn a CDR just as easily as I can, and you could save several dollars a CD in doing so.

But - that's a big step and I'll be working on that next month.

This month, I was supposed to be playing a show on the 29th. I got moved to the 27th and the 26th or something like that. I'm somewhat irritated by this. I like firm dates with a purpose.

On other news:

The Xian right has decided to pressure IMAX to not show movies that mention Evolution. And IMAX caved. Fucking idiots - the lot of them. The Xian fundie retards are idiots for not getting with the program and concluding along wit hthe rest of the rational thinking world that evolution is a fact backed up by theory. And IMAX are a bunch of fucking idiots for caving in to the absurd notions of these ignorant right wing freaks.

The only way to stand up to an ignorant bully is to GET OFF YOUR ASS AND STAND UP TO AN IGNORANT BULLY.

Now, I've heard people say "they don't believe in evolution" because "their faith tells them otherwise".

I'm fine with that, because Evolution is a matter of Science and Knowledge, not a matter of Faith or Belief. Therefore, Evolution is open to scrutiny and revision - the ideas in Evolution will change when presented with evidence. Therefore, one doesn't have to "believe" in evolution. One merely accepts it as the contemporary understanding of the behaviour of genetic structures over time as they adapt to the environments in which they find themselves. Presently we have an abstraction called "Natural Selection" which shows how that works. So far, Natural Selection is right on the money, and has been proven in laboratories the world over as the only credible engine for evolution.

In this way, one can choose to "not Believe" in Evolution, and accept the notions of Natural Selection, speciation, etc. as Scientific fact and operant processes in the Terran Genetic Enterprise System we call "life". Or, in addition, one may also choose to "Believe" in Evolution, even though Belief is something completely superfluous to understanding and accepting Evolution. This may seem sophisticated in a sophistic sense, but it's actually not at all - it's really just a method of being clear about things.

As I said - we're dealing with idiots here: the agressive Bible Thumping fear driven bullies in the Xian Right, and the cowardly Money Counting fear driven cowards at the helm of IMAX. Neither of them understand what they are doing, or even the terms of their own discussion.

And people wonder why I despair of the human race.

HW

Not a Happy Camper

The Astronomer Fred Hoyle stated,

“It has been often said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ore gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.” 

He's right.

It is imperative that we make the world a better place, faster.

This is what must be done:

1. Reduce population. Not instantly, but quickly and gradually over a few hundred years. I would recommend a level of 200 million people within 300 years. I believe this can be accomplished by reducing our population by about 4% a year. This is a sustainable decrease that would result in significant reductions in energy and resource requirements. By the time we got to a level of 200 millions, the environment would be vastly cleaner and the population that did remain would be healthier.

2. Reduce energy and resource consumption. Presently we use too much energy. We must begin a steep decline in use, and that means rapid increases in efficiency and net decreases in energy consumption. This must be applied to every aspect of our society - computers must be more efficient, and we should use fewer of them. Cars should be rarer and vastly more efficient. etc. and so on.

3. Develop new methods of creating energy and meeting the technical needs of our civilisation that do not require the level of blanket destruction of resources and habitats that our present system requires.

4. Develop plans for broadening our footprint in the galaxy, so as to avoid extinction through accident (like asteroid strikes, etc.)

This is it. We must fix this on our watch. If you are reading this, this means YOU.

HW

busy crazy

I have had a very busy day that, finally, at 1.30 AM is winding down.

This morning I spent testing parts of Jane Siberry's new site. Last night I edited one of her records for her, and that will be up on her website eventually. I like Jane - she's really nice. Most "singer songwriters" annoy the hell out of me, but Jane's different - I like her - the clarity of her vision, her compassionate attitude, and tweaky sense of humour. She's also been very kind to me, which in this rampant world of unrelenting greed and stupidity, where so often I find myself getting shafted by people who really don't give a rat's ass about much of anything, is a very welcome thing. She's also got a great voice.

If I wrote songs, I would want her to sing them.

So, that was a bunch of fun work with her, and there is likely to be some more.

Then I scampered off to Orange for a few hours of paying effort, and then ran home to await the arrival of Dee and Deborah. I used to work with D & D at Roche Molecular Systems. They were scientists, I was a graphics flunky. Dee met her husband at my wedding - he was my best man, Raul Vera. They now live in Australia, and have a family, a car, a mortgage and all the other fine accoutrement of modern 21st century existence. Deborah works at Chiron now, and it was a pleasure to have them both over for dinner and a good long chat.

So, in 5 hours I have to be up and driving Elizabeth to school, so I should sign off. Just a note to the future: I need to discuss issues of performance cinema in this forum. I believe I will, so I can get my ideas out into the world.

Woof.

HW

Friday night

And I'm exhausted. Last night my car was towed, so I was up later than usual. $275 later, and it was mine, again. Today I was pretty draggy. A fellow I've been working with lately is in a band called "Tussle". They've been getting comparisons with Liquid Liquid. I happen to be friends with Dennis Young, the percussionist of Liquid Liquid, so I put the two in contact with each other.

It's funny how these things work.

A priest in Jerusalem wants my Coptic font. It's on its way...

Disconnected ephemera - tendrils of non-active relation.

Liquid Liquid, a priest in Jerusalem, Coptic fonts, Tussle.

A phone message from Annie in Nova Scotia.

I like Nova Scotia.

Now playing: Omphalos by Cerberus Shoal.

Time for sleep.

HW

We live in the time of explosions

We live in the time of explosions. We live in the time of this, then not this. We live in a time of temporal constrasts. It seems to be the way of things in the Stelliferous Age.

The endless ticking of the clock.

Much goodness - email from Jodi, Robin, Loren, and many others.

Working and making money.

Too much to report - I am bursting, and I have been typing all day.

More tomorrow.

We do live in the time of explosions.

SO MUCH

Gads. I've been selling my life, working at a day job for the past week, and will likely do so for at least another few weeks. This is a welcome blast of income. In response, I have set my sites on an Epson R200. I've looked at the three basic technologies: Ink jet, thermal, and litescribe.

They come down like this:

I can get a 16x DVD-R drive, with an external case and litescribe system for $150. But, I would need a PC to run it. So that tacks on another $400. And each lightscribe CDR is 60 cents, and DVDs are more. The nail in the coffin? It's REALLY Slow. Like 15 - 30 minutes to print a CDR.

NEXT!

The Primera Z1 thermal drive. Thermal rocks, because it's basically welded to the CDR. It doesn't smear, and it looks crisp and professional. However: this drive only prints at 200 dpi, which sucks. Also, it only prints in 4 distinct quadrants, and can't cover thhe entire CD. The drive itself costs $140. Replacement ribbons cost $20, and you get 200 quadrants per tape. If a CDs content can be set in there (and mine could, easily) that's bascially 10 cents a CD for printing the text. And: good news: each CDR can be cheaper, because it will print on anything... The down side: No Macintosh drivers, which means, as with the lightscribe, buying a PC for $400... Suddenly, the drive zooms to a $500 or $600 investment - a lot more than I have to spend. And 10 cents a shot and a lack of colour isn't a big plus either.

NEXT!

Inkjet. I'd like to buy HP, because Beth works for the imaging division, but GUESS WHAT! HP doesn't sell CD printing inkjets - they put their money on lightscribe, which, as noted above, SUCKS. So, the only rational alternative is Epson, specifically the R200, as it costs all of $99, and I can get 3rd party inks for 1/3 the price, making it VERY competitive with the thermal printer. The down side? The ink smears when wet, and each CD costs around 20 cents.

I would simply instruct people to take very good care of the CD...

I believe an R200 is in my future...

Too bad for HP... Yet another example of Carly's "vision" thing.

It's late - time for bed.

HW

Today Was A Day

I spent most of today working o nthe YLEM website. Made significant progress. This afternoon I worked at Orange.

Tonight I helped Elizabeth with her reading and spelling. Then we played UNO for a while, and, as usual, she beat me almost every time. After she went to sleep, I did a lot of email responding. Now it's pushing midnight, and it's time for bed.

Today I thought about whether or not Art has any place in the societies of the 21st Century. I've often thought that Art has become the religion of secular nations. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm wondering if the global focus on fundamentalist religion is problematising the Art As Secular Religion. It's kind of like the old "CHTHULU FOR PRESIDENT" poster - "Why settle for a lesser evil?" Art is the lesser evil, and it seems people want to pull the wool over their own eyes and don't want some flimsy ersatz mystification of "aesthetic experience" getting in the way of their visceral ecstacy.

That, combined with the gutting of public education, and the co-option of Art by Entertainment at the hands of Hollywood, the Music Industry, and the Gallery/Museum Industrial Complex - it just seems that Art is less and less relevant to people's lives. Reality TV, iTunes / iPod, and Monet Prints have simply taken over - even in the homes of people with enough money to know better. They Just Don't Care, and They Certainly Don't Get It.

As a working artist, I find these conclusions rather depressing - and these are "Educated People". The rest of society seems to have even fewer ties to Art or anything meaningful.

To quote a friend of mine,

(On a reality TV show, one of the people did a protest about refugee concentration camps)

"I had to turn it off and let my mind unchurn. I understand that the issue is much more complex than that, and maybe it was a bit overdramatic... but the audience jeered and howled... they were incensed that somebody was showing compassion in the middle of their fun. It's getting worse - the average person in the street needs more toys, more stimulation, harder drugs, faster sex just to keep from slipping into a coma - maybe an iPod with a dildo that shoots coke up their ass. I fear their bloodlust. You can write an artistic appraisal of Roman Amphitheatres - it's still a bunch of people being mauled by lions."

Well. Now it's almost 12.30am. The alarm goes off in 6 hours. I get so little sleep any more. I don't know why, but in the late evening I get this rush of energy, and sleep just doesn't come easily.

More tomorrow.

HW

YLEM

This weekend was an important weekend, as I spent most of it dealing with YLEM business. I am now the "Vice President" of YLEM, as well as the membership director, among other things. A few weeks ago, the president, Barbara Lee, quit, and took the trearurer with her. This was a great blow to the organisation, as we were cut down to 3 board members. Since thne, things have progressed well - we are now back up to 5 board members, and everyone seems pretty energetic in getting things done.

The first order of business is to get more rank and file members of the organisation. To facilitate that, we are going to be streamlining the online sign-up system (to use PayPal or something like it) as we are completely revamping the website in general. I've been doing most of the heavy lifting that way, but I don't mind, and everyone likes the work I've done so far. The present website is a disaster - it has a 6 megabyte Flash file on the index page. (!?!?!) If you're on dial-up it makes the site unusable. I'm doing everything in straight-forward HTML, using a much more professional looking design - it's slick, fast, looks nice, is easy to use and maintain, etc.

I'm also making progress on my own website. I hope to have a set of fonts for sale, soon. I hashed out some hard decisions about selling the imaging series I have. That will all be explained on the appropriate pages.

I wish I was getting paid for all of this.

Back from the Shadows Again...

Yesterday we returned from a short vacation in the Lake Tahoe area. We stayed in the town of Truckee at Holiday-Inn-Most-Acceptable. There was a lot of snow on the ground. More than I had seen in years. This vacation was primarily for Beth and Elizabeth. I'm not "against" winter sports, they just don't thrill me. Still, I had a wonderful time, and took a number of pictures. The high point in the snow was skittering down a long hill on a huge inner tube. Big fun. The low point was getting all cocky and running at a hill with a sledding-disk, missing the hill and the disk, and tumbling down the icy incline at a high rate of speed. I didn't break anything, but I'm still stiff and sore...

We had an *excellent* meal at the Cottonwood Restaurant. I highly recommend it. If you go, get a window seat... the view is fantastic, and the food is extremely good. Also: they serve Theakston's Old Peculier, a black Yorky ale. Yum!

I applied for several jobs, again, today. Got a call from Jathan, tons of email. I am putting together some ideas for new music. Also, I am finishing up a few fonts, and hope to have them all available at the website. Yay.

now playing: Deluxe by Harmonia

Thank God It's Friday...

Today, I fixed some links on the website. I expanded the Type section. I puttered about with a synthesizer a friend gave me. It's an EMU Audity 2000. A raver box if ever there was. It's OK, but not that impressive. I've tried to sell it, but so far no takers.

I've come to the conclusion that hardware synths are doomed. Especially after learning about Korg's UberSynth, the Oasys. Apparently the Oasys is going to cost around $8000. Which is about $6000 too much.

Basically, I have concluded that the Keyboard Manufacturers are truly doomed.

Strike that. They are totally SCREWED.

Why? Software.

Software synthesis already outstrips most anything you can do in a keyboard, and at a much lower cost.

Exhibit A:

REASON

I remember back in the ancient 1980s, when my cheezy ass sampler (by todays standards) cost $1750. It was a DSS-1. I still own it. In fact, I liked the DSS-1 so much, I actually bought another one. Now, in Reason, which costs less than $400, you can fill an entire virtual rack with samplers far in excess of what availed me then. I wanted 11 samplers stacked? Sure - in 1987, if I had $25,000 - no problem. In Reason, you simply open up a new blank Rack, and fill it with 11 samplers from the drop-down menu. And when you're done, you simply open up a new file. Back in the day, you'd have to sell all those samplers...
At a loss…

Reason comes with drum machines, samplers, processors, mixers, synthesizers of several different stripes, and on and on.

Second Exhibit: ABLETON LIVE

This, in combination with Reason, offers truly terrifying amounts of musical development and creativity. Recently, Live was upgraded to include MIDI, and a basic drum machine and a sampler, so now it is even more deadly as a combo with Reason. Live is a Loop based compositional system, but with its new MIDI capabilities, it is now a much more powerful beast. It costs about $350, IIRC.

Exhibit Three: Max/MSP

This, in combination with Live and Reason, makes ANYTHING coming out of Korg pretty much superfluous. With Live and Reason, you have composition systems and tonnes of "Gear". With Max/MSP you make your own gear, and it can be just as weird as you want it to be. Max/MSP isn't a synth, it's a software development environment that resembles an evil cross between Visual Basic and tinker-toys. It's available on Mac and (finally) Windows, and it totally freakin’ rocks. If you wondered how freeks like Autechre makes all that jiggety twitchy noise, look no further than: Max/MSP.

So, lets run some totals:

The Oasys is $8000.

I sometimes shop Musicians Friend so my prices are from about a month ago. They aren't the best, or the worst. It's just a data point.

Reason: on sale: $199
Ableton Live: $399
Max/MSP with Jitter (video libraries): $799
Edirol PCRA-30 keyboard with Audio In: $299


And a computer I found at PC MALL - an IBM Thinkpad:

Intel P4, 2.8GHz processor, 256MB RAM, 40GB Hard Drive, CD-RW/DVD Combo drive,15" XGA Display, XP-Pro, etc.

Which has PLENTY of power for audio. And it's on sale for a lousy $1,198.

So, throw in another hundred bucks for a keyboard stand and trivial nonsense and the total is around:

$2900

Which is what? $5000 cheaper than the damned Oasys? Since Max/MSP is for Advanced User GEEKS, and Jitter is even geekier, cut the $799 out and you still have an entire electronic music studio that kicks serious butt for about $2200.

Of course, the Korg Fans will squawk about the DACs in a computer sucking badly. Fine. Procure a Firewire outboard audio DAC. $1000 will suffice, and you're still several thousand dollars ahead of the Oasys.

Now: will your computer system CRASH? Yes, eventually. Will the OASYS? Probably not. If you're worried about that, then get a Powerbook or a Linux Book or whatever-the-hell-book that flips your crank that isn't running Windows. They don't Blue Screen as much as Windows boxen, but there are other issues involved. All in all, unless you're planning to spend your life on stage, you're better off with the computer-based system. Playing computers on stage is an entirely different article, one I would like to write soon.

In a few years you will likely have run through most of what the OASYS does that you find interesting. In a few years... I *shudder* to think what Reason and Live will be like... And if you tire of Live and Reason, there's PLENTY of other software out there to SPARK you into a new creative jag.

Basically Hardware Synth manufactures are doomed. The only ones who will survive are the ones making the uber-geek analogue gear, and they will basically be little more than boutique operations for audio purists. A REASONable fate.

So, anyway - I'll be ultra-busy for the next few days. Look for another installment of SPARK sometime next Wednesday.

HW

Dead Run

I'm at a dead run today. I have three deliverables to meet, and then I go test some software at Orange Design for the next few days. I was up late burning the DVDs and CDRs last night, so I woke up late this morning. E got to school on time and properly equipped, but I feel prety burnt out this AM.

Kyoto went into effect today without the USA on board, of course. I think what's going to happen is we're going to see the business community get on board with the enviro community to pressure the gummint to get on the stick with it - we've already lost our first bid at cheap pollution credits, and they'll only get more expensive over time.

Now playing: CD: From Bone to Satellite, by Tarentel. Awesome record. Especially at 9.15 AM!!!

HW

St Valentines Day

Today I took my valentine to the airport - she has to go to Colorado on business for the week. I miss her already.

This morning I put a number of my old columns from creativesynth.com up in the Words section. They need some work, but it's not so bad. I changed the size of the text from the tiny size I normally use (which is readable and looks cool) to a somewhat larger size, which is more readable in long sittings.

Elizabeth cut a bunch of valentines out for her buddies at school. Tonight is homework, a bath, and then early to bed.

Charles and Terri came by last night - we all had a great time. Dinner consisted of a shrimp cassoulet with tumeric rice and a spinach / walnut / balsamic vinagrette salad. Chocolate cake for dessert and LOTS of wine. A wonder time. We listened to Daniel Lentz, Michael Rother, and Virginia Astley, with solid forays into 5uu's, Univers Zero, and David Bowie.

I might get together with C & T tomorrow for lunch. That would be good fun.

The rest of this afternoon is going to be spent testing Florence, so I can get together with Peter Nyboer and we can finish what we started.

Now playing: Blue Valentines by Tom Waits.

HW

This is just a test.

If this were a real post, you would have been told where to go and what to do.

It seems that a bunch of TV fans have taken out a full page ad in the NY Times to protest the cancellation of Star Trek Enterprise.

The article can be found Here.

What a pack of losers.

I think there are FAR more useful and constructive places the time, money and energy being pissed away on trying to save a mediocre TV series can be spent.

Face it: it's network television. Its fundamental purpose is to keep your attention between commercials. It wasn't doing a very good job of that, so they canned it. It has nothing to do with art. It has everything to do with commerce.

If they could show nothing but TV commercials and keep an audience that way, they would. But they can't - people get bored - so they put dollops of infantile fantasy, emotional pornography, and corporate disinformation masquerading as news to simply keep your attention between the commercials.

The death of Enterprise is just the latest example of this process. It's just a product.

You want space? Here's space:



See how that goes down.

today we were all exhausted. E. woke up in the middle of the night with an earache. It was gone by morning, but our sleep is shot. I'm going to bed right after I post this.

HW

my second entry

I started this after the severed heads list disappeared. I wanted something a little more permanent and a place where people can comment on my ideas and writing. Also, it fulfills something people have been on my shit for years about. Now, all I need to do is write my autobiography, and my obligations to society will be complete.

For those of you who don't know me, go to http://www.kether.com/bio/

There's a picture there and everything. It's a little old, but the only difference is I weigh about 15lbs more and have less hair on top and more in back.

Right now, Beth is collecting Elizabeth from school. We will have dinner and then it is off to Friday Swimming Lessons. Our ritual goes like this: I whip up a quick dinner, and then we scoot down to les petite baleen, where E. takes lessons. After that we go to a gas station where she buys a small donut or some juice, I buy some nuts, and then we drive to the video store. Our friends, Charles and Terri are visiting us this weekend, so I doubt that Beth and I will rent anything, but Elizabeth invariably does - usually a disney flick or ScoobyDoo or something equally amenable to a sweet little seven-year-old girl's heart. Then she gets to stay up late and watch her movie.

Tomorrow we await C&T's call so we can arrange to meet on Sunday. I used to work with Charles at Macromedia in Tech Support. He moved to Seattle and met Terri there. We are fond of Terri - she's extremely fine people.

Today's Frustrations:

Not enough sleep.
Bush is still President.

Today's Elations:

Carly is still no longer running the ship at HP. Beth works at HP, and neither of us were keen on them hiring Carly...

My work is on exhibit at The Coyote Point Environmental Museum. Yay!

I realise this is total newbie blogger stuff, but I am just so happy to be able to do this -

what I am listening to right now:

a really nice mix CD! The tunes:

Song - Artist - CD/LP

As We Could Ever - His Name is Alive - Livonia
Loving The Alien - Iva Davies & Icehouse - Berlin Tapes
Wild Is The Wind - David Bowie - Station To Station
Sister Europe - Iva Davies & Icehouse - Berlin Tapes
Harlem Nocturne - Danny Gatton - Cruisin' Dueces
All The Way - Iva Davies & Icehouse - The Berlin Tapes
Ne Me Quitte Pas - Jacques Brel - Best Of Vol. 1
for myself - Nina Simone - After Hours
Remember A Day - Pink Floyd - A Saucerful Of Secrets
Cuts You Up - Peter Murphy - Deep
Southern Jukebox Music - Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Concert Program
Love Is Everything (Harmony Version) - Jane Siberry - When I Was A Boy
Svefn G Englar - Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun
Alma - Phil Manzanera - Diamond Head

A very sentimental CD, that suits my mood right now.

Well, happy weekend everybody! you can expect "heavier" posts in the future. I'm just starting it out fun, because, well, it's been a rough week and I deserve some fun. Dammit!

love,

HW

My First Blog Entry

I'm starting a real honest to goodness blog. Yep. finally got off my ass and did it, using a system from blogger.com. This post will let me see if it works or not. This blog is called SPARK, after a column I had on CreativeSynth.com, which was more of an essay based thing.

I'm actually kind of nervous about this. Here Goes!!!

HW