joaoflux / digital / analog / culture

The panel I had been invited for at the _Enter conference was quite a strange combination of people: Mike Taylor of Sky Movies and James Cridland of Virgin Radio and myself. Mike and James thought, it was funny enough that Sky and Virgin were on the same panel and I really have no clue how I fitted in - probably the connection was that they both represent companies who make smart use of user generated content commercially while I reflect on Second Life, which is often displayed as a space where people can run their own business and make money (which is of course partly a misconception). However, the panel went quite well, largely because the chair, John Naughton, did an excellent job at connecting it all. Meeting John Naughton was one of the Highlights of the conference. Unfortunately we had less than one hour and Mike and I joked last night while having a drink that we did not even get to fight. The email correspondence we had prior to the panel had been a bit controversial. Our common ground: How much we like hanging out in Nice.

Live high voltage sound manipulation, homemade electronics and circuit bending. Mike Taylor, director of Sky Movies networked media and participant of the discussion panel I was on at ENTER_UNKNOWN Territories thought it was noise, Bob Stein enthusiastically shouted “I love noise!”. Can they do the exact same Performance tomorrow? No, it’s Jazz! Indeed the noise grooved. In the national Grid Performance + Support music was generated directly by playing with high voltage and manipulating circuits. One of the guys told me after the show, that one of the tubes they used actually radiated x-rays during the performance (only for a couple of seconds and he assured me that I did not have to worry about not wearing lead underwear). Visually the show was great too and being blinded by flashes periodically added to the experience. Unfortunately my phone had run out of batteries and I could not take photos. Many people did though and I hope that I can nic something from someone else’s blog or Flickr album in the next days. Here are some links: Bugbrand, Bad Timing, Animals On Wheels

A first highlight at the opening night of the conference was Bob Stein’s Keynote on the future of books. Hard to believe that I had never come across him and his project “Sophie“, a software that can be seen as the web 2.0 version of the book. It is a networked multimedia authoring tool. Stein used it for his presentation too and before I know what he was going to talk about, I noticed that he was not using Power Point or Keynote and suspected that he was using some nerdy presentation tool that lets you script presentations in Python or some other cool language. Probably I would have downloaded such a tool too - testing obscure software for the fun of it is my favorite pastime after all. Anyway, the concept behind Sophie is really cool and I suggest you download it. While I’m typing this, Sophie is reading American Poetry to me. Very cool. I must show it to the folks at Literaturwerkstatt.

Jan Northoff & Tobias Neisecke are building a New Berlin in Second Life - a replica of the german capital. If it feels a bit small, it is because it is optimized for avatars who are not more than two meters tall. The average avatar in SL is actually quite a bit taller and the two are having a conspiracy theory: The avatars are tall so people need to buy more land. You ever wondered why 512qm seem so small in SL? After all it’s hard to believe that the Lindens got confused because of using the metric system. I was wondering if they may have gradually increased the size.

Anyway, Jan and Tobias are quite a team: Tobias is a doctor who got bored with hospitals and Jan is an artist who got bored with art (I have much sympathy for that). They met only 5 months ago when Tobias ran into Jan’s tiny Berlin Mitte gallery. They are serious about turning New Berlin into a lucrative business and I think that they do have a chance. Lets put it like that: Their plan is much better than other plans of replicating real places in virtual spaces. They also came up with a very cool tool by combining Google Maps and SL’s map: Map In Map, a service that lets you find virtual representations of real places in SL.

This week I will be in Cambridge at the ENTER_UNKNOWN TERRITORIES festival & conference. I got invited to take part for one of the discussion panels (”Future Spaces”). I’m looking forward to the event, because it sounds really interesting. I also expect a lively discussion after the email correspondence I had with the other participants so far. More to come.

When I travel with trains in the Netherlands (which I do fairly often), I usually try to avoid the double-decker trains, because of their poor interior design. The seats make my butt hurt and using a laptop is a pain in the ass: You can’t have it on the roundish table, because it’s to small and you can’t have it on your lap, because the table is in the way.

Being forced to do nothing but hang on my own thoughts during a 90 minute ride, I noticed a melody. It was simple, elegant and slightly melancholic. I tried to identify the source but couldn’t. I couldn’t even tell what direction it came from, the source seemed to change it’s position permanently. The melody seemed to consist of only two tones that alternated with no clear pattern, but not really randomly, a bit like a minimalist free jazz improvisation. It was quite beautiful and the low volume of the tune enhanced the experience additionally.

Because I do not have absolute pitch, I wanted to record it with my phone, so I could reproduce it or at least memorize it. I knew that the chance of actually hearing it on the recording was miniscule, but I tried nevertheless. A young guy who was sitting across the corridor asked me what I was doing. I told him that I tried to record the Sound and to my relief he confirmed that he could also hear it. His theory was that it came from the energy feedback brakes. He also mentioned that one of his professors in industrial design at the university of Eindhoven was the designer of the train’s interior.

Since my musical skill are too poor reproduce the two tones from my memory, I decided to bring better recording equipment next time I’m in the netherlands. My plan is to write a primitive script that would reproduce the tune for me.