September 7, 2008 at 6:35 pm · Filed under Music, Technology
I’ve always loved finding new ways to visually explain information, whether through maps, diagrams, charts or other graphical models. Edward Tufte is an old favorite on this very rich field of study — if you haven’t already, be sure to check out his latest book, Beautiful Evidence.
In similar fashion, Sha Wang’s nifty spiral generator creates a visual portrait of your musical tastes. By using your scrobbled Last.fm music tracks, Wang’s simple script whips up a sweet spiral graph of your listening patterns over the past year (see my spiral below). Want to try it out? Make your own at www.diametunim.com/muse, or view other spirals at http://datamine.tumblr.com.
Another colorful graphing tool for Last.fm users is LastGraph, which renders your listening history in the form of a wave graph. It’s just as pretty and clearly marks artists using varying color fields:
June 20, 2008 at 5:20 pm · Filed under Music
It’s 92 degrees outside! I can feel the heat in the air! Three cheers for the start of summer and a great weekend ahead: Bruno Pronsato performs tomorrow at the Endup during a day party called Apertura.
After his sweet set with Sammy Dee at Mutek (as Half Hawaii), he’s now making his way up from South America and I am so happy to see him a second time this year. Mark your calendars, this is a summer party not to be missed…
June 12, 2008 at 1:15 am · Filed under Architecture, Music, Travel
Events like Mutek remind me of the rip-roaring delight of being young, traveling to exotic locations (like Canada!), and indulging in sights and sounds from the outer fringe. Some festival highlights:
Morgan Packard and Josh Ott opened the week with ambient techno shavings, helix-like visual permutations, accordian drifts and bird whistles:
Barem and Chic Miniature warmed up the crowd on Friday evening at SAT, while artists worked on a large mural:
Half Hawaii shook the packed midnight down at Metropolis:
And Onur Özer unleashed horns onto the crowd on Sunday’s Piknic set. It started to rain, but who could stop dancing?
I also enjoyed a side visit to the Canadian Center for Architecture, where I caught an exhibition on residential case studies by SANAA partner Ryue Nishizawa:
April 13, 2008 at 1:00 pm · Filed under Design, Music
I first encountered the work of Bay area artist David Kwan at last month’s LISTEN/VISION 02 event, where I experienced Solaris, an audiovisual piece focused on the diaphanous reverberations of muted light forms.
Kwan, who teaches at Mills College in Oakland, is now taking part of Interplay, a new exhibition at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley:
Terra Firma is a complex video installation deployed by an automated system that “composes” a continuously changing landscape derived from video footage. The footage is generated from four different video sources that project images of empty landscapes to create a single on-site landscape in the gallery. Kwan’s visual continuum of shifting permutations creates a sort of “non-place” suggestive of our own interior psychological space. For the viewer, these images can provoke a nostalgic memory of our archetypal landscape. (description via Kala’s website)
Interplay
Featuring works by: David Kwan, Nora Pauwels, Bartosz Posacki and Steve Reich
- April 17 - May 24, 2008
- Reception: Thursday, April 17, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
- Gallery Talk with the Artists: Tuesday, April 29, 7:00 pm
- Gallery Hours: Tue-Fri, 12-5:30 pm; Sat, 12-4:30 pm
April 1, 2008 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Music
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