If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe

Carl Sagan -'A Glorious Dawn' ft Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed), by Colorpulse.

Creature Cast: Science with a side of cute

CreatureCast Episode 1 from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.

Creaturecast.org is one of my favorite blogs right now. This is first Creaturecast video podcast, which is worth watching just for the squid scientists (who appear around 00:53). But don't stop there! It only gets more interesting.

It's amazing what can be done with some quick and dirty animation, a little bit of music, and great content.

Miyazaki!

I am so excited for this!

What an interesting device. I can think of plenty of practical applications, although setting your preferences for every type of item would be time-consuming. That could be a new market: selling custom sixth sense presets that would weigh the values of each individual user. On the other hand, I can also think of plenty of ways that this technology could be used that are of questionable legality. But maybe I've just been watching too much sci-fi.

Gristleized

On Tuesday, April 28, 2009, Throbbing Gristle played their third show in New York City at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple.

The opening band, Emeralds, was finishing their set when I arrived, so I navigated through the crowd to the bar to get a beer. The Masonic Temple is in my neighborhood, so I'm predisposed to like the venue, but I was annoyed to learn that in order to buy a beer, I would have to go to yet another table to buy a drink ticket, and then I would have to fight my way back to the bar to purchase a beverage with said ticket. "I know," said the bartender, "It's really annoying." At the end of the obstacle course, I was rewarded with a six-dollar can of Zywiec lager - but it was a big can.

I decided to explore the balcony, where I found a spot to stand that afforded a decent view of the stage and the venue's columns and art noveau ornamentation. Then the house lights came on, and Throbbing Gristle took the stage.

Because the house lights were on, I found myself watching the crowd as much as I watched the band. At first, it seemed that the audience was fairly well-behaved, and I wondered whether people in general tend to be more polite when the lights are on. I noticed one couple dancing near the front of the crowd: a tall, thin man and a petite blond woman. They were the only people dancing as if no one could see them. After the first song, the couple managed to maneuver themselves into the center of the crowd, where they continued to dance with reckless abandon, the man lifting his arms up high. I was glad I wasn't standing behind them. As the set continued, the music became more intense and aggressive, and Arms-Up started trying to push up closer to the front. For the first time, the crowd started to become agitated - I wondered if this was how mosh pits started. Arms-Up was bouncing around like a pinball, he'd push forward and get pushed back, until finally a man turned around and punched him in the face. One, two, three times fast. I inhaled, startled, and looked around to see if anyone else had seen it. If anyone around me had noticed, they weren't showing it. Then it was over, just like that, and Arms-Up had bounced back to the blond woman, she was touching his face as he sagged and slumped. I watched from the balcony, feeling sick, my empty beer can vibrating in my hand.

Maybe I didn't see what I thought I saw. Maybe it's not that big a deal for most people if someone who is being disruptive gets their face punched in. In any case, Arms-Up was subdued for a few minutes, and just when it seemed that he had recovered, the venue's security personnel came into the crowd (everyone around him turned like synchronized swimmers to point him out to the bouncers) and dragged him away. I don't know what happened to the other guy.

The next song was dedicated to "the mentally ill who couldn't be with us tonight," and there wasn't any more bad behavior from the audience. We had the privilege of hearing a new piece, "Gristleizer," which used the Gristleizer effect unit. "Gristleizer" sounded like: Cicadas, wind whistling through bare branches, underwater roar, the laquer crack of billiard balls striking one another, and a howling constant tone ascending and descending in pitch. All of these sounds occuring in independent rhythmic patterns of variable tempo, the amplitude increasing until my ribcage was rattling.

When people really started dancing, they weren't trying to look cool or sexy. They shuddered and flailed ecstatically, and by the end of the final song, everyone is moving. Genesis P-Orridge moved like a puppet in citrus colors (lemon, tangerine, blood orange), the crowd shook, I tapped my foot. The show ended. There was no encore, though the crowd clapped and stomped until the band came out and took a bow together. I went out into the sticky Brooklyn night with stinging hands and a singing head.

Juana Molina rules the Loop

I picked up Juana Molina's new album, Un Día, last night, and I've had it on repeat all day today. It's warm, lovely, and a little bit skewed. In other words, it's my ideal soundtrack for spring.

Recommended Reading: The Chase, by Alejo Carpentier

The Chase is the story of a fugitive, a member of Cuba’s communist party who is running for his life. He takes refuge in a concert hall where Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is being performed, and he arrives just in time for the second movement: a funeral march.

Originally published in 1956, before the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, The Chase is a tale of disillusionment with a corrupt left-wing movement, which has become as brutal as the government it seeks to overthrow. It is no accident that Carpentier opens the novel against the backdrop of the Eroica (or “Heroic”) Symphony. This particular piece of music had been inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte and the ideals of the French Revolution, and the symphony’s original title was Buonaparte. However, after Napoleon was declared Emperor of France, Beethoven changed the symphony’s name in disgust. The Chase explores the brutality that accompanies the struggle for power, and the betrayal of the ideals for which the revolutionaries fought. As the plot unfolds, from the points of view of the fugitive and the ticket seller at the concert hall, we learn the extent to which the revolutionaries of the story have lost faith in their cause.

Carpentier renders sensory information in crystalline detail. In the Havana concert hall where the story begins, a rainstorm has forced the crowd indoors. “The moist scents of green poplars and watered lawns” transport the reader to that hot Caribbean night, and we can almost feel the sweat rolling down a woman’s soft back, which looks “as though it were being pressed by a thumb at each shoulder blade.” The sights, sounds, and smells of the concert hall and the city are clear and vivid. On the other hand, the fugitive’s voice is emotional and visceral. His hunger, his dirty clothes, and his terror are presented in a raw onslaught of information.