Carl Morris Archive

Tristan Perich’s mini-orchestra experience – on a microchip

By Carl Morris, September 21, 2010, 9:50 pm in Music, Present

Over the summer Tristan Perich released an album of five compositions called 1-Bit Symphony, housed in a regular CD jewel case.

So far so typical – apart from the fact that there is no CD here or any recording media. The music is generated live from a microchip inside the case and output from a headphone socket also housed on the case.

So 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording as such, but it is a physical artefact which allows you to experience the production of the music live, just for you. I use the word “orchestra” loosely but hey, this is art.

The tunes are also available as digital downloads but it’s not quite the same experience as the physical album package, which costs £23.99 (but has unfortunately sold out at the time of writing).

A microchip mini-orchestra is never going to become the dominant way of distributing music. But, just as quality photography prompted Picasso and other nonrepresentational artists to search for new and exciting areas in visual art, we could see this a creative reaction in physically-distributed music to the dominance of digital files. Fortunately many would concur that the actual music here is very good too.

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1000 Years of Popular Music

By Carl Morris, November 12, 2009, 12:13 am in Music, Past

richard_thompson

Richard Thompson is a solo musician and former guitarist in the folk rock group Fairport Convention.

When Playboy magazine blithely asked him to list his favourite songs of the last “millennium”, Thompson drew on his formidable knowledge of music to do exactly that.

The resulting list, spanning the years 1068 to 2001, was deemed unsuitable by magazine staff who decided to run more editorially viable charts by other personalities instead.

Nevertheless it gave Thompson a unique concept for a show – and album release. Live or on record, Thompson offers performances of one of the oldest known songs in the English language Sumer Is Icumen In, the Gilbert and Sullivan penned There is Beauty In the Bellow of the Blast and among other more contemporary songs Oops!…I Did It Again, originally performed by Britney Spears.

Despite the diversity, he admits to gaps in his coverage of the 17th and 18th centuries and “too much weight on Music Hall and Rock & Roll”.

Thompson’s background is in the folk tradition. In its original sense folk music happens in a live setting – songs are memorised, passed on and adapted, sometimes for hundreds of years. Often in our culture “folk” music has become a byword for a certain style of acoustic guitar music. But it originally signified a word-of-mouth community where ideas of authorship, strict copyright and “original” versions were secondary or non-existent. With that knowledge maybe it’s less of a surprise that Richard Thompson is a walking archive of songs ready to be shared, a commons if you will.

Richard Thompson photograph by 6tee-zeven

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Guernsey’s own language

By Carl Morris, October 31, 2009, 11:05 pm in Language, Present

Guernsey

Guernsey island image by Steve 2.0

The varied linguistic landscape of the British Isles is well worthy of exploration. One fascinating reminder is the fact that Guernsey has its very own language.

Known as Guernésiais, the language has just over 1300 speakers in total, almost all of whom were born in Guernsey, and hence 2% of its total population. Guernésiais is rooted in the Norman language, itself a regional language of France, ultimately rooted in Latin. Despite some similarities, Guernésiais is very difficult for present day Norman speakers to understand when spoken, although in written form the gist of a text is accessible to Norman readers.

Thus Guernésiais occupies the often vague boundary between a dialect – of Norman in this case – and a distinct, separate language. In general, it is often said that a language is just a dialect with its own army and navy. This alludes to the forces which throughout history have asserted one language’s supposed superiority over another’s.

If modern day media give rise to forms of cultural dominance, perhaps another formulation of this statement could be attempted – that a language is a dialect with its own TV channels, radio stations and web presence. In addition, its own translation of, say, the Harry Potter books would certainly be a good sign of health, whatever your personal literary taste might be. Guernésiais is painfully lacking all of these things and there can be no doubt that the language is now subject to immense pressure.

Indeed, 70% of the remaining fluent speakers of Guernésiais are aged over 64, which is a depressing statistic for certain islanders.

Earlier in October 2009, Guernsey’s ministers made a heritage tour of the Isle of Man, paying particular interest to the revival of the Manx language there. Although unlike Guernésiais, which still has surviving native speakers, the language of Manx was totally moribund and widely understood to have lost its last native speaker in the 1970s.

Like Manx and also Cornish, there are current efforts in Guernsey to promote its own language and consider it for introduction into the school curriculum.

There are few topics likely to provoke more emotion than education and exactly how finite time and money should be allocated to it. Would these resources be better allocated in the teaching of something else, perhaps one of the world’s majority languages? What about practical considerations and job opportunities in the global economy?

These questions, while not unreasonable, are predicated on a certain model and philosophy of education. But what is education for? What can education be for?

Undeniably, any given language survives because it has the strength and collective will to survive. It is parenting, education, everyday use and institutional will that sustain English, French and Mandarin. If the interest and effort is there, these will be the things that sustain Manx, Cornish and Guernésiais.

Indeed, what is language for?

A language can be thought of as a technology. It is a useful instrument which serves our diverse needs and interests in communication and human endeavours. One of these many needs might be work, commerce and the generation of wealth. These things adapt a language, as it adapts them.

But a language can also be considered in itself to be a form of cultural wealth. Among other things, Guernésiais has a notable resource of poems, some many centuries old. The poems are documents of the place and its history and heritage. But along with poetry, songs, stories and more obvious cultural products, the documentation is embedded and inseparable from its smaller parts – its words, phrases and idioms.

In complex ways, a language is also about identity. Guernésiais is a unique feature of Guernsey (even when considering the Jèrriais language, its Norman-derived counterpart on the island of Jersey!).

No doubt the Guernsey ministers are seeking to help Guernsey assert this distinctive identity. Arguably, the awareness of a shift towards a powerful Anglo-American homogeniety is a possible factor in their counter-efforts. For a young person of Guernsey, the language presents an opportunity to continue an unbroken link and celebrate what, ironically, all humanity has in common – diversity. Let’s leave the last word to George Métivier (1790-1881), the celebrated Guernésiais poet.

La Victime

Veis-tu l’s écllaers, os-tu l’tounère?

Lé vent érage et la née a tché!

Les douits saont g’laïs, la gnièt est nère -

Ah, s’tu m’ôimes ouvre l’hus – ch’est mé!

Translation:

Do you see the lightning, do you hear the thunder?

The wind is raging and the snow has fallen!

The douits are frozen, the night is dark -

Ah, if you love me open the door – it’s me!

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How to Get Someone’s Attention (The Hard Way)

By Carl Morris, October 7, 2009, 10:53 pm in Present

Recently I listened to the audiobook version of Free by Chris Anderson.

Like Anderson’s previous book The Long Tail, the book is rich with observations – and speculation – and is provoking debate in the worlds of business and technology. In particular, it got me thinking about the nature of attention.

Anderson expands on the observation that the internet is an economy of attention.

You may identify with a variation on this idea, perhaps the scenario of having seemingly endless spam and email to wade through, reports to read and information nagging to be filtered down to the useful, the essential and the interesting. (Put it this way, I’d been intending to listen to the audiobook for several weeks. Anderson got my attention because I was bedridden with flu with little else to occupy me. This is apt.)

Back in the office, while our filters continue to fail us, incoming information is abundant.

What’s concerning is that people on whom we depend to get things done for us (politicians, public sector workers, companies, organisations and the like) are subject to the same limitations as we are.

Attention is finite. In economic terms, attention is a scarcity. Each email that arrives devalues all the others.

Therefore something has to give – and very often it’s your message that gets drowned out.

A great example from social media is the Twitter whinge. If you’ve spent any time on Twitter you’ll have seen other people moaning, complaining or otherwise airing their grievances and probably done it yourself. In particular, there’s something very appealing about sharing a moan about poor service from an airline, hotel or even government agency. But does it result in any real improvement? In truth, a tweet is the easiest kind of message to publish and is often therefore one of the most insignificant forms of complaint in existence. Unless the company or target in mind is directly monitoring mentions of their name and has a policy of acting on them, it’ll probably achieve nothing.

Part of the problem is that a tweet has zero weight and zero cost. Examples of good attention-grabbing via 140-character tweets, usually when they become “trending topics”, are celebrated because they remain rare. Sometimes you want to make a strong point and really influence a big, sluggish organisation. For that purpose, without the boost of a trending topic, your solitary tweet can be easy to ignore or miss.

In the realm above 140 characters, it can be a similar story. Even the well known blogger Jeff Jarvis had to count on the support of fellow bloggers to build momentum around his Dell complaint. Obviously it helps if you have gathered profile and reputation through consistent blogging, as Jeff Jarvis has done (not to mention his substantial offline media activities).

In the meantime, the subject of your complaint might not see your email or a tweet in the first place. Even if they do see it, they’ll know it was very easy for you to create. Just as every virtual gift you receive via Facebook increases the comparative value of an edible box of chocolates or tangible bunch of flowers, maybe we should all be trying harder.

What are people doing to bypass the online attention economy totally?

Examples abound. Here are three.

  1. Maybe it’s time to rediscover what we consider to be older technologies, such as sending a fax. Write To Them is a UK-based service, built mainly by volunteers, which helps you to fax your Member of Parliament. It explicitly advises against copying and pasting standard emails because such emails are prone to being ignored.
  2. Many charities resort to street fundraisers, or “chuggers“, who pester people into donating. For the charity, these services can be expensive. They can also be highly annoying if you’re the target. Much more intrusive than an email. But that’s the point.
  3. The US television network CBS was forced to air the remainder of a series after cancelling it. Fans complained about the initial cancellation of Jericho by sending peanuts to CBS offices. A reported 18,000 kg of nuts were sent before bosses changed their minds. Arguably no amount of email or tweets would have matched that, although admittedly social media were vital in the coordination of the stunt (more background on this story in the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky).

As a wise man once said, the medium is the message. In each of these cases, the physicality of the medium can be a burden for you, the would-be communicator. But the inherent bulkiness of the medium can also be its strength. If you can wield that strength, you might just get things your way.

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Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box, Reconsidered

By Carl Morris, October 4, 2009, 8:23 pm in Music, Past

Public Image Limited: Metal Box

John Lydon recently announced the return of his post-punk band Public Image Ltd.

It’s a good opportunity to reappraise the band’s seminal 1979 album Metal Box. It’s a landmark record for all kinds of reasons.

Obviously there’s the music itself. It puts the disco into discontent.

Like anything described as “ahead of its time” it is, in truth, a direct influence for later artists. It’s the source of a throb and pulse which goes through a surprising amount of music which follows it. (For instance, listen to the tune Death Disco with bands such as LCD Soundsystem in mind, or for that matter certain other bands on DFA Records.) I’d hesitate to call it “experimental”, that might put you off. Let’s just say that, unlike most things which carry that word, it’s in no way an artistic dead-end.

Metal Box dates from a time when ALL recorded music had tangible packaging. And wow, what packaging.

Even though these were the days when physical media had a hope of being sustainable, this was a brave move. Virgin Records (at that time a maverick independent label) released it in the UK as three separate vinyl records in a metal film canister, hence the title. The whole thing has a heightened sound quality. Six sides in total playing at 45rpm certainly did justice to Jah Wobble’s cavernous basslines, as well as each scraping guitar sound and every shriek and wail from Lydon.

Once you managed to prise the thing open, that is.

Metal Box, in its original form, celebrates the awkwardness and clumsiness of the vinyl format. You can’t listen to it on your morning jog, nor your daily commute on the train.

Listening to it is a fully engaged activity. You can’t even do things around the house because the need to flip it over or change the record will keep interrupting you.

Although not too difficult to track down, it’s a cherished item for record collectors. (Overheard: “I just scored an original Metal Box on eBay!”, “Cool. How oxidised is yours?”)

Since the original, there have been several ways to listen to Metal Box.

For the USA version, the track list was rearranged and remastered it on to just two records in a cardboard sleeve. This made it look like any other album. Sound quality also suffered.

Then in the compact disc era, we were treated to a single CD housed in a little version of the metal box. Cute. But that’s not really a word you use when discussing anything associated with John Lydon.

At some point in recent years it made an appearance on iTunes. (And DRM was probably not the kind of contempt-for-audience the band originally had in mind.)

Now we can dip into it on Spotify, the licensed free music streaming service, adverts and all.

Often the music formats debate can come down to which is the more convenient. CD or vinyl? Or digital files? No question, digital is ALWAYS more convenient. But so is looking at the Wikipedia page for any given work of art, when compared to actually visiting a gallery.

The original version of Metal Box is a perfect marriage of content and packaging.

And who said content and packaging were even separate things?

Metal Box image by kenficara

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