Them crazy kids

 

Well I guess Mick (at 50 cough errm something) can’t be classed as a kid.

This performance was for the Foundation Degree’s “Creative Music Technology Live” module. The guys are playing to a sequence composed in Logic. Visuals are being triggered and improvised in real time with Arkaos VJ software (by Ed, who was hiding behind the curtain, Wizard of Oz style). 

I wonder whether this performance breaks any copyright laws? It blatantly steals from two famous songs. the first, Love Potion No. 9, was written by Lieber and Stoller, and was first a hit in 1959 for the Clovers (so we haven’t yet hit the 70 year rule). It’s been covered by loads of artists- the Searchers, Herb Alpert, Ronnie (Poison Dwarf) Dio, Elkie Brookes, Neil Diamond, the White Stripes etc etc …….

The second, “The Chain”, by Fleetwood Mac, is best known as the BBC Formula 1 theme. The bassline is the nemesis of guitar shop owners worldwide. 

So in terms of performance copyright, the only audience was the tutor (if you ignore the two children of one of the students, three balloons and a solitary youtube surfer) and the performance was for educational purposes.I wonder what the PRS would say. Is this the sort of work that the PRS’ new Limited Manufacture License is intended for?

Maybe if any of the CEMP fraternity see this they could let me know whether to expect a visit from the dibble.

Chris looks fetching in his pink headband.

 

WHAT THE FUTURE SOUNDED LIKE

 

 

“From Dr Who to The Dark Side of the Moon to modern day dance music, the 

pioneering members of the Electronic Music Studios radically changed the 

sound-scape of the 20th Century.  What the Future Sounded Like tells this 

fascinating story of British electronic music.”

Apparently this is only being screened at SXSW in Texas and Sonar in Barcelona (two festivals I’d love to go to, but I’ve already booked my ticket for the North Sea jazz festival in Rotterdam, which clashes with Sonar, and I’ve missed SXSW. Hopefully they’ll release it on DVD soon, although probably not soon enough to use it for research..

 

 

http://whatthefuturesoundedlike.com/

 

Future Shock

I stumbled across the book by Alvin Toffler, which led me to this 1972 documentary narrated by Orson Welles. OK it’s quasi-scientific pseudo hippy nonsense, but it’s a fascinating historical document, and the soundtrack features psychedelic funk and analogue synth bleepery of the highest order.

I wondered what it was actually saying for a while, as it seems to simply be scaremongering. The fear of progress is alarming, but some of the predictions are quite close to the truth. “In 30 years time,” it states, “men will be marrying men”, society will become more disparate and “people will be choosing their skin colour” (Michael Jackson is the only example of this one I can think of).

Toffler came up with the term “adhocracy” to explain a society that is highly organic and temporary, with no bureaucracy and few clearly defined roles. 

I’m thinking of looking at the work of Buckminster Fuller and Raymond C. Kurzweil. Their futurist outlook could tie in with my research on technological change and society.

 

Initial research

After much deliberation, I have decided to look into how society and culture influence technological innovation, and vice-versa.

 

After initial problems with my Athens account (which I don’t think had been authorized at the time of use), I managed to access the e-resources available at the BMU.

 

An initial search (keyword-“determinism”) yielded a great deal of results, but unfortunately most were centred on computer programming, even though I’d selected Arts and Design as a subject area. On refining my search by adding “cultural” and “music”, I discovered several eBooks and articles which touched on my chosen topic.

 

The first one which caught my eye was-

 

“Supporting musical composition by externalizing the composer’s mental space”

Shigeki Amitani, Koichi Hori | C&C ‘02: Proceedings of the 4th conference on Creativity & cognition ; ACM | 2002-10 |

I asked for the full printout, but was told to revise my request, or check for printed copies at Bournemouth’s library. A little bit 20^th Century that, isn’t it?

 

The next one I found was a conference paper,which was very closely linked to the themes of my study-

 

Title:	The Social and Cultural Shaping of Music Technology.
Source:	Latonero, Mark. Conference Papers — International Communication Association (2003-01-01)

 

I converted the text file to a PDF document, so I wouldn’t have the same problem as I did with the earlier document.

 

 

In the article, he argues that social and cultural factors shape new media technology.  His standpoint emphasises social and cultural factors that influence technological innovation, and shuns “technological determinism”.

 

I decided to look up technological determinism (!), which turns out to be the idea that technology is the key factor controlling how individuals and society change. (www.usm.maine.edu/com/concept2.htm)

 

Strange Sounds: Music, Technology & Culture By Timothy Dean Taylor

 

MySearch found this on Google Books. You can’t copy and paste it into a Word doc though, so I added it as a bookmark.

 

Through perusing these documents, I’m starting to get a grip on the underlying theories involved with my theme. Determinism and reductionism (the theory that anything is merely the sum of it’s parts, I think) are often compared with holism, which presents relationships as “non-linear”, which means that artifacts can be more than the sum of their component parts. I’m inclined to go with the holistic view so far. For instance, emerging internet technologies are produced by many disparate elements in a very non-linear way. You just have to look at the “mashup” web applications that use data from many sources previously thought to be unrelated.

 

 

I’m interested in synthesizer technology, and one particular album (remember them?) fascinates me. It’s called “Switched on Bach”, and was the first album to utilise synthesisers in a classical context. It was recorded by Walter Carlos, who’s now called Wendy Carlos (but that’s another story..). I emailed Wendy to ask her opinion on my research topic. There’s been no reply as of yet.

 

To finish on a less technological note, I found a book in my local library called Future Shock (1970) Bantam Books ISBN 0-553-27737-5. It was written by a sociologist called Alvin Toffler. I’ve only just started it, but it seems very relevant to my research. I’ve also discovered that a documentary based on the book is available, narrated by Orson Welles.