The Fredösphere

Via The Standing Room via this is sippey:  the most wonderfully stoopid promotion of high culture by a big fat corporation, evar:

Labels: Culture, Food, fun, VideoClip

A new angle found by SciFi Scanner, and a perfect topic for the Fredösphere:  Ancient Christian Paintings Give Evidence of Space Alien Visitation.  It sounded kooky, but then I saw the painting first cited:  The Baptism of Christ by Aert de Gelder.  I'm not sure who, but somebody's phoning home in that painting.

Meanwhile...

My son is enjoying a Boychoir retreat this week, and I was privileged to observe a special educational demonstration given to the boys by John Churchville, a local expert in classical Indian drumming.  It's amazing what just one hour of explanation can do to greatly increase one's appreciation of an art form.  Hey, here's an idea:  we could introduce music education into the public schools and effect an explosion in classical music interest among the general population!

Anyway, John's demo was info-packed and conducted with grace, even when the boys in the front row fidgeted or experienced gastric indiscretions thanks to the meal of tacos and refried beans consumed just minutes before.  Oh, and then there was the "please back up; I can feel your breath on the back of my hands" moment.

John showed us a video of his teacher, pandit (i.e., pundit, sort of like the Indian equivalent of a Ph.D.) Swapan Chaudhuri.  I found the following video which seems to be the clearest picture of the master employing the one-handed roll characteristic of his region's style of drumming.  See it for the first time at about 1' 30"; in most videos the hand moves too fast to see that he's flapping the right hand in a left-to-right movement, using the thumb and forefinger as one "drumstick" and the other three fingers as the other. 



Am I the only person who sees a bit of Harlan Ellison in Chaudhuri's face and posture?

Boychoir conductor Tom Strode mentioned the influence of Indian Music upon Olivier Messiaen.  If only Messiaen had Youtube, think of how much more he could have achieved!  Although, in that case, we may have had the Messiaenification of the following--which is too disturbing to contemplate!

Labels: Culture, Religion, Renaissance, sci-fi, VideoClip

Look carefully at this post at John Scalzi's blog.  Look at the first photo.  In particular, look at the painting of the strawberry on the far wall in the picture.  Note the lower-left corner of that painting.  Notice the gray head that is almost, but not quite, obscuring that corner.

That head just happens to be the one attached to my body.  Yes, I was in attendance at the author event at the Ann Arbor District Library last Sunday.  John was joined by fellow Ohiöspheric SF authors Tobias Buckell and Paul Melko.

The one boooooing! moment occurred when a gentleman from the audience questioned the value of publishing on the internet, compared to the "relatively permanent" nature of print.  The panel responded with more grace and patience than I probably would have, but the content of their answers shot down his premise.  Scalzi noted that "the disappearance of the internet implies apocalypse."  And then he noted that apocalypse would be very bad.  For people, for books, for everyone.  Then he described the many people busy archiving the whole internet.  The Noösphere Is Eternal!  (My words, not his.  But you knew that.)

Yes, Toby and Paul are funny and smart, but John modestly fails to mention he outdid even those two in clever, cogent, articulate comments on the state of SF publishing today.  In sum, the event was marred only by its brevity.  John, if you read this:  I was the one in the question line who stuck out his tongue impatiently when you called a halt to the Q&A session.  I apologize for my bad manners.  Please come back to Ann Arbor anytime.

Labels: Fiction, sci-fi

Jessica Duchen found this video of Messiaen, talking about birds.  After all, what else is there to talk about?



Close readers of The Fredösphere have figured out that Messiaen is my gateway drug for eep-op-ork-ah-ah modernism.  At the urging of Alex Ross I have softened my resistance even to Des Canyons Aux Etoiles.  What I learned from this video, the first I've seen of le maître, is that his personality is not the super-serene one of my imagination, but rather that of a high-energy enthusiast.  I detect the faintest whiff of Asperger's, and why am I surprised?  A life-long obsession with bird calls was supposed to be evidence of ... what? I ask myself.  I was gazing on the haloed icon; I didn't suspect that Saint Olivier might be a bit of a nutcase.  And believe me, I use these terms with the greatest possible affection, even admiration.  Those who know me will testify that I tell the truth.

Labels: Composer

Allow me to introduce a young composer named Philip Rice.  Philip is the long-lost cousin of John, one of my closest friends.  A recent family funeral brought the two together, and Philip's background is so freakishly similar to mine, John introduced us via email.  Philip comes from a religious, home schooling family and has been interested in composing from childhood.  He even lived for a while in Coldwater, Michigan, the county seat of my ancestral home.  He now studies composition at Central Michigan University.  He has a myspace page that dazzles, although I speak as one with embarassing memories of how much (that is to say, how little) thought I put into self-promotion when I was that age.  I should mention his technical mastery compares favorably to that of my 20ish self as well.  To top it all off, according to the photos of him online, he kind of looks like me, or more precisely, a considerably improved version of me.

I hate him.

Specifically, I hate him in brief, unguarded moments, but that hasn't stopped me from offering him my complements.  We'll be trading scores and advice in the future if my usual laziness in such matters (i.e., relationships) can be mastered.  CMU is several hours away from Ann Arbor, but my dream is that he could visit and sit in on a meeting of the Creativity Study Group that I'm organizing.  Wait:  I haven't blogged the CSG yet?  I guess I'll have to--in a future post.

Labels: Composer

Linking to Daniel Wolf has become my new bad habit, but only because of the immoderation with which I do it.  Nevertheless, here I am again to tell you about his 12 Kleine Præludien which he is offering as a free download in pdf.  I must mention it because one of the movements is dedicated to ... I blush! ... li'l ol' me.  This is one of those very cool, very unexpected pleasures that come along in life all too rarely.  I get the key of A; hmmm, what does that imply about my character?  Let's go to the ultimate guide to such matters, and see what terribly detailed, nuanced description for A Major we find there:

A Major:  Happy

Ooookay, I guess that fits me, as far as it goes.  But wait, the key Daniel chose is only A, not A Major.  What does A Minor mean?

A Minor:  Pure

Uuuuh, yeah.  Looks like that ultimate guide ain't quite so ultimate.

Labels: Composer, Keys

Whoa, whoa, whoa!  I pour all kinds of creative energy into composing my music; do you really think I have any left over to design original fonts for the score???

(This is on my mind because I just sent out a score this week for a competition.  The music is a setting of an ancient Irish poem.  For the title, I used a free, Tolkieny-looking Icelandic font called Edda.  For the rest of the score, I used the Finale defaults, except for the complete text printed on the first page; the text is so long, I had to use Arial so the tiny letters could be read.  I know what you're saying:  font promiscuity!  ...but that was the best I could do without rethinking every font decision in the score, which I had no time for.  Why, why, why did you people ever get me noticing fonts?!  Cure you, Daniel Wolf!  Curse you, James Lileks! 

I am pleased, however, that M. Wolf and others like Georgia; after an exhausting review of my choices a while back, I settled on Georgia as the most - interesting - yet - commonly - available - and - without - being - too - weird choice for my outgoing email.)

Meanwhile...

What's the greatest choir on earth?  Chanticleer gets my vote.  Richard Morrison (quoted at A Cappella News) seems tempted to nominate the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir directed by Paul Hillier.  He pulls his punch, however, and for the same reason I would:  their programming lacks the brilliance of Chanticleer.  (Maybe they could compensate with better fonts.)

Finally...

The Sci-Fi Catholic demonstrates how awkward confession can be for the anime fan.  It is no easier for the hardcore MMORPGer.

Labels: Choral, Design, fun, Religion

Who besides Daniel Wolf is blogging brainily about the process of composing?  If there are others, I want to (I should!) know.  Most recently he's making an analogy about the world-building of speculative fiction and role-playing games.  Yeh got yer composing, yeh got yer SF; perfect.

Next, let's sample some SF video.  First, we return to the most SF country that ever was, the USSR, for an animated interpretation of Ray Bradbury's There Will Fall Soft Rains:


...followed by a Star Trek mashup called A Cavalcade of Redshirt Fatalities:



Finally, we explore two interstitial realms of the almost-real and the almost-fake.  Of the former, Design Observer reverse-engineers the Steampunk movement and finds it wanting, making good points but adopting a regrettable "gatekeeper" tone in the process:  how dare these people design when they're clearly not real designers?!  (I like DO; why do I only link when they annoy me?  Maybe I am the regrettable gatekeeper.) Of the almost-fake, check out these "tilt-shift" photos (more here) that make true cityscapes look like cheesy H0-scale models.  Be-yootiful, and don't miss the skeptics in the comments section.

Labels: Composition, Creativity, fun, Futurism, VideoClip