The Fredösphere

I'm not angry--just hurt.  The Great Firewall of China is blocking Daniel Wolf, but found the Fredösphere too compliant (or, worse, insignificant) to be worth blocking.

Meanwhile....

Gawker's cool new SF blog, called io9, found a study that shows too much communication stifles creativity.  I'll try to summarize:  the right number of communication channels within groups--some, but not too many--allows members of the group to develop several ideas simultaneously.  Too much communication dissolves sub-groups and causes all members to converge too quickly on a single idea that initially appears to be the most promising.  Thus, too much communication is bad for innovation.  The study's conclusion dovetails nicely with Paul Cantor's claim that, in a nation (such as France) with a single metropolitan area dominating culture, and a history of top-down government patronage, cultural diversity and innovation achieve sub-optimal results.

It also dovetails nicely with my long-standing practice of warning the Wifeösphere on the dangers of over-communicating.

Furthermore, it's Source Fource!  I haven't seen anything this good since Captain Euro came along. 

Labels: Creativity, Culture

This ... Is ... Science!  You've got to read The Most Hated Holiday Song in the World at Design Observer, about a very intelligent but not very sincere attempt to use the science of opinion polls to design art with likableness maximized and minimized.  The most and least liked music are two utterly brilliant songs.  The satire is subtle; I honestly liked the likable song, at least the first half, which would not been out of place on a Kenny G (Mr. Likable himself) album.  In short, I liked it.  The unlikeable song is a patchwork affair with a rapping operatic soprano, accordion, pipe organ, banjo, tuba, Walmart jingles...aw, heck, just what you expect:

The Most Unwanted Song, however, is mesmerizing: over an accompaniment of bagpipe, tuba and accordian (statistically, America’s least favorite instruments), an operatic soprano (our least favorite type of singer) raps (ditto) about cowboys (ditto). Their research indicated that the most hated lyrical subject is holidays (disliked by 33%), so the song is suitable not only for Christmas, but Easter, Labor Day, Veterans' Day, and Halloween. These interludes are introduced abruptly by a children’s chorus (“Hey everybody, it’s Yom Kippur!”), who couple their refrains with cheerful commercial messages. By the end, the subject has shifted to human slavery and genocide. The whole thing, going on for nearly 22 minutes (the least favorite song length), is as impossible to ignore as a car crash.

Besides the music, there's painting.  You'll get George Washington in a landscape with deer, drinking from a stream--the deer, not the former president.  Plus, some utterly delicious Socialist Realist parodies.  I recommend Stalin and the Muses.

I haven't laughed this hard in ages.  Wow.

Labels: Composition, Creativity, Culture, Design

Throw that piano out the window of your garret apartment right now!  Reactable is the future of music making, and all those other crappy user interfaces--trombones, harps, Casio keyboards--are hereby obsolete!

Well, maybe not.  Still, it's fun, and slightly mesmerizing, to watch Reactable players (should we call them Reactablists?) work those funky blocks on the glowing blue table.  But would the music hold your attention without the visuals?

Labels: Composition, Creativity, Design

Blogging is light as I prepare to lead my website to a new server, one with a decent amount of disk space.  (Thanks to my friend Jeremy for letting me squat on his territory.) It appears that Comcast will stop hardening its heart and let me go, now that the Angel of Death has taken the first-born of every Comcast family.  Or maybe it was the frogs, or the rivers of blood -- but in any case, I've done bumping my head against the 20-meg limit that Comcast imposes on this website they gave me free (with the purchase of a cable modem, of course).  Maybe I should of known better, but I never guessed a collection of mere html files could grow so big after three years.

One very nice benefit of moving is that my domain, fredosphere.com, will at last persist in the navigation bar at the top of your browser after the redirect, so when you change your bookmarks, it will be (I hope) the one and only time you'll ever need to do it.

I should also mention the other reason I am not blogging so much lately.  I have spent a lot of time lately completing my first serious forray in fiction writing.  It seems the prose bladder inside my mind is emptied when I work on my story, leaving nothing for this site. One topic I would like to consider here relates to the motivation I am feeling for my new artistic outlet.  Is it the thrill of the new? Are the tools for cranking out prose (keyboard, word processor) better developed than those for creating music manuscript?  Or -- frightening though it may be to consider it -- did I miss my calling by pursuing music composition? All I can say is, I find writing a story to be about ten times easier than writing a choral piece.

There are lots of possible reasons.  I write choral music with plenty of counterpoint. Maybe I would have an easier time if I wrote songs for soloist and piano.  (But I don't want to.)  Maybe I make things unnecessarily complex emotionally with my music; I do know I am weirdly free of aspirations to greatness in my story writing.  (I'd be happy to be labeled a pulp sci-fi author.)  Maybe I'm not a natural musician; certainly, reading a book is fun for me, but practicing an instrument (or -shudder!- performing) is work I tend to avoid.  Again, maybe there are too few composers to justify the development of good music-editing tools (or maybe I haven't found them).  Maybe I'm not as experienced criticising prose as I am music, and I'm living in a fool's paradise.  Or maybe -- just maybe -- those who can, compose, and those who can't, write prose.  (And I am finding out I am numbered among the can'ters.)  I do know that, after 90 minutes of writing prose late at night, I feel like I'm just getting started; after about 45 minutes of composing, I'm looking for excuses to quit.

This situation is disturbing.

Labels: Composer, Creativity

Story tellers search continually for fresh ideas for their stories.  Always looking for some new deposit to mine.  The creators of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo found some gold, and started digging:

In the year "3001.5," the world is controlled by the "Chrome Dome Empire" under Csar Baldy Bald the 4th, who has launched the EMBB Edict: Everybody Must Be Bald. To that end, he's sent out his Hair Hunters, soldiers who reduce the populace to skinheads, regardless of gender or age. But when a young pink-haired girl named Beauty is threatened by the Hair Hunters, a tall, improbably muscled man with a humongous blond afro appears and rescues her.

Using his nose hair as a weapon. And harnessing his martial art "Snot For-You."

Another well-worn tool for breaking writer's block is the random word generator.  Here's a passage from Peter and the Wolf given the Crazy Lib treatment:

Early one fortnight, Lawrence opened the gate and went out to the big orange valley. On a branch of a big popsicle sat an unconventional cat, Lawrence's mother. "All is short, all is short!", chirped the cat roughly. Yes, all is short. Just then a squirrel came conceding round. She was glad Lawrence hadn't groped the turkey baster and decided to take a nice swim in the deep skerry in the valley.

Story tellers would do well to heed the submission guidelines for Escape Pod, a podcast of new sci-fi and fantasy stories:

EP is a genre ‘zine. We’re looking for science fiction and fantasy. Please don’t send us anything that doesn’t fit those descriptions. And by the way, we mean SF/F on a level that matters to the plot. Your story about a little boy receiving a balloon before his heart transplant may be touching literature, but it probably isn’t something we’re interested in, even if you edit it so that the balloon’s an alien and the heart came from Satan.

Reminds me of my idea for the theoretical ultimate in soft sci-fi:  if one of Jane Austen's novels contained a space alien as a minor character.

Labels: Creativity, sci-fi

Once technical mastery is achieved, all artistic flaws are character flaws.

Discuss among yourselves.

Labels: Creativity

Very cool:  Terry Teachout is writing an opera.  (Aren't we all.)

I'm glad to say I've adopted Google Notebook as a tool for organizing projects, which mainly means a place to store bookmarks to poetry I'd like to set, snippets of lines I've written myself, and titles of works I'll probably never get around to writing (but who knows?).  I've needed a project organizer for a while, and especially lately, as I've become more serious (more is a relative term here, people) about writing science fiction.  Fans of this plot, rejoice:  I'm writing it.  I even have a audience of non-zero size already in place, ready to read it.  Teaser:  imagine Augustus Caesar sitting in Albert Einstein's lap.  (This Albert Einstein.)

Beyond that, I harbor special ambition to combine my two main interests into one project.  No, I don't mean anti-popes and synaesthesia, I mean composing and sci-fi.  I don't mind sharing with you my working title -- Space Opera -- since it has almost certainly been used already.  [Accessing ... accessing ... --yep!  Darn.]  I've got some plot ideas that I think are a teeny bit original, so I'll keep quiet about them.  Sadly, considering how long it will take me to write this thing, it's only chance of attracting interest will be as a piece of retro-futurism.

On a related note, yes Don, you're right:  this is the greatest shampoo commercial ever.

Labels: Composition, Creativity, sci-fi, VideoClip

The rules of modern American politics require a person like John McCain occasionally to humiliate himself ritualistically.  What's these kids' excuse?

Mixolydian Mode has moved -- don't get left behind.

Here's a story on the Aristides Atelier, where painting is taught the old-fashioned way.  (You come in here with palettes full of mush...!)  Disturbingly, recent experience has caused me to question the emphasis on craft.  Just as everyone else is loosing faith in self-expression, I'm reminded that some people got it and some don't.  (More on that topic when I've processed it fully.)  Anyway, this talk of old-fashioned pedagogy reminds me of stories of the bad old days at U-M:  student composers presented scores to their teachers on vellum. Here at the Fredölogical Institute -- the only place in the world a student can get full, rigorous training in nested counterpoint -- I require my students to submit their counterpoint lessons carved in Italian marble.  Which means the kids learn to think really, really hard before committing themselves to each note.

Labels: Counterpoint, Creativity, VideoClip

Anti-Catholic:  muh-wah???  Why, I'm on the record many times stating my belief that many good Catholics are live Catholics.  At least, I think I'm on the record.  I've certainly thought it a lot.  I think.  The irony is that, like any good post-fundamentalist, I spent my early adulthood looking long and hard at communion with Rome, before choosing Pentecostal-spiced Lutheranism served on a bed of Evangelicalism.  And anyway, what anti-Catholic jokes are we talking about?  I've made a shtick out of anti-anti-pope-bashing, but that's pro-Catholic, ain't it?

And now, having done my duty on the subject of anti-popes, I give you today's blimp content.

Back to religion:  for those as obsessed as I with the science of religious conversion, Musical Perceptions gives us a snapshot of one underway.  God bless your search, Scott -- yours and everyone's.

Finally -- When Worlds Collide:  my day job brain and my artist brain alike enjoyed this take on the hot topic of boundaries and limits as stimuli to creativity, from the point of view of a IT guy who plays Dungeons and Dragons.

Labels: Airship, Antipope, Creativity, Religion

Der Drübermench continues to manifest his fascination with musical instruments.  His favorite place to visit now is the music store, and he spends much of his time drawing pictures of orchestras.


This orchestra must be the Guernica Philharmonic.

Labels: Creativity