Thoughts are like fishes

21 panels from the excellent King City by Brandon Graham

Oppressed Majority

The feminist in me adores this representation of sexism inverted but it's only funny up to a point and that is the point.

Yesterday my friend Jess commented on Facebook about the phenomenon of their personalised Lookback movies. Her phrase was 'mind-blowing' and it gave me pause because I'd discounted it as sentimental narcissism, in part because their choice of moments jarred with my own sense of my life. Though I liked the use of the format to comment on Vladimir Putin's Russia, see video above.

Here was an advert, Jess observed, that didn't work to demographic data like sex, age, salary, ethnicity or location. "Lookback is nothing more than an advertisement for Facebook itself, but it's an ad made just for you."

This innovation seems significant. It's mass-marketing at a micro level.

It kinda unsettles me, I replied to Jess, because it underscores how much they know about me and the potential for them to mine that data. Then again, I often think if advertising is going to get better then maybe that'll be good because they rarely interest me at present. I can think of only one advert on Facebook that gave me pause, when I watched a video about improving productivity when making electronic music.

The thing I learned reading Jess' thread was that a friend of hers had found she didn't have a Lookback movie to watch because she posts too infrequently on the site. "...There was just a polite but vague message about how they look forward to seeing more of her in the future, and she told me she is now planning to post more actively..."

Which leads me to see the purpose of the exercise as relationship-building.

At present I think Facebook is the best social media platform because it has the biggest audience. There are a lot of people who I only manage to keep in contact with through the service. Google+ doesn't have that despite being thrust on me a number of times. Twitter is interesting for entertainment outside of my personal networks, and email is becoming a thing of the past.

Engagement is Facebook's advantage and to maintain it they will need to continue to innovate. Lookback is an interesting step and one that shows skill in repackaging individual data on a massive scale.

It was interesting that another aspect of their 10th birthday was a message to advertisers thanking them for being part of Facebook's life, envisaging this milestone as 1% of their journey. A Facebook millennium is an ambitious statement, possibly designed to shake comparisons with MySpace, but it also comes soon after their response to recent 'research' from Princeton and it's interesting to see how much they used Google's resources for that.

Another interesting aspect is Lookback shows Facebook can produce video content. Previously I posted a video called The Problem with Facebook where the commentator made an observation that they would have difficulty running video adverts because this was lacking.

I've seen good results from using Facebook advertising at work, in part because their metrics beat anything from traditional media. They can reach people in ways that others cannot and I hope they use this power responsibly.

In Real Time

Found a nice surprise when I opened a copy of Real Time at the Eastern Riverina Arts office last week. They profiled me last year for their website but it was gratifying to see my work alongside professional artists like The Ronalds, The CAD Factory and the Wired Lab. Also cool to see two Leeton-based arts events represented.

Cut-up poetry

William S Burroughs would've been 100 this week and the Disquiet Junto got me to make a song using the lead story from the local newspaper as lyrics.

My partner Jo has been making cut-up poetry for a few months, inspired by the originator of the form: Tristan Tzara. Apparently he was kicked out of the Surrealists for thinking he could compose a better poem automatically and, as a result, started the Dadaists.

Today I had a go, with mixed results. It's quite exciting the way the juxtapositions force your brain to make sense from random combinations of words. Burroughs thought the process could be a magical ritual, revealing hidden meaning. I like his idea of audio being used the same way to cast curses by intercutting 'bad' sounds into a recording, such as his example of closing a restaurant he didn't like by recording them and then adding police sirens and screams. It's a kind of remixing.

Call Me Burroughs records a quasi-magical revenge attack on a Boulder deli from which two of his opiated friends had recently been thrown out. First, Burroughs arranged for a surreptitious tape recording to be made inside the deli—ambient noise, kitchen clatter, waitress-customer banter—and then, days later, with equal surreptitiousness, he played it back from a cassette recorder inside his coat as he sat at one of the tables. As Miles writes: “Over the next hour he increased the volume so that you could just about hear it, but no one appeared to notice.” Yet subliminal damage was being inflicted: discontinuous time streams, information feedback. “After forty-five minutes … one of the waiters threw down his apron and stalked out, followed by the owner, arguing loudly. The owner returned and began to scream at the serving staff, sending two of the women running to the ladies’ room in tears.” Burroughs, psychic vandal, was 63 years old at the time of this incident.

Rising up

There's a piece on my music in The Narrandera Argus today which picks up on the new remix chain, as well as another online collaboration.

'Rising Up' is the recent project with other producers from the Ninja Tune Forum and I've written about it for Cyclic Defrost this week.

Building poetry wanted

Pretty sure Crikey mean 'versus' rather than 'verses' but now I'm curious about poetry on the topic of architecture.

Reminds me of Frank Zappa's line on how "writing about music is like dancing about architecture"

The weirdest thing happened

My track 'Having a Barney' appears on the new compilation from New Weird Australia. Looking forward to hearing the other contributions.

Moody Indigo

Another great version of Mood Indigo is this one by Charles Mingus:

By all accounts Mingus was a moody bastard but the bass playing blows my mind every time I listen to this album. (II B.S. is another killer cut.) The way it weaves around, supporting the melody yet dextrously moving up and down the fretless neck of the double bass.

Once I looped those opening piano chords and they reminded me of something from a Bond soundtrack.

Visually stunning

The graphics in this film clip are quite amazing, surreal and trippy.

On first viewing I wasn't sure why I started thinking about Kraft macaroni and cheese but then I spotted the packet in the background. Maybe subliminal advertising does work?

Hemp seed

Apparently it's illegal to eat hemp seed in Australia, which is a shame as it's packed with protein and omega acids.

The terms agreed to when purchasing this packet prevent me from eating it, so I best just follow the directions on the back to make a 'body cream'.

The Problem with Facebook

Mood Indigo

'Mood Indigo' is my second favourite Duke Ellington track (after 'Blue Pepper'), so I hope it features prominently in Michel Gondry's new film -- which looks fantastic (in all senses of the term).

Here's my favourite version of the tune, featuring Ellington with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, from the album "Money Jungle":

Australia Day

Each passing year it seems like Australia Day merchandise gets increasingly nationalistic. "Aussie Pride" shorts? To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, it seems you won't go broke underestimating the taste of the Australian public.

I've commented on Australia Day before but these items in a Woolworths catalogue make me wonder how much tackier it's going to get.

Artist Bernie Slater has taken aim at these sort of products before and the image below is one of his works.

See Gene Pitney live

A local newspaper had this piece today about Gene Pitney playing in Narrandera. I'm not sure they know he died in 2006, there's no mention of it in the article.

I've been amusing myself with the idea the word 'live' in the headline infers the opposite of dead, rather than perform in person. Like they're bringing him back from the grave.

Onomatopoeiart

Facebook.com/GraffitiDailyNews

Faux fisheye

Got a fisheye lens effect using a glass in front of the camera

Elsewhere

Meanwhile, over on Twitter -- which I didn't break after all -- I've referenced a classic rock tune in my page design. Any guesses? Tell me @showcaseJase

Assault and battery

Australian media have been discussing alcohol-fueled assaults recently, following on from a number of stories about 'king hit' men -- some dying as a result of one punch. It makes me think about the time I was assaulted and, unsurprisingly, there are many stories from males about this sort of event because it's so common.

Let me share my story before offering a view on why this is so.

I was heading to get a taxi after celebrating my graduation from university in Canberra, when a stranger walked up and hit me in the head. I picked myself up and got in a cab. The driver sympathised with events and dropped me home before I realised I'd lost my glasses. Sometime I also realised I'd blacked out at the scene of the assault.

I called the police and they were not interested in assisting me. Maybe I sounded drunk but it was a rude shock to realise they wouldn't provide any assistance nor take a statement. They also wouldn't check for my spectacles.

I called my sister and she kindly drove me into town in the early hours. We found my glasses, someone had thoughtfully moved them to the side of the footpath. I woke up later that day with a significant bruise on the side of my face, blackening one eye. I already had stitches in my chin from a mountain-biking accident a day earlier.

As I wrote earlier, many people have similar stories about senseless violence from strangers. I was unprepared for the psychological results. Sometimes I couldn't help but flinch from strangers.

Now I wonder if this has become a rite of passage of sorts but more recently when I heard a friend had been assaulted I wondered if a support group could help address the situation. I still feel like I can't make sense of why I was bashed but I guess the commonness of the crime means I shouldn't have too much difficulty finding people who want to share their stories.

Mother Rhyme

Here's a poem about childbirth by my partner Jo, who read it once aloud in Wagga and a friend recently asked for a copy. When Jo gave me the original text, I realised I'd have to transcribe it, so I made a scan and thought I'd add it here.

Australia in 2 minutes

Strong language but for good effect. Another funny take on Australia from Neel, see more here.

2013

The year didn't really go to plan on here.

It started with an ambition to keep increasing my blog posts and now, as it ends, I'm realising my Bassling blog may overtake this one for output in 2014.

In part it's because I've been focusing more on producing audio and have spent less time documenting passing interests on here.

Another part might be the demise of blogging, a trend I've resisted but can see that other websites have stolen a lot of the audience.

Why have a one-sided conversation on here when I can get a better response on Facebook? (Well, sometimes I want a one-sided conversation, I guess; and other times I use this site as a way to capture stuff.)

Anyway, this year was a good year for my audio productions. A few tracks came out on US-based releases, as well as a couple of self-produced ones.

Another highlight was remixing an apple for the Art Misadventure #3 exhibition at The Roxy.

Western Riverina Arts commissioned me to create a soundtrack for their Reimagining the Murrumbidgee exhibition and then gave me a part-time job, duties for which included designing the catalogue and promoting the show.

I returned to the playgrounds to produce more material for the Centenary of Leeton although I ditched the idea of screening in The Roxy and organised projections on a couple of water towers, like Metropolis in 2011.

The album WHILE brought together some of the better tracks produced for the first 100 Disquiet Juntos.

And I experimented with producing videos for the Junto but found not every project suited this medium.

At the beginning of the year I also experimented with keeping a sketchbook diary and published a few examples. It was fun but time-consuming, though I'm considering returning to the activity next month.

Experimentation continued with reviews of alcoholic drinks in haiku poetry:

The pop and the fizz
illustrate detonating
deeply tanned berries

Moonlighting as a small business called Witch Media led me to make a TVC for Bidgee Binge which put my bass-playing on air, a track that resulted from a Junto.

Yeah, it's been a good year. You can find a bit more about my 2013 here and it will explain these 12 five-second sections of audio:

All the best in 2014 :)

Nils Frahm on toilet brushes

Read a lot of rave reviews about this guy's performances and this video gives some idea why. Thanks to Schemawound for drawing my attention to it. He's good to know if you want atuff put in your ear.

Remixed one of Nils' tunes earlier this year.

And I remixed some of Schemawound's work too

When I broke Twitter

Murrumbidgee view NOT

Just noticed this not-so-local image on the website of my local state-based member

Michelangelo moment

This Saturday

While responding to the Disquiet Junto

The Disquiet Junto is an online group of musicians who respond to weekly directions, sharing their work on Soundcloud. It had its 100th consecutive project this week and it was my 36th track.

I've said the Disquiet Junto is giving me an education and that is a deliberate choice of words because it's a great model for learning. Each week I explore a new creative constraint, learning through my own practise and then comparing and contrasting my experinces with my peers.

It has been a really good activity for me, both for learning and for practice. There are some months in the year where I feel less productive, you can see the pattern in my blog posts. The Junto encourages me to make music and produce audio at times when I need encouragement.

This weekend I made a really good track from the sound of boiling water. It's the sort of thing I might try but not finish, so settting a deadline is another benefit for me. Duke Ellington is attributed with saying "I don't need time, I need a deadline."

This weekend I also finished compiling and remastering 20 tracks for an album of my favourite Junto pieces. I'll post it in the coming week but for now I've created a playlist of the first drafts and listed below are the blog posts about each Junto, including both the Disquiet.com instruction and the discussion at Bassling.com

In a few places there's additional content, including video and one sketchbook diary. Enjoy!

Heading out - Disquiet Junto Project 0089: V’Ger
http://disquiet.com/2013/09/12/disquiet0089-vger/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/09/disquiet-junto-voyager-i.html

Accoster (Featuring Jared Brickman's Every Day We Are Dying and Outer Space Does Not Give One Single Fuck)- Disquiet Junto Project 0065: Piano Overlay
http://disquiet.com/2013/03/28/disquiet0065-pianoverlay/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/03/disquiet-junto-tosca-accoster.html

No Nofi (Featuring Lee Rosevere) - Disquiet Junto Project 0066: Communing with Nofi
http://disquiet.com/2013/04/04/disquiet0066-nonofi/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/04/disquiet-junto-nofi-thriller.html

Having a Barney - Disquiet Junto Project 0095: Discuss Amongst
http://disquiet.com/2013/10/24/disquiet0095-discussamongst/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/07/more-dinosaur-park.html
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr0be-5c8cI

5 + 5 - Disquiet Junto Project 0074: Applause Rousing
http://disquiet.com/2013/05/30/disquiet0074-applauserousing/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/06/junto-clap-remix.html

Dubbed step - Disquiet Junto Project 0091: Walking Music
http://disquiet.com/2013/09/26/disquiet0091-walkingmusic/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/09/dubbed-step.html

Race you to the house - Disquiet Junto Project 0064: Composing from Memory
http://disquiet.com/2013/03/21/disquiet0064-halflive/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/03/disquiet-junto-school-bus-friday-pm.html

Sense the wind - Disquiet Junto Project 0071: Wind Music
http://disquiet.com/2013/05/09/disquiet0071-windmusic/
http://bassling.blogspot.com/2013/05/sense-wind.html

Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Q6QfBtjUM

River views

Reimagining the Murrumbidgee website is now online, as is the catalogue, which I designed.

This image from the catalogue shows Sarah McEwan's installation, which is really beautiful to behold.

Via Soundcloud below you can hear excerpts from my soundtrack for the exhibition.

Kinda creepy

Bit of a Bob pic

Wow

Good one Jamie Boyd

Been a long time since I've seen theatre and Goodbye Jamie Boyd made me really appreciate live shows. The story is dynamic and the acting faultless.

The production was richly realised and it should go well for the school shows tomorrow. The messages seemed aimed at a teenage audience and they are worthy but not heavy-handed.

Hypnotism

Dreams are weird

I've written elsewhere on the weirdness of dreams but this blogpost will take the discussion to a new level of weirdness.

When I was a kid and I had nightmares and I started training myself to wake before it got too scary. I still seem to do it. So on Saturday morning when I awoke from a dream where I was confronted by a burglar, I woke up feeling a bit agitated.

The dream involved spotting through a window a burglar going through my stuff. I have these internal windows in my house, so I'd assumed it was my current home. I went to the phone and dialed for the police and received an answering machine message with a woman's voice. The burglar discovered me and came rushing over, as if to grab or attack me. He sat on the couch next to me as he did this, seemed to to hear the woman's voice and then turned to leave. I awoke at this point but not before he turned his head, revealing a second face. The face was familiar and male and on the back of his head.

This two-faced figure has resonance with me because as I child I went to London, where I saw an advertisement on the wall in an underground train station of a male with eyes in the back of his head. I remember hiding behind my mother to avoid looking at it. Interestingly, the ad was for insurance -- promoting the idea you could watch out for threats where you wouldn't normally be able to see.

Now the really weird part is that on the Saturday morning I awoke from this dream, my partner's brother Ben was staying the night. In hindsight I think the second face on the burglar may have been his face but I'm not sure.

On Saturday night we got a call from Ben, saying he'd returned home to find he'd been burgled. Ben lives with his parents at present, in a part of the house I've often lived in too and had dreams about in the past. It has a lot of windows. A guitar amp I'd lent Ben was stolen. The burglar had been interrupted by a friend who lives next door, who even spoke to him.

I've had dreams that felt like premonitions before but this one seemed to anticipate news of events that had happened but hadn't yet been discovered. Maybe it's a coincidence but it's an eerie one for me.

My great great grandmother (my mother's mother's mother's mother) was a medium and I've often thought it would be an interesting idea to research. I've also thought I should stop some of my behaviours that reduce the likelihood of dreaming but, frankly, it kinda freaks me out to think about having dreams if they're like this one.

This dream features in my Disquiet Junto piece this week. Have a listen and read more on the Bassling blog.

Oscar Wilde snap

Wilde was witty alright. My favourite of his lines is probably "I can resist everything except temptation"

Brad, Johnny and Tom

From here

When I broke Google

After breaking YouTube, I've moved on to Google

Alan Moore

Like this sketch of Alan Moore, whose Lost Girls has been banned in New Zealand.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Had a few laughs today reading Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Cab Savvy at Toorak Winery

Leeton's Toorak Winery held a very successful workshop on wine blending last weekend as part of the Taste Riverina food festival.

The photograph shown comes from the Toorak Winery Facebook page.

The wine blending workshop succeeded in revealing a lot of the skill in winemaking. As we experimented with identifying tastes and then combining them, there was ample time to ask questions about the process.

I really enjoy wine and have learned a lot from drinking with wine science students while living in Wagga. One lesson was that you learn more from opening a few bottles than you do from opening one bottle because the compare and contrast approach assists in identifying tastes. This was the first time I'd been able to try contrasting approaches using the same grapes. It was a revelation in how combining these flavours can promote or disguise characteristics.

Drinking with wine scientists also taught me the importance of spitting out. It's good to remember when sampling around a dozen wines within a few hours around the middle of the day. Before we started comparing blends, Robert Bruno led a tour around his family winery, identifying the differences in producing white and red wines as well as the mechanical and chemical processes involved in producing 3.4 million litres of wine largely within a few months each year.

A vertical tasting of the premier brand Willandra Shiraz gave a sense how ageing changes wine, as well as the subtle berry bouquet of their double gold medal-winning 2006 release. It was so good I didn't want to spit it out, I wanted it to be part of me. Toorak Wines have won over international wine show judges and overseas suppliers with their European approach. The flavours are more integrated and less like your stereotypical Australian wine. It's not the brash and bold sorta thing I normally drink, so the whole event made me feel incredibly sophisticated.

Winemaker Martin Wozniak poured glasses of the shiraz currently maturing, different batches from the same harvest that illustrated some of the scope of his job. My tasting notes for these four glasses could describe four different wines and, in a sense, they do. These different flavours have been exaggerated and shaped into a palatte from which they will find complementary and contrasting shades to colour releases for a vintage. The key constraint that wine must be made from grapes ensures no one gets too crazy with the contents of our bottles but it's this sense of working with what you've got that's really appealing about winemaking. The problem-solving required as well as the chemistry to produce a sensuous product like wine makes it an art.

After lunch we began the process of settling on our blends. Using two shiraz batches and a cabernet sauvignon that the winemakers thought they'd most likely be selling unblended, we once again found contrasting flavours.

My initial attempt was to combine the shiraz whose eucalyptus note I liked with the tree fruit-flavour of the cabernet and the result was underwhelming. My second attempt favoured the shiraz again while introducing smaller amounts of the cabernet and the second shiraz. It was another revelation. The flavours seemed to rearrange themselves on my palate. The coppery note that had left a bad taste in my mouth in the second, rougher shiraz now carried a tannin finish after the wine had departed.

Examples of different oak treatments illustrated the knockout vanilla taste of American wood versus the restrained French equivalent. A couple of Hungarian alternatives were subtler and different again. This demonstration lead to discussion of the oak treatment already employed on two of the three wines we were blending.The shiraz I called rough I learned hadn't had this process.

When Robert asked if anyone was ready to blend their bottle I raised my hand. To keep the measurements easy to scale he made more than what was required and I was stoked to hear people sampling my blend making appreciative comments. We each had different approaches and it was fascinating to taste and discuss how small increments in the ratios were noticeable in our mouths.

This wine blending class wasn't something I'd seen promoted before and in the local paper the winery are quoted as saying they're thinking of running it again next June. If you like wine there's a lot to learn about the science and artistry as well as a very satisfactory feeling to be gained blending your own bottle. Highly recommended.

Portrait by Daniel O'Brien

At the Grong Grong Creative House keeping an eye on my brood, when Daniel says "There's a cloud of smoke behind your head. I'm going to take a photo."