A friend and master baker unveils her new project, TartistLA, to the Los Angeles area. If the images above don’t convince to order a homemade tart, I’m not sure what will.

More at Tartist.LA

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Via: http://www.nerdcore.de/wp/2010/08/13/voodoo-wrestling-im-kongo/

Via: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/africa/100722/full-frame-congo-magic-athletes

Spandex, brush, candle wax, dirt, spit, blood, worship and theatrics. Never realized wrestlin’ was a spiritual practice.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/harder-tea-partiers-try-prove-theyre

All images via Voodoofunk.blogspot.com

And for the hell of it, some afro-funk mix from their dusty archives:

I was on a flight the other day hours after watching Blade Runner. So in some restless state of my mind I started imagining the future. First of all, some of my predictions are lazy. Secondly, some are stupid but that may depend on your tastes. Holds card up to houdini hat. I predict that in the future music producing software can become a musical commodity. For example, instead of purchasing an MP3 of your favorite song, you purchase a piece of software (playable on some future device) that produces music within your favorite genre. It’s actually not terribly futuristic. Lots of software exists that produces music somewhat on its own within certain styles or framework (especially ambient music). The strange part might be the suggestion that mainstream audiences might get into this. My crazier prediction (or hope) is that someone creates a piece of software that dissects and analyzes a master and produces new hypothetical compositions based on their collected works.

I’m not sure who’s music it would be: the original composer, Mozart for example; the software developer; or the software itself. It seems we can all start asking those questions today.

“Cope emptied Santa Cruz’s libraries of books on artificial intelligence, sat in on classes and slowly learned to program. He built simple rules-based software to replicate his own taste, but it didn’t take long before he realized the task was too difficult. He turned to a more realistic challenge: writing chorales (four-part vocal hymns) in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach, a childhood favorite. After a year’s work, his program could compose chorales at the level of a C-student college sophomore. It was correctly following the rules, smoothly connecting chords, but it lacked vibrancy. As AI software, it was a minor triumph. As a method of producing creative music, it was awful.”

Full Article

Composer David Cope has been dealing with exact issue for years. I hadn’t been following and I had my suspicions as to how advanced the results had become. From what I can hear on the article above, I’m pretty surprised. So the technology has maybe caught up with its aspirations but what about audiences? That’s probably the hard part. Most people don’t buy music if they believe it’s only created by software. Most people don’t consider software as art either. Well that is a problem isn’t it? Or a good thing for other people. None the less we’re closer. The simple fact that T-Pain and Daft Punk can revel in their “artificiality” might make room for the software generated album of the future.

Number 1: It was hot inside.

Number 2: Fairey had a carefully placed sticker over his “Obama” image on his laptop. Political imagery on personal items you can’t throw away is never a good idea to me.

Number 3: Skullphone had its primary series on display as soon as you entered the gallery. From a distance, it’s a wide collection of LCD screens displaying a collection of Skullphone (skeleton + phone!) imagery — as well as depictions of related media and landscapes (billboards). Considering the temperature inside, I assumed the screens were all overheating. If you could manage yourself through the crowd that night and observe the works closer, you’d find that they were actually paintings. All color halftone paintings layered and embossed in some kind of resin. I unfortunately don’t know much about the mediums used. With the right lighting, the works are vivid.

Number 4: Urine disguised as beer (Pabst).

The show was worth a smile. The technique was spot on. I recommend not attending that venue on an opening night though, when Fairey is there. Not quite worth it, even if you want to be seen.

“I’m in the process of starting a non-profit which invites contemporary artists to design and build playgrounds in the United States. I’m now trying to raise enough funds to get the first prototype playground built in Los Angeles. The amount of unsuccessful grant writing I’ve done recently is quite soul-crushing. So I’m giving popular culture and the internet a go. If you are a threadless user already, please vote 5 for me and leave an enthusiastic comment. If my design gets picked I’ll get paid $2500 in money and prizes, part of which will go towards my fund-raising effort.”

Whatever the results of this contest, I think her idea sounds great. So give her a hand and vote. Let’s eventually make these playgrounds. For the kids.

I shouldn’t post a lengthy article here on the subject but I am very interested in the idea of graphing musical information. I don’t have a major concern about the study of color relating to music (synesthesia) but instead the idea of charting data as a means of defining both music and beautiful patterns of information is much more intriguing to me.

I had the idea of a piece of software some years ago that would more or less allow you to draw music in a wide range of manners. A piece of software that really consolidated many concepual ways of graphing music, drawing it, structuring, etc. I don’t have programming prowess to handle this on my own. If you do please don’t hesitate to contact me. I did recently come across software that approaches this in some fashion.

AlgoScore is based in CSound and focuses on algorithmic composition – http://www.bitminds.net/kymatica/index.php/Software/AlgoScore

One important feature it has that my idea for software also entailed is it’s non-realtime aspect. Maybe it’s just a personal ideal but I find it pretty writing music when I’m not entirely sure what it will result in. Anyhow, the image atop relates to a currently incomplete work, Pressed Twelve-tone Flower. I attempted to extrapolate musical information from the image and qualities of a pressed flower while utilizing serialism. Really, it came down to dissecting the image and deciding what was purposeful enough to use a musical information. It was tricky. I think.

Here’s an image relating to the software AlgoScore:

It’s standard data there. Envelopes, waveforms. Nothing terribly unfamiliar. However it might just be me but I can get enough of looking at this type of score. For some conceptual pieces of music, this is where it makes the most sense: in the graphing of data, notes, musical suggestions, rules, guidelines.

In my hypothetical software, I imagine a feature that allows you export as a PDF and end up with a lovely chart/graph designating maybe the beautiful, theoretical piece of you music you can’t really hear.

Update: It seems that a couple days later the entire website (with said software) has become unavailable. Adding further to the rare presence of interesting scoring software out there.