1 month until "real life"

My post Sync 08 life has commenced! The semester until now has been largely consumed with organizing & producing the (art & music) festival. It was largely a success, in my book, we had good crowds both nights and great performances. More work went into it than I ever predicted, partly because it was my first time organizing something of that scale, but I'm glad for the experience. I met some great people, learned a lot about music & technology-- what really makes performance in that area compelling, and toughened up a little. Under pressure, there will always be people difficult to deal with, no matter how flexible or amiable I strive to be.

A few festival pics:

Michael Una played an amazing set Friday night

shenanigans.tv brought a whole troupe and awesome costumes

we were very luck to have DJ 'munk spin both nights

I can by no means relax completely with graduation a little over a month away, but will be happy to concentrate on my own work for a while. I will be spending lots of time on my senior project, an interactive video installation, and catching up on all the regular person things that seem to get pushed aside when I'm consumed with a project. My body has already retaliated for the lack of pre-Sync sleep. I missed most important commitments this past week, but feel a tiny bit better and am hoping I don't have mono. Ah, the pursuit of balance, when I do so thrive on extremes!

Something I've been thinking about a lot-- using the correct tools for the task. In all aspects, using the most appropriate thing available to you for the situation. Email is great for professional correspondence and long-distance communication, but for personal relationships, phone calls feel like a much better choice. (Trading the ability to calculate your words for the chance to read voice inflections?) Facebook is good for party invites, and... not much else. Why not use GarageBand for a quick recording of an idea if it's easier to start up than ProTools? Why not stir your tea with a fork if it's the closest thing in reach? I am sensitive to aesthetics, and fanfare has its place, but spare time is too precious to be lost in politics and logistics.

Playing Catch Up

Wow, I feel obliged to say that it's "been a while," indeed.
Traditional organization hasn't been my forte as of late.

I'm working on getting my web site set up proper, but until then, I'll continue on here.
I showed a short video piece at the Lightworks (student) Film Festival last weekend, and once I compress it I'll post it here. It reminded me how much I really, really enjoy sound design for visuals.

I had a tough semester and now I'm glad to have a little time for things like reading (currently: A Year With Swollen Appendices, Brian Eno' Diary), listening to music with my full attention, with other people (note: replace all TV watching with this activity), staring at paint peeling patterns on ceilings, etc.

For once I'm not too saddened by the short length of our winter break between semesters. One, I'm more sickened than ever by rampant consumerism. And, classes are tough but they keep my mind occupied. I'm finally starting to feel creative again, and I'd rather work on projects than dwell on the difficulties of the past year.

Everyone self-medicates somehow, right? Drugs, alcohol, food, television, mass media, popularity, "evangelism"...

Detroit was named the most dangerous city this year, and has the nation's highest poverty rate.
Half an hour away and insulated by academia for four more months, I'll keep hoping I'll somehow be saved from mind-numbing work and extreme money troubles. Hmm.

Peace.

Videos!

Here's a recent video for which I did the sound design. My art school friend Katie Jacquez shot the video. It was a quick (but fun) little project, so more collaboration may be in store.




And until I get my very own website, I'll post some archived stuff here. This is a 16mm silent film I wrote, directed, and edited for an intro film class. I also had a lot of production help from my group members. I think it deserves a soundtrack some day soon.

Delivery:


Lastly, I'll pretend I'm a hip culture blogger, or British. Thanks to a certain fashion-forward friend for introducing me to French & Saunders.

My favorite sketch, American Retirement:

Maybe I need to introduce more humor into my projects. It might keep me happier. Unless people don't "get it." At least with "serious work" you can pretend to be pretentious in those cases. When people don't understand my humor I feel like the kid in gym class who always gets hit in the face with the basketball. What?

Mostly Music News

It's been a while blah, blah, so here we go:

Concerts

BJORK
Last Tuesday at the Fox in Detroit, Bjork tore it up. A friend who'd seen her a few months ago in Chicago said she sounded tired, but I didn't notice. My attention can wander in huge venues such as this, but I was quite enamored with her performance, as expected.
I was also drooling over the DJ setup, which included touch-screen faders and pitch controls projected on 2 huge screens, and a REACTABLE. Apparently they're not even on the market yet. If you haven't heard of these babies, take a look:

This is what electronic instruments should be-- tangible, visceral, gestural.

My favorite from that night was Hyperballad, which started out like the recording and turned into a super sweet dance version of itself. And then there was confetti!

FEIST
I had high expectations for this show since, two years ago at the Blind Pig, she blew me away. I was disappointed as her voice just wasn't up to par-- she seemed tired or sick and wasn't sustaining or reaching high notes well. I enjoyed the quieter songs more due to all this. On the whole, though, not very memorable.

R.K. SRINIVASAN
A visiting professor from India, proficient in Carnatic and Hindustani styles. Suprisingly my favorite concert by far. Anything I say about it feels insufficient... He is a virtuoso and plays delicately and clearly. R.K. was joined by a tablas AND a mrdangam player, both excellent as well.
Indian music is so close to my heart, and this concert made me want to start practicing Hindustani singing again.

Geoff Dyer
This Brit is my new favorite author. I highly recommend Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It. It's a collection of short stories/essays that are a mix of travelogue and memoir. The location and content is always changing but there's a thread of dry humor and unbelievably candid insight throughout.
He writes in a way I'd like to be able to compose. Things are somewhat fictionalized while allowed to be just what they are: not overly dramatic or glossy, and in doing so he shows life to be even more surreal, profound, and glorified.

Daft Punk movie
I can't wait until I can get my hands on this. It's been released in Europe and there's a few North American screenings coming up, but no word on widespread availability yet.

Electroma Trailer:

More news soon on my own endeavors, perhaps, though living less in the virtual realm is definitely a good thing.

Nocturnally yours--

Stellar Museums, Sensuous Music

I didn't journal much in London, and many of my myriad experiences are still coming back to me...
One of the most amazing museum exhibits I've ever seen is Soundwaves at Kinetica. This tiny glass-walled museum in the center of Spitalfields market was full of innovative, interesting, & interactive sound pieces. My favorite was Michael Markert's "phonetic theremin," sort of a mix between a talk-box and a theremin, that treated the spatial position of your hands as a mouth forming vowels.

That is the kind of work I would LOVE to be able to do. It's nice to experience interactive pieces about sound (not just "music"); be able to point to something specific that I would be proud to call my own. I want to do more research about the methods these artists use. I need to remind myself that such things are possible, and that I probably already have the skills to do some of them! I'll start by refreshing my Max/MSP/Jitter skills, perhaps.


On a different note, any Eno fan (or non-fan, really) who hasn't downloaded the Oblique Strategies widget yet, do so!

Which reminds me, I did a short "study" in the style of Eno last semester:

(© H. Konzman, of course)
The voices are 1920s Tarpon Springs school children reciting the Greek alphabet, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Sweet dreams.

Miscellaneous & an overuse of quotation marks

Seaweed salad in a sushi restaurant that plays things like "The Girl From Ipanema" on the loudspeakers, and witnessing Mass for Indian immigrants with Bollywood-tinged chanting in a historic Parisian cathedral, and what, really, is "authentic?"

Reading (the same lines five times, in disbelief) in The Economist about the Chinese controlling the weather for the Beijing Olympics, and what, really, is impossible? And what's still "sacred?"


In a way, plane travel is a form of time travel. In that you don't have to traverse all the land/sea in between to get from point a to point b; you're skipping all the in-between time and places that for most of history you would've been forced to experience.


just because

Home?

I didn't start this as a purely personal journal, but inevitably I'm still holding conversation with myself, so here's the thought of the day:

Suburban Wasteland
I like to think I'm fairly open-minded, but I recognize I'm probably more judgmental of the "culture" I come from than of any others I've experienced. This is partly due to all the negative associations I have with growing up here. I don't think that I'm better than anyone, even if I happen to be more "worldly," or whatever.

...But I do think that living in a nondescript area of suburban sprawl, shopping at hideous strip malls and super-size 24-hour marts and eating processed food at chain restaurants contributes to disillusionment. I'm talking simple human happiness factor, too, not even environmental issues. Feelings of isolation are possible (prevalent?) in any living situation, but I guess I'm thinking more in terms of community layout than size. For example, compared to where I went to high school, Ann Arbor feels more village-like, walk-able, and aesthetically pleasing in general (if contrived). Though, compared to a big city with decent public transport, Ann Arbor can be difficult to get around and lacking in entertainment.

Hmm, I think I may be in over my head with this one. I'm not championing the innate virtue of big cities over small towns, but I do think community planning needs to be centered around people rather than corporate interest and consumerism. Wal-Mart and McDonalds, this means you.

Is anyone more familiar with this topic than me?
Suburbs supposedly arose as a form of liberation-- the working classes being able to afford bigger houses and yards and all. Instead of facing anti-Americanism in Britain, many people who'd been here raved about the amount of space and the modernity ("everything's so new and works well"). It came as a surprise, to be sure.