Lee Barry's Blog, page 27

Dreamy Music

  As a continuation of the "Containers of Music" idea, I'm revisiting recorded music's intimate connection with cinema, and in context with my current album, photography as well. The editing of film is very similar to recording and mixing--so it is logical that they would have similar effects on memory and emotion--in which sound and place are encoded: Music can remind you of specific places and

Peripherique

 Very often people will comment on the edge or frame of something, rather than what they thought was the focal point.This image by Austin Kleon is ostensibly about the creative space. But I did wonder, "I could use a table like that...", and I must that I  didn't fully read the article. In fact, I began to shop for work tables.This is the idea that (at least marginally) informed the "Peripherique

Ostensible Improvements

A recent article on this frustration:"Never before has a phone update felt more like a blatant act of hostility....I woke up yesterday to find them decimated to a smoldering rubble. Nothing was in its right place, many podcasts had just plain vanished, and worst of all, the damage wasn’t even the result of a glitch, but rather an ostensible improvement."  Things are becoming over-refreshed and

Some June

 6/10/1997Attended Tribune’s 150th celebration at Tribune Tower with luminous light sculpture by John Mooney. Chicago Jazz Ensemble led by Bill Russo.6/11/1997Idea: Songs about books, songs about films.6/13/1997Friday the 13th. Bulls win 5th championship—The city went nuts!6/18/1997Interesting that linguists have reduced all the languages in the world to just three, plus the Basque language,

Exformation (Cont.)

Xenakis's PithopraktaFrom the recent book Subtract:"We asked people to change random loops of musical notes. They were about three times more likely to add notes then to take them away. It was roughly the same 3 to 1 ratio when we tasked people with improving a piece of writing. We asked participants to transform a five-ingredient soup. 2 out of 90 participants subtracted ingredients."  (p. 27)It

Chance Operations

 In the book Analogia, George Dyson uses the commercial airline industry as an analogy for how cybernetics work: You develop a simple system with simple rules and then let it run itself. There is no control room per se, but you can set one up. For example, in a music session I would have 3 to 4 channels devoted to constantly running systems based on algorithms, and then pull up the faders at

Lists, Grids, And Creativity

 
Umberto Eco on lists: "The list doesn't destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists." I've always been a proponent of incrementalism, both

The Unplugged Self

 A short riff for a Sunday...Over the past decade or so I have been hearing more discussion of the Self and Self-actualization. If you use the analogy of an artificially intelligent being that's been developed over decades, we'd assume that it would eventually develop an “ego”. But that ego would always have to be "plugged in". What the spiritualists seem to be saying is that the real Self

Creativity As a Compromise

Madame Bijou--BrassaiArt is always a process of squaring what we wanted to do and when we eventually did.The piece I'm working on now for Music For Places V is a "period piece" set in Paris in 1932 in which there are only photographic stills for possible scenes in a movie--"scouted" photos if you will.One of the scenes is in a cafe in Paris. Possible scoring for this kind of scene is almost

On Rewrites

Very often once you reach a certain point in a work you realize it has to be revised. I feel I'm always moving towards a Resolution, which doesn't always mean it's finished. Like a visual artist, you have to step back and look at it and figure out what it needs.One of Eno's Oblique Strategies is something like "Step outside" or "Go to another room" (Maybe you can find it) Your piece wants