02023-01-05 | Computer, News
I love RSS, Real Simple Syndication (Wikipedia) and prefer looking at my own list of RSS feeds over reading what an algorythm thinks I should read – which is also one of the reasons why I am not on Facebook or Instagram and am no longer active on Twitter. Finding feeds for blogs that might interest you has become easier with this handy directory that shows a collection of 1219 blogs about every topic. If you have a Mac or an iPhone or iPad, have a look at this excellent RSS Reader app. It’s been around forever, in Internet years, it’s free, and I think it is excellent. Go ahead, curate your own news. You’ll feel better!
ooh.directory is a place to find good blogs that interest you.
Find out more…
ooh.directory
02022-12-10 | Art, Computer, Copyright, Internet
Art In The Age Of Optimization – by Dan Sheehan:
In fact, fans love to tout AI art’s accessibility, saying that now anyone can be an artist. Unsurprisingly, this claim seems more focused on art as a product than it is on art as a practice. And that love of accessibility does not seem to extend to social services, public spaces, or anything beyond the automation of skill based professions.
and
So the company line becomes, “we want art to be for everyone,” while the obvious goal remains the same as every other big tech attempt at optimization: to make money. No one truly believes that the goal here is to make art better or more accessible, right? Are people actually looking at this stuff and feeling like they’re at the dawn of a new age rather than the beginning of the end? The ideal outcome for these companies is to provide a service that makes it so that when some tech guy needs an image of an astronaut looking at the moon to promote his new NFT, he doesn’t have to talk to (or more importantly: pay) anyone to get it. Like the vast majority of silicon valley’s latest contributions to the world, the only thing this seeks to actually optimize is exploitation. So why does everyone seem so excited about it?
I added the emphasis.
Please read the entire post. I think it is brilliant.
02022-12-06 | Art, Computer
This evening I have been reading about artists whose work was used to train AI, often against their express wishes, and sometimes in the guise of being an homage. There is a long list of them. Here is a link to one of the articles I read. My conclusion is that as long as we don’t teach art in our schools, there will be no appreciation for the work of artists. There is a human need for expression. We are the animal of stories and art. If this expression is not guided and trained and shown a path of practice and growth, then people will resort to technology to express themselves, whether that’s by creating AI facsimiles of art, or otherwise finding ways to do what they have not been taught.
02021-03-17 | Computer, Jon Gagan
I am learning how to use a program called Live, made by a company called Ableton. Ableton is headquartered in Berlin and consists of 350 people from 30 different countries. The software has been around for almost twenty years and for much of that time I have used it for really simple things, like taking a drum performance and slowing it down, or speeding it up. In the lingo of Live this is called warping.
Last year I started looking at what my next studio might look like. I have always used ProTools for recording, mixing, and mastering and that’s the software I am most comfortable with. I am pretty sure christmas + santa fe, released in 2000, was the first album I recorded with ProTools. I am using a very old version of the software, 6.9.1, because that’s all my old studio computer can handle. At some point I will have to switch to a newer computer, which is why I am thinking about my next computer as well as the software that I might use. I looked into Logic, but it feels like software for a keyboard player. Great for a person who uses MIDI, but I don’t use MIDI. I installed Luna, but that didn’t feel right to me either. Perhaps I am simply too used to ProTools and therefore I can’t see the possibilities of the other applications. This might be so. However, with Live I do see new possibilities.
In the last few weeks and months I watched a whole bunch of videos on how to use Live and try to work with the app for a few hours every day. Slowly, I understand it a little more. The software might not work as well for audio editing as ProTools does, but I want to try to record “slow2” with it. There is no better way to learn a method than by using it.
Today I messaged Jon that it might be easier for me to work with Live if I had a nice, big external monitor – because Live feels very dense on my laptop. There is a lot packed into the screen space. Our chat turned from huge screens for computers to using goggles instead because they would use less resources… once they exist. Jon wrote that one might need a larger mouse for a huge screen. I replied that it should be called an elephant. Then I wrote that it would be even better if I didn’t have to sit at a computer. If there were cameras in the room, connected to the computer, I could indicate the amount using the space between thumb and finger. Jon mentioned wanting to be able to conduct the software, rather than having to write automation.
Then I mentioned that Brian Eno said in an interview that computers didn’t have enough Africa in them. That led to this TED talk about Fractals at the Heart of African Designs. The talk explains that binary fractal code was used in Africa and then…
In the 12th century, Hugo of Santalla brought it from Islamic mystics into Spain. And there it entered into the alchemy community as geomancy: divination through the earth. This is a geomantic chart drawn for King Richard II in 1390. Leibniz, the German mathematician, talked about geomancy in his dissertation called “De Combinatoria.” And he said, “Well, instead of using one stroke and two strokes, let’s use a one and a zero, and we can count by powers of two.” Right? Ones and zeros, the binary code. George Boole took Leibniz’s binary code and created Boolean algebra, and John von Neumann took Boolean algebra and created the digital computer. So all these little PDAs and laptops — every digital circuit in the world — started in Africa. And I know Brian Eno says there’s not enough Africa in computers, but you know, I don’t think there’s enough African history in Brian Eno.
There you have it. Africa is at the heart of computers.
02021-02-27 | Computer
This post on Daring Fireball led me to this email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker plugin for macOS Apple Mail. I know nothing about programming software and was able to install the plugin for my laptop using the Terminal. It’s working. If you want to check it out click on the next link.
GitHub – apparition47/MailTrackerBlocker: An email tracker, read receipt and spy pixel blocker plugin for macOS Apple Mail.:
MailTrackerBlocker is a plugin (mailbundle) for the default Mail app built-in to macOS. Email marketers and other interests often embed these trackers in HTML emails so they can track how often, when and where you open your emails. This plugin works by stripping out a good majority of these spy pixels out of the HTML before display, rendering the typical advice of disabling “load remote content in messages” unnecessary.
Browse your inbox privately with images displayed once again.
02020-07-31 | Computer, Guitar, Performance
The guitar is an instrument that is mercurial enough, without having to struggle with open source software that “forgets” settings.
I remember reading a blogpost years ago where someone had asked Paco de Lucia about playing guitar. The post was taken down later, perhaps because it wasn’t an authorized interview, perhaps because of the language Paco used, not knowing this would be published. I will always remember it though because it was true. Here is part of it:
I could not live without the guitar, but at the same time this is no way of life, because it is such a difficult instrument, so ungrateful; you dedicate your whole life to it, hours and days, and suddenly you come up on stage, and that day you feel in perfect shape for playing, and still you don’t hit one single string right, and you cannot figure out why… it depends on so many things, on how long your fingernails are… I am talking about tenths of millimeters, and you ask yourself. What is going on? Where am I failing? And it could be a badly polished nail…
Well, yesterday I was looking forward to perform and my nails seemed to be in good shape. At 7:30pm the slideshow ended and I started playing. A couple of minutes later I was informed that no sound was being transmitted. I stopped and put my guitar down. Computers and software are clearly as mercurial as guitars are.
The open source streaming software’s meter showed that sound arrived at the computer, but somehow it didn’t make it out to the upstream. Instead of trying to search for the problem I quickly created a new sound source for the broadcast. It seemed to solve the issue and I started playing again. In my hurry I forgot, however, to add the new sound source to the other two cameras and when subsequently switching to either of the two additional USB cams the sound dropped out. We had to use one basic camera for the entire broadcast.
I work hard to make my performances look and sound as professional as possible. Touring with Luna Negra I know that the band sounds great and that our engineer Stephen Coler is doing an excellent job of translating that sound to every kind of venue. So it was very frustrating to stumble yesterday. When I was younger my temper was such that I surely would have destroyed a few things, that’s how upset I was…
I am going to look into streaming software alternatives after next Tuesday’s performance. Yesterday afternoon I spent an hour trying to get the software to “see” the USB cameras I was plugging in. To be fair it could have been a mercurial USB port on my laptop or something with the USB hub I have to use because streaming requires three ports and my laptop has only two. After plugging and unplugging different configurations, and restarting the computer multiple times, it suddenly started working.
I still believe in streaming over making videos because there is something about live performances that just feels right to me. It’s a unique challenge and when it all comes together it is magical. I am hoping Tuesday will be magical.
