Economic Left/Right: -3.88 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.38 A little bit to the right of the Dalai Lama. But I knew that. altering your mental relationship with the world some years ago i had the great good fortune to take on a job as night attendant at a 24-hour petrol station, 10pm-6am, 2 days on, 2 days off ( which really fucks with the body clock ) ... i thought it might be fun, might allow me to write music with no distraction ... no such luck ... doors were locked at 11pm, in time for ritual through-the window abuse from the pub throw-outs, shelf re-stocking duties followed until the early hours ... after a couple of weeks, i started trying to make friends with the market traders arriving at 4am, to their bemusement and irritation ... Your political compass Economic Left/Right: -6.88 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.38 Down there at the anarcho-syndicalists with Mandela, Dalai Lama and Gandhi. Tired of Bush's rhetoric? Sick of the appeals to fear and references to 9/11? Think you could do better? Here's your chance! With this fun Interactive Tool!! George Bush Speechwriter Your political compass Economic Left/Right: -6.62 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.10 International Chart A diverse professional team has assessed the words and actions of globally known figures to give you an idea of how they relate to each other on the political compass. Right Libertarian A rhythmic digression in human voice. Alun Brings the light... 7. Are exceptionally sensitive to light
If I could be awake at night and sleep through the day every day..... ...you would miss your 'normal' friends and 'normal' interactions too much, altering your mental relationship with the world, and your physical characteristics would change. A friend who worked at the Telegraph for 3 years of nights found, most obviously, his skin pigmentation getting fucked up and has been told to expect it to be 1-2 years before it returns to 'normal'. Is it worth it? Index of /Dr._Brontosaurus-Crabwise-EP-2004-DrBName Last modified Size Description An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements that exemplify Bruce Mau's beliefs, motivations and strategies. It also articulates how the BMD studio works. 1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth. 3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there. 4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. VCs don't understand this one, and practice the opposite of number 3. 5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value. 6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions. 7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit. 8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism. 9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere. 10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead. 11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications. 12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice. Allow both failure and sucess, and reap the benefits of both. 13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves. 14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort. 15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant. Hire stupid people; they will supply you with stupid questions. 16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential. 17. ——————————. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others. 18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world. I can personally vouch for this one. I work best at night, I've done my best music at night, I think better at night. If I could be awake at night and sleep through the day every day..... 19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for. 20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. We do that. 21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again. 22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference. Thats why when everyone is using the same set of tools (Protools) in the studio, you should run away from them as hard as you can. If you don't, your stuff will sound like their stuff. Differentiation of your tools and methods is fundamental to arriving at your own sound. For example, when our studio is running, nothing is permanently plumbed in, and between sessions, everything is unplugged. That way, each setup is unique, each session is unique. When you have permanent routing, your place has a "sound" and whilst thats great if you want to sell studio time and have big clients its anathema for anyone wanting to explore. Ideally, all your equipment should be in....later! 23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better. Use with caution obviously. 24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it. Bingo! Unless you write your own software. 25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight. Guilty as charged mlud. 26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you. 27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.” Cut it up. Why not go all the way? 28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions. If they get stuck to you albatross fashion as the coiner, you could be trapped in an atenololian nightmare. 29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent. 30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.' Freedom is slavery? "Suits" are the people who try to stop every innovation we can think of. They were against the record, the radio, television, the VCR, they are against file sharing, they have no vision, no guts and live only for today. The truth is, Frank Gehry is a superstar. This is how he gets over the first hurdle. secondly, he budgets properly, setting out the financing he needs to realize a project leaving a good margin of error so that he can deliver on budget. He does this by having suits under his control. That is the key, to have suits working for you as a tool, and using that tool effectively. If you cooperate with them, they will control you...even if you are paying them! 31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed. Translation; get rich as fast as possible. Only then will you be free enough to not borrow money and do what you want no matter what the consequenses are. Ask George Lucas about this. No one understood what he was trying to do with Star Wars. Even the producer admits that he didnt understand it, but backed it anyway. Now, Lucasfilm can make any film that it wants, can invest in any technology that needs to be created...and you know the rest. 32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same. 33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment. 34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove. 35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique. 36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words. tology. 37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it. 38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential. Acid! 39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations. 40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields. Skype. 41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves. 42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself. 43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free. http://www.brucemaudesign.com/index.html It's not about the world of design. It's about the design of the world. Design has emerged as one of the world’s most important forces and nature itself has fallen to the regime of design. Design has placed us at the beginning of a new, unprecedented period of human possibility where all economies and ecologies are becoming totally global, relational, and interconnected and there exists one complex network of dominion over the forces of nature. Massive Change This is the new exhibition I will be touring at the gallery this fall. Check the site, it is a massive blog! Training starts next week. I am hoping it will be as cool as the cyborg exhibition, which was both fun and mind-expanding. I was debating if I would have time to tour this exhibit, but how can I not? Does anyone have insight into the world of color printers? At work we use a Tektronix Phaser 780. It is a colour laser printer. The quality is very high though it cannot handle high volume because the rollers get crapped up (unfortunately it gets a massive amount of work at the office). A seven-colour Epson printer would probably be a good choice too. I had no idea that Heidelberg made desktop print solutions but if they do I bet they are pretty good. Heidelberg is very highly regarded in the printing industries. To see a press check off a Heidelberg sheetfed is to cream one's pants. mmm. Quark issues: Akin, you're right on all counts about what Quark needs to do, I've felt their business/programming strategies of the past few years have bordered on "fucking retarded." I do think that they'll stick around though. Most of Quebecor uses Quark, and Quebecor alone could keep Quark in business. Of course that's nothing to say for Quebecor's legendary miserly nature - most terminals haven't even been upgraded to OS X yet, so who knows what the hell they'll do. Insane. Blogger's interface is starting to go totally crazy on me. not impressed. vvvt - bing. I have class from 8am to 9:30pm on Tues/Thurs. Better get moving. foster the extensions community into making Quark much better. Imagine if it were as easy to write extensions for xpress as it is for Movable Type. Can they do this without exposing the source of xpress? what they could do is buy up all the functionality they need in the form of these xtensions, optimise them and then ship them as the default feature set of xpress, that way, they keep the door open for developers to extend xpress and reduce the amount of re-writing from scratch that they have to do. Which is the same route Apple have been taking of late, no? Also Quark need to make it easier to develop extensions and support hobby extension makers, that way it could foster the extensions community into making Quark much better. I think Quark may be fighting an uphill struggle though, I would wager that most small design studios and agencies have moved over to InDesign, the behemoths only staying with Quark because of the huge investment of updating all their systems. I reckon they're on the brink though. Quark also needs to reduce the prohibitive entry price to its products. Josh -- I'd love $5000 to spend on a printer. At work we have an Epsom Stylus Photo 1270. It's OK for the stuff we're doing right now, but I'd love a networked, rendezvous postscript printer with Coloursync support. That won't happen for a while though. I'm using a 19" Apple Studio Display that can't manage 85Hz above 800x600. I'm using it at 1600x1200 at 60Hz and slowly going blind. Heidleberg make good printers. Not sure if any are in your price range (although I expect so). It would be really nice if there was a professional design community website out there with reviews of products, tips and techniques, etc. I guess Creativepro comes pretty close. If you were Fred Ibrahimi, the man who created and owns Quark Inc., what would you do to squash the threat of Adobe InDesign? I see that you can now download the 6.1 updater for free and without any registration or barrier from quark.com - perhaps they have got the message that locking people out of updates (even people who are not registered, or non purchasers) simply moves users to programs that dont lock the user out, ie ones made by Adobe. Or perhaps not. You still have to register to download the full res preview extension, an extension that adds a feature that should have been build in to xpress ages ago. It looks like a feature war, after real stability is fixed. Once your programme will not crash and eat your work, then you have to offer tools, sensibly laid out and accessible. Quark needs to:
They cant rely on third party extensions to provide functionality to xpress. Doing this makes running xpress as a fully featured dtp programme hideously expensive - actually, what they could do is buy up all the functionality they need in the form of these xtensions, optimise them and then ship them as the default feature set of xpress, that way, they keep the door open for developers to extend xpress and reduce the amount of re-writing from scratch that they have to do. hmmmmmmmm I meant US $5000 (this is for my work office). Perhaps that is too much for what I need, which is really just high quality CMYK proofing and small job runs (CD-ROM labels, some one-off brochures, &c.). Any ideas on models or brands? My budget is ~ US $5000 For that amount of money, you can probably get a six colour fine art printer...from what I hear...or did you mean $500? www.skeletonhome.com Fascinating artworks right there, by Mr. Bruce Tovsky. Design-wise Blogdialins, I am looking for an office color printer to be mostly used for proofs and very small jobs. Speed is not an issue, but accuracy of color and variety of paper sizes and stocks is. My budget is ~ US $5000. Does anyone have insight into the world of color printers? -- I've switched from Quark to InDesign as well this year. I find my work faster and easier to modify/see results. The PDF output function hss been invaluable. As has Preview/Bleed/Slug Mode. Hi Anthony, Thank you for your suggestions regarding our commenting system. As this is a new feature for us, we are very interested in getting input from users so we know how to improve the service. We will certainly take into account the issues you raised. Thanks for using Blogger! Blogger Support Original Message Follows: Whoever wants to fake documents, wether they be the "Niger Uranium" docs "George Galloway in Saddam's pay" papers or these "Bush is a lowdown dirty chickenhawk" files, they need to read Stop stealing elections and find our how democracy works. CLAUDIO ARRAUBIOGRAPHYClaudio Arrau, renowned throughout the world as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the century, stands today at the summit of his long and legendary career, for the one artistic goal he has pursued for a lifetime: the total fusion of virtuosity and meaning.
Where other famous pianists play the piano for excitement, power or display, Arrau plays to probe, to divine, to interpret. Says Arrau, "An interpreter must give his blood to the work interpreted."
The famed late doyen of London music critics, Sir Neville Cardus of the Guardian, explained Arrau vividly: "Arrau is the complete pianist. He can revel in the keyboard for its own pianistic sake, representing to us the instrument's range and power, but he can also go beyond piano playing as we are led by his art to the secret chambers of the creative imagination."
In a tribute by the Berlin Philharmonic, which bestowed the Hans von Bulow Medal on Arrau in 1980, on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of his debut with that great orchestra, it was put even better: "When Arrau bends over the keyboard, it is as if Music and only Music itself, is flowing out of his entire body. There is not a nuance of feeling or sound that he has not mastered. His pianissimo is more eloquent, more mysterious than that of others, and his fortissimo has more depth of dimension and is more limitless."
But a London Sunday Times interview some years back explained the Arrau mystique best of all: "One regards him as a sort of miracle; the piano is the most machinelike of instruments except the organ - all those rods, levers, little felt pads, wires, no intimate subtle human connection with it by breath, tongueing, or the string player's direct engagement with speaking vibrations. But Arrau makes it live, like God teaching Adam on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel roof; liquid, mysterious, profound, alive."
At 86, Arrau today is a legend in his own lifetime, not only for the penetrating profundity of his interpretations, but for a still transcendent virtuosity completely at the service of his art. Explains Arrau: "Since in music we deal with notes, not words, with chords, with transitions, with color and expression, the musical meaning always based on those notes as written and nothing else - has to be divined. Therefore any musician, no matter how great an instrumentalist, who is not also an interpreter of a divinatory order, the way Furtwangler was, or Fischer-Dieskau is, is somehow onesided, somehow without spiritual grandeur." [...]
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