Miksi netissä on niin hirveää? [Why online sucks] (2019) Iida Sofia Hirvonen. A solid text and eye witnesses account of contemporary social media culture. The text identifies a particular mode of toxic-discussion culture: Toxic pit fight promotion, indicating process where some people stir disputes between different marginalized communities.
20191217
Superb vinyl technique: Q-tip is a Beast (2009), fits well with our Bifi wood-records at Oksasenkatu. Q-tip is also rapping on Groove Is in the Heart (1990)! Spending my time as a gallery guard working on my eurorack (sample 1 & 2). Breadboarded an inverter.
20191215
Buchla – Electronic Music as Performance Art (2019) Under the Big Tree. A near hour long lecture on the history of the Buchla (Bemi) design company. The talk isn’t analytical, it does not excavate what it meant for Buchla to interface with a synthesizer or what motivated Buchlas dissentient and anti-government attitudes. But it offers some interesting historical details and explains the heterogeneity of his layouts (Save a click: Users don’t need to see a module to recognize it, they can identify it by feeling the knobs!).
Designing the Make Noise Erbe-Verb (2019) Tom Erbe/Soundhack (a video by mylar melodies). A very detailed history of reverbs and a thorough look on Erbes design process. He shares his insights openly and offers concrete tools for reverb design.
Heading to Buchla and Serge territory myself. Swapped my Monotribe for a Variable Slope VCF by Random*Source. I’ll have to build an inverter to help it resonate. Also got a Sense module from Bastl, to develop my mineral water audio analysis toolkit.
Visited Mental Alaska back2baSICs PARTY in Kannelmäki yesterday. Heard Viktor Toikkanen, who played a live programming gig using Tidal. This was the first time I’ve seen live programming (other then our Masku Movement sessions in ~2008) and it was great. I could identify some terms in the score (it was projected on the wall) and anticipate changes, which made the performance feel analytical. Bought a cassette from him too. Actually… There weren’t that many live coding moments. Toikkanen mainly triggered events he had programmed for the record. Some triggers pushed his computer to the limits and we could hear soundcard buffer overload crashes and glitches. I think this digi-materiality was an important part of the presentation. Glitches felt like real grains pushing trough the code. It echoed hardcore rock moments when artists push their amps to max.
The Internet’s Mid-Life Crisis (2019) The Agenda. Cory Doctorow argues that the internet is not broken, everything bad we see happening to it, such as facebook etc., corporate control of the infra and espionage of citizen, is a result or symptom of capitalism. After some weighing all guests seem to agree that some kind of legislation of the internet is needed to move forward (I think this would make the internet a part of the democratic domain).
Our exhibition opening at Oksasenkatu 11 was nice. A lot more people then I expected and mainly new faces. I’ll be on site to meet visitors for some glögi, sound lounging and fun. Dates: 18.-20.12 (12-18:00), 27.12 (12-18:00). Crossroads launch & seminar at SOLU went well too. Had the pleasure to meet Leena Valkeapää, she felt like a wild thinker. There were around 20 people at the event, which was just enough the make the space to feel crowded (at times). I got a lot of nice compliments on my talk on Earth Art Conservation.
Post-ore* (noun)
/poʊst ɔːr/
- Multimetal smelting and welding spillage blobs accumulated to the proximity of furnaces, pouring channels, storage units and waste disposal facilities, over the lifespan of a foundry, casting facility or smithy.
- Metal objects that are only worth the materials that are made from. Repurposing of such objects is “post-ore refining”, meaning the extraction of metals from wasteful objects. E.g. Gold extraction from discarded computer circuit boards or repurposing of a decorative steel things. Also unsalvable metal crafts projects, sacrificial metal brace/support used in the construction of other items.
- Metals which have been bonded with nonmetallic substances. Salvaging or repurposing such materials is labor intensive and deemed unwise under contemporary economical terms. Post-ore can be found in composite objects assembled from an array of materials (lesser metals, plastics, wood etc.) and hence not accepted by contemporary scrapyard entrepreneurs: “Nah.. We’re not a dump, that thing is only good for post-ore”.
- Post-ore age: A future human time when people resort exclusively to ground metals (and occasional meteorites) as their supply. Enough metals have been pulled from the depths of the planet to supply people for any currently imaginable human future. The amount of metals on the the top of earths crust, serves as an insurance that humans will never return to pre-metal ages. No culture or human group can ever be “bombed back to the stone age”.
* Term coined by Jesse when visiting an old foundry and discovering multimetal ingots (iron, copper, aluminum etc.) which had been produced by decades of spillage. He also spotted a fireplace-base-cake containing lumps of aluminum, copper etc. developed from someones efforts in clearing metals from their plastic housing by burning them on open fire. Finnish translation: Jälkimalmi or jälki-malmi.
20191121
Build a USB 5v output 1u and assembled a passive signal multiple. The USB 5v output is equipped with a 250mA fuse to prevent excessive power draw. The project taught me how to measure amperage and to work with fuses. The faceplate and interior structure, which supports the charger have been laser cut to measure. Damaged and destroyed my Mikrophonie contact mic build. Build RCA out/in sockets on the back of my main case which attach to my spring reverb and tank (which is mounted to the case). Laser cut 1u panels (lpg, piezo amp, attenuverter/offset) and delivered my first modular beat online (polyrhythmic slow beats trough a spring reverb sound like drumbient).
Preparing for the BIFI Studio exhibition with Johannes. Event info is online at the Oksasenkatu 11 site. Equipped both monstera leaf piezo mic units with balanced outputs and they work very well. The sounds are clean and the surfaces sensitive.