Two people kinda want Robert Krulwich to be Science Advisor to the next US president

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 10:19 am

We all know that few people can explain science like Robert Krulwich can.

So I've started a Facebook group calling on the next US president to make Robert Krulwich his Sciece Advisor.

And after three days, one person has joined.

How crap is that! My take on it is: We want to keep him for ourselves, and not take him off the radio, so no one is joining in.

That's it!

Where are we headed?

Sunday, October 19, 2008 6:22 am

An ambitious title, Where are we headed?, and as you suspected, this won't be a comprehensive answer. The setting is clear enough: incentive-less digital broadcasting, iPods, mobile phones, and the internet on the tech side, and probable decreased consumer and funder spending.

Plus, it would seem, me writing veeeeery long sentences when I could be asleep. But how and ever.

The big feature shows seem to be dying off. RTÉ canned Curious Ear this spring, despite the international recognition it got. I think the producer, Ronan Kelly, is now doing stuff for their digital station RTÉ Choice, which is fab news. I'm not up to speed with the funding for their digital services – it was always a bit hazy to be to be honest – so I don't know how secure that is. I want it to be secure, that much I know.

And now there's the big news from Australia: the ABC is ditching its best shows, Street Stories and Radio Eye.

I don't know any of the background, but that really is bad news. The paid outlets for creative features are going, going…

Do we have to look to the USA? It would seem so – and PRX have been doing a sterling job of late, bringing us the joy of the Saltcast and Youthcast, as well as a new PRX due soon.

I would love (as ever) to have been at the Third Coast Festival in Chicago last week, but do I have the money? Like hell I do. But I wonder what was the murmur there about the economy.

Oh and this week I had my first experience of a public radio fund drive – listening online to WNYC, it's was rather cool, though timezones and lack of internet access at home meant I only heard Takeaway/ME - Brian Lehrer. Of course I would have loved to have heard Radio Lab funders, maybe like the ones on PRX or whatever.

All that ramble (man, I need a sub), is a prelude to the Where are we headed? bit. Shows like Radio Eye, the hour-long sound and emotion rich feature, are made for listening to while sitting down, doing not much other than enjoying the programme.

So, you kinda need a home to get the most out of it (I listen on the hoof, but know the city is distracting and detracting). And these days, it seems, fewer and fewer people have homes, especially in the US.

Doesn't that suggest a benefit for more iPod friendly programmes? I think so.
And what is iPod friendly? Hmmm. Not sure just yet. My first reaction is "back to basics": speech based, no background music or sounds, low dynamic range, short, well written, to the point.

Of course you can have background sounds, to play "for the fifth listen", but if it's so simple, will people want to listen again anyway? Lot's of opportunities there I think, that's for sure!

Will ponder and post more later, but right now, I've got to find some wi-fi to steal so I can post this!

Hearing Voices and nature sound. Yay!

Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:06 pm

H/T from the blog of the super Hearing Voices, here's a point to an article on wildlife sound recording and phonography, with a really cool photo!

DNTO, outside radio

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 11:57 am

Sometimes, I lose interest in DNTO because Sook-Yin Lee is so un-radio, it seems irrelevant to me, it falls apart.

But she is so un-radio, that she she breaks it out and brings it to new people. She makes me feel like a snob or a jealous child, not wanting radio to be enjoyed by other people who "don't get it".

But that is so important! Especially in these days when the technology is shooting off in all sorts of directions. Radio used to be how music people found their new music, but now that's much less the case. So we're losing the music people (though as an aside, if an economic downturn means people are going to gigs less, the full coverage a radio operation can muster of live shows can drag us up a bit – but that's an aside). Sook-Yin Lee is a music person, a wider-world person who happens to be using radio. I've been listening to the podcast for about a year now, before being convinced. But joining up with the new theme music, and (cos this is where the technology and life are making eye-contact) the video on the website, I'm a convert.

Well, I'm still myself of course. Just seeing new ways of making the would audible.

Here's the first video:

Sunday, October 05, 2008 7:52 am

The Journey to Away, the Best of Outfront podcast, CBC radio, week of October 1st 2008. 


This is an exemplary use of music and sound – no, the Asian gong is not a patronising or flat tool. Hear how it punctuates the speech, and how it ramps up the significance of words – what could be "just words".

I suspect in parts of Canada, this story may seem old, common, ordinary. There is something out of the ordinary and uncommon at the end, but how to bring in those listeners who may discount the story as "just another one of those"? With evocative sounds, sound that remind listeners why they have heard a story like this before, how the difference between Vietnamese food here and there is something they know, a part of their social definitions.

The gong, like the school children and waves, sounds like field audio. The sounds of war are also so real, that they do a lot of explaining.

On the second listen, I'm more struck with the return journey to away. The sign of a great piece, I think, if it can absorb you yet still leave more to discover on the second listen. That might break one of the traditional rules of radio, but that's always been a news-based rule, and this is, after all, the age of podcasting.

Outfront is one of those amazing shows that made me want to go to Canada and work in the CBC. That's not to say there isn't still a chance of course…

Diary of Leanne Wolf wins at Third Coast

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 4:53 am

An outstanding RTÉ Radio One documentary has won an award at the Third Coast Festival.

The Diary of Leanne Wolfe is superb. It's gut-wrenching, and it's tough to listen to only because it's so sad.

It has been honoured by Third Coast. I am very pleased at this. Making a radio piece is a way of honouring a story, and radio makers recognising a particular piece is honouring it further. I suspect a tremendous radio documentary means something small to Leanne Wolfe's family. That piece winning a Richard H. Driehaus Foundation award half way across the world can, hopefully, also mean something to her parents and sister.

I was bullied in school, but this documentary helped wipe that experience from my past. It's wonderful.

This week:

Friday, September 26, 2008 5:18 am

On Sunday, the batteries that came with my Olympus LS-10 finally gave up the ghost. I bought it in late June, and recorded about three hours of audio, but had also used it as my regular mp3 player almost all the time since then too. Awesome battery life.

Changing tack, an interesting post (they all are, but this one is more of a sharer, I guess) on James Cridland's blog about personality radio.

Flickr, CNN, and Christopher Lydon

Friday, September 19, 2008 5:20 am

I've started an internship – no comments about denying my age, please – outside radio. Chatted with the media analyst there the other day, and somehow we got talking about France24. And he told me of a time he was interviewed there during a bulletin and got all tongue tied: he couldn't concentrate because the presenter was so pretty.

Ok we probably got talking about that because Mishal Husain was presenting on BBC World News just then on the TV set above his head.

Still, I didn't know it at the time, but my new colleague had just given me an opening to a blog post I've been considering for a few weeks now.

A lot of people – mostly male, I'm thinking – watch more TV news because the person on screen looks good. Ok maybe I do it too, and maybe even with radio presenters, but thank heavens there's no website that holds onto things like blog posts you once wrote then deleted in a blush.

Since I paid up for a Flickr Pro account, I've been able to see which is my most visited photo. The search-engine grabbing tit shots perhaps? How about a shag from above? My collection of antenna masts in New Zealand? Amazingly not.

It's this one:
connor and kristy2.jpg

A photo of me in studio, or is it a photo of CNN International anchor Kristie Lu Stout somewhere outside the usual set? Flickr also kindly tells me the referring site, and it is a forum thread on CNNfan.org simply called… Kristie Lu Stout:

Wendy Mok took the picture, I think with Rik O'Shea's camera (yeah I'm still a name-dropper!). The photo data is wrong though, it was taken in late-summer 2004.

So right. Does it make people follow the news more? It does with some, yes. How does it change the authority of a newsreader – either by increasing or decreasing it?

CNN rarely employes unattractive presenters (okay they have that odd western aesthetic with Asian women. Fine), and if your favourite correspondent gets sent to a different bureau or beat, she'll bring your interest with her. Anyway. I'm not going to get intellectual about this because I'm not sufficiently equipped.

To me, for now, yes I reckon it's rather immature.

Back Home

What about radio? Painting your own pictures… how much better is that!

There's a discussion thread about that over at The Sound of Young America (no, I don't understand the branding. Maybe young Americans are very ironic. Many of those I've met are super-well informed and pleasent. I'm stumped by the cheesiness thing though). Anyway, as well as the wholly deserved adoration of Jad Abumrad (can't wait for the new season of Radio Lab, eeee!), and the delightful description of him as "adorkable", there is something I had only the vaguest sense of. That Christopher Lydon. All I know of his work is the Open Source podcast , with The Watson Institute at Brown University, An American conversation with… etc. Okay I thought, he's an academic who's doing a podcast as part of the course. Good on him.

Ah ignorance.

How surprised was I to find on that forum that there's a song about falling in love with Christopher Lydon! And in that song, the heart-broken Dresden Doll sings she won't contribute to NPR… naturally I have educated myself, slightly, about Christopher Lydon's career, though I have a way to go yet on that.

So how about this: Christopher Lydon interviewed the Dresden Dolls!

Musicans write and sing songs, radio producers get ideas of who to interview, and presenters make the sounds that reach us – the touch at a distance.

And in case you don't know it, here is surely one of the greatest break-up songs in the history of fantasy and broadcasting: stream.publicbroadcasting.net/ros/open_source_051005_lydon.mp3

Orientalism, China, radio.

5:20 am

I've just been listening to Studio 360's piece on the poetry of Mao Zedong. Raised some thoughts.

It started in the menu, where they played a clip of a Mao poem being read in English – by what sounded like a Chinese student. I guess I was pre-disposed to question the piece after it flagged itself as representing Mao with a young, weak voice.

The piece itself followed an item on how tyrants (their term), including Mao, ease themselves into the psyche through graphic and architectural art.

The first interviewee was an American expert on Mao – Willis Barnstone. I'd never heard of him so I was immediately interested in what he had to say. I was happy with that, and happy to hear a new voice on modern Chinese history, even if it's one of which I have no contextual knowledge – a glance at his bio is well-impressive.

The next guest, though made me feel less comfortable, when she said Yan'an as if it rhymed with Yemen. I reverted to the old habit of doubting the authority of someone who pronounces the names wrong (a habit that was only slightly softened by how most Chinese Olympians were given names with "jeee" in them for much of August on British TV). It led me to question why both their specialists were Westerners. But with a bit of thought: if I were working on a US radio piece about modern Chines poetry, who would be my first port of call? Prof Heather Inwood at Ohio State University. Though at least I could be sure she'd get the pronunciation right.

The arguments for using a westerner could include how clearly the person will speak English. You have to balance that with the practicality of taking who you can get. That said, for a timeless arts piece, you have little excuse for not getting the best person who will speak to you. And then, perhaps the most significant point: the piece was re-versioned from a podcast. As a podcaster myself, I think that's freaking awesome! But, should that be enough to excuse some weaknesses?

It's maybe a bit harsh of me to say weaknesses. As an independent, producing for little or no money, arranging quality interviews is very tough – sometimes even a TBU is out of the question, and Skype is your only way of getting an interview. While I feel radio has to move away from phone audio where possible to strengthen itself in the age of diverse digital media, I also accept that there are practical difficulties for the individual.

Back to the point of using Western experts. If you're an expert, you're an expert. So it shouldn't matter where you grew up. Where you grew up may mean your starting point is closer to that of the listener – so that would be an example of an American academic being better for Studio 360 than a PRC academic, for example.

Helping a listener see the PRC understanding may be very valuable, and may be very difficult – a level of difficulty that Radio Lab could take on, better than most, although it can be far less comfortable to talk about another race or culture than about science.

But you know, I could have been being sexist or agest too as the speaker was young and female. I'm not sure I'm equipped to examine that.

Now back to the young weak voice – indeed, Mao wrote poetry in his youth, and it is possibly a good challenge to our presuppositions to have him portrayed by an early-20s Chinese student in the US. That's likely a fair comparison to who Mao was in his day.

So this has become more of an analysis, than a criticism: and I would hate to think the producers would be in any way put off by some guy writing stuff on his blog.

And a final note, I don't actually know who read the poetry, how old he is or any of that. Though I know they could have gotten someone pretty good at London Chinese Radio ;-)

UPDATE, Sunday 5 October: With a bit more distance, I've been struck by the obvious point that this story comes from a poetry background, while I was hearing it from a Sinology background. If you work on a poetry podcast, and poetry is you field, of course you will find most of your experts from that field. And that's media – it gets heard by people in all sort of different fields. And to be fair, I was listening to an arts programme, not a history or, um, China Studies programme.

In Brief: Merchandising

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 7:54 pm

Radio 4's Today programme had presenter-head eggcups; NPR allows loyal listeners even more unashamedly celebrate their passion:




It's a tote – which I guess is a more American term for a shopper, or shopping bag, or canvas bag, or cloth bag, or… oh just look at the picture. It's one of those, punning on the name of their Legal Affairs correspondant Nina Totenberg.

Simple pleasures :)

If I had a million dollars (or two thousand pounds)

Friday, August 22, 2008 11:47 am

Wildeye Bulletin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First of all, news of an exciting new trip for 2009. As with all things with Chris Watson we expect places to go fast - so do let us know asap if you'd like to book a place...

Wildlife Sound Recording in Northern India with Chris Watson

A unique opportunity to record the rich sounds of the jungles of Northern India accompanied by experienced wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson.

Our base will be Camp Forktail Creek - a forest home surrounded by a dense Sal forest and moist jungles and the only ‘jungle’ camp of its kind within Corbett Tiger Reserve, offering exclusivity in game viewing, great walks and explorations on foot. Corbett National Park was the first National Park founded in Asia and being an excellent habitat for the Bengal Tiger, “Project Tiger” was launched here in 1973. Corbett is also rich in avifauna with counts of over 600 bird species.

From Camp you could get great sound recordings of Great Hornbill, Slaty Woodpecker, Oriental Scops Owl, Spot bellied Eagle Owl, Brown Hawk Owl, Large Tailed Nightjar, Indian Cuckoo, Common Hawk Cuckoo, Cheetal, Barking deer and monkey alarm calls and if lucky a leopard sawing.

As can be seen at http://www.wildeye.co.uk/india.html, we have a fantastic itinerary planned with walks, game drives into various parts of the park, night expeditons, and, with luck, elephant-back safaris. Although the focus will be on recording wildlife and natural atmospheres there will also be opportunities to record the wonderful sounds of the people and villages of the area. As April is wedding time in the area we may get lucky with a wedding in the village or a prayer ceremony in a local temple.

Dates: Sun 29th March - Wed 8th April 2009

Costs: £1,990 per person. Includes international flights, all local travel in India, accommodation and full board (apart from expenses of personal nature like phone calls, postage, laundry, tips, alcoholic beverages)

Booking: To check availability contact: info@wildeye.co.uk
If places are available you will be asked to pay a deposit of £500 per person to secure your booking.
Places are strictly limited so early booking is recommended.

Wildlife sound recording with Chris Watson

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:45 am

I have had the pleasure of attending two workshops run by Chris Watson – one of the most respected natural-sound recordists around, and the choice of the BBC. He was also an avant garde musician of the 70s and 80s. And, he's lovely!

The first workshop was organised by the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth (well done Chris Potts), and the second was by the Wildlife section of the British Library Sound Archive (well done Cheryl Tipp).

So a lot of like-minded people met and talked and listened and learned and felt warm and fuzzy.

We all learned a lot of techniques and skills from Chris. The biggest benefit for me was the encouragement that you are free and perfectly entitled to go out, get gear, drive and walk out to a hide and record, edit, compose, and perform. You can do it all. There's no need to fear you aren't as microphone-minded as some, no need to fear the editing, no need to think you don't deserve a podcast or a public exhibition.

I've increased my podcast output a lot since the workshops, and that can only be good!

London Calling

Saturday, August 02, 2008 4:50 pm

Watcha!

Back again, this time from good old London town. As ever I'll make my excuses and promise a longer post soon – in this case on a fab natural sound recording workshop with the one and only Chris Watson.


In the meantime, some bits and bobs: 
  • Virgin Radio is still IDing as Virgin Radio.
  • There are new carpets in the centre block of Bush House
  • London Chinese Radio has a studio on Camberwell Road, and will be web-streaming live from next week
  • Maplin doesn't (seem to) sell skinny mic cable.

How did I miss this?

Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:25 am

In April 2007, a momentous milestone was met, as The Onion reported at the time:

This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence

Another top Documentary on One

Friday, July 04, 2008 8:04 pm

The most recent edition of RTÉ's Documentary on One is a cracker.

Who fears to speak of '98? is about events in Gaelic Games in 1998 – I know little about the sport and have no memories of those events, but can still enjoy this doc. It presents the drama of sport through radio features techniques – and also brings a sense of wider tension, in the air around the stadium. The editing is great – nice techniques that create the atmosphere and feelings needed, without disgruntling some of the more traditionally mined listeners who are probably still significant for this slot.

For listeners outside Ireland there may be some accent and vocabulary difficulties, but I think it's still worth listening to!

Physical gallery show for Martin Williams

7:28 pm

A gallery in London is to exhibit ten pieces by Martin Williams. Details below! I know a couple of the pieces, Billy, Pack it Up Will You? is (to my ears) classic Martin. And The Tourist has just been featured again on the Third Coast Festival's weekly radio show and podcast.

I have a notion I've heard some of the others, but I'd like to hear them again as my own awareness has changed. But I won't get a chance as I won't be in London!

The details:

MARTIN WILLIAMS

YORKSHIRE RELISH
-10 pieces for radio

3-6 July 2008: Thur 3/7: 6-9pm and Fri 4/7 - Sun 6/7: 12-6pm
Lorem Ipsum Gallery, 2b Vyner Street, London, E2 9HE


The Lorem Ipsum Gallery is pleased to present Yorkshire Relish - ten pieces for radio by Martin Williams.


“I put the dowt behind my ear and walked through to the kitchen. The switch! Electricity! The Slot! Jesus no shilling. No breakfast. Overcome with despair I sat down, close to tears.My mind was completely blank for some time. Then. Raw eggs! Very healthy. Yes and there was some Yorkshire Relish to mix in.”
-from Wednesday by James Kelman



Billy, Pack it Up Will You? (30mins)
A found photograph... midnight taxi journeys... false memories.
Featuring the voices of Polly Frame, Leah from Alderney St. cemetery, a handful of taxi drivers and folk from the street.

The Person I’m Talking About (15mins)
Combining an account of the inexorable progression of coastal erosion with inter-connected stories extrapolated from fleeting observations.
And songs.
Originally made for the Resonance FM series All Day Everyday. Featuring the voices of Malcolm Kirby, John the newsagent and customers.

He Always Did, He Always Will (30mins)
Melancholy dada: nonsense made musical.

Property is Theft (13mins)
A tea-towel from the washing line was found on the bedroom floor. All the drawers downstairs were open and their contents scattered.
Taking stock in the aftermath of a burglary.
With bowed guitar and home-insurance claim forms.

Two Thousand and Six (60mins)
Constructed out of a series of recordings made each day for a year.
Three hundred-and-sixty-five days as banal bricolage.

News From Cuba (30mins)
A sound portrait of Cuba.

I Can Remember It Very Well (30mins)
Radiophonic collage: ablutions, Baudrillard and bagpipes.

The Tourist (30mins)
The oblique saga of a fictional traveller.
The Tourist is lost. He can't sleep, or tune out the music emanating all around. Secretly he looks forward to the journey home.
Including quotes from James Clifford's Routes, John Berger's Here is Where We Meet and William Basinski's The Garden of Brokenness. Featuring the voices of Ana Bonaldo, Haimo Li and Maike Zimmermann.

Sometimes I think You Too Sweet to Die (30mins)
Musicalised hokum.

At Home the Woman Read the Words Aloud (13mins)
Home-spun stories.
Including a quote from Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Originally made for the Resonance FM series No Place like Home.


For further information please phone Birthe Jorgensen: 44 079841 53375, e-mail: birthejorgensen@loremipsumgallery.com

AJE Witness Special on Polynesians and Taiwan

Sunday, June 29, 2008 10:45 am

Wooooow…

What a terrific show. "Made in Taiwan" is a Witness Special by Al Jazeera English, where a Samoan and Cook Islander analyse their genes, and follow the path they make.

I had known for years that Pacific Islanders, it's generally held, originate from Taiwan. That was a bit of information in my head.

And I had known how girls on the streets of Auckland would remind me of a Taiwanese woman.

But this show brought it together. I spent ten months in New Zealand, until mid-May, then two weeks with American-Taiwanese. The faces, accents and attitude reminded me of my diggs in Auckland and working Radio New Zealand International.

And it somehow worked deeper. This programme moved (me at least) in both the head and the heart. Ace programme.


I can't find it on their website or YouTube channel – I'll post an update if I do!

Edirol R-09 RIP again

6:36 am

A week ago, my Edirol R-09 got a soaking, and in spite of being left next to a toasty Aga for a day, no longer works.

:(

Thinking of an Olympus LS-10 as a replacement, but I should earn some radio-money first!

New series of All Day Everyday

Monday, June 16, 2008 7:42 pm

I missed most of the first series, even though I thought I'd set Audio Hijack Pro to record…


Anyway, Martin Williams is producing more All Day Everyday for Resonance FM




A L L    D A Y    E V E R Y D A Y
Every Wednesday at 5:45pm on Resonance FM – 104.4fm in London – worldwide via the internet: www.resonancefm.com.
 
Reflections on the mundane and the miraculous.
 
As if in response to Walter Benjamin's belief that the everyday is saturated with the marvellous, All Day Everyday presents an array of artists addressing the quotidian – the beauty and banality ever-present in the everyday.
 
Documentaries, musical compositions, radio drama, essays, poetry, soundscapes, performance, interviews…
 
Series produced by Martin Williams
http://www.notfarfromhere.co.uk/
 
Details of the next few programmes in the series…
 
Wed June 18th:
Tartu Sound by Murmer
In February, 2008, Maksims Shentelevs and Patrick McGinley led a workshop in the southeastern Estonian city of Tartu entitled Sound as Space/Sound as Language with a group of 15 Estonian and Finnish university students. The work focused on a development of deep listening skills, and on the use of sound as a communication tool, or as a way to describe or create real or imaginary spaces. Only acoustic objects, brought in by the participants, and elements of the space itself (floorboards, walls, windows, chairs) were used during the two-day workshop. This piece, intertwined with reactions by a few of the participants, was composed by Patrick McGinley using recordings made of the workshop exercises.
Murmer, aka Patrick McGinley, is a sound artist and composer.
http://www.murmerings.com
 
Wed June 25th:       
Boots Brown: All Day Everyday by David Grubbs
The Swedish improvising group Boots Brown takes its name from a pseudonym once used by the clarinetist and saxophone player Jimmy Giuffre. Guiffre came up with the name for a recording session in order to sidestep the demands of a recording contract. The current Boots Brown is premised on the perhaps impossible melding of free improvisation and the kind of US West Coast jazz for which Jimmy Giuffre was a key figure.

This short programme, Boots Brown: All Day Everyday, takes as its subject a set up and soundcheck prior to Boots Brown's concert on 25th April 2008 at the Bunker in Bielefeld, Germany. It is inspired by the series of documentaries that Luc Ferrari and Gérard Patris made for French television in the mid-1960s under the title Les Grandes Répétitions. These five documentaries about musicians in rehearsal beautifully capture the sounds of the comparatively empty time that leads up to a performance. I've also admired Leonard Cohen's idea on Live Songs of recording the final song on a live album in his hotel room after the show. The live recording was made prior to the concert.

Boots Brown consists of Mats Gustafsson on saxophones and electronics; Magnus Broo, trumpet and, at least during this soundcheck, opera singing; David Stackenäs on guitar; and Johan Berthling on double bass.

On the day of this performance, Jimmy Giuffre died at his home in Massachusetts at the age of 86.
David Grubbs is a New York-based musician and writer.
http://www.dragcity.com/bands/grubbs.html 
 
Wed July 2nd:          
All Day Everyday by Esther Leslie
This mini-radio lecture in high-flown scientific language backed by quotidian sound effects is an exploration of the everyday as lodged in the microworlds of domesticity and the macroworld of the cosmos, directed by SM Eisenstein and montaged of Marx's Capital and Joyce's Ulysses.
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck College, London
http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/
 
Wed July 9th:           
Doors: Through and Into: Brooklyn: Winter ‘07-8 by Rick Moody & Laura Vitale
Inspired by Sun Ra’s Door Squeak piece from 1967, Doors: Through and Into is a sound collage constructed from the multifarious doorways of Brooklyn.
 
Bathroom doors, garage doors, elevator doors, subway doors, doors on municipal buses, car doors, apartment doors, doors to various appliances…
 
In addition to the doors themselves, Rick Moody and Laura Vitale present the passage between spaces, from public to private and back again, always through the lovely, musical thresholds that are a regular part of everyone’s daily fare.
Rick Moody is a novelist and short story writer.
Laura Vitale is a NY-based sound artist and radio producer.
 
Wed July 16th:
Everyday Indeterminacy by Catherine Dyson & Martin Williams
In pastiche of John Cage & David Tudor’s Indeterminacy, Catherine Dyson reads a series of everyday yarns at a rate of one per minute, accompanied by a series of minute-long accompaniments by Martin Williams, each component recorded with no knowledge of the other.
Catherine Dyson is a writer and theatre artist.

Lest WE forget

9:45 am

On Richard Sambrook's blog today:

Tweet This!