#Milieu Music Digital

[trevlad-sounds]

Friday 6 October Mixtape 381 “Institute of Hope” Retro Space Electronic Sleep Ambient Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays. Support the artists and labels. Don't forget to tip or subscribe so future shows can bloom.

Panic Girl-Feathers Of Hope 00:31

Milieu-Sleepership 03:03

Bryan Rohmer-My Corner of the Couch 12:04

x.y.r.-Interior Music 012 13:57

Elin Piel-Ciliary Body 19:26

Cub-cub-Sun Dome 26:28

Gy0-Lisboa I 31:14

Apta-Close 34:42

Fragile X-Saltwater Symphony 38:20

Tim Shiel-Spirit Home 42:28

Space Ghost-New Day 44:36

Emily A. Sprague-Rain 46:48

Natural Life Essence-Polinization 52:05

Cautionary Guides-The Pharmaceutical Institute 1:00:47

[trevlad]

Wednesday 16 August Mixtape 355 “Sweet Day Revelation”

2023-08-16

Retro Lounge Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays. Support the artists and labels. Don't forget to tip so future shows can bloom.

Kutiman-A Day Off 00:00

Mort Garson-Ode to an African Violet - Alternate Take 05:01

Jonathan Fitoussi-COLORS OF THE FUTURE 08:50

Milieu-Euflorian 16:05

Uncle Fido-They Muse 20:29

Veslemes-Morning Patrol 22:34

Bright & Findlay-Fireflies 27:38

Yan Tregger-The Last Girl 30:34

Uh Huh-Citrus Song 34:39

Sessa-Música 38:20

Yves Malone-Black Trucks Fill the Night, Empty Then Full 40:55

Vulfmon-Harpejji I 44:34

ATA Records-Going Galtactic 46:05

Piero Umiliani-Sweet Revelation 47:54

[byneddiedingo]

Two Takes on a Hardy Novel

Julie Christie and Alan Bates in Far From the Madding Crowd (John Schlesinger, 1967)

Cast: Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp, Peter Finch. Screenplay: Frederic Raphael. Cinematography: Nicolas Roeg. Production design: Richard Macdonald. Film editing: Malcolm Cooke, Jim Clark. Music: Richard Rodney Bennett.

Matthias Schoenaerts and Carey Mulligan in Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg, 2015)

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge, Michael Sheen. Screenplay: David Nicholls. Cinematography: Charlotte Bruus Christensen. Production design: Cave Quinn. Film editing: Claire Simpson. Music: Craig Armstrong.

Almost 50 years separate these two adaptations of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, and the differences between the two owe as much to film technology as to changing tastes. As always, translating page to film involves compromises. Screenwriter Frederic Raphael remains faithful to the plot, with the paradoxical result that characters become far more enigmatic than Hardy intended them to be. We need more of the backstories of Bathsheba Everdeen (Julie Christie), Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), William Boldwood (Peter Finch), and Frank Troy (Terence Stamp) than the highly capable actors who play them can give us, even in a movie that runs for three hours -- including an overture, an intermission, and an "entr'acte." These trimmings are signs that the producers wanted a prestige blockbuster like Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965), which had also starred Christie. But Hardy's works, with their characters dogged by fate and chance, don't much lend themselves to epic treatment. David Nicholls's screenplay for the 2015 film is much tighter than Raphael's, and about an hour shorter. Nicholls makes most of his cuts toward the end of the film, omitting for example the episode in which Troy (Tom Sturridge) becomes a circus performer, one of the more entertaining sections of the Schlesinger-Raphael version. I think Nicholls's screenplay sets up the early part of the stories of Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan) and Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) much better, though he has to resort to a brief voiceover by Mulligan at the beginning to make things clear. His account of the affair of Troy and the ill-fated Fanny Robbin (Juno Temple) is less dramatically detailed than Raphael's, but in neither film is their relationship dealt with clearly enough to make us understand Troy's character. John Schlesinger, a director very much at home in the cynical milieus of London in Darling (1965) and Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and New York in Midnight Cowboy (1969), doesn't show much feeling for Hardy's rural, isolated Wessex, where the weight of tradition and the indifference of nature play substantial roles. What atmosphere the film has comes from cinematographer Nicolas Roeg's images of the Dorset and Wiltshire countryside and from Richard Rodney Bennett's score, which received the film's only Oscar nomination. And where atmosphere is concerned, Thomas Vinterberg has an edge thanks to technological advances: In Schlesinger's film, despite the fine cinematography of Roeg, the interiors seem impossibly overlighted for a period that resorted to candles and oil lamps for illumination. The change in film technology now makes it possible for us to see the way people once lived -- in a realm of darkness and shadows. (We can almost precisely date when this change in cinematography took place: in 1975, when director Stanley Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott worked with lenses specially designed for NASA to create accurately lighted interiors for Barry Lyndon. Since then, the digital revolution has only added to the arsenal of lighting effects available to filmmakers.) So cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen's adds an element of texture and mystery to Vinterberg's version that was technologically unavailable to Roeg, and not only in interiors but also in night scenes, such as the first encounter of Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan) and Sgt. Troy (Tom Sturridge), when he gets his spur caught in the hem of her dress. The scene is meant to take place by the light of the lamp she is carrying, which Christensen accomplishes more successfully than Roeg was able to. On the whole, I think I prefer the newer version, which is less star-driven than Schlesinger's, but in the end the best version of the story is Hardy's novel.

[00towns]

the practico-inert and you: an experiment in attention

I’ve been thinking a lot about place recently. It’s the beginning of the rainy spring in Mie; I fumble with my mask and glasses as I shake off the drizzle I underestimated on my bike ride to school. When it’s not too wet on my way home, I ride past my apartment to the small cherry blossom orchard next door to check on the blooms. They’re in varying stages of pink and white flowers, and they’re all wet. Mesh baggies of oyster shells hang around the lowest branch of each tree. I have yet to figure out why, but a friend floats the idea that the minerals from the shells might serve as fertilizer that runs down the trunk of the tree at exactly this time of year, when the rain is constant and the peak bloom is any day now. On days like recent ones, I watch the rain flow for a little bit, and think about the craggy surface of the shells, miles and miles from the ocean, feeling the water in their crevices. I think of how they might feed the tree, helping it push out every last flower, stretch open every pink bud. This, too, is place. 

This porous, soft body has me somewhere in it, but I am just its occupant. I am made from place in every breath, every step, every night when I lay my head down. Henrik Karlsson described this in the broader sense as milieu¹, or the culture contained in your unique set of connections. It is an individual configuration of connections to flows of information, emotion, art. In this way, it is beyond the blanket term of ‘culture’, and hones in on individual relationships with all nodes of information. He names a few examples: your Twitter feed, your friend group. To me, milieu as a framework for understanding input attempts to put name to the Sankey diagram of an individual’s relationship to information: what comes in from where? How much of the whole does it make up? Where does this input go? Karlsson takes this term and uses it to the curation of taste, but I was compelled by the milieu as an environment, a physically and digitally mediated place where words become the substance of skin, music leaves behind spotted freckles on it, someone’s unkindness makes bones ache like incoming rain. Undoubtedly, place is just one element of a milieu, but recently, it seems to have been making itself the most clear to me. I live in a place, as do you, and that place lives in us, too. 

A few years ago, I read Marxist Andy Merrifield’s formulations on the bounds, both physical and metaphorical, of urban space. Merrifield argues that the city is a practico-inert, a Sartrean concept described as a set of material conditions created by intentional human action towards a set of goals, ‘praxis’, with which new, continuing praxis must contend. This idea argues that the outcomes of action are not built on neutral foundations of naturally arising systems; rather, they are often in tension with the results of past action, even that of supposed social progression or development. In the contemporary era, an obvious example is climate change, the conditions under which processes of capital, industry, and production towards an ostensibly ‘better’ life have exponentially sped up the decline of the environment, turning its decay into the new arising social condition that the most urgent innovation and intervention must address. Whether intentionally created or not, these conditions frequently become the site that new, immediate intervention must attend to, usually working in contradiction both morally and practically to the initial set of goals or ideas. The site that most urgently demands action is the result of past action for change. 

Like this, Merrifield says, the city no longer serves the needs of the people it was created for. Namely, the labor of the dead is dominant over living labor as manifested in the physical structures that govern urban spaces, like bricks and mortar, systems of transit, and what he describes as a ‘million-fold mass’ of people “such as never existed before, a flow of dynamic people who soon become passive vagrants, unemployed, sub-employed, and multi-employed attendants, trapped in shantytowns, cut off from the past yet somehow excluded from the future too, from the trappings of ‘modern’ urban life; instead, they’re deaded by the daily grind of hustling a living”.²

When I read this, I was finally able to understand what Sartre meant when he said that the practico-inert is necessarily physical. To people like my parents, the city and the practico-inert are fundamentally inseparable ideas of outdated labor, alienation, and dispossession, to which they responded with finding another built prison of potential action – moving to the suburbs. To young, socdem art-type people graduating debt-free from elite universities, the city is a place of infinite potential, a place to simultaneously revel in and revolt in the fact that thousands of others are attempting to experience the same jungle gym of guerilla living promised of early-twenties urbanism. This difference, which had previously always been a funny musing, transformed into a slightly unsettling realization that the way that the built structures of the city impose themselves on people are always totalizing and neutralizing, and the difference lies instead in the individual’s attempt to contend with some sort of urban future. In both cases, the city’s characteristic inaccessibility is so fundamental to its continued operation that they become the terms that most urgently need attending to: the housing crisis, landlordism, displacement, wealth disparity. In short, the city is practico-inert: a structure arising from human action towards a goal that is no longer attentive to the needs it was originally created to serve. 

The city would then come to be a place I found myself thinking about a lot. After reading a little more about the practico-inert, I had originally set out to use it as a personal analytic with a focus on attentivity, the core of what makes the praxis active or inert. I began this exercise attempting to make a list of metaphorical structures that I’ve identified in my life that no longer serve me but I remain tied to, essentially aiming to strip the practico-inert of its economic foundations and just use it as a tool for a thought experiment. What are some values that I’ve worked to embody that no longer serve my needs? How do these values capture my attention in a way that is not useful? 

The metric of ‘values’ worked easily on the personal level – I could already imagine discussing my former extroversion, my once-diehard belief in the project of diversity, my relationship to the Internet. But these felt flimsy, and easily dismissed as a thing of the past based on my own whim to decide whether or not I still ‘felt’ that way, a sentiment that could be assessed in a single moment and change from one to the next. Their effectual presence in my life was a yes or no. Any true structural prison – to Sartre, only then truly revealing the conditions in need of urgent praxis; to Karlsson, only then acknowledging the new relationship to place beyond merely people or things – would take more effort to reveal and would be much more threatening because they are not easily demolished, just as bricks and mortar, steel and I-beams, manhole covers and sewers.

I don’t currently live in a city, if taking the conventional definition, but I certainly used to. Merrifield’s analysis of the city as a prison of past action resonated more than I had anticipated. Power, capital, and governance in the city are already overwhelmingly powerful to the average person, but what about miles and miles of metal, stone, and steel? What about eons of highways, cables, and displaced space? Are these not equally as immovable and totalizing? From here, I turned towards the material analytic. The material condition demanded consideration just as much as the patterns, behaviors, and practices that came from it. Essentially, doing this project had to suck, otherwise it wouldn’t have really been done. I had to be mean. 

Like any good researcher, I began at the archive. I started by flipping through old journals, scrolling through old Tweets, finding fragments of thoughts in my Notes app, even combing my Google search history. I meditated. I read Trick Mirror. I went to White Stone. What I found by actually gathering some thoughts is that any pattern that I could identify was eerily iterative of the city’s role in my life, sub- and sub-sub-categories of my experiences in the city stemming from both time spent living in one and time spent in a stratified relationship to one in time and space. I ended up with a handful of spare-change reflections, none really satisfying without the context of the built environment(s) that raised them. It wasn’t possible to take on the analytic of the practico-inert as a metaphorical, abstract reflective project because I kept returning to the same handful of undeniably physical structures, all grounded in my relationship to urbanity: motions, places, things, a cruel version of all roads lead to Rome. The items on the list that I will attempt to articulate occupy both the purely economic, physical, built environment prison of past action, and the self-helpy, ‘bad habits’, abstracted trap of habit where all afflictions are deeply individual – a flagellating look both inward and outward. What places live under my skin? What do they do there? Are they welcome? 

Ad Reinhardt, from 'How to Look at Art, Arts & Architecture', 1946

I identified these based on the criterion of physicality and attentivity, both important to the analytic of the practico-inert with the former being material conditions and the latter being the ability of those conditions to change and respond. In other terms, I forced myself to choose objects or practices that are a) strictly material, b) I spend a lot of time thinking about, either willingly or unwillingly, and in order to keep this grounded in some sort of personal reflection, c) I rely on for a non-essential project of identity, self, or general indulgence. This exercise in itself – listing, writing, reflecting – is an attempt to reorient the attentivity of these structures.

Karlsson, 2022 – First we shape our social graph, then it shapes us https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/first-we-shape-our-social-graph-then (thank you, P)

Merrifield 2011 – The right to the city and beyond: a Lefebvrian re-conceptualization 

The city

I’ve already gone on about the city, but I make the most sense to myself when speaking in specific terms. My dad is a born and raised New Yorker. My mom was born in Singapore to immigrants from Southern China, who then immigrated again when she was sixteen to settle in the Bronx. I was born in Hong Kong. My family moved a lot as I grew up, and I spent a handful of years each in Guangzhou, northern Virginia, Bangkok, Beijing, and Seoul. I went to college in a medium-small city in central Virginia, and visited my parents in Tokyo once a year. 

These are all facts, but like many truths, they contain sub-truths and technicalities in droves. In Bangkok, and Beijing, my family didn’t live in the city-city. My brother and I were still in school, and most of the large, expensive international schools were located in the outskirts of the urban core, where they could comfortably house sports fields, swimming pools, and big homes for rich expatriates. In Beijing, the school even housed a huge structure known aptly as ‘the Dome’, an enclosed, airtight mega-facility where students could play tennis or soccer, run laps, and use the gym without worrying about the cardiovascular threat of heightened air pollution levels thanks to a state-of-the-art mass air filtration system not yet even seen in hospitals. My parents elected to live out there so that we could be close to our school and participate in the expatriate community that came with it. They instead would make the commute into the city every morning and evening. Going ‘downtown’, as it was usually referred to, was a rare breach of the expatriate bubble that surrounded my international school and happened so infrequently it was in itself a vacation. There, the ‘evidence’ that we were not the West wasn’t limited to the selection at the local convenience store or the language spoken by the service economy attending to expat whims. It was everywhere – public transit, visual culture, attitudes towards each other, urban organization, fashion, etiquette, pop culture. Notably, it was not in us. A family of Chinese Americans in Asia took on an odd quality, one that was hazy at best in our expatriate bubble but sharp and unforgiving in the city. At this age, in these places, the city was supremely unfamiliar – we literally did not even breathe the same air. 

The most recognizably urban experience I had in any city I grew up in was Seoul. In Seoul, we lived on the army base¹ in the middle of the city located right next to a bustling city center of shopping, restaurants, and cafes. My commute was almost an hour by private bus provided by the school to an equally bustling part of Seoul closer to its northern boundary. As I came into my independence as a late teenager, I came to know the city in two distinct pockets, categorized into ‘places near home’ and ‘places near school’. It was between these two frames that I started to negotiate the extent to which I was recognizable to myself – at home, I was among my family, my parent’s coworkers, and other expats, exchanging Americanisms, but at school, I was with friends and classmates, made up of mostly Korean Americans that tended much more to Korean than American. There was an invariably small overlap between these two groups, the residents of which I avoided desperately. I wore these two hats with a sense of urgency.

Everywhere else in Seoul, I was free to be no one, helped along by a growing allowance of independence and a determination to shoulder my way into becoming a real person. In the winters, I rode my longboard along the Han River to catch the early sunset over Dongjak Bridge, dodging old men on in-line skates and expensive bicycles, and be back home in time for dinner. In the warm spring, my friends and I would cut school early, make a Ghibli-esque trek across a wooded back-area of the school grounds, beg the guards who video-monitored the back gate to open it for us, and emerge onto the campus of Yonsei University to eat cold noodles, button-mash at arcade Tekken machines, and play pool. Unlike previous experiences of living in cities abroad, I felt like I could say that I really lived in Seoul, despite barely understanding any Korean, never working, and attending an English-speaking school. To this day, I remember Seoul so fondly it stings; in college, I called it my hometown for an embarrassing amount of time before realizing that most people took this to mean I was an international student, and dropped it. 

My first time moving to a place that was both a non-city and a non-suburb-of-a-city was when I moved to the US to go to college. In my first year, I was less than 100 miles away from the place I had just finished spending eighteen years of my life telling people I was from, and had never been so homesick (and insecure about being homesick) in my life. That first fall, despite my desperation to enjoy college, I put a countdown timer on my phone that ticked away the days until my flight to Incheon and laid in my dorm room until it got to zero. At home, it was like nothing had changed. The unpleasant growing pains of first year were literally an ocean away; I drank, ate, and played pool with my friends like the last four months had been a glimmery hallucination. Despite seriously considering otherwise, I returned to college for the spring semester, and things shifted slightly into a more tolerable peace. In the summer before my second year, my parents moved to Tokyo, but the feeling remained that I was returning to something that was home, or a gossamer, refracted version of it. When I started to look forward to winter break, it was a desperation to get back to the city and reconnect to myself in a way that I was starting to rely on having regular access to – home was meditation. This, combined with the rare experience of being so near my parents again after a while, shaped these weeks and months into a time outside of time. When it was time to leave, the semesters that stretched in front of me felt measured in gaps between ‘now’, and ‘the last time it was now’. A few weeks of acclimation back in Charlottesville later, I wouldn’t have even known what you were talking about. 

Now, when my friends talk about the city, they do so with a hint of reverence. Seattle is like this, the Upper East Side has that character, LA is so that, the Bay Area is this way. I’m guilty of this too². When a certain urban quality comes to precede a city, and the urban quality precedes the self, staring yourself in the face seems a lot less necessary³. Even a certain outfit set in different backdrops can say wildly different things about a person’s personal wealth, sense of self, educational background (think Dickies overalls, an hour south in Orange or in a boba shop in Annandale). The things that set cities apart from one another innately present some information about the gaze that is taken upon it, which in turn shines out of its residents in equal abundance. To know these differences and be able to talk about them in the weird sort of lingua franca of the well-traveled coastal elite is to learn an entirely different lexicon, and it’s one of money. These qualities have been intentionally scrubbed from the suburbs to create a uniform experience where everyone can be white, everyone can be American, and everyone can forget where they might have lived before. In contrast to urban character, suburban character seems more insidious. I don’t know anything about the history of the house, neighborhood, or county where my family lives. There’s no character to take on, no place to project identity, and no reason to. I cannot help but feel that this is intentional. Do the senators and politicians who live in my neighborhood and surrounding areas know the history of this place, as they govern districts and states miles and miles away? 

Here is the point I am leading up to: in the aftermath of this pattern of visiting home, where I was neither really just ‘visiting’ nor ‘going home’, the city – any city – feels like pilgrimage. It is a grand return both to the place itself and the person that I am while there. In my winters in Tokyo, surrounded by the concrete jungle gym of a city that positioned itself supremely important, I felt, at times, like a torso. If I kept moving, didn’t become a regular anywhere, and didn’t make any huge social faux paus, being in the city let me feel like I could have no identity at all – if I kept my mouth shut, I wasn’t even a woman or an American. I revel in the feeling that I, too, could be absorbed into the fabric of an ever-changing urban entropy that had always been intimidating, and through this even become unfamiliar, new, enticing to myself. I was entranced by the idea of feeling or acting like I blended in, as if a certain urban character was as much a resident of me as I was of it, and it would shine out of me even when I left just as long as I absorbed enough of it, learned to take it on. At the same time, any wrong move would expose the ugly tourist living beneath my skin, the embarrassment of non-belonging, the disjointed transplant. Being from nowhere in particular is a familiarity with many places, but it’s also a deep disfamiliarity with every place, home or not. This is what I will call practico-inert: I crave the city for its anonymity, centrality, encounter; I am impassively estranged from the relationship that people have to place despite being desperate for it. 

It’s wishful thinking to imagine that this is a unique feeling. And just as everything is embarrassing, I am embarrassed by how much I feel like myself in the city, and yet how self-absorbed my obsession with the ability to not be self-absorbed is! I’m more than aware how much I sound like the joke about the ‘returned from study abroad, or the ‘just moved to Manhattan undergrad’. But the truth remains that I like who I am more in the city, and the unrecognizable me(s) that still live there even after I have left. I can be an orbital cloud under balmy blue skies in Apgujeong or a vampire flitting around bookstores in Meguro, all in the same pair of sneakers. These people feel like reflections of my inner life, like I can start to match up the person that I’d like to feel like I am with the character that precedes a place. However, it’s also not lost on me that Korea and Japan are some of the most homogenous countries on Earth, and I happen to match the dominant look in either place, affording me a certain privilege and baseline ease that I don’t experience in America. In a roundabout way, the anonymity of the city is an escape from the exact type of narcissistic self-hate that I suffer from: I don’t have to stare down the barrel of everything I have decided that I am and am not if I can put on a hat and go for a walk and not be that person in public for an hour. It’s a respite from the project of identity. 

That summer was the last time I will live in Tokyo for a while. I spent some of the hottest days of the year on park benches devouring words, steam-pressing images into the back of my eyelids, and downing conbini ice cream and canned beer. That month, I made three friends. I didn’t learn much Japanese. It felt like worship. 

“Instead, centrality is always movable, always relative, never fixed, always in a state of constant mobilization and negotiation, within and without any movement. It’s a kind of centrality that is the nemesis of centralization with its totalizing mission of domination and control; it’s not so much about occupying a center as creating a node, a node that represents a fusion of people, and overlapping of encounters, a critical force inside that diffuses and radiates outwards; rain that creates its own tidal wave.” (Merrifield, 2012, p. 276)

This is an entirely distinct experience of neo-imperialist American shame that requires its own piece, and probably another few years of percolation.

I’ve always been amused by the difference in thought in regards to the city as exemplified by young people, for which the city can be a sandbox of art, food, fashion, and drinks after dinner, and my parents, one a born and raised Chinatown Manhattanite and the other a product of the Bronx, for which the ‘city’ represents the impoverished foundations upon which bootstraps-were-pulled-up-on to the suburbs of Northern Virginia. I reveled in this disparity in some part as self-soothing mental stimulation to erode the reality that I could not independently afford to live in New York City, even if I wanted to, for years, and that if I ever do move there I will be just another young privileged face in the wave of gentrification and displacement, another inconsequential neuron firing in the empty head. 

I called C the other day, from the break room next to the teacher’s office at my school. I jotted grammar points in Japanese as we talked about our lives. When I tell her that the honeymoon period of Japan is starting to wane and I need to look for a new hobby, she laughs. She says that living somewhere new is just being annoying about that place for six months and then moving on. I feel seen. 

In the car

Thanks to the great endeavor of my parents, I was never truly in charge of my own life or death in a meaningful way until I got my first car at 20 (not coincidentally, also thanks to my parents). My mom recalls that time as the most nervous she had ever been in the four years we lived across the world from each other. She told me she was often unable to sleep if she knew I was driving a long distance until I sent a text that I had arrived safely. My burgundy red Honda Civic and I would drive almost thirty thousand miles together in three years in a variety of settings, ranging from rush hour Manhattan to the one-light towns of central Virginia. 

In that car, I experienced three traffic incidents (two at-fault and one not, only one requiring any repairs) and three tickets (two speeding, one parking). The traffic incident I remember the most took place in the early spring of third year, while I was making the long Sunday evening drive back to school from Fairfax. I had spent two hours either white knuckled behind the wheel in NoVA traffic or bored to tears on the long straightaways of 29. As I pulled onto JPA, a police car turned on its lights and started following closely behind me. Without a street space to pull into, I drove until I could pull off onto a side road and turned on my hazards with my hands on the wheel. The middle-aged white officer berated me for taking so long to pull over until I was crying silently (‘Do they teach you that in driving school? To keep going like nothing’s happening when you see police lights behind you?’), and then wrote me a ticket for $50 which I was too scared to go to court for. Over the next two years, JPA would prove itself to be a site serving many strange purposes (the resting place of a decaying skunk, the setting of a poorly executed hate crime, the open-air hallway of a never-ending house party), but it would always make me prickle with nerves when driving. 

The car is a practico-inert in many senses. It’s an urgent site of intervention in climate justice, urban planning, civil engineering, the average American household. But I’ll add a personal analytic to this as well, and argue that the tyrannical rhythms of the car – both concept and object, on both the micro and macro – are engraved into wide highways and country roads in my skin, and I’m only just now polishing them out months after leaving my car behind in America.

The role of policing almost feels too obvious to include here, but it’s the most logical place to start. The car, and the American place sitting in its driver’s seat, is the constant, slight yet looming, threat of police confrontation that is designed for the average driver to forget about. The traffic stop is the biggest initiator of all American contact with police¹, and is the start of one in three police shootings. In the car, I find myself uncharacteristically anxious over potentially interacting with police to the extent that it impacts my ability to drive safely, always keeping an eye out for speed traps on Google Maps or a squad car tucked into some trees on the highway. Outside of driving, I can’t even think of a close call to police interaction I’ve had in the last three years². Speeding on American roads is almost a granted, especially at just five to ten miles per hour over the limit, but it’s not lost that this makes it so that a police officer is constantly justified in pulling over any vehicle on basis of their own judgment, and any other risk beyond that an automatic double jeopardy. 

Double jeopardy almost feels like the goal of highway policing. A litany of bad decisions make themselves available to me when I have access to a vehicle, including driving tired, driving while others are drinking in the car, driving through inclement weather, speeding if I’m late. A larger slice of the pie chart of possible decisions also become ‘bad ones’ when I am driving: using my phone, having a snack, getting distracted. It is so much easier to be irresponsible when operating a car than at any other time; it takes an even smaller slip of concentration, a much briefer lapse of judgment for things to go south. In shorter terms, I am never leaving more up to trust in my soft, weak body and squishy force of will than I am when I am operating a car. It’s terrifying. When I was driving regularly to commute or see friends, I started noticing how miserable it was making me because of how it primed my mood to be oriented towards complaining: there was never enough parking, I always missed a green light, traffic was always crazy. I was trying to shift from being acutely aware of every ounce of my mortality to being a relaxed, cool, fun person. This was becoming the entry point to my interactions with the world and started to take an actual toll on my attitude and footing in many socially demanding situations of both work and leisure. My car slowly filled up with junk from work, junk from eating shitty food, junk from overthinking. 

I continue to be blown away at how casually friends, family, and often strangers drop their lives in my hands at the door when entering my vehicle. It’s a heavy feeling that I found hard to shake at first, and would last even after arriving at a destination safely. Part of my mind would stay outside, parked on the street, occupied with the trip home, or stuck on the things my car demanded to consume – time, attention, gasoline. Any trip on which I took my car was a trip on which I took with me the most expensive thing that I own and every subsequent liability from that. I’m a good car owner in that I’m very up to date on the maintenance and safety of my car, but I’m also aware how much of a task that is even as someone who considers themselves relatively organized. Often, it’s one that I simply can’t believe that the average person is up to all the time, making other people’s cars and driving sometimes more stressful than my own. It’s made me unnecessarily paranoid, strict, and anxious, not in a way that I think is unjustified given the reality of traffic mortality in the United States, but in a way that makes me hate myself. 

In Japan, like a huge portion of the population here, I don’t own a car. There are clear outcomes to this: I’m in better shape without doing much at all, I chew through books and podcasts easily while commuting, I have not once thought for even a second about parking³. My average daily step count has more than doubled. I own a cute bicycle. It’s all very characteristic of any high-functioning train-based society, and I’ll sorely miss the clockwork of the transit systems here when I leave⁴. It’s the strongest system of public infrastructure that I have ever had the privilege of experiencing. On the other hand, I live in the prefecture of Japan that is home to the Suzuka circuit, Japan’s premiere F1 destination and a well-known attraction for car enthusiasts. The city I live in is known for its petrochemical industry and its subsequent pollution; the sidewalks are narrow and the streetlights are sparse. The auto industry in this area impacts life here down to our classrooms. Migrant workers are a strong community even in smaller towns, and many English teachers, especially in middle schools, have a handful of students who they are teaching English to at the same time as they learn Japanese by brute force immersion. Honda’s manufacturing presence in Mie and Toyota’s just a prefecture north in Aichi has made all of the Chubu region surprisingly mixed-race and multiethnic. While I may not drive one anymore, the presence and impact of cars is something that I feel every single day at work, while walking or cycling, when sleeping. 

I’m not entirely sure what to do about the car. I’m certain I’ll never truly escape it. Rather than just complaining, however, there is a reason that I consider my car practico-inert, in the sense of a physical prison of past action. The material necessity of my car isn’t even something I would put up to question. Despite my overwhelming hatred for it, ten times out of ten, I would choose having a car over not having one. 

In Virginia, I live in a typical American suburb where leaving my neighborhood is nearly impossible without a car. I was able to access pretty much everything that kept me sane through college and the year after through my car – my friends, work outside the home, food. I made a little money on the side during the quietest weeks of winter on Uber. I traveled up and down the East Coast with friends, alone, with family. A huge part of my job in public programming required having access to a vehicle that could haul huge pull-ups, posters, and tech equipment. My car probably saved my life ten times over when COVID shutdowns first began in Charlottesville and I was suddenly, curiously, without a place to sleep. Learning to drive the summer before and getting my car literally weeks before March 2020 saved me probably a lifetime’s worth of stress. My car made itself indispensable. It’s arguable that there’s always another direction to point fingers in – the built environment of the suburb and the lack of public infrastructure to respond to a health crisis come to mind – but I’d sooner find myself grateful for having had a car in a difficult situation than I would stick to my anti-car principles and have been totally fucked. In times where a car makes itself absolutely necessary, do you know what a little relief feels like? It feels like a lot⁵. 

Yet, I still can’t quite characterize my relationship to my car as practico-inert for the reason that ‘I don’t really like it, but it’s handy!’. The truth remains that a lot of the time, I really enjoy driving. I have an emotional attachment to my car in the same way that children love stuffed toys for keeping them safe. I take pride in taking good care of my car and being a good driver. What is it exactly about the car that appeals to me so much? Why do I feel empowered by driving at speed, at operating a car smoothly, by the alone time spent driving? Why do the cultural imaginations of the great American road trip stir something in me, anxieties and dangers and headaches of the highway and all? This is what feels the most endemic about my infatuation with the car, the road, the act of driving. It’s the constant return to it and its needs, the inevitability of the car. I could accumulate hundreds of hours on foot and on bike, feel the effects on my health, environment, and attitude, and still find myself instinctually tending towards the car if the option was given to me. 

At the same time, I have to ask what the next point of practice on this site might be. Does having moved somewhere with fantastic infrastructural support for non-drivers count as taking actionable steps towards escaping the totalitarian car? I would argue no, but I will add that escaping the car has not subtracted cars from my life, but instead opened up new ways of locomotion. I don’t blink at a thirty minute walk any more, know my neighborhood’s bus schedule like the back of my hand, developed an eerily familiar pseudo-social relationship with my bike (albeit a bit more wary of each other). 

Not driving has brought a sense of attunement to the world that I hadn’t even been conscious of until I visited home for Christmas. Japanese people are known for their timeliness, reflected in both individual approaches to life and public transportation systems. but there’s also a more constant awareness of time that comes with living here. When the difference between getting home at 5 and at 8 is catching a bus that leaves once an hour, which is likely the first leg of several extremely on-time transports, time doesn’t slip away as easily as it would if deciding to leave was just that. There’s also always the faint threat of straying too far from home with no public transit to get home, like missing a bus that’ll get you a train that’ll get you the last train to the only station walkable to your house. While at times stressful, getting home is often as much as working backwards from a desired destination and a given time, and I’ve found myself surprisingly attuned to the spatial relationship between places, the time demanded of such movement, and the suddenly much larger consequences of losing track of time. 

Attunement, in another sense, has also been to the world on the exterior of a car. Urban studies essayist Garnette Cadogan noted in an interview on the podcast The War on Cars that “[walking] was a place in which I continually meet people. I’m invited into worlds in which there is one pleasure or delight or discovery, or an encounter with another that just kept enlarging my sense of myself and the possibilities in the world. And I began thinking of walking as possibility. Because that’s what walking was—it was social possibility, it was emotional possibility, even spiritual possibility.⁶" I’ve found this, too, to be characteristic of my life on foot. Some of the things I’ve seen while walking in my neighborhood include a family of tanuki living in some bushes near an empty lot, a beautiful cherry blossom orchard with oyster shells scattered over the soil, and an outdoor tomatillo plant that I can get a decent harvest from if I can get to the fallen ones before the birds do. It’s gotten to the extent that I occasionally balk at even riding my bike, which can be too fast to catch onto the finer details of possibility⁷. 

This sense of joy, encounter, surprise is irreplicable by the logic of the car. It’s a mechanically necessary slow-down, a forced thoughtfulness, a proximity to mindfulness through an organic rhythm, the ultimate relationship to the earth. I grow gratitude for each step my body allows me, stem curling up from the ground into the sole of my shoe, through my spine, and blooming out of the top of my head to shelter me from the sun. 

Henry Grabar in Slate, The American Addiction to Speeding https://slate.com/business/2021/12/speed-limit-americas-most-broken-law-history.html

In November, someone stole my bike from the train station in my neighborhood (punks!!! hooligans!!!). A nice detective drove me to the police station, put my groceries in the refrigerator while they took my statement, and then took me home. He asked if I liked Shohei Ohtani. The bike was back by the next week. 

 I went to Costco in Gifu with my coworker and her friends a few weeks ago. We forgot where we parked and wandered the lot eating hazelnut chocolate soft serve. The familiar will make itself clear, I guess. 

In the heat of August last year, there was a typhoon in my prefecture. The principal instructed us all to stay home, so I sweated it out in the disgusting apartment I had been assigned to as the storm rattled my windows. I was surprised to find out upon coming back to work that I had been charged a day of PTO. When the Ishikawa earthquake caused a runway fire at Haneda Airport and I missed my flight from Tokyo to Nagoya, I spent an extra 24 hours playing tourist, shopping, and eating in my favorite city. I got the day off for free and received plenty of old-lady cooing over my misfortune for the transportation incident. 

https://www.tumblr.com/jb-blunk/677813547138498560/in-this-terrifying-world-you-continuously-have-the

The War on Cars, Episode 83: The Pedestrian. https://thewaroncars.org/episode-83-the-pedestrian-final-web-transcript-2/

Like staring at the mountains and wishing I was hiking, or seeing a cute dog and wishing we were hiking together, or feeling a nice breeze and wishing I was feeling it on top of a mountain while on a hike

My relationship to East Asia

I’ve already talked about my not-like-other-girls tendencies, but perhaps this is where that strange feeling of extremely internal, quiet insanity of girlhood comes to light: I genuinely believe that I have one of the worst cases of carefully managed, suppressed NLOG-ism possible. I will push myself to be specific. 

I sometimes relish the fact that other Asians are surprised to find out certain things about me. One such thing is that I am a fan of K-pop, another is that I was in an Asian sorority in college, one more is that I’m ChinAm. It makes me feel like I’ve done something right, like I’ve successfully dodged tropes and have emerged as uncategorizable and unrecognizable, the Best Asian, made up of vagueness and blurry cultural lines that I can keep in my pocket until it’s the right type to deploy them. I enjoy this feeling. It makes me feel important. In much ruder terms, I think I have a tendency to like to be right by means of other people being wrong, to derive some of my sense of self-worth from not being the person that people perceive me as. I joke with my friends that the worst part of being a K-pop fan is other fans, and there’s more than a grain of truth here: some of the most fun to be had in K-pop fandom is pointing and laughing at people who are crazier than you, including, sometimes, past versions of yourself. There is something so evilly satisfying about not being other people. These people, more often than not and including myself, are Asian Americans who for some reason I cannot help but judge for being Asian Americans in ways that are exactly predictable: in fandom, in social organizations, in friend groups, online. Terms like boba liberalism, all-Asian friend group, soft cultural power whiz through the ticker tape in my brain like the endless, hungry feed that it is, algorithm-ed and gameified to either like or hate, be or not be, participate in or reject. 

If this entire tirade screams of internalized racism to you, fret not; the thought has occurred to me, too. I understand that tropes about types of Asians are meant to take them down and make them understandable, even ones that circulate internally to those groups. My distaste for parts of Asian America is a hatred of something that I see reflected at least partially in myself. However, instead of internalized racism, I’ll offer this indictment of myself that I believe is much more accurate, and to me, much more cruel: I have clung onto my relationship to East Asia for years past its expiration date. 

Again, I will push myself to be specific. There is something shiny, brief, and shameful buried in the heart of the way that I think and talk about my experiences in East Asia. I am deeply, fondly attached to the years that I spent there as a teenager. Perhaps it is the red-cheeked shame of still feeling like I struggle to talk about privilege despite a plethora of examples and opportunities that would lend themselves to my case; perhaps it’s also the neocolonial conditions under which I’ve been able to gain intimate access to so much of East Asia. The fact remains that I can attribute so much of who I feel I am to the way that I was raised by these places, and I don’t know if I like that about myself. This sense of self feels very extractable; like it’s something that can be taken away if I were to settle down, or pursue something I find uninteresting, or let those times fall away in importance. I feel deeply, weirdly protective of the years and months that I spent in Korea and Japan. I don’t know if it’s the typical yearning for places that I once loved, or a specifically pathologizable dependency on that time as defining characteristics of my personality¹. Something about the times that I spent as a high schooler feels like the last time that I participated in something wholeheartedly, fully believed in something (the future, perhaps, or maybe myself), and wasn’t nonconsensually critical about my relationship to the world. I don’t know if this is more defined in contrast to a subconscious, post-COVID mourning, being a femme, or another casualty of being an NLOG, but I cannot tear my eyes away from these memories, experiences, and places as something that is possible; I find myself thinking of them in the same way that I used to let influencers, friends, and celebrities worm their way into my head on the pipeline to obsession. Sitting around and idealizing about that time is it’s own activity at this point². The thought makes me feel like my teeth are rotting. I think that this nostalgia is what feeds the flames of discomfort I feel about my place in Asian America. 

My interests in pop culture coming out of East Asia are a big part of what I feel like my time growing up in Asia left me, along with a sloppy fistful of a few different languages. But, I’ll also acknowledge that these interests are entirely aligned with current Western media consumption fetishes focused on Korea and Japan. I’m a die-hard K-pop boy group stan who has been in it for so long that I’m stronger in Korean than I am Japanese several times over (and I only live in one of those places!). The time I spent living in Korea was on the occupied land of the American military, both representative of a history of imperialism and actively participating in it. I went to an expensive private school on the government’s dime where the vast majority of students were the anchor babies of eye-wateringly rich Korean American families who wanted their kids to have a better shot at entrance to American colleges. I’m currently a first year participant on the JET program, sending thousands of Westerners and English-speakers to different cities and towns across Japan to work in public and private schools in the name of soft power cultural exchange. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a vast majority of people on this program are people whose interest in and understanding of Japan began (and frequently, ended) with anime, video games, and other post-war mass cultural exports. I, myself, won’t try to pretend that having spent time here before makes me any better. For me, to have lived in Korea and Japan was to consume them, and the taste is unpleasantly reminiscent of the metallic, violent things that America and Japan have consumed too. In this way, too, my relationship with East Asia feels unsatisfying, but perhaps to wish otherwise is to wish for ignorance. 

If I attempt to cut to the heart of what I feel, I think it is this: I have hung my laurels for so long on a specific, personally-and-politically fraught experience of living in Asia and the experiences that it has provided me that I’m not sure how to be a version of myself that I like without setting that person against others. I understand what a terrible thing this is to say, and at the same time, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to meaningfully articulate how much I mean it. 

It feels silly to say, but my parents leaving Asia to move back to Virginia last year left me with a pang of uneasiness. My own position as a diasporic subject has always been defined by space; when I was younger it was by living in Asia in places I both did and did not have a diasporic connection to, in college it was by visiting my parents frequently and the small but strong Asian American network I was building. I would always have my ties to the physical land of Asia as my leg-up experience, somehow always orienting me differently to the core of Asian American discussions and topics. It was a huge part of who I was. Since my parents moved back to Virginia, I find myself wrestling with the thinner, ground-floor terms of diaspora that I haven’t had to before. What once felt just like discourse is now the reality that my family is learning how to deal with – microaggressions, regular aggressions, language loss, access to traditions, aging relatives, changing family structures. It was easy to think of smelly Asian food in the cafeteria tropes as just that when they were only ever happening miles and miles away, in a culture that I knew was supposed to be very much like my own but was not. Now, I worry about my parents when they FaceTime me from their drives up to New York City Chinatown, I don’t laugh when my dad tries to tell me a funny story about a racist guy in Wawa. I feel like I’m experiencing a delayed puberty of the very basic ‘growing up Asian in America’ – my NLOG factor has evaporated, if you will, and I’m left to define what it means to be like exactly other Asian Americans when I so often (problematically) set my stance against them. I’m occupying the position that I so often intentionally misunderstood. 

It feels cruel that my mind is so occupied with a place that I no longer have a neat, agreeable relationship to. My family belongs to the early end of Chinese immigration to the United States, pre-1965 and working class. We have no family or holdings left in China – the farthest extent of my family network now lives in Long Island. Since my parents moved back to the US in the summer of 2022, I’m struggling to renegotiate the new geographic, spatial, and familial terms on which my personal experience of diaspora rests. I find myself craving words from others who have tried to make sense of their relationship to homeland, which read differently than they used to as I flounder to find something that feels satisfactory. This is what I would come to identify as practico-inert: I developed so much of who I thought I would grow up to be off a relationship to East Asia and my experiences in those places that I’m no longer sure how to not fall back on the ideas of ‘space’ and ‘time’ to think about who I am, and by extension, how I relate to other people, especially now that that relationship is changing. 

I wrote much of the above before I moved to a small industrial city in central Japan on the JET Program this past summer, which slowly helped hammer back many of my NLOG tendencies back into their comfortable, sun bleached spots, hiding that there was ever anything wrong to begin with³. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely during my time so far, but I still find myself drawn to the same questions of place. I don’t see myself living in my area long term, but also can’t fathom going back to the US anytime soon – there is still so much to do here. Japan is safe, convenient, and easy to live in. I enjoy the pop culture and have been given opportunities I couldn’t even imagine back in the US. In the same breath, I miss English speaking friends who I feel like I can match in every sense instead of just a few and a language, I miss my family. I want to make more money, I want to be in community with more queer people. I want to live five thousand different lives. In short, I have no idea how I’d like to sort my relationship between home and home, a refrain repeated over and over in the body of Asian American literature and media. I have a hard time treating my time in Japan as real, and the life that I am building here as an actual reflection of the way I will shape my twenties and beyond. This, too, is part of the escape of my relationship with living in EA that I have to contend with now that it is of my own choice and volition to do so, and now with the experience of the US under my belt. 

As I transitioned out of working in Asian America in the referential sense and into what feels like working in Asian America in a literal sense, I’ve come to realize that to me, Asian America is much more interesting as a stance than as a subject matter. I’ve gone on a strange personal journey from finding Asian Americans cringe when first encountering them en masse at UVA to really staunchly standing by standing by them (to the extent of taking not one, not two, but four jobs in AAPI), to finally settling on a begrudging acceptance that the sometimes interesting, sometimes embarrassing fabric of being Asian American in public is just the way that things are. I’ve felt more moved by the kinship that being Asian American has allowed me, both here in Japan and in college, than I did in my year actually working in the field. Asian America can feel flimsy at times; my friends and family are perfect, robust, eternal. This, too, may be borne out of some unsettled place: I’m afraid that the subject matter approach will spend too much time trying to sift through the clumpy litter box of identity and come up with the slightly scary notion that the material of Asian America is, in truth, not much substance at all, a mosaic of borrowed difference that doesn’t reveal itself as nothing until the dust is blown off, and the tradition itself floats away with it. 

The idea that I might have dedicated my life’s work to something that I’m not really sure if I really care for is both a reassuring and frightening thought. After having moved, I keep looking over my shoulder at Asian America, as if playing red light, green light. If I don’t look, will it change? Will I turn around one day and find myself staring back? Will Asian America catch up to us? On the other hand, my job now feels like the most derealized I have ever been from any concept of complex public identity: I am an American talkbox who has a mastery of the English language, and for that, this box must talk⁴. 

“Remember: home is

not simply a house, village, or island; home is an archipelago of belonging.” 

From Off-Island Chamorros, Craig Santos Perez

I’ll also recognize that I haven’t had quite the amount of years beyond them that I will have after I return from Japan for a second time, so it’s a bit hard to tell if I will romanticize these years specifically or just constantly yearn after my late teens and early twenties until I mold over.

See Liz, on yearning. 

The NLOG factor, here, is one that I was raised in: it is being a foreigner who doesn’t look it in Asia, what I once saw termed as a ‘hidden immigrant’ (ew) in a book about third culture kids that seemingly was trying to give people a term to rally around. 

 I was asked to put together a presentation on fall activities in America, and found myself haphazardly Googling Virginia tourism websites. I ended up showing a historical reenactment video of a bunch of kids fake-dying from plastic rifle wounds in Jamestown, just because I thought it would make the kids laugh. It feels weird. 

I am determined to deserve something

Recently, I was at an event that I considered myself exceedingly fortunate to be at – perhaps one of the only things I’ve ever participated in that I could truly consider a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The entire time, the two things that I felt were close to tears and why me? What could I possibly have done to bring me to this point? How did the spaghetti of life choices and decision trees have led me to this point? I’ve never thought of living this way. 

I don’t not believe in cause-and-effect relationships, but there have been more than a few moments in the past year that have left me questioning if there is really such a relationship that can define two abstract items in time and space as a ‘cause’ and as an ‘effect’, in matrimony of opposition to each other. It feels vain to imagine that a mental connection that I might draw between two things could be anywhere near a reflection of a reality that often feels too complex to even participate in, let alone draw conclusions about. Attempting even more than two things feels like a farce. Infinitely many things are true at the same time, and these things are often in contradiction, in moral opposition, producing outcomes where it seems like none should occur and withholding them when they should be obvious. To leave the job of attaching red yarn between events to humans is a Sisyphean cosmic prank, frankly, and I’m sometimes left gawking at my own daring to even try. 

I’m not sure where this instinct to believe in a logical world comes from, where karma functions like a machine, actions have direct consequences, and the idea of justice can be followed to a T. This has never really been true on the personal nor public scale. This ambiguity can be beautiful, and the gaps between truths are the spaces where poetry grows. Here, too, is where I’ve found meaning out of injustice, celebrated undefinability. But I can also identify that I am a type of person for which this ambiguity – where fault is shared, where forgiveness is granted with two hands – has made a faint sense of cloying guilt that I’ve received much more than I deserve, have been forgiven many more times that I should have, and have escaped the consequences of my failures in a way that has made me fat and happy, complicit in my own excuses as to why I live the way that I do. 

This, of course, isn’t to say that I don’t want an environment where I feel as if I will be supported if I fail or allowed to make mistakes. It is, however, an inquiry into the perhaps more damning notion that I haven’t really ever truly deserved anything, whether ecstasy of the everyday, the opportunities I’ve had, the people that I can call my friends and family, the way I’ve been able to move through the world. Why do I have these things? Is it even possible to imagine a ‘cause’ large enough, pious enough, unquestionably virtuous enough that could result in this elation of my delight for my everyday life? I have received so, so much. My gratitude overwhelms me constantly, I feel like I am always failing to say thank you. 

In this logical version of the world, my sense of thankfulness is nourished by work in all senses. My attunement to the karmic flow of the world manifests in my personal life, and I am able to reciprocate my joy by an inner sense of extended satisfaction and openness to work, effort, commitment. Work comes easily and naturally, and feels like an equivalent reciprocation to the universe for its gifts. Instead, I don’t feel satisfied by work at all. I think that fulfillment in life isn’t constructed off of work is true for most people. But again, perhaps more insidiously, I don’t find myself satisfied by hardly any work at all – in the capitalist definition, but also in the personal and descriptive. Even the things that are supposed to feel the most actionable, personal, self-serving – working out, taking care of my home, reading, writing – feel like work. How can I even begin to think about a real, genuine gratitude for the life I’ve been allowed to live when living well, even for just my own sake, feels like work? Is it possible to feel satisfied with anything I accomplish when that accomplishment feels unnatural and uncharacteristic? Is there such a thing as the feeling that I believe that I deserve a result that I actually get? Is it vanity to think that my joy is something I could have possibly endeavored to deserve? 

As I, like many young adults, slowly realize that my work will never be a true reflection of what I am passionate about or interested in, I’ve struggled to look towards new hobbies to fill up my time. It’s not often that I understand the satisfaction of something well done, but when I do, it’s like the machinations of a world that I’ve felt like I was wired wrong for are suddenly, overwhelmingly obvious. The times I catch glimpses of that satisfaction are magical, like taking the first bite of a really good meal that I perfected, the view from the top of a difficult hike. I learned that the term for this is called complex leisure, and it’s defined by its scalable nature. Complex leisure differs from passive leisure by way of being something that one can improve at, participate in in different measures, and invest variable amounts of money in. Most adult hobbies are complex leisure, like climbing, recreational sports, cooking. The idea that sustains this type of leisure is that continual and self-implemented challenges lead to the same type of effort-result gratification relationship that is usually structured by school, traditional jobs, and capitalist institutions. This type of satisfaction is deeper, more meaningful, and leads to tangible outcomes for the practitioner. 

I’ve always considered myself someone with a rich inner life. I’m grateful for it – I can spend time by myself well, entertain myself, make myself laugh. And yet, I don’t know why complex leisure evades me. I can’t quite bring myself to understand the type of sustained pleasure that complex leisure over a long period is supposed to bring. I’m afraid that deep down, I’ve never really worked towards anything in my life, and the ends of my pleasure receptors have been fried off permanently, not even from short-form content or the Internet which both definitely play a part, but from years of instant gratification, overlove, and community. I have been given so much and have done shockingly little to deserve it. I take, and take. 

I think my indulgence in quick-fix dopamine – friends, the Internet, music – is actively preventing me from the revelation of gratitude, actual embodied gratitude that shines out from my chest without trying. Is it really possible to develop a dopamine response to real life, complex leisure, and work that can match the ecstasies of sugar, the Internet, sex? Even beyond that, what about my friends, nature, or music, my appreciation for which I have done absolutely nothing to cultivate? These things may not be given, per say, but my enjoyment derived from them is something I again have done nothing to deserve. I think there do exist people who have gotten close to perfect on their regulation of joy milieu, but I also think there are people who cosplay complex leisure in order to mine satisfaction from the Internet and sex, which brings me to my next thought, which is just how superficial attempting to understand all of this is. Trying to draw circles around things like satisfaction, joy, rhythms, feels like implementing a slow feeding schedule for an overenthusiastic dog, who will eat and eat until they throw up. I am both owner and dog, and when the hand and the mouth belong to the same beast it is quite, quite easy to fall into patterns of excessive stimulation. Perhaps the answer, just as it is to the dog, is a Kong filled with peanut butter¹, a slow drip of emotion controlled just enough to tame envy and ugly, jealous thoughts. 

Some on the Internet call one such response to an overloaded brain a dopamine fast, where a break from social media and interactive technology is taken to reset the receptors of dopamine from instant gratification and addictive behaviors. This approach imagines the experience of instant feedback dopamine addiction to stem from the cyclical algorithms of the internet as much as the content itself. However, I was surprised to learn that the original concept of a ‘dopamine fast’ included fasting from things beyond the digital age: social interaction was one of them, another was eating for purposes other than basic sustenance². The aim of this practice was to abstain from not just quick dopamine fixes, but any at all. After a period of dormancy, brain receptors are supposed to recalibrate to the joys of daily life. Beyond dopamine, I think the necessary fast extends to other people. The cause and effect logic that I want to attempt should belong to my own body, start and end with me, remain something close. Maybe quick-release dopamine is avoidable, as are imaginary audiences with enough time and distance. But is it possible to abstain from place, even just for a little while? Can I extract these things – the city, the car, East Asia, beyond – from under my skin? I’m not sure it’s possible. 

In a way, I’d like to do a system reset of sorts, one that brings the solution to this ennui down to eye level, like inputting ‘hello, world’ into a supercomputer. I’m trying to rediscover the clean boundaries of an effort and an outcome, like maybe the sharp edges will shoulder some logic back into me. In the face of absurdities in droves and joy so easily reveled in, there’s something sacred about an action and a consequence, praxis and its outcomes, a push and a fall. In short, I am determined to deserve something, to create the perfectly weighted outcome from the ultimate infallible action. Perhaps this an effort to assuage the guilt of my joy, as if by demonstrating that I am capable of working without immediate gratification, or that if I am able to say with my whole chest that I deserve an outcome, just one, that all the other ecstasies of my life are things that I can have also deserved, even if by less direct measures. I’m looking for proof of concept. 

As I reflect on place, the practico-inert, and what no longer serves me, I think this guilt of incessant ungratefulness may one day take its place in these ranks. Guilt, too, is a node on my milieu, and I fear it will spread to eat at more of my being. I’m infinitely thankful for what the places I’ve explored in this project have given me, and it has taken a great deal of guilt to say that they no longer provide the joy, solace, and comfort they once did. As much as I would like to be the sole progenitor of my logical reset, these places will push their way into my blindspots, both material and emotional. They are a part of me. 

As I challenge my place(s) to be more attentive to my needs, I, too, must think about how I curate it. I soak up the rays of my desk neighbor, my brother on Facetime, the blue of my water bottle. I am relentlessly tiraded upon by the fat clouds that hang over the parking lot of my school, the yellow flowers that bloom in the sidewalk cracks. They take their places in my soft body, and I carry the tastiest ones like a secret stash of snacks. I’ll break one in half. Perhaps this, too, can be gratitude. I hope you’d like to share.

 See also: frozen grapes, the last few pearls at the bottom of a cup of boba, anything describable as a ‘team-building exercise’, trying to book-club something with friends online

 Lol this is just called going to work 

[dare-g]

"As scripts easily generate endless iterations of varied forms, the difference between one form and another is no longer a critical integer but instead the output of a totalizing mathematical process. Any formal complexity in this context becomes normative and thereby ineffective as a mode of resistance to power. Moreover, form can be generated today without concern for constructability, because advances in digital software are paired with ever-more-sophisticated building technologies. With constructability becoming less of a concern, contemporary architecture produces increasingly more exuberant forms, each one just as anomalous as the last, creating a conceptual milieu that is ultimately homogeneous, despite any specific differences between individual forms.What capacity does architecture have to be critical in this context? While it is tempting to identify the problem as an infatuation with software, perhaps the problem lies in the inherent attitude around time that the digital presents. The techno-zeitgeist of today has returned to a present-based avant-garde, one in which the limits of form are defined by the technical possibilities of the present and in which time might be the integer of possible resistance. If this is so, what might a different attitude toward time look like? For this, it is possible perhaps to turn to Theodor Adorno’s study of Beethoven’s late works. Adorno finds in Beethoven’s late works a return to classical conventions after a long period of rejecting them almost entirely, and yet this classical recapitulation does not follow formulaic classical structures. Instead, Beethoven introduces caesuras and ruptures between classical conventions, and as such, he identifies the fragment as a formal idea, which informs the path that music and other disciplines take in the nineteenth and twentieth century. But Adorno’s analysis is of interest not simply because he succeeds in identifying a formal change that marked the beginning of a new period in musical history, but rather because Beethoven’s unusual treatment of classical conventions problematizes the existing relationship between form and time. The classical conventions that appear in the work inevitably embody a temporal dimension, due to their emergence within a specific historical context and their corresponding associations with particular styles. Yet because of gaps and breaks between these conventions, the classical elements no longer follow the formulaic sequence of classical form, and are thereby transformed from stylistic determinants to autonomous fragments within a work. Untethered from style, they become possibly unbound from time. So, in a way, Beethoven’s late works were neither imitative nor innovative. Instead they rewrote the relationship between the parts of classical form through an approach that did not rely purely on formal anomaly to break from the past, but that disrupted temporal continuity by breaking up the narrative sequence of a piece, and in so doing, questioning the historical context within which the work unfolds. Beethoven’s work looks neither forward nor backward in time, but rather sits outside a temporal progression. Anachronisms no longer operate as historical reference; as fragments they acquire a different capacity to identify with other moments and other eras—including those that had not yet occurred.Adorno called this phenomenon lateness, and it is different from the modern relationship to history, which focused on a break with precedent, and different from the postmodern relationship to history, which focused on citation and a return to past historical styles. Instead, lateness exhibits temporal ambiguity. The result is something nondialectical, not of the zeitgeist, and not of the avant-garde. Late works are neither of the present nor of the past. They are, as literary critic Edward Said wrote, in and apart from the present."

Lateness

[oral-history]

WHY AUDIO NEVER GOES VIRAL Is This Thing On? (One of the Best Pieces Ever)

Stan Alcorn

· Jan 15, 2014

With a community of creators uncomfortable with the value of virality, an audience content to watch grainy dashcam videos, and platforms that discourage sharing, is a hit-machine for audio possible? And is it something anyone even wants?

Skip Dolphin Hursh

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Last October, several dozen audiophiles gathered in a basement auditorium for an all-day conference about “the future of radio in a digital age.” Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian finished a talk he’s been giving to college campuses about the Internet and the transformative power it can unleash when it mobilizes a mass of people around an idea, a video, a website, a tweet. When he took questions, I asked: Why does the Internet so rarely mobilize around audio? What would it take to put audio on the Reddit front page?

Ohanian leaned back, contemplating the question, apparently for the first time. “That’s interesting,” he said. “I’m thinking of a lot of the viral content.” You could practically see the memes and GIFs pass across his brain. He started to point out that most viral videos are under three minutes, while the best audio storytelling was usually longer, but interrupted himself with a story about Upworthy.

When the founders pitched him on their plan — to make “socially good content” “go viral” — Ohanian invested “out of passion,” not because he thought it would work. Now Upworthy is one of the fastest growing media properties on the Internet. Sure, sound may not go viral today, but Ohanian is optimistic. “Probably someone here in the audience is going to show us all wrong,” he said, “and a year from now we’re going to look at the Upworthy for audio."

“So go make it.”

Easier said than done.

Cat Video Vs. The Cat’s Meow

Bianca Giaever has always been obsessed with radio. As a child, while she biked her newspaper delivery route, she listened to an iPod loaded exclusively with episodes of WBEZ’s “This American Life.” At Middlebury College, she stalked her classmates, dragging them to her dorm room to record interviews she edited into stories for the college station and smaller audiences online. “I was fully planning on working in radio,” she says. “My whole life.” That is until, the day after graduation, she became a viral video star.

When she painstakingly crafted moving audio narratives, her parents and brother listened. When she added video to her final college project, “The Scared is Scared” — a 6-year-old’s dream movie brought to life — “It just. Blew. Up.”

“At first I was like, ‘Wow. A lot of people are sharing this on Facebook,’” she recalls thinking, “‘I have such nice friends!’” Then it was friends of friends. Then strangers. By the time websites like Mashable and CBS News picked it up, she could only picture the audience as a number. Waiting on the tarmac for her post-grad vacation to begin, she watched on her phone as that number spiked into the thousands, then hundreds of thousands, seemingly crashing the site that hosted it. “These French people were yelling — because I had my phone on as we were taking off — that I was going to kill them,” she recalls. “They were like, ‘Is whatever you’re doing worth our possible death?’ And I was like, ‘Maybe? This is the biggest thing that’s happened in my life!’”

Of the 100 most-shared news articles on Facebook, three were from NPR, but none included audio. Two of these were reblogs of YouTube videos.

I’m a public radio reporter and this doesn’t happen in my milieu. There is no Google Sound, no BuzzFeed for audio, no obvious equivalent of Gangnam Style, Grumpy Cat or Doge. If you define “viral” as popularity achieved through social sharing, and audio as sound other than music, even radio stations’ most viral content isn’t audio — it’s video. A 17-minute video interview with Miley Cyrus at Hot 97 has nearly 2 million views. An off-the-rails BBC Radio 1 video interview with Mila Kunis: more than 12 million. In June 2013, the list of the 100 most-shared news articles on Facebook included three from NPR, but none included audio. Two of these stories were reblogs of YouTube videos (this one and this one), found on Gawker and Reddit.

“Audio never goes viral,” writes radio and podcast producer Nate DiMeo. “If you posted the most incredible story — literally, the most incredible story that has ever been told since people have had the ability to tell stories, it will never, ever get as many hits as a video of a cat with a moustache.”

It’s hardly a fair fight, audio vs. cat video, but it’s the one that’s fought on Facebook every day. DiMeo’s glum conclusion is an exaggeration of what Giaever reads as the moral of her own story: “People will watch a bad video more than [they will listen to] good audio,” she says.

Those in the Internet audio business tend to give two explanations for this disparity. “The greatest reason is structural,” says Jesse Thorn, who hosts a public radio show called “Bullseye” and runs a podcast network called Maximum Fun. “Audio usage takes place while you’re doing something else.” You can listen while you drive or do the dishes, an insuperable competitive advantage over text or video, which transforms into a disadvantage when it comes to sharing the listening experience with anyone out of earshot. “When you’re driving a car, you’re not going to share anything,” says Thorn.

The second explanation is that you can’t skim sound. An instant of video is a still, a window into the action that you can drag through time at will. An instant of audio, on the other hand, is nothing. “If I send someone an article, if they see the headline and read a few things, they know what I want them to know,” a sound artist and radio producer told me. “If I send someone audio, they have to, like… listen to it.” It’s a lot to ask of an Internet audience.

For some radio makers, social media incompatibility is a sign of countercultural vitality. Thorn has called his own work “anti-viral,” and believes that entertaining his niche audience is “still so much better than making things that convince aunts to forward them to each other.”

“That’s A-U-N-T-S,” he clarifies.

But when I suggest the situation doesn’t seem to concern him, he interrupts, “To say that it doesn’t concern me — it concerns me profoundly. I think about it all the time.” In his view, social media warps our consumption patterns, and not for the better. “It’s a serious problem in my life. And not just in my media-making life, in my day-to-day life.”

After Giaever’s video went viral, she turned down an internship at “This American Life” — “my dream since I was nine” — to become a “filmmaker in residence” for Adobe. She gets paid to make her own movies, which she still approaches as radio stories with added visuals. It’s the proven way to get people on the Internet to listen. “The entire concept of what I’m doing seems problematic to me,” she says. “What’s so beautiful about radio is you can’t compete with what people are imagining in their heads, right? And yet I still continue to do it.”

Because audio doesn’t go viral.

Except that sometimes, it does.

Kids Say The Darndest Things

Most viral audio wasn’t intended for the Internet. Recordings made for some other purpose are excerpted and uploaded: voicemails, speeches, and calls to 911 and customer service hotlines.

One category of viral audio is the document, bits of audio that serve as evidence in a news story. It’s easy to imagine text transcripts being distributed in audio’s absence: Bradley Manning’s testimony, the 911 calls of the Trayvon Martin case, Obama’s oft-quoted “clinging to guns and religion.” The primary advantage of audio over text is that it lets the listener confirm a quote with her own ears and determine if meaning is altered by nuances of emphasis or emotion.

Another category of viral audio is the rant or comic diatribe, where emphasis and emotion are the entire point. For instance, an irate San Francisco Chronicle reader chewing out the editor for referring to a “pilotless drone,” or a voicemail becomes an increasingly laugh-filled narration of the aftermath of a car crash. A transcript of these would be like lyrics without a melody.

Somewhere in between these two is a subcategory that could be called “celebrities gone wild”: Alec Baldwin cursing out his 11-year-old daughter, Christian Bale cursing out his director of photography, Mel Gibson cursing out his ex-girlfriend, etc.

These brief, emotional, sometimes-newsworthy clips of people speaking have cousins in viral video. In fact, the two are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Mitt Romney’s infamous “47% comment” was captured and distributed as a video featuring blurry donors’ backs. A recent viral “video” titled, “Potty Talk! [Original] 3 year old contemplates the effects of his diet on the toilet” is merely a shaky shot of a bathroom door. When documenting a primarily auditory event from the vantage point of a single recording device, adding a video camera to the microphone gives slightly more information, and the advantage of keeping the eyes occupied.

But these amateur, one-shot videos are a small and shrinking section of the viral video pool. “We’re seeing a lot more professional work in [the viral video] space, and I don’t just mean advertisers,” says YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca. The “top trending videos” of 2013 were all intentionally shot and edited for an Internet audience: music videos (“What Does The Fox Say?”) and ads (Volvo’s “epic split” with Jean-Claude Van Damme) but also low-budget productions like the Norwegian army’s “Harlem Shake.” They all have had over 90 million views.

Analogous audio — deliberately constructed and virally distributed — is a rarer and more recent phenomenon.

Ask a public radio journalist for an example of viral audio, and one piece comes up again and again: “Two Little Girls Explain The Worst Haircut Ever.” It’s two minutes and fifty seven seconds of cute, as five-year-old Sadie and three-year-old Eva tell the story of an ill-advised haircut to their patient interviewer and father, WNPR reporter Jeff Cohen. For public radio, Cohen has covered gangs, unemployment, and the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school. He won a magazine writing award for a story in the Hartford Courant about Connecticut’s first Iraq war widow.

“I’ve done a lot of work as a reporter that I’m pretty proud of,” he says. “I will never be recognized for anything for the rest of my life, except for this.”

It, too, resembles a viral video: it’s short, self-contained and driven by cute children. But not only does it lack any images of said children, it isn’t a straightforward record of what unfolded in front of the microphone. Cohen recorded two interviews, one with each daughter, and then carefully edited them into a fast-paced, seamless whole. Unlike Alec Baldwin’s voicemail, “Two Little Girls” is a showcase of audio’s power to create what appears to be an unedited version of reality, but is in fact a tightly constructed story, with a beginning, middle and end.

To explain why millions of people have listened to “Two Little Girls” — and why this is still so exceptional — you have to look at its convoluted path to fame.

What We Mean When We Talk About ‘Viral’

Taken literally, “viral” brings to mind an infectious agent bumping around inside its host, spreading accidentally by breath or touch. When “viral marketing” emerged in the 1990s, the medical referent was apt. The disease vector typically took the form of email and “virals” — as such ads were then called — that lived in the inbox. Invisible to the wider world, they spread from individual to individual, as when Hotmail stuck a sign-up ad beneath its users’ signatures. Or when the movie “American Psycho” sent compulsively forwardable emails from its psychotic main character, Patrick Bateman.

Today, those seeking to “go viral” have the same essential goal — to increase their audience by reaching the audience’s audience (and their audience, ad infinitum) — but the web has changed beyond the dynamics of disease transmission. Instead of invisible, one-to-one emails, today’s Internet infections spread by a cascade of publicly visible, one-to-many “likes,” “shares,” “tweets,” and “reblogs,” accelerated and amplified by an expanding web publishing industry. “Sharing” implies a deliberate effort, but social media sharing skews toward a mix of self-representation and what Tumblr creative technologist Max Sebela refers to as “speaking in content”: You might share Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” not because you want people to watch the video, but to make a joke about the fact that today is Friday.

“How does it happen,” YouTube’s Kevin Allocca asked in a 2011 speech called “Why Videos Go Viral.” “Three things: tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness.”

Tastemakers are like virus broadcasters, picking up outstanding, or “unexpected,” Internet phenomena that might otherwise never spread beyond their initial communities, and spraying their spores onto larger followings.

For Cohen’s “Two Little Girls,” the key tastemaker, without whom it may well have languished in Internet obscurity, was Gawker’s Neetzan Zimmerman. (Note: I spoke with Zimmerman before he announced his plans to leave Gawker to become editor-in-chief of a social network startup called Whisper.)

Zimmerman is the closest thing to a one-man embodiment of what he calls “the viral industry.” When Gawker hired him in early 2012, his boss A.J. Daulerio approvingly called him, “a total freak” for his ability to methodically scour the corners of the Internet for the video, memes, and Internet ephemera that would grow to popularity after being seeded with Gawker’s audience. “Before I used to do basically 20 hours a day,” Zimmerman says. “Now there’s a night shift, so I don’t have to worry as much.” In the last three months of 2013, his posts were responsible for more than half of Gawker’s pageviews and two thirds of the site’s unique visitors — nearly 40 million in total — according to Gawker’s public stats. For comparison, that’s more than 1/3 of the traffic of the entire the New York Times website.

Zimmerman’s work is a more extreme version of the new, upside-down dynamic of web publishing. Instead of the publisher’s megaphone guaranteeing its articles an audience, the publisher only has an audience insofar as the articles “go viral.” Tens of thousands of readers see most of the dozen items Zimmerman posts each day, but millions see his blockbusters.

For those hits, the content and the clickbait headline are as important as the timing. He describes “going viral” like surfing: boarding a wave at the earliest possible point. “You don’t want to wait too long because you’ll miss that initial cresting,” he says. “It’s a race against everyone else.”

Zimmerman chooses what to cover by scanning for signs of that wave rather than looking deeply at the constituent molecules of content. “The way the system works is I keep a mental note of instances of occurrence on a certain tier of sites,” he says. This lets him identify “viral momentum,” even when his personal judgment might suggest otherwise. “The purpose of the system is to override my biases and to override whatever personal feelings I have.”

Sometimes this lets Zimmerman not only beat the competition, but also popularize something that might otherwise never bubble into the mainstream from a less-trafficked corner of the Internet. But the system — Zimmerman’s and that of the “viral industry” more generally — has an obvious bias of its own toward content that is already being shared on the Internet.

For Bianca Giaever’s “Scared” video, first college and radio friends shared it on Facebook, then Vimeo made it a “staff pick,” then major media websites like CBS News, BuzzFeed, Jezebel and Mashable blogged about it. Within three days, hundreds of thousands were watching.

For Cohen, it took four months, and a lot of luck.

‘Invisible As the Radio Waves Themselves’

Jeff Cohen had interviewed his daughters many times, in the same way other fathers shoot home videos. “I’m sappy that way,” he says. But he thought enough of the haircut piece to play it for colleagues at the radio station. “It was about five minutes long, and my boss and friends said, ‘Cut it down to three minutes and put it on PRX.’”

PRX is the Public Radio Exchange, and as the name suggests, its website is a marketplace where station managers shop for stories. After Cohen uploaded his new, tighter version of “Two Little Girls” in February of 2012, it was discovered and licensed by a handful of local stations: KOSU in central Oklahoma, KUT in west Texas, KSJD in southwest Colorado.

But to the Internet, all this was invisible as the radio waves themselves. “PRX is designed as a business-to-business marketplace,” says PRX CEO Jake Shapiro. “We’re not designed for listeners… yet.”

The circuitous route that “Two Little Girls” took to Gawker didn’t start with PRX, but at a monthly event called “Ear Cave” hosted by one of Cohen’s colleagues at a coffee shop in Hartford, Connecticut. “I call it BYOB, BYOE,” says the event’s creator Catie Talarski. “Bring Your Own Beer, Bring Your Own Ear.” She dims the lights, sets up chairs, and projects a photograph of an old radio, so the audience has something to look at while a chosen curator presses play on a laptop. That April, “Two Little Girls” was the grand finale.

“It was just a huge hit,” recalls Adam Prizio, an insurance auditor who was in the audience that night. Two months later, Prizio, with the voices of Eva and Sadie bouncing around his head, decided to google it. Finding the audio on PRX, he posted a link to community blog MetaFilter, with no description other than a mysterious quote (“It happens three times in every life. Or twice. Or once.”) and the categorization “SLAudio,” a riff on “SLYT” (Single Link YouTube).

Overnight, the comments swelled. “Amazing.” “Adorable.” “Better than the Car Guys.” “OH MY GOD THIS IS FUCKING BALLER.” There were fewer comments than a link published ten minutes later — “Fundamentalist Christian schools in Louisiana will soon be citing the existence of the Loch Ness monster as proof that evolution is a myth” — but they were comments of single-minded delight. The next morning, Zimmerman saw the thread in his morning Internet regimen, and within an hour had put up his own post that would go on to gather some 1.3 million views entitled, “Public Radio Reporter Interviews His Two Little Girls After One Gives the Other the ‘Worst Haircut Ever.’”

“It didn’t really matter that it was audio,” says Zimmerman. “It was more about how it was being received online.”

In one sense, it followed the same trajectory as all viral content, or what YouTube’s Kevin Allocca has defined as a combination of “community participation” and “tastemakers.” Something becomes popular in a niche community, whose public enthusiasm attracts the notice of a tastemaker, who then repackages it to suit a larger audience, where the entire process repeats on a larger scale.

But really “Two Little Girls” succeeded in spite of its immediate community. Cohen first had to be convinced to put it online at all, and even then it was on a website searched only by public radio station managers. While Cohen says it made the rounds of his Facebook friends, it only took off after audio enthusiasts heard it at a coffee shop.

Compared to other media, even young, tech-savvy audiophiles are less likely to share audio on a weekly basis, and when they do, they’re more likely to use email instead of social media.

The barriers that nearly blocked “Two Little Girls” from finding a larger audience are a mix of culture and technology. While home videos make the leap to YouTube all the time, audio makers tend to keep their scraps to themselves. When I took an unscientific poll (n=60), it backed up what I heard anecdotally: Compared to other media, even young, tech-savvy audiophiles are less likely to share audio on a weekly basis, and when they do, they’re more likely to use email instead of social media.

Several echoed the sentiment of occasional radio producer Laura Griffin, who said, “I tend to assume that most people don’t have the same patience and appreciation for audio that I do, so I am selective about what audio I share and with whom.”

Others pointed to technological limitations. The files themselves are large and often forbid downloading. Audio-hosting websites employ an inconsistent potpourri of players, many of which disallow the embedding that has helped make online video ubiquitous. (Some PRX audio can be embedded, but Gawker had enough trouble with its player that they uploaded the audio into their own.) “I often don’t share NPR audio because their player isn’t embeddable and requires going to another website to listen,” notes multimedia producer Will Coley.

There is one standard format for distributing digital audio, but rather than resolving these barriers to sharing, it may be their most perfect expression: the podcast.

The Podcast Problem

If you don’t know what a podcast is, you’re in the majority.

Technically, it’s an RSS feed containing links to files (“podcast” typically implies an audio file). Using podcast-listening (formerly “podcatching”) software, you can “subscribe,” setting your computer or smartphone to automatically download the new and get rid of the old.

It’s hard to appreciate in 2013 the enthusiasm with which this simple idea was met by the mid-2000s media.

“I haven’t seen this much buzz around a single word since the Internet,” computer programmer Carl Franklin told the New York Times in 2004.

By letting everyone become broadcasters (or really “podcasters”), it was supposed to disrupt radio in a way that was predicted to parallel that other online media format with a horrible portmanteau name: blogging. In fact, the name “podcast” was tossed off by the Guardian's Ben Hammersley between the alternatives “audioblogging” and “GuerillaMedia.”

It wasn’t all hype. Anyone can start a podcast, just as anyone can blog. The podcast did close the loop, in its clunky way, between where people download and where they typically listen. And aficionados can point to a long list of programs, especially covering technology and — more recently — comedy, which never would have existed otherwise.

12% of Americans listened to a podcast in the last month, the same percentage as three years ago.

But while much of online publishing now takes the form of the blog, interest in podcasting seems to have flatlined. According to Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron), 12% of Americans listened to a podcast in the last month, the same percentage as three years ago. It is a substantial niche, but smaller than the percentage of people who create online videos, and less than a sixth the number who watch them.

“There was a huge wave of initial excitement around podcasting changing and disrupting and turning upside-down radio seven years ago, or longer,” says PRX’s Jake Shapiro. “And then it kind of just petered out.”

While the number of podcasts has proliferated, the vast majority of episodes have audiences in the double or triple digits, judging from the experience of podcast hosting giant Libsyn. “If you want to do the average, our mean podcast? Now you’re looking at like 200, 250 downloads per episode,” Libsyn’s Rob Walch told NextMarket Insights's Michael Wolf. The majority of top podcasts, far from being grassroots disruptors, are major public radio shows: “This American Life,” “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” and “Radiolab.” It’s the dominant way of finding an on-demand audio audience on the Internet, but it’s more Hulu than YouTube.

The absence of disruption is, in part, baked into the technology. “It’s clearly the number one barrier to wider listenership,” says Jesse Thorn. Apple gave the format a big boost when it brought it into the iTunes store in 2005, but that walled garden of a market has come to delimit the podcast’s reach. To watch a YouTube video, you click play, wherever it exists on the web. With another click you can immediately share it by putting a player in the feed of your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or even LinkedIn accounts.

To listen to a podcast, however, you have to search for it on an app or in the iTunes store, sign up for it, wait for it to download. (Of course there are other ways to download podcasts, but the majority of podcast downloads occur through Apple.) Click “share” on Apple’s podcasting app, and you’ll be prompted to post an RSS feed, which is a bit like trying to share a new Tom Junod article and instead passing on a password that readers can use to subscribe to Esquire.

These hurdles don’t hamper podcasts that are already well known. Thorn’s podcast audience has been growing steadily by approximately 50% each year. “Radiolab” and “This American Life” — public radio shows that are among the most popular podcasts and the aesthetic guiding lights for young public radio producers — are both approaching a million digital listens for each new episode. For these shows, the occasional episode will get shared more than others, but that “viral” bump is on the order of 10 to 20 percent, and even that seems driven less by social media than old-fashioned word of mouth. “Google is a much bigger referrer to any given episode [than Facebook],” says WNYC’s Jennifer Houlihan Roussel. In other words, podcasts don’t go viral. Nor are they designed to.

As the Guardian’s technology editor, Charles Arthur, points out in the Independent back in 2005, “Podcasts take content and put it into a form that can’t be indexed by search engines or be speed-read, and which you can’t hyperlink to (or from). A podcast sits proud of the flat expanse of the Internet like a poppy in a field. Until we get really good automatic speech-to-text converters, such content will remain outside the useful, indexable web.”

A Cloud Atlas?

If there is any company attempting to create a modern web alternative to the podcast, it’s SoundCloud.

“Podcasting: It’s a fairly old school method of distribution,” says its co-founder and CTO Eric Wahlforss. “We are certainly of the opinion that SoundCloud is the superior way of broadcasting your show across the web.”

If you’ve played audio from Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, you’ve likely seen it: the slow crawl of orange across a gray waveform. This omnipresent, embeddable player is what has most clearly attracted the moniker “YouTube for audio.” Hoping to make sound as sharable as video, SoundCloud delivers this content via a streaming player instead of a dressed-up file download.

In a Facebook message, data scientist Lada Adamic told me: “Soundcloud does seem to have a lot of sharing activity (everything is dwarfed by YouTube but soundcloud is holding its own) [sic].” SoundCloud was the 11th most commonly submitted domain on Reddit as of March 27, 2013, according to Reddit data scientist Chad Birch, above the Huffington Post, the Guardian and Vimeo. The number of YouTube domains submitted was almost 22 times as high.

But the SoundCloud content accumulating most on social media isn’t what the company calls “audio.” “In our world, in terms of viral content, the real viral content is actually music,” Wahlforss says.

For non-music “audio,” SoundCloud lets broadcasters and podcasters have it both ways, encouraging them to make their shows available on SoundCloud’s platform, while also creating a podcast-ready RSS feed. “We are trying to blur that distinction a little bit,” says Wahlforss.

“We’re on SoundCloud because they have a nice player for sharing on Facebook and Twitter,” says Seth Lind of “This American Life.” But the total plays of their hour-long episodes on SoundCloud peak at roughly 3% of its digital listenership, and are usually under 1%, hovering around 5,000. A look at SoundCloud’s “trending audio” page presents a similar picture: podcast episodes and radio shows, with listenership in the hundreds or low thousands.

Clearly, technology alone doesn’t ensure the virality of an hour-long show with a headline designed for consistency rather than clickability (e.g.: “#513: 129 Cars” from “This American Life”). “It’s probably not going to be as popular as a Gangnam Style,” Lind notes, dryly. The audio that has gone viral takes a different tact: short, tailored specifically for SoundCloud, and providing a near-immediate pay-off that fulfills the headline’s promise.

Much of it is some mix of rant and newsworthy document, like AOL’s Tim Armstrong firing Patch’s creative director, or Charles Ramsey’s 911 call after he helped rescue three kidnapped women in Cleveland.

But the most heard, and most truly social example of SoundCloud’s viral audio is a New Zealand radio host’s dramatic reading of a series of text messages from a one-night stand gone unhinged: “This Is What Crazy Looks Like Via Text Messaging.” “Fletch & Vaughan” host Vaughan Smith found the texts on BuzzFeed and performed them as part of a four hour-long drive-time show. He then uploaded it to SoundCloud and shared it on Facebook to appease callers who wanted to hear the skit — but only that one skit — again.

“At the end of the weekend it hit a million plays,” says Smith. “It was mental.” With more than six million plays to date, more people have heard the version from “Fletch & Vaughan” than have read the BuzzFeed article it was adapted from — a triumph of sound over text.

It couldn’t have gone viral without a player as sharable as SoundCloud, but perhaps more importantly, it couldn’t have gone viral without the active unearthing of comedic gold buried within a longer broadcast. “In public radio, only within the last few years has there been a big value seen in disaggregating content from shows,” says PRX managing director John Barth. “And there’s still a pretty big debate about that.” These concerns echo the now-largely-obsolete resistance of other media to the Internet. They want listeners to experience the whole enchilada, not take the ingredients and re-contextualize them.

As for creating a whole new audio cuisine — work cooked up specifically for a SoundCloud audience — the successful examples are elusive. “We mostly use it as a promotional tool really,” says Smith. “We use it to promote the podcast.”

The Message Is The Medium

Last October, Reddit's Alexis Ohanian told a basement full of audiophiles to go make "the Upworthy for audio," but in a sense, we already have the Upworthy for audio: Upworthy. With its scientifically-selected, clickbait headlines, it  is the reason nearly two million people have heard the future president of Ireland Michael Higgins dress down rightwing talk show host Michael Graham (“A Tea Partier Decided To Pick A Fight With A Foreign President. It Didn’t Go So Well.”) It’s the reason hundreds of thousands have heard Geoffrey Gevalt tell a small poignant story, set to music, about his daughter (“A Toddler Gets Totally Profound In a Way Most Adults Don’t”) and Summer Puente about her father (“Every Night This Dad Falls Asleep in Front of the TV. There’s a Beautiful Reason Why.”)

The Upworthy sector of the Internet economy isn’t just healthy, it’s insatiable and omnivorous in its appetite for content it can coax people into clicking and sharing. “Whether it’s audio, whether it’s video, whether it’s still images, whether it’s text: my system remains pretty much the same,” says Neetzan Zimmerman. “For me it doesn’t really matter.”

The viral industry can help solve audio’s skimming problem, but only if it can find the content in the first place. “Radio doesn’t do a very good job of marketing itself to the viral industry, for whatever reason,” says Zimmerman. “Maybe it thinks too highly of itself, or thinks of ‘viral’ as a cheapening of its content. I really disagree with that. I think there’s a lot there to be mined, and a lot that gets ignored.”

“Marketing” makes it sound like radio makers simply need to do a better job of drawing attention to their work. And it’s true: active, public sharing directed at non-audiophiles is how Zimmerman found “Two Little Girls.” If there were a website that showed what audio was “trending” in some smaller community, Zimmerman says it would become part of his system. “One hundred percent. No doubt about it.”

There are also plenty of short podcasts and single-serving radio stories that are poorly labeled on obscure web pages or presented in unembeddable players. “Nobody that I’ve seen, even the best of them, spends time thinking about how to create the metadata or the descriptions: the things that might actually catch your attention,” says PRX’s Jake Shapiro.

More fundamental than marketing is the question of where audio makers see a market. “So far nobody is producing audio, really, for an audience that might be scanning for things to enjoy,” says Shapiro.

“It’s somewhat of a chicken and egg thing,” he says, “Until producers have any kind of confidence that there’s an audience or some money to be made — or preferably both — they’re not really targeting it.”

“If it can’t be used for pornography it’s never going to be the most popular thing.”

Perhaps Facebook will tweak its algorithms to favor audio. Perhaps SoundCloud or PRX or Apple will make a social alternative to podcasting. “It’s possible that someone will make this app that’s all about sharing audio that will be the next Snapchat,” suggests Seth Lind. “That’s obviously not going to happen,” he quickly adds, to make sure I know he’s joking. “If it can’t be used for pornography it’s never going to be the most popular thing.”

But Jeff Cohen and “Fletch & Vaughan” demonstrate that audio makers don’t have to wait for a deep shift in technology to court a viral audience. They would, however, have to create audio not for already-dedicated radio and podcast listeners, but for the distracted, impatient crowd that is the web. Audio enthusiasts would have to evangelize on that work’s behalf, not just in coffee shops or emails to each other, but online, loudly, with the same manipulative, click-chasing techniques wielded by the rest of the web.

The day “Two Little Girls” went viral, Jeff Cohen tweeted: “I fear I may disappoint new Twitter followers once they realize that I mostly write on Hartford, government, and healthcare. Not my kids…” That is still more or less his beat, though he does also have a children’s book (“Eva and Sadie and the Worst Haircut EVER!”) due out this summer.

“I don’t know anything about the Internet, really,” Jeff Cohen says. But the way he sees it, although he got lucky, he also made his own luck.

“I didn’t cut anybody’s hair. But when you see an opportunity, you take advantage of it.”

Stan Alcorn is a print, radio and video journalist based in New York City. He regularly reports for WNYC, Marketplace and NPR and is a staff writer for Fast Company's Co.Exist.

© 2016 News.me Inc · Terms · Privacy

[ammonitetestpatterns]

i wonder how pluto in aquarius will see the upending and remaking of the digitally connected, physically backed archivist/private (as any such supposedly passive acts of cognitive synthesis are, in your own final realm, your apocalypse of having the say in aesthetic judgment) maniac/collector mindset from its last tenuous social fiber. especially in light of how new the digital landscape for this commercial and microculturally reformative experience of music is, the reselling ecosystem gaining a more sophisticated footing and becoming fully integrated with the background ambience of encounter, freed from the storefront, warehouse, or organization. too much decentralization of intelligence going on, without understanding its roots/how virtue in the act of sharing is implanted with the singularity of experience, a fleet dreaming of the eternal as it passes an opaque bay, dangling the diamonds of ecstatic understanding and communion from the sky, the second a sparkling shroud usurps the reality of night. how do you regard people and organizational bodies when they appear to treat music, whose nimbus challenges the monotony of culture industry even if born from its limb, as an opportunistic endeavor, a source of profit despite their glaring position of wealth (i suppose the early modern example of elite patronage doesn't count because there is no community around you if you are on the internet via smart phone and everyone in your social sprawl can say the same) and lack of contribution, whether toward cultural hermeneutic attuning and a real human feeling bridged across frequencies and electrical signals that remind us of our own electrochemical enunciation into sentience, the music making that leap, so necessary to nourish the soul, in holding and reaching the essential pulse of the body taken in through its history, as listening is time travel, or to the knowledge base outside the egoic affirmation made in the public display of closed distribution or the curation of mixes/ancillary compilations (in that, you didn’t directly rip or surface sides/cuts by your own efforts) tapping on the glass of a faraway milieu barred in language and a culture's common scope of intuitive relationally appendable and exchangeable signs, a net of bubbles that they could never have known without popping them from the future? i must humble myself and kiss the lash of my own ignorance. and yet! that is where the beauty rises, in that miraculous flash of feeling like you can get through, by that mystery of being so affected by art on the threshold of its knowability when its corners aren't fully illuminated yet, by our capacity for expressing and making out of the manifold of the self and its paths of pliability made arable, sown together, the boundaries of the ego melting and recasting, that is how you know and that is how you are made anew, when you are taken up by sound, by song, by rhythm, by the canon of the heartbeat.

[idigitizellp21]

Guiding Rules For Student Success In School

We all get very excited to talk about student success in school but have we ever imagined the steps one needs to take to reach success? It is an amalgamation of good conduct, great academic achievements and parental involvement too.

We have tried to chalk down 7 unique yet essential rules for a student to succeed in their schooling journey.

7 Guiding Rules for Student Success in School

1. Code of Conduct

The school upholds a Code of Conduct rooted in respect, integrity, and personal responsibility. Students embody these values through academic honesty, respectful communication, and active participation in our diverse community. Punctuality, attendance, and engagement in extracurricular activities and community services are essential, fostering a culture where every student thrives academically and socially and is prepared to lead with integrity in a global context.

2. Attendance and Punctuality

Attendance and punctuality are more than regulatory requirements- they are requisite to our culture of responsibility and engagement. We foster a milieu where regular attendance is synonymous with commitment to learning and growing ethically. Our policy underscores the significance of being present for academic pursuits and the rich tapestry of extracurricular activities and community engagements.

3. Revolutionary Learning Environment

The school excels in education through a curriculum that marries the rigor of the CBSE framework with the creativeness of experiential learning. Our pedagogical approach incorporates smart boards, digital resources, and project-based learning to cultivate critical thinking and innovation. Classrooms at SHCVIS are not mere spaces of instruction but vibrant arenas of intellectual exploration, where every lesson is an adventure and every challenge an opportunity to excel.

4. Extracurricular Excellence

Our vast array of activities- from sports and music to dance and drama ensures that every student finds a niche to hone their talents. Professional teaching in disciplines such as basketball and athletics empowers our students to compete at inter-school levels embodying the spirit of excellence and teamwork. We believe pursuits are crucial in crafting well-rounded individuals who are as adept in leadership as they are in academics.

5. Safety and Security

Ensuring safety is a multifaceted endeavour, blending modern technology with vigilant oversight. Our campus is fortified with CCTV surveillance and a strong security apparatus to safeguard our students and staff. The school’s sickbay is equipped with first-rate medical facilities and staffed by a dedicated nurse and an on-call doctor, ready to address emergencies with care. Regular safety drills and protocols ensure the community is always prepared and secure.

6. Community Engagement and Social Responsibility

We nurture a culture where education extends beyond the classroom, encouraging students to engage in community service projects, field trips, and thought-provoking workshops. These activities are designed to instil a deep sense of empathy, civic responsibility, and global awareness, preparing our students to be conscientious and proactive members of society.

7. Parent Involvement and Communication

Lastly, we view parents as vital partners in their kid’s educational journey. Our school hence organizes regular parent-teacher meetings, insightful workshops, and engaging seminars to ensure parents are actively involved in their child’s development. We have established a parent portal and multiple communication channels to keep parents informed and engaged, hoping for a collaborative environment where feedback is valued and contributions are welcomed.

Harshad Valia International School carves a path for student success

Shri Harshad C. Valia International School is dedicated to transparency and continuous improvement, prioritizing our students’ best interests. To help our students become more active and informed for the upcoming school year, we are providing some Back to School: Tips for a Successful School Year. We encourage parents and students to actively engage with us, ensuring that together, we can offer the best possible educational experience.

[adib5499]

Education for All: Affordable Schooling Options in Greater Noida

In the sprawling urban expanse of Greater Noida, where rapid development intertwines with the aspirations of its residents, the landscape of education is evolving. Amidst this dynamic milieu, Dwps Low Fee Schools emerge as beacons of accessible education, offering a pathway for many towards enlightenment and empowerment.

Dwps Low Fee Schools, an abbreviation for "Delhi World Public School," embody a commitment to providing quality education at affordable rates, thereby democratizing the access to knowledge and opportunities. Situated strategically across Greater Noida, these schools cater to a diverse demographic, encompassing families from various socio-economic backgrounds.

At the heart of Dwps Low Fee Schools lies a dedication to academic excellence without compromising on affordability. This ethos is not merely a slogan but a lived reality, as evidenced by the comprehensive curriculum, competent faculty, and state-of-the-art facilities provided at these institutions. The curriculum is meticulously designed to foster holistic development, encompassing not only scholastic achievements but also character building and life skills.

One of the defining features of Dwps Low Fee Schools is their inclusive ethos. Regardless of the financial constraints students may face, these schools ensure that no child is left behind. Scholarships, subsidies, and financial aid programs are integral components of their ethos, ensuring that economic barriers do not hinder educational aspirations. This inclusivity fosters a vibrant learning environment where diversity is celebrated, and students learn to empathize and collaborate across socio-economic divides.

Moreover, Dwps Low Fee Schools prioritize innovation and adaptability in their pedagogical approach. Recognizing the transformative potential of technology in education, these schools leverage digital tools and interactive learning platforms to enhance the educational experience. From smart classrooms equipped with audio-visual aids to online learning portals accessible to students from diverse backgrounds, technology serves as an enabler of educational equity at Dwps Low Fee Schools.

Beyond academics, these schools place a strong emphasis on extracurricular activities, recognizing their pivotal role in nurturing well-rounded individuals. Sports, arts, music, and cultural events are integral parts of the school calendar, providing students with opportunities to explore their interests and talents beyond the confines of the classroom. Through participation in extracurricular activities, students develop essential life skills such as teamwork, leadership, and resilience, which are invaluable for their future success.

In addition to fostering academic and extracurricular excellence, Dwps Low Fee Schools are committed to instilling values of social responsibility and community engagement in their students. Service-learning initiatives, environmental awareness programs, and community service projects are integral components of the school curriculum, empowering students to become responsible global citizens who are cognizant of their role in creating a more just and sustainable world.

In conclusion, Dwps Low Fee Schools in Greater Noida stand as exemplars of educational inclusivity and excellence. Through their unwavering commitment to affordability, accessibility, and academic rigor, these institutions are not only shaping the minds of the future but also paving the way for a more equitable society where every child has the opportunity to thrive and succeed.

[dy-patil-university-navi-mumbai]

Constructing Narratives and Dreams at D Y Patil Deemed To Be University

Situated amidst a vibrant hive of scholarly aspiration, D Y Patil Deemed To Be University serves as a refuge for visionaries, creative individuals, and narrators. This location fosters creativity by providing an ideal environment for innovation and tending to its seeds with passion and expertise. At this institution, academic programs such as the Bachelor of Science in Multimedia and Animation, the Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication, and performing arts are well-known in Mumbai—they are journeys of discovery, platforms for expression, and performance arenas—not merely courses.

 A Canvas for Digital Dreamers

The BSc in multimedia and animation program at D Y Patil Deemed To Be University helps students delve extensively into the realm of digital arts, scrutinizing each intricacy of visual effects, graphic design, and animation. 

As a student what can you benefit from in this degree?

State-of-the-art infrastructure with modern labs for advanced research

Industry standard multimedia lab

Modern sketch lab

Industry standard sound recording, photography and shooting floor

Tie-up with multiple media and production houses for hands-on training

60-degree placement training and assistance

Under the guidance of mentors who have traversed the creative path and attained leadership positions, pupils gain an understanding that each pixel and frame constitutes a brushstroke within the broader context of their digital canvases.

A Stage For Skilled Educators: Mass Communication Studies 

The Bachelor of Arts in mass communication program at DY Patil University equips students with the skills necessary to discover and amplify their individual voices amidst the chaos of the international stage. Youth acquire an understanding of the influence that words and images can have, as well as the accountability that accompanies the task of molding public sentiment. 

As a student what can you expect from this degree?

International & National seminars

Versatile informative workshops

Guest lectures by eminent professionals

Guaranteed placements and industry connections

By completing an intensive curriculum in journalism, advertising, and new media, pupils develop into conscientious members of society who are equipped to utilize their writing instruments and cameras for the betterment of society, rather than becoming merely proficient communicators.

Building The Stage of Dreams: The Study of Performing Arts

D Y Patil Deemed To Be University, situated amidst the dynamic cultural tapestry of Mumbai, is devoted to the performing arts. The university's prestigious status among performing arts colleges in Mumbai is well-known. It is a location where music, dance, and drama are experienced rather than merely performed. As a student what can you expect the curriculum to offer?

Theoretical instruction

Industry-oriented training

Expert-led seminars

Immersive hands-on experiences

The education offerings of this subject are meticulously crafted to empower students with the creative acumen and practical proficiencies that are essential for engagement in professional arenas within the creative industry.

Unique to D Y Patil Deemed To Be University is its steadfast dedication to fostering the development of the holistic individual. In addition to its demanding academic program, the university cultivates a milieu that nurtures innovation, generates fresh perspectives, and cultivates strong social connections. In this context, the process of acquiring knowledge becomes intricately linked with self-exploration, as learners forge their own trajectories that transcend their professional selves and embody purpose-driven individuals.

By integrating rigorous academic standards with innovative inquiry, the university equips students not only for contemporary careers but also for forthcoming developments. Discharged from the university not only with academic credentials but also with narratives of personal growth, graduates are prepared to impact society.

DY Patil University is ultimately more than an establishment; it is a transformative period in the lives of its matriculated individuals—a period where aspirations and anecdotes are shaped with each passing day, lesson, and experience.

[priyankaguptablogs]

Tips to Choose the Right Recording Studio

In the bustling landscape of music production, finding the perfect recording studio can be akin to discovering a hidden gem. Whether you're a budding artist seeking to lay down tracks or a seasoned professional looking for a space to unleash creativity, selecting the right recording studio is paramount. In the vibrant hub of musical talent, such as Bangalore, where every note resonates with passion and innovation, the search for an ideal audio recording studio in Bangalore can seem daunting. However, fear not, as we unveil a comprehensive guide to help you navigate through the myriad options and land on the perfect studio for your needs.

Define Your Requirements: Before embarking on your quest for the ideal recording studio, it's crucial to outline your specific needs and goals. Whether you're recording a full album, a single track, or a podcast, understanding the scope of your project will steer you towards studios equipped with the requisite facilities and expertise. In the bustling metropolis of Bangalore, where the music scene pulsates with diversity, identifying your requirements ensures that you narrow down your search to audio recording studios in Bangalore that align with your vision and objectives.

Research Thoroughly: In a city teeming with artistic fervor like Bangalore, conducting thorough research is the cornerstone of finding the right recording studio. Delve into online forums, review platforms, and social media channels to glean insights into the reputation and credibility of various studios. Pay heed to testimonials from fellow musicians and industry professionals, as their experiences can offer invaluable guidance in your quest for the perfect audio recording studio in Bangalore.

Assess Studio Equipment and Facilities: The heart of any recording studio lies in its equipment and facilities. When scouring through the plethora of options in Bangalore's bustling music scene, prioritize studios equipped with state-of-the-art gear, acoustically treated rooms, and versatile spaces conducive to creative exploration. Whether you're seeking analog warmth or digital precision, ensure that the studio's equipment aligns with your sonic preferences and technical requirements. A meticulous evaluation of equipment and facilities ensures that you entrust your musical endeavors to a recording studio poised to elevate your sound to new heights.

Evaluate the Expertise of Staff: Behind every exceptional recording studio lies a team of seasoned professionals adept at transforming musical visions into sonic realities. In the thriving ecosystem of Bangalore's music industry, seek out studios staffed with experienced engineers, producers, and technicians capable of understanding and enhancing your artistic vision. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the scene, collaborating with skilled professionals fosters an environment conducive to creativity and innovation, ensuring that your recording experience transcends mere technicalities and evolves into a journey of artistic exploration.

Consider Budget and Accessibility: While pursuing your musical aspirations in the dynamic milieu of Bangalore's music scene, it's imperative to strike a balance between quality and affordability. Evaluate the pricing structures of various recording studios, taking into account factors such as studio time, engineer fees, and additional services. Additionally, consider the studio's location and accessibility, ensuring that it's conveniently situated within Bangalore's vibrant nexus of artistic activity. By aligning your budgetary constraints with accessibility and quality, you pave the way for a recording experience that's not only fulfilling artistically but also financially viable.

Seek Recommendations and Referrals: In a city pulsating with creative energy like Bangalore, personal recommendations and referrals wield immense influence in the selection process. Reach out to fellow musicians, producers, and industry insiders for their insights and recommendations regarding reputable recording studios in the city. By tapping into the collective wisdom of the local music community, you gain access to insider knowledge and firsthand experiences that can illuminate your path towards finding the perfect audio recording studio in Bangalore.

Schedule Studio Tours and Consultations: Before finalizing your decision, immerse yourself in the ambiance and energy of prospective recording studios by scheduling tours and consultations. Take the opportunity to interact with studio personnel, discuss your project requirements, and assess the overall vibe and atmosphere of the space. Whether it's the cozy confines of a boutique studio or the sprawling expanse of a commercial facility, experiencing the studio firsthand provides invaluable insights into its suitability for your creative endeavors.

Trust Your Instincts: Amidst the myriad considerations and deliberations involved in choosing the right recording studio, never underestimate the power of intuition. In the bustling musical landscape of Bangalore, where every chord reverberates with passion and innovation, trust your instincts to lead you towards the studio that resonates with your creative sensibilities. Whether it's the warmth of the staff, the sonic purity of the rooms, or the overall vibe of the space, allow your intuition to guide you towards a recording studio where your artistic vision can truly flourish.

In conclusion, navigating the vibrant tapestry of Bangalore's music scene in search of the perfect recording studio requires a blend of diligence, discernment, and intuition. By defining your requirements, conducting thorough research, evaluating equipment and facilities, and seeking recommendations from the local music community, you can embark on a journey towards finding the ideal audio recording studio in Bangalore. Remember to trust your instincts, as they will ultimately lead you towards a studio where your musical aspirations can take flight amidst the harmonious symphony of creativity and innovation.

[trevlad-sounds]

Friday 6 October Mixtape 381 “Institute of Hope EXCLUSIVE” Retro Space Electronic Sleep Ambient Wednesdays, Fridays & Sundays. Support the artists and labels. Don't forget to tip so future shows can bloom.

Panic Girl-Feathers Of Hope 00:31

Milieu-Sleepership 03:03

Bryan Rohmer-My Corner of the Couch 12:04

x.y.r.-Interior Music 012 13:57

Elin Piel-Ciliary Body 22:00

Cub-cub-Sun Dome 28:47

ZENYA-Ariadne 33:38

arushi jain-Look How Far We Have Come 36:45

Gy0-Lisboa I 45:10

Fragile X-Saltwater Symphony 48:25

Apta-Close 55:50

Tim Shiel-Spirit Home 59:35

Space Ghost-New Day 1:01:25

Emily A. Sprague-Rain 1:03:45

Wilson Tanner-All Hands Bury the Dead 1:09:19

Natural Life Essence-Polinization 1:12:21

Cautionary Guides-The Pharmaceutical Institute 1:20:35

Kosmischer Läufer-Die Kapsel 1:24:21

The Hardy Tree-Mist on the Playing Fields 1:27:10

Pierre Dutour-Deer Forest 1:32:50

[soundofcar]

Unveiling the Freedom of Wireless CarPlay Stereo: Discover the 10.25-Inch Advantages

In the dynamic realm of automotive technology, the fusion of smartphones and car systems has reshaped the driving landscape. Among the cutting-edge innovations in this sphere is the wireless CarPlay stereo, heralding a seamless solution that elevates both convenience and safety on the road. At the forefront of these advancements stands the 10.25-inch wireless CarPlay stereo, offering a transformative experience for contemporary drivers seeking unparalleled connectivity.

Embracing Wireless Freedom

Gone are the days of tangled cords and restricted movement within the vehicle. With wireless CarPlay stereo 10.25 inch, drivers seamlessly sync their iPhones to the car's infotainment system sans cables. This not only declutters the interior but also fosters a safer driving milieu by reducing distractions.

The Allure of the 10.25-Inch Display

In the realm of visual interfaces within cars, size indeed matters. The expansive 10.25-inch display provides ample room for crisp graphics, vibrant hues, and user-friendly controls. Whether navigating maps, managing music libraries, or accessing apps, the generous screen enhances visibility and usability, ensuring drivers remain focused on the road ahead.

Seamless Integration in Action

The beauty of wireless CarPlay stereo 10.25 inch lies in its effortless assimilation with existing car technology. Once synced, the system mirrors vital iPhone features directly onto the dashboard display. From placing hands-free calls to dictating voice-activated messages, users harness Siri's capabilities without relinquishing control of the wheel.

Expanded Entertainment Horizons

Long journeys need not be monotonous with the 10.25-inch wireless CarPlay stereo for car stereo. Offering access to an array of entertainment apps, passengers can effortlessly stream music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Moreover, the system supports third-party navigation apps, supplying alternative routes and real-time traffic updates for stress-free travels.

Future-Proofing Your Drive

As technology advances, investing in a wireless CarPlay stereo for car ensures your car remains abreast of the digital age. Through software updates and compatibility enhancements, users enjoy the latest features and improvements without necessitating new hardware purchases.

Conclusion

The 10.25-inch wireless CarPlay stereo epitomizes convenience, safety, and innovation in automotive technology. By eliminating the constraints of traditional wired connections and introducing a larger display interface, drivers immerse themselves in a more connected driving experience. Whether tackling daily commutes or embarking on cross-country odysseys, the wireless CarPlay stereo redefines our interaction with vehicles, charting a path towards smarter, more enjoyable journeys on the open road.

[mathildecourt]

IRA Duo

Actual

(FR) ~ IRA est un duo artistique formé en 2023 et composé de la guitariste Mathilde Court [1996 - CH] et du compositeur électronique Danilo Gervasoni [1987 - IT]. Mathilde Court joue de la musique contemporaine tout en explorant diverses facettes du monde artistique : elle participe à des performances de musique expérimentale, interprète des pièces de compositeurs contemporains et écrit de la musique électronique. Danilo Gervasoni vient du milieu punk-hardcore et s'implique depuis des années dans l'électronique live, la production et la composition classique-contemporaine. Il travaille en utilisant les technologies numériques dans le but d'explorer les aspects relationnels liés à la musique et à l'art. IRA est né de la volonté d'unir ces deux parcours pour créer un projet artistique pluridisciplinaire qui utilise la musique électronique comme support privilégié.

Il prend la forme de musique contemporaine, d'installations sonores, de DJ sets et de collaborations avec d'autres domaines artistiques (cinéma, écriture, etc.).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(EN) ~ IRA is an artistic duo formed in 2023 and composed of guitarist Mathilde Court [1996 - CH] and electronic composer Danilo Gervasoni [1987 – IT]. Mathilde Court plays contemporary music while simultaneously exploring various facets of the artistic world: she participates in experimental music performances, interprets pieces by contemporary composers, and writes electronic music. Danilo Gervasoni comes from punk-hardcore environments and has been involved in live electronics, producing, and classical-contemporary composition for years. He works through the use of digital technologies with the aim of exploring the relational aspects related to music and art. IRA was born from the desire to unite these two backgrounds to create a multidisciplinary artistic project that uses electronic music as its privileged medium.

It takes the form of contemporary music, sound installations, DJ sets and collaborations with other artistic fields (cinema, writing, etc.).

[luna-xial]

Best MIDI Keyboards

The discourse surrounding the indispensability of MIDI keyboards in the panorama of music production pivots around pivotal constructs of versatility, adaptability, and tactile engagement. A critical examination of these elements delineates the MIDI keyboard not as a mere accessory but as a fundamental instrument critical for navigating the complex architecture of contemporary music creation.

Versatility is the first beacon illuminating the MIDI keyboard's critical role. In an era where genre fusion and sound innovation are at the forefront of musical evolution, the MIDI keyboard stands as a maestro of metamorphosis. Capable of emulating an encyclopedic array of instruments—from the resonant depths of a cello to the celestial chime of a xylophone—it demolishes the financial and spatial barriers that once constricted producers’ creative realms. This orchestral omnipotence provided by a singular device equips music producers with a sonic Swiss army knife, essential for the eclectic demands of modern music composition.

Adaptability, the MIDI keyboard’s second virtue, offers an intuitive bridge between the analog sensations of musical performance and the digital manipulation of sound. This chameleon-like adaptability ensures that it remains a relevant and indispensable tool amidst the rapidly evolving technology landscape of music production. The ability to assign MIDI controls and map them to specific functions within Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) transforms the keyboard into an extension of the producer’s intent, allowing for a more fluid and immersive creation process.

Finally, the element of tactile engagement underscores the MIDI keyboard’s criticality. The physical interaction with keys and controls engages muscle memory and instinct in the music creation process, nurturing a more intimate and intuitive relationship with the digital composition. This tactility is paramount in preserving the human essence within music, bridging the gap between digital precision and emotional expression, ensuring that productions resonate with the listener on a deeper level.

In summation, the MIDI keyboard’s virtues of versatility, adaptability, and tactile engagement render it an indispensable instrument in the music production milieu. It is a linchpin in the modern producer’s toolkit, integral for crafting the nuanced, complex, and resonant compositions that define the contemporary musical landscape.

SoundShockAudio https://soundshockaudio.com/

[s12023artnum]

L'IA et la culture artistique !

A l’heure actuelle, l’utilisation des intelligences artificielles fait partie de notre quotidien avec l’utilisation des téléphones où nous retrouvons une IA partout, que ce soit pour programmer une alarme, un rendez-vous, les assistants vocaux tels que Alexa ou encore Siri, ainsi que sur Internet. Mais les IA se retrouvent aussi dans la culture artistique. Cela peut fortement affecter notre perception, ainsi que notre façon de penser.

L’intelligence artificielle est un processus d’imitation de l’intelligence humaine qui repose sur la création et l’application d’algorithmes exécutés dans un environnement informatique dynamique.

L’intelligence artificielle ne va-t-elle pas remplacer les artistes ?

L’intelligence artificielle est utilisée dans de nombreux domaines. Mais parfois cette utilisation peut avoir un effet sur certains secteurs. C’est le cas dans l’industrie de la Kpop.

L’industrie de la Kpop remonte aux années 1990 en Corée du Sud, mais depuis 2020, les progrès de l’IA ont permis son entrée dans ce milieu musical. C’est le cas pour Eternity, un groupe de Kpop complètement virtuel formé par Pulse9.

La création de ce groupe montre l’avancée des nouvelles technologies, puisqu’une IA est à la fois responsable de chansons produites mais aussi de la création des idoles. Elles sont 11 membres, qui semblent être toutes réelles. Mais parmi ces membres, une d’elles se distingue, c’est Zae-in, elle possède plusieurs compétences.

Elle peut chanter, rapper, exceller en stylisme, être une actrice remarquable. Tout cela est possible grâce à une technologie d’échange de visage en temps réel et à une voix générée par l’IA. Cette idole est incarnée par 10 personnes différentes (incluant acteurs, chanteurs, danseurs…). Toutes ces personnes prêtent à Zae-in leurs compétences en fonction des besoins.

Cependant, cette utilisation dans le monde de la Kpop permet différents avis sur le sujet. Mais les critiquent ne s’arrêtent pas que là, cela touche aussi leur 1ère chanson sortie en 2021.

Certaines personnes critiquent l’expression faciale des membres, d’autres évoquent l’effet « vallée de l’étrange » qui rend les spectateurs mal à l’aise face à des objets humanoïdes comme c’est le cas pour Eternity. Toutefois, malgré les critiques, les idoles virtuelles sont en augmentation dans ce milieu, c’est l’essor de l’IA dans la musique Sud-Coréenne.

Nous pouvons aussi retrouver cet effet dans l’industrie musicale puisqu’une IA peut créer de la musique, des chansons. Elle peut aussi prédire les futurs succès, analyser les tendances musicales et reproduire le style d’artistes célèbres. L’intelligence artificielle permet aux auditeurs de générer une musique adaptée à leurs préférences, ainsi qu’elle donne l’occasion de créer des performances musicales réalistes virtuelles, c’est-à-dire qu’elle contribue à la génération de pistes musicales, reproduisant ainsi les nuances et les subtilités d’un vrai instrument. Ainsi les algorithmes exploités par les intelligences artificielles peuvent être utilisés pour composer des morceaux entiers ou pour ajouter des effets spéciaux uniques à une chanson existante. Par exemple, l’IA Mubert peut créer différents styles de musiques à partir de quelques mots clés.

L’utilisation de l’IA pourrait mettre en péril les métiers tels que compositeur, producteur, interprète et ainsi voir disparaître tous les droits d’auteurs et d’interprètes sur les œuvres réalisées.

L’IA, la prochaine célébrité !

Une IA a permis à une personne de gagner un concours d’art.

Cela s’est déroulé dans le Colorado, où Jason ALLEN a gagné la 1e place de ce concours d’art grâce à l’illustration Théâtre d’opéra Spatial, créé par l’IA Midjourney.

Il a participé dans la catégorie « Art Digital ». Le style de son œuvre fait penser au travail manuel de toutes pièces d’un artiste. Le décor est à mi-chemin entre le style baroque et futuriste sublime. L’IA Midjourney permet de créer une image de toutes pièces à partir de quelques mots. Cette œuvre suscite l’intention de certains artistes ou internautes sur internet. Tout le monde n’est pas forcément d’accord avec l’utilisation d’IA dans des concours d’Art ou que son utilisation marque la fin de l’art. Cependant, Jason ALLEN s’attendait à ces remarques lorsqu’il a décidé d’utiliser Midjourney, c’est pour cela qu’il s’est permis de l’employer. 

Toutefois, une célébrité en vogue depuis quelques années n’est autre qu’une IA.

Lil Miquela est une influenceuse d’Instagram 100% virtuelle.

C’est une chanteuse et mannequin de 19 ans habitant Los Angeles. Sa première chanson Speak Up, a été publiée le 24 mars 2020, et a 7 159 922 de vues sur YouTube.

Elle a été créée par deux Américains : Trevor McFedries et Sarah DeCou (société Brud) le 23 avril 2016. Elle a été élaborée par un logiciel d’imagerie 3D. Cette IA a plus de 2,7 Millions de followers sur Instagram, elle copie des photos et des vidéos qui sont ou ont été à la mode. Elle a aussi un certain nombre de partenariats avec des marques différentes, lui rapportant 10 millions de dollars par an. En 2018, elle apparaît dans la liste de 25 personnalités les plus influentes d’Internet par le magazine Time, ce qui fait d’elle une personne connue. Elle pose même aux côtés de célébrités bien réelles telles que Ariana Grande.

Quand l’IA se pense chercheuse !

Une IA a été utilisée pour des recherches sur des œuvres.

Après près de quatre décennies de litiges, une intelligence artificielle a confirmé qu’il est hautement probable que le tableau Brécy Tondo ait été conçu par les mains de Raphaël. Ce tableau est exposé à la Cartwright Hall Art Gallery à Bradford en Angleterre.

Ce tableau a longtemps été considéré comme une copie de la célèbre Madone Sixtine réalisée par ce même peintre.

Mais l’authenticité artistique a été prouvée par cette IA. D’autres expériences complémentaires telles que la spectroscopie moléculaire ont prouvé que les pigments utilisés datent de la période de la Renaissance. Or, le peintre Raphaël a bien vécu et exercé durant cette période.

Cette prouesse a aussi permis à des chercheurs de reconstituer des tableaux recouverts par d’autres œuvres peintes.

Depuis septembre 2022, la Focus Art Fair du Carrousel du musée du Louvres à Paris a exposé un tableau de Vincent Van Gogh jamais montré auparavant.

Cette œuvre Les deux lutteurs a été découverte en 2012 sous une nature morte de fleurs de champs, qui est signée par Van Gogh lui-même.

Cette découverte a été faite au hasard par deux experts en art de l’Université d’Anvers au Pays-Bas. Au départ, ils cherchaient à prouver que cet artiste flamand était bien l’auteur de cette œuvre. Ils ont eu recours à des rayons X pour réaliser ces recherches. Cette découverte a été prouvée par une lettre de ce peintre adressée à son frère qui atteste que ces deux lutteurs ont bien été peints par l’artiste. Ce tableau a été reconstitué grâce aux technologies actuelles. Depuis 2019, deux chercheurs de l’Université College de Londres, le spécialiste en apprentissage automatique et neuroscience Anthony BOURACHED, ainsi que le physicien Georges CANN. Ils voulaient recréer à partir de l’intelligence artificielle des tableaux disparus après qu’un artiste ait peint autre chose par-dessus. C’est le projet NeoMasters, qui a permis la fondation d’une start-up nommée Oxia Palus. Les rayons X donnent des images confuses et pas très nettes.

Les chercheurs retirent à la main sur les images numériques, les éléments qui ne peuvent pas être présents sur l’œuvre cachée. Puis, ils utilisent aussi des algorithmes entrainés pour parfaire et compléter le tracé des contours de la scène. La nouvelle image obtenue est un dessin à colorier. C’est ce qu’ont fait leurs outils d’intelligences artificielles. Ces chercheurs ont fait apprendre à leur IA, le style de Van Gogh, son usage des couleurs, même ses coups de pinceaux, à partir de certaines de ses peintures. Ce qui a permis à l’IA de générer une version en couleur du tableau de ces deux lutteurs. Ces chercheurs ont ensuite imprimé cette œuvre avec une imprimante 3D sur une toile. Le résultat étant tellement concluant que la réplique du tableau est exposée.

Définitions :

Vallée de l’étrange : théorie selon laquelle plus un robot androïde est similaire à un humain, plus ses imperfections nous paraissent monstrueuses.

Spectroscopie moléculaire : méthode qui permet d’analyser des molécules organiques et d'identifier leurs groupes fonctionnels.

Renaissance : mouvement de l'histoire européenne associé à la remise à l'honneur de la littérature, de la philosophie et des arts de l'Antiquité gréco-romaine.

Baroque : Style artistique qui s'est développé en Europe et en Amérique Latine du XVIème au XVIIIème siècle, qui se caractérise par la recherche de l’émotion, du spectaculaire, du mouvement et de l’ornementation.

Futuriste sublime : mouvement littéraire et artistique européen du début du XXe siècle, qui rejette la tradition esthétique et exalte le monde moderne, en particulier la civilisation urbaine, les machines et la vitesse.

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Charline POUILLON