The site’s title is rather off-putting (“Mustard Gas Party”?), but the photographic essays on Modern Ruins are superb. The artist has a very strong sense of the uncanny. Thanks to Bryan Alexander for blogging this site.
Here’s one of my favorite images from the site so far:
<img src="http://gardnercampbell.net/blog1/wp-images/creeping evening_01.jpg"
The title alone is worth the price of admission.
This fall I have been gripped by Vannevar Bush’s essay “As We Might Think” and by Doug Engelbart’s essays over at Bootstrap.Org. Reestablishing contact with Brian Lamb and Bryan Alexander (who led me to this essential chapter on Doug Engelbart from Howard Rheingold’s Tools for Thought–thanks a bunch, Bryan) and DePauw’s Dennis Trinkle (who introduced Bryan to Howard Rheingold–get the story here) has made all these thoughts accumulate even more intensity for me. Then I find “Life With Alacrity” and Christopher Allen’s very useful history of social software on his blog. The article generated many comments that take the discussion to an even higher level. Great stuff. Thanks to Charlie Lowe at cyberdash by way of Martha’s “The Fish Wrapper” for the links that led me there.
I know I recently blogged about how a network is not itself a mind, but with the kind of celerity this Internet enables it does sometimes seem that the thoughts are coming after me just as much as I’m pursuing them. I’m struck by how much I’d like to encourage this feeling in my students, too, and that I’ve often had it when I do my research and writing in Renaissance studies and film studies. It’s something like feeling the conversation cares about, even anticipates, my participation in it. A fragile, fleeting emotion that’s hard to sustain … but an important motivation for keeping up my end of the chat.
“What is truth? said Jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”
Brian Lamb blogs about the Northern Voice weblog conference in Vancouver next February. Deadline for submissions: Nov. 15, 2004. The list of possible topics, like all good lists, is itself an education. I’m particularly intrigued by the notion of a 1-2 minute “lightning tool talk.” I’m hoping Brian can capture and share a couple of those talks on streaming video somewhere, somewhen. Or maybe I’ll see for myself whether the “moose is loose” (what a great conference logo, eh?):
Not too long ago I reported in these pages that I had quit the band. That was true. But way leads on to way, as the poet said. The band asked me back for a gig that was scheduled before I had announced my departure. I said yes. I had fun. Things went well. Now we’re playing again, though in the meantime one member left to pursue a different muse. So we’re down to a four-piece.
Last weekend we did a gig in a brewery for some military guys who had been promoted and were, by tradition, throwing a party for their friends and colleagues. The next afternoon we played for an after-wedding celebration held as a backyard barbeque. The brewery gig was fun but the sound was atrocious: it was like playing inside a large sewer pipe. I stuck to real simple bass lines because anything else turned to thick mud. The next day’s gig was more fun and we sounded much, much better. I was afraid that playing outside would mean we’d make no sound at all, but in fact what happened is that we could control the sound very precisely since we didn’t have to fight the reverb. Until the cops came and shut us down, we were having a great time.
For the morbidly curious, here’s a photo of the band, and the very first photo on Gardner Writes. Left to right: me (bass, vocals), Karen Young (lead vocals, percussion), David Sale (drums), Steve D’Andrea (guitar, vocals). I’m playing a ’72 Fender Jazz with active EMG pickups through a Gallien-Kreuger 200MB hooked up to a pretty much generic cabinet with a 15″ EV speaker. That’s a genuine coiled cord.
Blue Window at the Brewery 10/29/04
I’m watching the election returns on several stations–typical guy with a remote control, I know–but I’m interested to see that, even more than in 2000, there’s extensive use of computers on the sets. By that I mean interaction with computers that involves touching or writing on them, not just passive reception of stuff generated by computers that are essentially invisible.
Two examples. On CBS, one fellow had what looked like a large, touch-sensitive screen he could manipulate as he analyzed the data. He launched what looked like applications by touching a toolbar or icons on the screen. He also moved through large maps by touching them and sliding them along. He also zoomed in on maps by touching areas. The whole effect was rather like the “pre-crime” screens in Minority Report. The other example was on NBC, where Tom Russert did his “magic math” on a tablet computer with a wireless connection to a larger studio monitor. Tom Brokaw called attention to the fact that the magic math was being done “electronically” this year.
My thought is that it’s more dramatically effective to have someone visibly controlling or interacting with a computer on the set than it is simply to have slick computer graphics or displays. Somehow the human agency makes the process more compelling, as if the visible human intervention makes the information seem more purposeful.
I don’t think I’ll count Dan Rather’s pencil-on-the-monitor in this category, though perhaps it has its own homespun charm.