techyum ::

I love seeing tributes to women who were at the forefront of tech and science; this tribute to Daphne Oram, one of the pioneers of British electronic music, really made my day. Also, here’s the Wikipedia page about her. Snip:

There are many histories of electronic music. Some focus on the avant-garde studios active in Europe, America, Russia and the old eastern bloc countries, and usually mention the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, Luciano Berio, John Cage and others. There are other stories that focus on popular music: Kraftwerk, the Human League, Depeche Mode and Aphex Twin. And there are more esoteric studies that mention Raymond Scott, Louis and Bebe Barron, Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan. Yet, however hard you look into the history of electronic music, there is one name you’ll struggle to find – that of Daphne Oram.
Oram was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, a pioneer of what became “musique concrete” – music made with sounds recorded on tape, the ancestor of today’s electronic music. Her story makes for fascinating reading. She was born in 1925 when Britain was between two world wars. She was extremely bright, and studied music and electronics – unusual at the time not only because electronics was an exciting new industry, but also because it was a man’s world.
She went on to join the BBC, and, while many of the corporation’s male staff were away fighting in the second world war, she became a balancing engineer, mixing the sounds captured by microphones at classical music concerts. In those days, nearly all programmes went out live because recording was extremely cumbersome and expensive. Tape hadn’t been invented, and cheap computers were half a century away.
Yet when tape did come along, in the early 1950s, Oram was quick to realise that it could be used not simply for recording existing sounds, but for composing a new kind of music. Not the music of instruments, notes and tunes, but the music of ordinary, everyday sound.
After Oram had finished her day’s work, and everyone had gone home, she trundled tape recorders the size of industrial gas cookers from empty studios, and gathered them to experiment late into the night. She recorded sounds on to tape, and then cut, spliced and looped them; slowed them down, sped them up, played them backwards. It must have been like working in a laboratory, or inventing new colours – a new world almost impossible to imagine now. (…read more.)

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Drew Daniel, mastermind of the Soft Pink Truth and one half of the daring duo known as Matmos, has written a new book on Throbbing Gristle’s “20 Jazz Funk Greats.” Part of the 33 1/3 series, it covers what is perhaps the classic album by the best band you’ve never listened too. Following on the heals of the band’s suprisingly wonderful reunion and Dr. Daniel’s new position in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University, this is the perfect little volume for those who weren’t able to lift Wreckers of Civilisation off the coffee table.
Full disclosure: Dr. Drew is an old friend whom we dearly miss on the west coast.

Image via Ubuweb of Henri Chopin’s Sol Air (1964). Goodnight Henri.
A week into the new year, I’ve finally whittled away at the nostalgia and the prophecy of the year-end lists. Beginning by adding to the downpour of CES coverage, I turn your attention to Earth2tech’s Green Guide to CES. While the tech-nodes are being stimulated, tickle the ears with Disquiet’s rundown of Ubuweb’s first “featured resources” of 2008. Rekindle the visual cortex with 2007′s best photographers and stretch your brain around last year’s top ten new organisms. In case you missed it Hell did freeze over last year and the micronation movement is gaining momentum. Timetravel was made possible thanks to eBay and geek power. On that note, let us not forget all the people who died in 2007. To those we never knew who changed our lives forever, goodnight.

Image via the Praemedia Private Collection.
Just in time to miss my last post, Boing Boing reports on a collection of wax cylinder Xmas tunes available online for free. Let all media rise from the dead so the great Zombie Xmas Apocalypse may begin!

The last century gave us quite an avalanche of formats for sound and vision and while some folks peer into the future by taking bets on the Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD fiasco, many people are finding niches in mediums past. Sidestepping the obvious and ongoing strength of vinyl sales, Reel Recordings has just begun releasing magnetic tapes again, specializing so far in an appropriate array of experimental seventies music. Only slightly more surprising is the astonishing array of underground cassette-only releases at Mimaroglu Music Sales. Perhaps even more entertaining are the format mash-ups, such as the floppy CDR or the VinylDisc (thanks Jonathan!). Personally, I like to gather the family around ye old wire recorder while we work at the art of homemade wax cylinders, the visage of Edison glowing from a frame above the hearth.
Well, except for we don’t have a hearth and since we live in San Francisco, we’d rent it out for a pretty penny if we did.

The title pretty much says it all. National Geographic, Afarensis and Science (who will be publishing the research) are reporting on the new discovery. Adding to the joy is the fact that the entire thing has been captured in amber, in situ, so to speak;

The fossil fungi used hyphal rings as trapping devices and are preserved together with their prey, small nematodes.

I feel touched by His noodly appendage just thinking about it.
That said, the yearly onslaught of Best-of lists is upon us, so everyone take shelter. If you really need a fix, stick to things like the top Bigfoot stories of 2007 or the anticipatory Disquiet’s Best of 1996-2006 (is the net really that old?). You can also prepare your ears for the coming year with a free 12K sampler, if you’re a fan of such anachronistic mediums as the compact disc.

Over at Ars Technica, Eric Bangeman reports that a judge has ordered record labels to cough up actual figures on download expenses, and that the damages sought by the RIAA are unconstitutionally excessive. Duh. But in a double smackdown, showing that the music industry is a giant, painful learning lesson of what not to do in every sense with regard to digital media and the Internet, New York Magazine gives a nice opinion piece about Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris’ admission to Wired that they never even bothered to put a digital media strategy together until it was too late to make a strategy. He’s a prime example of the dying media dinosaur, and everything they’re taking to their tar-coated graves. It’s, like, so cute when they flagrantly disregard technology and consumers!
In Ars Technica’s Judge tells record labels to cough up download expenses, we learn that the wholesale price of music (not previously disclosed) is a mere .70 a song. And if damages are as they suggest no more than ten times the 70-cent loss, then file sharers would only have to pay $7.00 per shared song. Snip:

(…) Beckerman has argued that the RIAA’s actual damages are in the neighborhood of 70¢ per song, less than 0.1 percent of the minimum statutory damages provided for by the Copyright Act. The RIAA initially fought to keep its wholesale pricing secret, but its lead counsel has since admitted that the 70¢ figure is in the right neighborhood. Beckerman would like to see any damages capped at no more than 10 times the amount of actual damages should infringement be proven.

Link.
But the real laugh-a-minute is over at New York Magazine in Universal Music CEO Doug Morris Speaks, Recording Industry in Even Deeper Shit Than We Thought, where we get to read:

In a way, he almost comes off as cute, like if your grandfather were accidentally hired to run Google (at one point, Morris hilariously compares his embattled industry to a character in “Li’l Abner,” a comic strip that stopped running in 1977).
As for his actual digital strategy, it’s pretty much what we expected — Morris’s singular goal these days is to limit the power of Steve Jobs and iTunes. He puts most of his energy into designing Universal’s own Internet music store (Total Music, which is definitely doomed to fail), cutting deals with Apple competitor Microsoft for a piece of those massive Zune profits, and heroically doing all he can to make it even more difficult for consumers to justify paying for music online. But then he says something so ridiculous it sort of blows our minds. (…)

Link (via).

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Justin Quinell, master of the pinhole camera and inventor of the notorious SmileyCam, now offers his DIY technology to the world. You can now purchase a SmileyCam or The Pin Cam Camera home darkroom kit, which includes “a beer can pinhole camera (personally emptied by the artist!).”
Boing Boing reports on some very sad news:

Lady Jaye Breye P-Orridge, wife of industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge and member of Psychic TV, died of heart failure on Tuesday. Lady Jaye and Genesis were in the midst of an ongoing life-art project to make them look more alike through matching breast implants, haircuts, and other body modifications. The aim was to merge their identities to create a single “pandrogynous” being, Breyer P-Orridge.

Goodnight Lady Jaye.

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Image of the circuit diagram for the Gerassic Organ.
Peter Blasser of Ciat-Lombarde is offering printable templates of circuits from his homemade musical instrument oddities. Sniff around the rest of the Ciat-Lombarde site for an array of odd and wonderful instruments and sound samples. I am saving up my pennies, though Peter does take “food, sound objects or interesting plant specimens.” Though some of us are ashamed to admit we haven’t soldered anything since grade school (guilty), this allows everyone to get back into the game.
A further confession: Actually, I only used the soldering iron to melt my toys.

Thanks to the Mind Hacks blog, I’ve just finished a great article on the neurology of Alice, which is available as a free .pdf here. Be sure to check out the Mind Hacks entry for more information on ‘Alice in Wonderland Syndrome’ and the Mad Hatter as victim of mercury poisoning.
Speaking of mental disorders, have you ever wondered what your psychologist really wants to do to you? Look no further than the most important psychology experiments that have never been done. What do you mean you don’t have a psychologist? You’re all against me aren’t you?
Off to download (the disappointingly 160 Kbps) In Rainbows.
Image from American McGee’s Alice,which was an amazing game 7 years ago (now I feel old).