Live blogging flossie: Pulse Project- touching as listening

(Last year, Flossie was women-only and a bunch of men complained. This year, they bowed to pressure and decided to let anyone attend. I'm the only boy in the room.)

Talk by Michelle Lewis-King, an American who uses SuperCollider(!).

This is based on pulse-reading and some Chinese medicine principles. She has an acupuncture degree.

Occidental medicine is based on cutting apart dead bodies. Whereas Chinese medicine is more 'alchemistic', she says. Western medicine is from looking at dead bodies. Chinese medicine is based on feeling living bodies.

Pulses are abstractly linked to a type of music of the spheres.

She started drawing people's pulses at different depths. This is sonic portraiture.

She found the SuperCollider community to be problematic to ask questions due to differences in 'architecture' differences. Some of the tutorials are not easy. She says the book is great because of the diversity of approaches. People at conferences have criticised her code, which is not a fun experience.

The community also provides a lot of support. The programme is free, community oriented and a useful tool.

She's playing one of her compositions. It's a pulsing very synthesised sound.

More info: journal.sonicstudies.org/vol04/nr01/a12 4th issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies

Twitter @vergevirtual

Kronos Quartet at the Proms

I'll start with the lows

I've been really grumpy about music lately and the at the start of this concert, my heart sank and I thought my grumpiness would continue. My friends and I got the promenade tickets for the arena area of the Royal Albert Hall (which is laid out somewhat like the Globe theatre, such that people stand around the stage). I had reasoned that string quartets were intimate, so it was better to be close. In fact, the acoustic of the hall are such that even standing not that far from the stage, the only sound I could hear was from the speakers. I might as well have been up way above, at least then freed of the burdensome expectations of non-amplified sounds.

The sound seemed slightly off the whole evening. At first, I thought the group lacked intensity, but they certainly looked intense. Somehow, it just wasn't getting off the stage, lost somewhere in the compression of the audio signal. Lost in the tape backing they had for nearly every piece? Which (can we talk about this?) seemed to be really naff most of the time. There also seemed to be subtle timing issues throughout a lot of the concert and sometimes it just sort of felt like the seams were showing.

Kronos was my favourite string quartet for a long time, largely due to their distinctive bowing, but also due to their willingness to take risks, defy genre, etc. Unfortunately, this has becoming more and more gimicky as of late. One of their pieces, a BBC commission (so it's not entirely their fault), had a Simon toy in it. The cellist would do a round of it and then play back the pitches in time, along with the other string players who also copied it. Along with tape backing, of course. Some of which seemed to be samples of Radiophonic sounds. I thought I recognised a single bass twang of the Doctor Who theme and I hoped they would just play that rather then the piece they were actually slogging through.

The best bit

However, they also played Ben Johnston's String Quartet No 4: Amazing Grace, which was the piece I was most looking forward to. I didn't know the piece, but I know the composer. The piece's setting is lush Americana - Copland-esque but in a twenty first century context. The piece has a lot of busy-ness in it. It's Americana glimpsed through the windows of speeding trains and moving cars. America between facebook posts. Constant distraction, the theme fragmented and subsumed in the texture of life. At one point, the violins and viola are busily creating their densely fragmented texture, while barely audibly, the cellist was playing the noted from Amazing Grace on the overtones of the highest parts of his strings. The notes of the melody become metaphor for Grace itself. Something transcendental and beautiful is always going on, giving meaning to a jumbled whole, sometimes so subtly that it's difficult to perceive. The occasional moments of thematic clarity thus reminded me of tragedy, as that's when grace becomes most apparent and evident.

It was really really beautiful and I teared up a bit.

The Good

Sofia Gubaidulina's String Quartet No 4 was well-played and my friend Irene especially considered it to be a highlight. It's a very good piece, but I'm sure I've heard the work before and I think it came off a bit better on those previous performances.

I thought the Swedish folk song Tusen tankar was also a high point. The piece was short, unpretentious and well played.

In general, they seemed to warm up and get going over the course of the concert and if they had ended with the last piece on the program, I would have gone home and felt pretty happy about them, but then they played an encore.

The tape part

I like tape (by which I mean any fixed media, like CDs or whatever). I write tape music. I like it when ensembles play along with tape. Tape is great.

Tape music is also sound that doesn't immediately come from an instrument. So if it's playing really processed or artificial sounds, that's perfect, because those sounds couldn't easily come from an instrument. But when it's just filling in for a backing band that nobody wanted to pay to hire.... it's naff. It's inexcusably naff.

If Kronos wanted to play an encore with a metal band or whatever, I would have thought it surprising and maybe slightly gimicky. But they played an encore with a tape of a rock band. A tape that at one point got really loud with synchronised lights, while the quartet kept sawing away an unchanging string accompaniment. At that point, they played backup to a tape and tried to make it seem ok with lighting tricks. A tape of a rock band, not any kind of acousmatic tape. A let's-just-play-a-tape-it's-cheaper.

The high point of the concert was fantastic, but the low point . . .. I give them a mixed review overall.

Composer Control

I am writing this on my phone, so please pardon any typos.

I've just gone to see a piece of music, which I won't mention the name of here. It was an interesting idea and technically competent and well-rehearsed, but it fell a bit flat in performance. The best moment of it was a long pause in the middle. The conductor and performers froze and the audience held its breath, waiting. What would happen next? Was the piece over? Was it still going? I had a composer once tell me that pauses add drama and this was the first time I would agree with that pronouncement.

I had a look at the score afterwards and it had a bar of rest with a fermata over it (that means 'hold this') and a asterisk to a footnote that said to hold it much longer than seemed reasonable or necessary. Interestingly, and i would say not coincidentally, this did seem to be the only thing not precisely notated in the work. Everything else about the sound production had been pre-decided by the composer and the ensemble was carrying out his eaxcting instructions.

This does seem to be the dominant theme of 21st century music composition. Composers seem to want complete control over musical output. Some, like Ferneyhough with his total complexity, approach this at an ironic distance. They intentionally overnotate in a way they know is unplayabe, to produce a specific kind of stress in the performer. But more recently, the trend is to overnotate but remain playable with the sincere intention of getting exact performances every time. Or, at least, to control what elements are exactly repeatable and treat the freer parts as one might treat a random generator or a markov chain in a computer program.

I played very briefly in the Royal Improvising Orchestra in the Hague and I have very positive things to say about that experience and the other members of the group. However, the control thing was still evident and creeping in. They had borrowed from another a group a very large set of hand signs, designed so the conductor could tell the supposedly improvising players what to play. Indeed, with those hand signals in use, it was no longer accurate to say that the players were improvising. Instead, the conductor was and were mechanisms for carrying out his musical will. Fortunately, that was only a small aspect of our performance practice. When we were doing this, we all took turns conducting, so we got a tradeoff and still were improvisers, at least some of the time.

I mentioned above being treated as an aspect of a computer program and, indeed, I think that is the source of the current state of affairs. Many younger composers (I'm including myself in this group, so read "younger" as "under 50") have become reliant on score notation programs and write music without being able to read it very well. With MIDI playback, it is possible to know what notes will sound like together even if you can't read the chord or find the keys on the piano.

The major drawback on relying on MIDI renditions of our pieces is that they sound like MIDI - they are precise, robotic and unchanging. Pieces that are written to sound good for that kind of playback often don't work very well with live ensembles. One solution to this dilemma seems to be to treat ensembles more like MIDI playback engines, rather than adapt our style of writing for real conditions. This is a failure of imagination.

Those who are pushing notation and musical ideas in new directions are not so naive as the above paragraph suggests, but we still have become accustomed to being able to control things very precisely. When I write a musical structure into a program, I know it will be followed exactly. when I want randomness, I have to specify it and parametrise it precisely as well. In the world of computer composition, adding randomness and flexibility is extra work.

For humans, it's the exactness that's extra work and one that has faint rewards for audiences and for performers. It sucks the life out of pieces. It makes performing dull and overly controlled. It is an unconscious adoption of totalitarian work practices, informed and normalised by the methods of working required for human computer interaction. The fact that most professional ensembles barely schedule any rehearsal time does not help with this phenomenon, as they do not tend to spend the time required to successfully interpret a piece, so we seek to spell it out for them exactly.

Composers would do well to step back and imagine liberating their performers, rather than constraining them. We would also do well by learning to read scores. Computers are fine tolls for writing, but could you imagine a playwright using text-to-speech tools in order to create a play? Imagine what that would do to theatre! I think that's happening now to music.

But, as in today's performance, the most magical moments in performance are the ones where performers are empowered. If you don't think you can trust them, then you've picked the wrong performers or written the wrong piece. In the best musical performances, the emotional state of the performer is followed by the emotional state of the audience. Give them something worth following.

The Last Days of Dog

When Xena was first diagnosed, I started trying to think of nice things to do with her. We did some of them. I stuffed her into my bike trailer and took her through the canals into Vicky Park. The thing is that she was still seriously unwell, even if she was functional with pain killers. Her favourite activities almost all involved physical activity, which she had trouble with.

We went on some nice walks, but not long ones. Her favourite low impact activity was always going to parties, so we went to parties. Sonia's going away party was large and crowded, with densely packed people, all merrily drinking. Xena weaved among them, charming people and nicking unguarded food. She was a social butterfly. As it got very late, I got worried about her getting tired or trampled, so I took her upstairs to chill out. I was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep, in fact. A lost party guest opened the room door and she darted out and rejoined the stragglers, happy to be in the midst of things.

That was probably her happiest night after being diagnosed and I'm glad she got it.

I found a new flat in time for my eviction. Sonia left the country for the year. Xena slowly, but surely kept declining, with brief rallies. Meanwhile, all the pills she was taking meant she needed frequent walks, during the day. And during the middle of the night. She often seemed at her perkiest, happiest and most mobile at 3 AM.

When I finally moved to a ground floor flat, it seemed to greatly increase her mobility. This week, on Tuesday morning, I took her to the park and she actually ran a bit. Wendyl, my new housemate, took her out for a walk, and Xena excitedly tugged on her lead the whole way.

Wednesday, maybe from overdoing it, maybe from just reaching a threshold, she was much more stiff and limped to the park. On previous days, she would often limber up as she walked, even if she got off to a rough start, but that day her limp just got worse and worse. I gave her pain killers and they didn't help. I accidentally left treats within reach and she left them alone, preferring to lie on the floor. So I called the vet to make an appointment.

Then I fed her every treat in the house whilst waiting for the cab. I knew this would eventually upset her stomach, but I thought she would not actually experience the ill effects of this. But then the vet was running behind and we waited over an hour. She looked miserable from being in the vets' office, from the pain in her leg, and presumably from an upset stomach.

Because the euphemism is "putting her to sleep," I assumed it would resemble sleep in some way, but it did not. She did not tire and relax as much as she crumpled.

Vets say these drugs are humane and painless and kind. Anti-death penalty activists say they're painful and cruel. Somebody here is wrong.

I wish they had sedated her first.

I've never seen anyone die before. The dog I had as a kid apparently got into rat poison and died 10 minutes before I arrived to see him. I was not at the bedside of either of my grandmothers or my cousins. My uncle died in his sleep without warning. When my mum died, I was at opera, seeing Messiaen's St Francis of Assisi, feeling unhappy about how the hugging of the leper was treated. My experience of death is funerals and loss and digging my first dog's grave and fetching my neighbour's drowned cat from the pond. Xena won't have grave, won't have a funeral. The only thing left is to give away all her things.

The vet said I did the right thing. I tried to explain I hadn't just let it go until she was staggering. That she got suddenly worse. That I hadn't carried her because I knew that also hurt her shoulder.

Today, I woke up extremely early and got on a train to Birmingham to sound check for a gig I played in this evening. Because my life goes on, at least, even if hers doesn't.

And when we finished earlier than I expected, I got a train tonight back to London instead of waiting for the morning, as that's easier, so I was feeling kind of good about it and thought I should send a text to … nobody. There's nobody waiting for me. There's nobody who cares if I go back today or tomorrow. I have no particular responsibilities. No job. I am uneeded. I can sleep through the night without having to wake up for a walk. If I reach to my side while I sleep, my bed will be empty and my floor bare. I can go wherever I want and do whatever I want. And if what I want is a walk to the park, I'll go alone.

I killed my dog today

A while ago, I posted that Xena had cancer. The vet sent me home with steroids and tramadol, a pain killer. Gradually, she needed more and more pain killer until today, when something got much worse overnight and she could barely walk at all.

I called the vet to ask how much it would cost to get a housecall and then I started calling for cabs that would take a dog. I wish I could say something nice or reassuring about her death. I showed up at the vet's office and they were running more than an hour behind, so Xena lay in the middle of the waiting room floor and looked around nervously. Then she limped around with me to a back room, where she was frightened and hurting. She lay down on a blanket they put out. The vet shaved a section of her leg to give her a shot. She sniffed my eyes where I was crying as he pushed in the injection and just collapsed her head down and had stopped breathing within a moment.

He said she felt no pain, but how would he know that?

I took her collar off and her head flopped easily in my hands. Her body was still warm, her ears still soft, her eyes still open.

I wish I had done it before she got that bad. I wish I hadn't had to do it at all. It doesn't matter what I wish.

London Flat Hunting

I am currently house sitting for a council tenant. This is perfectly within the rules for eighteen months. It has been longer than that. I am going to be evicted, but I don't know when. Ergo, I am looking for a new place to live.

Despite the many tales I've been hearing of people being evicted in advance of the Olympics, this seemed to get off to a promising start.

The Art Space

I went on a web site that caters for people looking for a room in a shared housing situation and found something that seemed ideal. It was a live-work space, catered towards artists. I arranged to go look at the rooms, without Xena, as, at the time, the vet still thought she might have a sprain and she was not allowed to walk very far.

The rooms were tiny and seemed overpriced, and the organiser was overwhelmingly hispterish, but the shared space was good and it seemed I could get a ground floor room with my dog. There were 10 rooms going in each warehouse space. Given the prices, I worried my future housemates might be trust-funded artsy wannabes, but then I decided to get over myself. I emailed the organiser the next day and asked to arrange a meeting between him and Xena in order to get the room I liked. He said he did not want to force an injured dog to walk and I could have the room if I wired him the deposit the next day. Alas, I still do not have internet banking and asked to put it off to Monday.

On Monday, I was feeling too glum about Xena's impending demise to leave the house and warned him I couldn't do it until Tuesday morning. He wrote back something with a smilely in it and thus on Tuesday morning, I sent the wire, intending to email him saying I had done it when I got home at the end of the day. But, alas, at the end of the day, I found he had emailed me that afternoon to say he had rented the room to somebody else. I had a moment of panic and asked for the last room in the building with a window in it. More than half the rooms he had for rent had no windows or outside light, which I know from experience will mess with my head. This last room was smaller, more money, and up a flight of stairs.

But wait a second? How could the room be gone if I wired him the money that morning? I called him up and he explained, basically, that he had undercapitalised the project. The building owner would not let anyone move in until he paid the full deposit for the entire building, which was not money that he had. Therefore, in order to get things underway, he had decided that whoever sent him deposits first could have whatever room he had for offer. He had promised the same room to three different people and I was not first to prove that I had wired him money, ergo, it couldn't go to me. I briefly explained that I needed both a window and ground floor access, due to my dog's mobility issues and he said he would try to see if we could shuffle around a bit, but I would still need to pay the higher rent in that case. I said ok. I have to move. I have a dog. I need a place.

My friends, however, said I should get my deposit back, so I called the landlord and said I didn't really feel comfortable with how things were going and as I had wired him money for a specific room at a particular price, I would like my money back. He sounded unhappy and I apologised at length for the inconvenience I had caused, but he agreed to return the money. Again, I have no internet banking, so I don't know if he has done this yet. I have his real name and bank details, so I am confident that my money will get returned.

The Recording Studio

I was cycling past a set of studios that are in high demand and was surprised to see for lease sign on the building. I phoned up and found that the sign was out of date, but the company had several other things on offer. Would I like to live in a three bedroom recording studio around the corner from my current address? Would I! The price was high, but if there were three of us, I could just about do it.

The recording studio turned out to be in the basement of an office building. It was two bedrooms, a small living room, a fantastic kitchen, a large recording area and a control room. The guy previously living there had done it up himself in a kind of haphazard way, which the estate agent kept describing in terms of the 'architectural vision' of the DIYer, as if he were an undiscovered Frank Lloyd Wright. The man had not merely stapled budget-rated acoustical foam to all the walls and then decided to cover them with shabby black coverings that did not hide exposed pipes, he had left it unfinished on purpose as part of his great aesthetic.

Indeed, he did seem to love black walls, as the entire studio was black, as was a wall of the living room and was the bathroom. This was a daring choice for a basement apartment with no windows of any kind. But not as daring as the shower.

The shower was attached to the master bedroom, which was really the only proper bedroom, as the other one had hanging sheets instead of a wall separating it from the living room. He had clearly run out of room to put in a shower, so he put in a bath tub, in the interior, windowless, black painted room. The ceiling was not high enough to support a shower. But then inspiration must have struck him. He dug into the ground and made the bathtub deeper. Approximately 5 feet deep, so it was a long, narrow enamelled space that he had put footholds in so one could climb in and out. Or, possibly bleed out the corpse of an animal slaughtered for dinner. I may yet have nightmares about that shower.

With the sound proofing and the black walls it would have made a great SM dungeon if it was not so shabby. As it is, it would make a perfectly great rehearsal space and a nice place to live if I wanted to go slowly insane. Especially if this manifested itself as cannibalism. It has a really nice kitchen.

The Missiles

The Ministry of Defence has decided that the best way to defend the Olympics from terrorists is to put surface-to-air missiles on the top of a gated community in Bow. The people living in the flats under the missiles were not consulted about this and are not pleased to have military weaponry on their roofs. (It turns out that the 4th amendment in the US Constitution is more useful than you might have guessed in the modern age.) Much to my delight and surprise, I actually met two people who live in the missile buildings.

Bow is not London's most sought-after area, so I asked if 'gated community' meant something posh. One of the residents explained that the area was being gentrified street by street. Some squares were very rough and others were fine and others were posh, all right next to each other. The gated area is a posh enclave of 20-something yuppies who are buying their first flat before moving to a more desirable post code. She explained they had not yet gotten beyond the 'stage' of doing lots of coke and behaving like children. The missiles on the roof are an accident waiting to happen, she opined.

I asked if there was anything going in my price range, because who doesn't want to live right underneath an embarrassing military accident? She said there was and then emailed our friend in common a link to an advert for a one room flat. It was more than twice as much as she had estimated the average cost to be and well out of my range.

It's just as well as can't afford coke either.

The search continues....

And if you know of a place that wants a not-yet-employed recent graduate and a short-term dog, which is on the ground floor, with a ramp or with a lift, do let me know.

Xena has cancer

Xena has been gradually slowing down for the last year. I thought it was her arthritis at first, but when her limp got bad, I took her to the vet and an x-ray showed that she's got a tumour in one of her shoulders. He suggested that she might have a few more years if her leg was amputated, but she also might not. As far as they can tell, it hasn't spread, but they can't say with certainty and I think it would be a very difficult change for her, since she's nearly 12.

So, she's getting pain killers and is home with me. The vet thinks she'll probably have about 3 good months.

I'm glad that we don't put dogs through what we put people through.

Xena's a good dog and has had a good life. She's been to 10 countries. She's lived in 3 and in multiple US states. She's been to parties, weddings, concerts, camping trips, festivals, offices, universities, cars, boats, trains, trams, bicycles and buses.

It would be difficult to overstate how much my life has changed in the decade she's been my dog. She's been there for the death of my mum, the end of my software engineering days, the end of my marriage, the entirety of my post-graduate career, my transition, half my time in Holland and all of my time in England.

I'm trying to stay cheerful, since she's not gone yet and she's concerned about me being upset. It's difficult to adjust.

Xena has many friends in many places. If any of you want to come out and see her, I can find a bed or a sofa for you to sleep on.

Engaging and Adjusting

The thing about negative feedback is that it's extremely useful for knowing how to improve. (Mostly, not counting the guy who wondered if our mothers were proud (I'd like to think mine would be.)) And the topic that stands out most glaringly is audience engagement.

This is a long standing problem for many groups dating back to the start of the genre. Somebody left an anonymous comment on my last post comparing us to "geography teachers." Scot Gresham-Lancaster wrote that The Hub was compared to air traffic controllers. Their solution was to project their chat window, something we've talked about, but never actually implemented. There are papers written about how the use of gestural controllers can bridge this gap, something we have implemented. But what projected chat, gestural control, and synthesised voice all have in common is hiding behind technology.

Thus far, we usually physically hide behind technology as well, sat behind tables, behind laptops and do not tend to talk to the audience. However, not all of our gigs have been this way. When we played at the Sonic Picnic, we were standing and we had a better connection to the audience, I think because we were behind plinths, which are smaller and thus we were more exposed. Other concerts, we've talked to the audience and even even have given them some control of our interface at certain events. This also helps.

Performers who have good posture and good engagement are not like that naturally; they practice it like all their other skills. A cellist in a conservatory practices in front of a mirror so ze can see how ze looks while ze plays and adjust accordingly.

Also, it turns out that it wasn't just me that 'crashed' due to user error rather than technical failure. There's two solutions for this - one is to have a todo list reminding the player what they need to do for every piece and to automate as much of that process as possible. The other is to be more calm and focussed going on stage. When we were getting increasingly nervous waiting to be called on to perform, we could have been taking deep breaths, reassuring each other and finding a point of focus, which is what happens when gigs go really well. Alas, this is not what we did at all.

So, starting next week, we are practising in front of a 'mirror' (actually a video projection of ourselves, which we can also watch afterwards to talk about what went right and wrong). We are going to source tall, plinth-like portable tables to stand behind or next to. The composer of every piece will write a short two sentence summary explaining the piece and then, in future, we'll have microphones at future gigs, such that whoever has the fastest change will announce the piece, say a bit about it and have a few bad jokes like rock bands do between songs. We're also going to take deep breaths before going on and have check lists to make sure we're ready for stuff.

On the technical side, I'm going to change the networking code to broadcast to multiple ports, so if SuperCollider does crash and refuse to release the port, the user will not have to restart the computer, just the programme. Also, I'm hoping that 3.5.1 will have some increased stability on networking. My networked interactions tend to crash if left running for long periods of time, which is probably a memory management issue that I'll attempt to find and fix, but in the mean time, we get everything but that running ahead of going on stage and then start the networking just before the piece and recompile it between pieces. To make the changeover faster, we've changed our practice such that who ever is ready to go first just starts and other people catch up, which is something we also need to practice.

A pile of negative feedback, even if uncomfortable, is a tremendous opportunity for improvement. So our last gig was amazingly useful even if not amazingly fun.

Gig Report: The adoration may not be universal

BiLe had two gigs yesterday but I'm just going to talk about the second one. However, first I'm going to talk about some gigs I played a few years ago. One was a cafe gig, or possible several cage gigs. They tend to blend together. I was playing tuba with some free improvisers, including the owner of the cafe. A bunch of people were there talking, we started to play and just about everybody left.

It's slightly uncomfortable, but it's well known to anybody who has ever played in a cafe. And there have been times when I've meant to have a cup of coffee and talk with friends and then, rather than talk over the music, we've moved on when it started. At other times, I've been happily surprised by live music and there have been many times I've gone out to a cafe specifically to hear the music that was programmed.

The other was in 2004 and I had just started doing live computer pieces in SuperCollider, but they were not interactive, they were live realisations. (I called them "press the button" pieces.) I was testing out a new one at an open mic night at a restaurant. My friend had organised the evening and asked me to play, but it was me and all acoustic guitars. It was a very early version of the piece and it still had some major aesthetic problems, which became glaringly apparent as it played. Many people in the room left to go home over the course of the piece. It was not a cafe, it was a restaurant. People had plates of food in front of them which they apparently abandoned during the longest 11 minutes of my life. (I blogged about this at the time.)

A few things happened as a result of this. One was that a busboy came out and game me a thumbs up, I'm pretty sure because he liked the music, but you never know. Another was that I instantly got much more respect from my colleagues at the university. For my own part, I pledged to become more aware of how listeners may respond to pieces I was working on to try to prevent a repeat of this. And finally, I learned the value of playing things in front of people as part of the path to finishing a piece.

The reasons for the increased respect from my colleagues is slightly complex. Part of it was simple elitism, but I think a part of it was an encouragement to take risks. Being likeable is not enough. Some fantastic music is loved upon first listening. But a lot is hated. A lot of fantastic an important pieces caused riots on their first playing. 4'33" by John Cage, Rite of Spring by Stravinsky and Ballet Mecanique by George Antheil are all well-known examples of this. Of course, causing an uproar does not mean that you're good. You could just be terrible. But it does mean you're taking a risk.

Of course, I tend to blunder into risks blindly and be caught a bit by surprise.

TEDxBrum

Localities can put on their own, independent TED conferences. One in Birmingham decided to invite BiLE and despite having a gig already lined up the same morning, we agreed to to play.

I'd been at the LoveBytes festival in Sheffield (which was excellent) the day before and stayed over. Alas, it turned out that the reason that my hotel room was so cheap was because it was directly over a Reggae club. I think my room must have been right over the bass amp. One song was in the same key as the resonant frequency of the door frame. We woke up early yesterday morning, played a set at a headphone concert at the LoveBytes Festival, and then got on a train back to Birmingham and got to the MAC centre just in time to set up and play another set at TEDx

We waited nervously back stage for our turn, filed in and started to play XYZ by Shelly Knotts. For some reason, there was a lot of crashing. Chris missed the entire piece, trying to recover from a crash. Julien and Shelly both crashed mid-piece, but were able to recover quickly. I did not crash, but I'm the last to come in. It was sparse and a bit stressful, but we got through it. We've played that piece a lot previously. It's not our first piece, but it's the first we proposed, as we spent our first-ever meeting writing a vague proposal to NIME last year and this was the piece that we played there.

Then we played Sonnation 2 by Julien Guillamat. We've only played that piece a couple of times before, but it's not difficult. I forgot to plug in my faders and spent the first two minutes trying to figure out what was wrong and then recovering, so it also had some sparseness. The end was not as tight as it could be and I smiled a bit at the error, but then it was over and we filed back off stage.

We always have problems with having the right sort of game face for playing live. I've been working on my posture, but we still sometimes slip into head resting on arm with elbow on the table. And I should have kept a straight face at the end. I typed some lines into the speech synthesiser to announce piece titles, which is something I've seen other bands do at laptop concerts. I have mixed feelings about it. It seemed better than not engaging at all (which is what we usually do, alas) and we didn't have a microphone.

Afterwards, we went outside to wait for the talks to end so we could break down our gear. It was then that somebody pulled out their smart phone to check Twitter.

Reactions

The tweets are below in chronological order (oldest first). While it was clear the performance had some technical issues, it had not seemed unusual in any way. We picked pieces that I thought would be accessible. XYZ has computer game elements, including players competing for control of sound parameters and lo-fi game-ish graphics. Sonnations also seems accessible in that is uses live sampling of metallic instruments, something that has worked with Partially Percussive and because it has a physically performative element at the end. Plus it gets nice sounds.

It may be that the difference between reactions to Sonnations and, say, Partially Percussive may have to do with managing audience reactions in some way. The bells do sound nicer than the kitchen hardware, but, because they look like instruments, the audience may be expecting something much more conventionally tonal. They resonances of the metal bowls might be a nice surprise vs the cow bell sounds might be slightly disappointing. Of course, it's even more likely that the audience would have found the use of kitchen objects to be unbearably pretentious. It may have been better to play Act 2 of the Laptopera as the second piece. It sounds weirder, but the obvious references to spam email, especially the penis-enlargement ones are funny and may have engaged them. Or maybe not. It's hard to know.

We're playing at the symphony hall in May and this does have me a bit worried in that I would not have predicted these crashes and I don't know what caused them. And I'm worried that we might be too brutal for fans of minimalism. It's caught on much more than other genres of 21st century art music and appeals to a mainstream audience. Just because an audience wants to be challenged a bit, doesn't mean they want what we do.

On the other hand, as somebody who often specialises in noise music, I've never expected to get mass approval or even approval from the majority of people at any given gig. Probably the only exception here is that I'm not usually as directly exposed to audience reaction. And, indeed, there were people who liked it. So maybe it's a storm in a teacup? It's impossible to get perspective on things from the stage, as it were.

Tweets

• About to find out what a laptop ensemble is at #TEDxBrum @EskimoDalton
• And the laptop ensemble are (is?) using macbook pros, because they're the best kind of laptops #ilovemac #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82 (replies)
• Oh...it's BILE! Ha! #TEDxBrum @EskimoDalton
• What a treat. Watch the bham laptop ensamble being streamed live on #tedxbrum websire now x @JoyOfFengShui
• Using iphone as a sound control device - motion control + music = electro-weirdness! #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• It's like being stuck INSIDE A LAPTOP right now #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• i got a headache can we get @Flutebox on pls? #tedxbrum @tedxbrum @Flutebox @aerosolali
• The Birmingham Laptop Ensemble. It could only come out of the University of Birmingham. #tedxbrum #notforme @mrmarksteadman
• @mrmarksteadman :-) @carolinebeavon
• @carolinebeavon I'm sure it's all really clever, but just a tad self-indulgent for me @mrmarksteadman
• @mrmarksteadman I agree. No real musical quality from what I can tell ... But then, I went to BCU ;-) @carolinebeavon
• @carolinebeavon That's kinda my point! Good, no-nonsense uni ;) Sad to have missed @flutebox; will defo check out the @civicolive replay @mrmarksteadman
• @mrmarksteadman yup. They were great. This ... Hmmmm, not a fan @carolinebeavon
• @carolinebeavon Guess you had to be there. Oh no, you are, sorry. And it continues. *sigh* mrmarksteadman
• @mrmarksteadman let me out!!!!! :-) @carolinebeavon
• @carolinebeavon OH GOD IT'S SO SMUG! I CAN'T TAKE HOW PLEASED THEY ARE WITH THEMSELVES! (Sorry… just… yeah, sorry.) #tedxbrum @mrmarksteadman
• Not getting the laptop ensemble - will try harder #tedxbrum @mrspicto
• I was expecting some form of 8bit electro music. This is not that. #tedxbrum @JAWilletts
• I think the computers have taken over #tedxbrum @dorvago
• Very impressive technically, although not sure if it's supposed to be music? #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• @Dr_Bob82 BiLE = sound art ?! @PostFilm
• @PostFilm I'd agree that it was 'sound' but never been a fan of electro-music :) @Dr_Bob82
• @Dr_Bob82 sound art: I guess it's just a matter of taste. You don't hang someone for not liking coffee, anchovies, or cucumber @PostFilm
• @PostFilm It's definitely a matter of taste, although occasionally I have felt socially ostracised for not liking coffee ;) @Dr_Bob82
• @Dr_Bob82 harmony, melody, rhythm are culture- and time-specific; but electroacoustic is so broad now that it's difficult to generalise @PostFilm
• @BiLEnsemble > visually Kraftwerk/Modified Toy Orchestra minus suits, audibly Aphex Twin via laptops & remote controls. Madness! #TEDxBrum @asmallfurrybear
• #TEDxBrum Bored already @Keybored_KATz
• Horrible feeling that this isn't going down as expected... Please, some melody for the love of god!! #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• #TEDxBrum Trying to be positive - but really - pass the paracetamol @Pictoontwit
• Birmingham Laptop Ensemble - using interference to create music! #tedxbrum http://pic.twitter.com/PmCOiBQG @CerasellaChis
• #TEDxBrum I feel very old right now. @Stephen_Griffin
• It's like a game, where I don't know the rules and can't tell if it's glitching or not. #tedxbrum @JAWilletts
• Think there's some sort of Kinect-type deal going on here as well with controlling the 'music' #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• No, sorry I tried but not for me ( laptop ensemble) #TEDxBRUM @mrspicto
• somebody pls where is nathan @Flutebox come back pls! #tedxbrum @aerosolali
• #TEDxBrum can Flutebox come back on please @Pictoontwit
• #tedxbrum not sure what to make of this music @simonjenner
• @BiLEnsemble > a possible contender for @supersonicfest 2012 line up? #TEDxBrum @asmallfurrybear
• nah not for me... Seems too out of control & random...“@vixfitzgerald: I don't get it #TEDxBrum Birmingham laptop ensemble :( ??” @Soulsailor
• Like War of the Worlds meets Aphex Twin meets an over-enthusiastic computer geek #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• Anyone else not got a clue what's going on? Even the performers look disinterested! Smile and nod, smile and nod... #TEDxBrum @MykWilliams
• Its getting an interesting Twitter reaction. Not sure whether it's quite a bit too revolutionary. #tedxbrum @JAWilletts
• As if my head didn't hurt enough from all the ideas #TEDxBrum crammed in, BiLE start their intense sonic assault http://yfrog.com/khb13bqj @orangejon
• Birmingham Laptop Ensemble at #TEDxBrum http://pic.twitter.com/DdGoqzSJ @stanchers
• #TEDxBrum that made Kraftwerk look pedestrian Stephen_Griffin
• Birmingham Laptop Orchestra. Industrial grunge synth from the 70s. A little to atonal for me. #tedxbrum @DaveSussman
• Please. Melody. Just a little bit. I won't tell the experimentalist musicians that you did it #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• Amazing stuff around here. :) #TEDxBrum @CerasellaChis
• Talk amongst yourselves. #tedxbrum @mrmarksteadman
• #TEDxBrum I am sure there mothers are very proud - I am now reflecting on the value or otherwise of a University education @Pictoontwit
• I feel like this needs an explanation #TEDxBrum @chargedatom
• Hmm sorry but please don't "play" another "track" /Birmingham laptop Ensemble ;-( #WTF #TEDxBrum @Soulsailor (replies)
• WE NEED MOAR COWBELL!: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/80a71ef8cb/more-cowbell #tedxbrum Dr_Bob82
• ...but i do like the guys stickers on his laptop.... #tedxbrum @aerosolali
• #TEDxBrum the power of social media - and when you die on your feet even faster @Pictoontwit
• Really not feeling Laptop Ensemble.I'm afraid at #TEDxBrum even they look bored. @carolinebeavon
• Wouldn't it be better to just plug an iPod in. #tedxbrum @dorvago
• The cowbell is a way too understated instrument, let's get the cowbell trending too! #TEDxBrum #morecowbell @TEDxBrum
• Is it possible to rehearse this? #seriousquestion #TEDxBrum @chargedatom
• @chargedatom I think they're winging it. Most UoB students do ;) @Dr_Bob82
• @BiLEnsemble it's interesting to watch here in the MAC. Physical meets digital, theres so much that could go wrong, it's working!! #tedxbrum @Ben_R_Murphy
• If we don't get more cowbell, we may as well all go home #cowbell #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• Who spiked my drink with acid? Is this real? #TEDxBrum @craiggumbley
• I for one, was happy to have #8bit of silence ¦-) #bless RT @mrmarksteadman Talk amongst yourselves. #tedxbrum @Jacattell
• #TEDxBrum the emperor's new laptop? @Stephen_Griffin
• I'm now imagining myself in a rainforest. Away from this. Far away. #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• #TEDxBrum PLEASE STOP @Pictoontwit
• Britain 's not got talent sorry #TEDxBrum @vixfitzgerald
• One of them must be checking the twitter feed #tedxbrum #multitasking @dorvago
• Oh dear twitter generated laughter in danger of breaking out now. At least it is a more positive effect than i expected #tedxbrum @mrspicto
• Ah, so they played instruments at the start, recorded them, now they've digitised and resampled them and are playing them back #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• I'm not at #TEDxBrum, but finding the tweets about the "Laptop Ensemble" hilarious. It sounds dreadful (but I bet you all clap at the end). @editorialgirl
• HELL YEAH :-D @Jacattell
• Ordered chaos; #LOVEIT! MT @Soulsailor nah not for me... Seems too out of control & random... /cc @vixfitzgerald #TEDxBrum @Jacattell
• #morecowbell #lesscowbell would it make a difference?? #TEDxBrum @chargedatom
• Massive TUNE! #tedxbrum @n_chalmers
• @n_chalmers will buy u the CD for ur bday! #tedxbrum @J_K_Schofield
• @n_chalmers going to download this one after for sure @kathpreston1
• Twitter is my outlet. Can't keep straight face. #TEDxBrum @karldoody
• No one said innovation was going to be easy, right? #TEDxBrum @TEDxBrum
• #TEDxBrum Warming to BiLE - snugly weird. @Stephen_Griffin
• @Stephen_Griffin Was that smugly weird? #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• So now the track is on a loop and they're playing along 'in real time' with it. Except it sounds... well... it's finished now #tedxbrum @Dr_Bob82
• Balls. #tedxbrum @mrmarksteadman
• #TEDxBrum .... Laptop Ensemble ... Seriously ... Is that it ;-) @shuhabtrq
• I want to see more people preoccupied with the stuff BiLE is doing. #TEDxBrum @CerasellaChis
• Well I liked it... #TEDxBrum @stanchers
• Brilliant performance from Laptop Ensemble BiLE - enjoyed watching and listening to them on the live stream #TEDxBrum @PostFilm
• thinks BiLE upset some #tedxbrum delegates who did not want to open up to sound art and opportunity for digital experimentation @PostFilm
• Skimmed the #TEDxBrum stream - if that sad reaction to @BiLEnsemble is accurate reflection of audience vibe I'm glad I'm not there. @peteashton
• @peteashton Actually the reception to it IN THE ROOM in the real world was warm. The dissenters were vocal on Twitter. Go figure. @helgahenry
• @peteashton We don't know how much info (if any) was given to the audience about what they were listening to. Tweets sounded... surprised. @editorialgirl
• @editorialgirl Indeed. I just don't think I'd enjoy being in an audience which is surprised in that way by their work. Which is fine. @peteashton
• @peteashton if it's any consolation at all, I was there, at TEDxBrum & I enjoyed BiLE. New to me, a surprise, yes, but in a good way! @KendaLeeG
• @hellocatfood I think you v can now legitimately claim to be a misunderstood artist now! The #TedxBrum audience just weren't ready for you. @AndyPryke
• @gregmcdougall there was a random laptop music segment that didn't work for me then more awesomeness #TEDxBrum @Soulsailor
• for me 'sound art' is part of the creative "T" in TED. More radical digitral sonic experimentation please from BiLE #tedxbrum @PostFilm
• Oddest moment today: watching @BiLEnsemble use modern technology to give the audience a scarily accurate experience of tinnitus. #tedxbrum @catharker
• #tedxBrum @BiLEnsemble have potential. I heard some cool sounding stuff and was a little jazzy. Maybe mix with instruments/samples/beats? @RenewableSave
• i see bile at #tedxbrum has caused some controversy. i don't think any performer has an inherent right to have their performance liked. @simonjgray
• (& i type this as somebody who has made music which is well far from being universally liked. #tedxbrum ) @simonjgray
• Really enjoyed playing at #lovebytes and #tedxbrum yesterday... as well as the post-TED discussion ;) @BiLEnsemble
• @BiLEnsemble and we enjoyed you! @TEDxBrum, out of interest, was the #lovebytes performance different? @Ben_R_Murphy
• @BiLEnsemble well done BiLE performing at #tedxbrum !!!! @InterFace_2012
• @celesteh obvious there were probs at #TEDxBrum, but I enjoyed the pieces - although was brought up on Harvey's "Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco" @davidburden
• BiLE Blog #tedxbrum http://celesteh.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/gig-report-adoration-may-not-be.html @PostFilm
• BiLE's last piece at #TEDxBrum http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8693004/TedxBrum%20BiLE.mp3 Quietat points so some mobile signal interference. @Acuity_Design

Letters

Dear Editor,

I am writing in regards to your recent headline, HEARD THE ONE ABOUT A SEX SWAP MAN WHO REPLACED A FEMALE COMIC?.

The transgender comic involved in the story is not a man, but a woman, something which you seemed to be aware of when writing the story. Also using the term "sex swap" is derogatory. A better headline would have read, "Have you heard the one about the transgender woman who replaced another female comic?"

The rest of your article seem to be fine and it's a shame that it had this headline attached. If you have any questions or are in need of advice when writing about transgender people in future, the website for Trans Media Watch has a section in order to advise journalists and editors. http://www.transmediawatch.org/guidance_for_media.html

Thank you for your time.

Here's an article you can just rerun every few months

Trans People Exist!

Reports in today's Daily Mail show that there are transgender people in Britain. Their reporters were able to discover that this phenomenon, which effects one in one thousand Britons, appears to be even spread throughout society.

"Some trans people are very old, some are very young and the majority are in between those extremes" said researcher Dr Smith, "Fully half of trans people are less than the median age! Most trans people over the age of 6 have attended school - or are currently doing so."

"We also found that trans people come from all different races and social classes." said Smith.

Due to social pressures, many trans people do not feel comfortable talking about their past to national news papers. "Go away and leave my family alone!" said one 45 year old trans person to the Daily Mail yesterday, speaking under condition of anonymity outside his home at 134 Passing Lane, Oxford E1Q 3GL, just around the corner form the Tescos Express.

Still, trans people may be anywhere in the country. "This appears to be random, like left handedness" said Beatrix Jones of Trans United. "There are trans people in cities and in rural areas, from the northernmost bit of Scotland down to the Isle of Wight."

Jones explained that trans people also may take a variety of jobs from showgirl, to university professor to dustman to "anything you can think of" she said.

There is also diversity in how they establish their personal lives. Many trans people have romantic partners, although a significant portion are single. Also, researchers found that many trans people have children. "As the UK does not mandate sterilisation for trans people, some have become parents post-transition. Also, many trans people forgo any form of medical transition and just transition 'socially'" said Smith.

"Trans people do have some specific needs, like the ability to live their life without media intrusion" said Jones, shutting her door in the reporter's face.

Writing to the New York Times

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your article on January 12, 2012, "Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?" I have long suspected that the Times was entirely unconcerned with the truth and was slavishly repeating the claims of people in or seeking power, but it's nice to have it confirmed as the official policy of the newspaper. This will especially come in handy when I am arguing with others about the lack of merit of your newspaper.

As to your question about whether you should bother yourself with reporting the truth, I would say no. You don't have any credibility anyway and it's cheaper just to print press releases without doing research.

Thank you for taking the time to solicit reader opinion,
Charles Céleste Hutchins

Recently, I've learned that freedom of the press is much, much better protected in the United States than it is in the United Kingdom. Journalists are free to make claims with good evidence without having to be in fear of overly-strong libel laws. In the UK, you cannot make a claim without absolute proof. In the US, you just need good evidence and the occasional "alleged" and you're good. UK journalists are jealous of the many press protections afforded American journalists.

And yet, with all the freedom to actually point out lies and fraud and corruption and to let their readers know when somebody is obviously lying - with the freedom to look into things and print what they find, with all of the great and wonderful legal protections the US provides to it's journalists, the newspaper of record wonders if readers actually expect them to do any journalism. Brisbane, the editor, writes, "I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about."

I wish I could say I was shocked.

America's Last Strong Union

Dear Senator Boxer

I am writing to ask that congress take steps to stop cuts to the Postal Service. As you know, the postal service has just announced it plans to reduce service levels and fire 100,000 workers. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, these changes will put a drag on the economy, raise the prices of prescription drugs and hurt people living in rural communities. This is the last thing our country needs in a time of recession.

What's more, as you know, the US Postal Service would be operating at a profit, were it not forced by congress to pre-fund the retirements of future postal workers who are not yet even born. The Post Services budget shortfalls are entirely a result of this mandate. This unprecedented mandate is an attack on one of America's last strong unions, by forcing cuts where none are needed.

I hope I can count on you to protect these 100,000 jobs and do the right thing for the 99% of your constituents who rely on the postal service.

Explaining the Inexplicable: Gender Dysphoria

I was in my 20's the first time I ever experienced snow. I'd seen it on TV and distant hilltops, but I'd never been in it, heard it fall, smelled it, gotten it stuck to my clothes. There's no way anybody could have really explained snow to me.

And yet, I'd seen a lot of TV and movies that featured snow, read books, read descriptions. So If my attempt to explain dysphoria is confusing, imagine that you've never seen snow.

I asked on twitter several weeks ago, “If you were going to try to explain dysphoria to a cis person, what would you say?” Nobody replied, except one guy who said, "I'd use the pizza topping example 'I like pineapple, it just don't belong in my pizza.' or something similar..." I'm not sure what he meant.

I was asking because of a particular cis person, but it did get me thinking more generally about the difficulty in communicating something that is outside of most people's experience. But I thought I could try to explain:

I'm starting to see the convenience of the "in the the wrong body" narrative as a way to attempt to explain the inexplicable. However, I prefer to think of myself as having after-market upgrades. Because who gets the right body? One of the most good looking (cis) guys I know told me doesn't like his body and meanwhile I wish I looked more like him. Also the "trapped" in the wrong body thing seems alarmingly close to some very problematic ideas about disabled people.

I've never had another body than the one I have now, he's mine, he's me. I'm male, so every part of my body is male. For example, I have a very manly spleen. This is why I almost always refer to having transitioned in the past tense, dating it back to when I started T. Losing my moobs was a happy day indeed, but it doesn't make me more of a man.

St Augustine wrote about being freaked out by his private parts, cleverly disguised as a discussion of Original Sin. Adam was the first, last and only guy to get the right body, according to Augustine and then getting thrown out of the Garden of Eden screwed everything up for everyone. Which is to say that I wish I could pass naked, but everybody has issues.

On the other hand, it really does bug me that I have parts that are atypical and how I feel about them is a lot more complex than whether they're "wrong," because they are male and they are part of me. And that's what I can't explain. My experience of this is not the universal trans experience, because there is no such thing.

Which is why I don't normally try to explain. All interested parties accept my assertions about myself and I accept their assertions about themselves and we move on.

How much could I even explain? I dunno how I figured out I was a man, just that I know I am. Not that this was an easy conclusion to come to. I spent a lot of time agonising about this, and yet the process is opaque to me now. When I read She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan, I found her glibness on the issue profoundly frustrating. She said she “just knew.” I didn't know at the time and wished she'd said more about how this came to be. Alas, now I “just know,” and am not sure what more I can say about it. I think that if I asked a cis person how they knew they're cis, I doubt they's have a better answer.

It bothers me when cis people get freaked out about this. And despite my happy life in a bubble, it's clear that they do get freaked out, even the well-meaning ones. Sometimes, I think an easy explanation might help them, but, again, it's like snow. Well-meaning people will quickly see that they need to just accept that other people have different experiences. They will accept that snow exists without having ever been in a blizzard. Becoming a spokesman for the weather service won't help.

It seems weird to some people, but it's my life. It's my identity. It's vital. And yet, as the one who is different, I'm socially expected to engage and manage other people's reactions, in which they are alarmed by a core aspect of my being. It's interactions like that in which I see the great attraction of going stealth. Instead, here are some words about it.

Writing Letters to Oakland

Dear Mayor Quan,

  I just watched an internet video in which an Oakland Police officer at the Occupy Oakland protest had his name taped over, so that it was unreadable.

We ask a OPD officer why he had his name badge covered.... from BLK PXLS on Vimeo.

The officer in question, J. Hargraves, was ordered to remove the covering by his superior officer once members of the public intervened. That he had his name covered at all strongly suggests to me that he was intending to break the law in his policing of protesters. I also find it troubling that he was willing to do this only a few feet away from his superior officer.  This further suggests that the department has an informal policy allowing or encouraging this behavior.

I hope you as mayor investigate whether or not this is the case and order the police to issue a clarification to their officers that they are required to follow the law and respect the civil rights of protesters.

Thank you for your time,
Charles Hutchins

---

You can contact the mayor of Oakland via her website: http://www.oaklandnet.com/contactmayor.asp

You cannot shop your way to a better world

Shopping is not activism.

Let me state that again: a targeted, organised, specific boycott, like the United Farm Workers No Grapes boycott of the 1980's is activism. Because it has specific goals and is part of a larger protest movement. But buying only locally produced, organic produce from your local co-op is not activism. Because shopping is not activism.

Now, it could be very good for you and beneficial for your community to buy organic produce from your co-op, but that doesn't make it activism. Similarly, you can use voting as a way of mitigating negative political change in your area, but voting isn't activism either.

There are images going around facebook that suggest the "real" way to occupy Wall Street is by shopping at the right stores. I want to pick apart some of the problems with that.

Many of Walmart's shoppers are poor. they shop there because they can afford the produce there. It might not be great produce or an altruistic retailer, but they're eating better than they would be if they shopped someplace else. While it's true that their communities would be better off if there were more independent retailers, in the mean times, you're asking them to sacrifice feeding fresh fruits and vegetables to their kids. This is not reasonable. Also, by implication, the people who shop at Walmart become responsible of the bad effects of that retailer, when, in fact, they tend to suffer more keenly from those same effects.

Let's say you go to an independent shop to buy clothes. Good for you. What are you going to buy? You decide to avoid the cardigan made by sweatshop labour. Good for you. You decide to avoid the one made with polluting synthetic yarn. You decide to get one made from only ethically treated animals. And decide to mitigate pollution by only going for organically fed animals. So you buy a llama hair cardigan made by a local hippie who grew his own llamas locally, feeding them only locally grown organic feed. You have successfully avoided Wall Street, kept your carbon footprint low, bought a sustainable cardigan that will last for several years and keep you warm even when you get soaked by the rain. Good for you! That cardigan probably cost $200, every penny of which stayed local and was invested back into your community. This was a good choice of how to spend your disposable income.

However, buying your hypothetical cardigan was not activism. First of all, although it was a wise investment in your own clothes and the community, this was really not affordable to most people. Walmart shoppers cannot afford to buy your clothes. Buying that cardigan is certainly an ethical act, but it's not an accessible act. If you want to protest income inequality and economic injustice, this protest could not possibly come in the form of expensive personal purchases.

It's disappointing that voting and shopping are not actually enough to change the world in a meaningful, positive way. These things are, quite literally, the least we should do. And we should do them. Those of us who can vote should take that responsibility seriously and if you have enough money to be ethical with your purchases, then certainly do it, but don't make these things out to be bigger than they are. If you want to occupy Wall Street, then you're going to have to vote with your body, not with your money and not with a check mark in a box, but by physically participating.

Our consumer culture of predatory capitalism has gotten seriously out of control and fixing it requires people of different social classes working together. If your activism is not accessible to the poor, it's not in common cause with them. Anybody can stand in a mass demonstration. And we need to stand together.

I know we've been told our whole lives that consuming stuff is voting with our money, that we have choices that empower us through buying stuff and that we can build our identity (including our moral sense of self) by what we buy, but all of these ideas came from advertisers who want to sell us stuff. It's been drummed into our heads since birth, but it's not true. It's propaganda to keep us buying stuff and docile. The purpose is to prevent protest, not empower an easy for of it.

Activism is a group activity. If it's done at the mall, it comes with a risk of being escorted out by security. It is visible. It is disruptive. It is what we need.

Occupying Oakland

I was on the West Coast of the US for a few days recently. On my last day there, I spent some time at Occupy Oakland, one of the occupation protests to spin off from Occupy Wall Street. The Oakland protest was an encampment in front of City Hall. I arrived on Tuesday afternoon to find a bunch of tents set up and people milling about. There were signs posted, renaming the plaza to "Oscar Grant Plaza." Oscar Grant was, of course, the man shot by BART police a year or two ago. Other signs invited the 99% to "hella" occupy Oakland. Another large banner was against corporate oligarchy

Some of the people were working on stuff, so I asked a guy there if I could help. He sent me to the food tent, where there was another guy dishing up soup to passers by. I helped him out for a while and then he went off, leaving me in the tent.

Several people came up for soup, bread, grapes os something to drink. The soup was made in a large pot which was over a camp stove that was keeping it warm. It seemed like about half the people who came asking for food where people who had come specifically for the protest and the other half were people who might have been hungry anyway. I worked a shift in a soup kitchen once many years ago and this was not like that. In the soup kitchen, you have a stark dividing line between who is feeding and who is being fed. Some people bring food and others eat it. In this case, there were people coming constantly with donations, but everybody was eating together.

As long as people just wanted soup, I was fine and I could tell them where to put material donations, but anything more than that and I had no idea. I was alone in the tent for a while, unable to answer questions. Finally the women who knew stuff came back and told me to take a break.

I wandered through the tents to where I could hear music. There were native Americans playing a large drum and singing. A reporter from the local TV news recorded herself talking with them in the background. A circle of lesbians were sitting nearby with a MacBook, planning something. A woman from Revolution Books sold me a newspaper about how Bob Avakian is the second coming of Mao. I sat in the sun until the shade progressed over the entire plaza and then I moved towards more music.

I found a guy with an American flag T-shirt and a rockabilly haircut playing a guitar and singing something about a "rich man" through a PA system, when there seemed to be the sound of drumming getting gradually closer. There was a samba band marching up the street, to the occupation. As they arrived, the guitar player wrapped up his set and the drums played for at least an hour. They had a dance troop with them. Both the drummers and the dancers were amazing. After a long routine, they said they'd brought extra instruments and everybody should join them by playing or dancing. Many people did.

Meanwhile, the kitchen crew had gotten a BBQ going and were cooking something that might have been pork. A woman came by with a bag of apples and handed them out to all and sundry, so some people stood eating ribs or apples, watching people dance. This was Oakland, so the dancers were all races, all ages. Some of them were middle class, some were poor. Some were white, some were black, some were asian. There were LGB people, trans people, straight people, cis people, in what felt like a giant festival. A middle schooler lept into the middle of the dancers and started break dancing to wild cheering. Then a pair of guys in maybe their mid 20s started doing a sort of martial arts dance while the samba dancers danced in a circle around them. One of the martial arts guys was hopping up and down on his hands while the other one did some move I could never hope to replicate.

The joy, the diversity, the food, the music, the use of the word "hella" - it was pure Oakland. It's why I love the East Bay. It's why that protest gave me hope. With the wide swath of people participating, with the toilets donated by the unions (and by a local BBQ joint), it felt like real coalitions are happening. And while the demands of the protest aren't entirely clear, they're building something that seems like a movement. Real change might come out of this and it is change we desperately need.

How to do page numbers and a table of contents in NeoOffice

This may also apply to Open Office.

Go to the format menu and select styles and formatting. a window or something will come up. one of the tabs on it is for page types. Duplicate the default type and call it something else. Then, go to the start of your document at the very top of the page and under insert, select manual break. A window will open that will have a drop down menu of the page types. Change it from [none] to the page type you just created. At the bottom of the window, in the second little box from the left, it lists page type. so when you're on your new blank page, it should say default and when you go to the second page, it should say the name of your new type of page.

Next, go to the first page of your text and go to the insert menu and select footer and it will have next to that your two page types. Check the one that describes the main body of your text. It will hopefully make you a footer, which it will then stick your cursor in. then under the insert menu, go to fields and the page number. The popup will have something asking about style, make sure it's set to 1 2 3, etc. and it will have something about starting with a specific page number. set that to 1.

Then go back to that first empty, still blank page and insert two manual breaks so you have three blank pages at the start of your document. Go the middle of those pages and go to the insert menu and then select indexes and tables and then indexes and tables and then table of contents

You're nearly there. Go back to the styles and formatting window and go to the paragraph styles tag. Right click on the one called heading1 and select modify. It will give you a window asking about spacing, fonts, etc. Set it to look like every heading you've used for your chapter titles. If they're 14 point centred times new roman, then make it like that. then go to heading2 and modify it so it looks like your subheadings you've used for chapter sections and keep doing this for all the heading levels you've used.

Now, lastly, go through your text and highlight all your headings. So at the starts of chapter 1, highlight your title "why i'm awesome" (or whatever you called it) and then, in the styles and formatting window, double click on the heading 1. This will switch that title to have the heading 1 formatting, which, if you did it right, will look the same as it did before. Then go to your subheading and select it and double click on heading2 in the styles and formatting window. Go through your entire document changing your heading to use the heading1, heading2, etc. When you've got everything, go back up to your table of contents page and right click on the table of contents. A menu will pop up and one of the options will be to update the table of contents. Do that and it should list all fo your headings and subheadings. If you're missing some of them, then you forgot to change it in the document.

And of course, the best way to do this is to use the headings and stuff from when you first start writing your document, so keep that in mind for next time.

I wrote a letter to the Metro

I wrote to the Metro about this article which differs from the print version. The print headline was "Boy, 10, returns to school a girl." The first sentence repeated the word "boy" and thereafter used only terms like "child," and avoided any use at all of pronouns.

I'm not sure how much of an improvement it is to say that a 10 year old wants a "sex change." I guess they thought the word "transgender" would be too difficult for London morning commuters.

This is the letter I wrote:

Dear [Editor],

I am writing in regards to yesterday's Metro front page article, "Boy, 10, who went back to school a girl" in regards to misgendering the subject. The correct way to refer to a trans person's gender is to follow their choices. The girl in the article clearly wishes to be known as a girl and your use of "boy" in the first sentence and headline is therefore inappropriate. The rest of the article uses only the term "child." It is not appropriate or neutral to treat this girl's gender as if it is a subject of open debate. You also use words like "youngster" to avoid using pronouns outside of direct quotes. This, plus the use of boy does seem to undermine the gender identity of the girl.

There is a very helpful website, trans media watch, which offers advice to journalists writing articles about trans people: http://www.transmediawatch.org/guidance_for_media.html This website advises the media to avoid phrases like "sex-change," which also appears in the first sentence of your article. Your article is otherwise sympathetic, so I hope you can keep these things in mind the next time you write about a trans person.

Did I mention they picked it as their front page article? This is something that happens every single autumn in at least one school in the UK. It was in other news outlets, including on the BBC, as the girls' mum talked to the national press. I'm all for raising awareness of anti-trans bullying, but large shocking headlines seem to be participating in, rather than decrying, adults calling this girl a "freak."

The Metro has not acknowledged my letter, although they did correct the web version. I thought I'd post the letter here.

I'm trying to imagine how it would have felt to have a newspaper headline when I returned to uni with a new set of pronouns... I hope the girl's mum is keeping her away from the news.

Dissertation Draft: Solo Live Electronic Pieces

Phreaking

When the local 2600 group, started organising BrumCon 2007, which took place on 3 May 2008, I asked if I could present a musical set. They had never done such a thing before, but they agreed. 2600 is a hacker group (“2600 Meetings”) with roots in phone phreaking (Trigaux), so I decided to reference that in a piece written for the gig.

As noted in The Complete Hacker's Handbook, “Phone phreaking” refers to the practice hacking phone systems in order to get free calls or just explore the workings of the system. Phone systems used to be controlled by in-band signalling, that is, audible tones that a user could reproduce in order to gain unauthorised control. For example, 2600 Hz was a useful tone to “seize” control of a line. Other such sounds commonly found in telephony are Dual Tone Multi Frequency [DTMF] sounds, which are the ones produced by a landline keypad. (Dr. K.)

I looked up red box phreaking on Wikipedia and also DTMF signals and used those tones as the heart of the piece. It starts with a dial tone, then does coin dropping sounds, followed by the sound of dialling and then a ring back sound, followed by a 2600 Hz tone. After that introduction, it plays dialling signals and then a beat. The beat is made up of patterns of sampled drums. The programme picks random beats to be accented, which will always have a drum sound on them and then scatters drum sounds on some of the other beats also. The loop is repeated between 8-10 times and then a new pattern is created, retaining the same accents for the duration of the piece. If the randomly generated drum pattern seems too sparse or too full of beats, the performer can intervene by pressing a joystick button to add some drum beats or another to remove them. The idea for randomly accenting beats comes a lecture by Paul Berg at Sonology in the Hague where he noted that accenting random beats seems like it had a deliberate rhythm when it's heard by audiences. This is related to Trevor Wishart's discussion of Clarence Barlow's “indispensability factor,” where Wishart notes that changing accents of a steady beat can alter the listener's perception between time signatures. (Wishart p 64) It seems that greater randomness in picking accents leads listeners to perceive more complex rhythms.

After the beats, a busy signal comes in occasionally. There are also bass frequencies which are DTMF sine tones transposed by octaves. Finally, there are samples of operator messages that are used in the American phone system. These are glitched and stuttered, the degree of which is controlled with a joystick. Thus, this piece is partly a live-realisation, self-running piece and partly controlled by a performer.

At the time, I was interested in making computer pieces that necessarily had to be computer pieces and could not be realised with live instruments or with an analogue synthesiser. Extremely exact tunings and sample processing are both examples of things that are computer-dependant. I was also interested to have more live control and more visible gesture, in order to, as Paine describes in his paper on gesture in laptop performance, “inject a sense of the now, an engagement with audience in an effort to reclaim the authenticity associated with ‘live’ performance.” (Paine p 4) I thought having physical motions would engage the audience more than a live realisation. Conversely and relatedly, I was also interested in the aesthetics of computer failure, within the glitches I was creating. Cascone writes, “'[Failure]' has become a prominent aesthetic in many of the arts in the late 20th century, reminding us that our control of technology is an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect, precise, and efficient as the humans who build them. “ (Cascone) I thought this intentional highlighting of imperfection would especially resonate with an audience that largely worked in a highly technical and professional capacity with computers.

I also find glitches to be aesthetically appealing and have been influenced by the extremely glitchy work of Ryoji Ikeda, especially works like Data.Matrix, which is a sonification of data. (“Datamatics”) Similarly, in-band signalling is literally a sonic encoding of data, designed for computer usage.

When I performed the piece at BrumCon, their sound system did not have an even frequency response. Some sine waves sounded way louder than others and I did not have a way to adjust. I suspect this problem is much more pronounced for sine tones than it is for richer frequencies. Another problem I encountered was that I was using sounds with strong semantic meanings for the audience. Many of them had been phreakers and the sounds already had a specific meaning and context that I was not accurately reproducing. Listeners without this background have generally been more positive about the piece. One blogger wrote the piece sounded like a “demonic homage to Gaga’s Telephone,” (Lao) although he did note that my piece was written earlier.

Blake's 9

The music of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop has been a major influence on my music for a long time. The incidental music and sound effects of Doctor Who during the Tom Baker years was especially formative. I found time in 2008 to watch every episode of Blakes 7 and found the sound effects to be equally compelling. I spent some time with my analogue synthsiser and tried to create sounds like the ones used in the series. I liked the sounds I got, but they were a bit too complex to layer into a collage for making a piece that way, but not complex enough to stand on their own. I wrote a SuperCollider programme to process them through granular synthesis and other means and to create a piece using the effects as source material, mixed with other computer generated sounds.

The timing on a micro, “beat,” and loop level are all in groups of nine or multiples of nine, which is why I changed the number in the piece title. I was influenced to use this number by a London poet, Mendoza, who had a project called ninerrors which ze^* describes as, “a sequence of poems constricted by configurations of 9: connected & dis-connected by self-imposed constraint. each has 9 lines or multiples of 9, some have 9 words or syllables per line, others are divisible by 9.  ninerrors is presented as a series of 9 pamphlets containing 9 pages of poetry.” (“ninerrors”) I adopted a use of nines not only in the timings, but also in shifting the playback rate of buffers, which are played at rates of 27/25, 9/7, 7/9 or 25/27. The tone clusters frequencies also are related to each other by tuning ratios that are similarly based on nine. I was in contact with Mendoza while writing this piece and one of the poems in hir ninerrors cycle, an obsessive compulsive disorder, mentions part of the creation of this piece in it's first line, “washing machine spin cycle drowns out synth drones.” (“an obsessive compulsive disorder”)

While ratios based on nines gave me the internal tunings of the tone cluster, I used Dissonance Curves, as described by William Sethares, to generate the tuning and scale for the base frequencies of the clusters. The clusters should therefore sound as consonant as possible and provide a contrast to the rest of the piece, which is rather glitchy. The glitches come partly from the analogue material, but also from sudden cuts in the playback of buffers. For some parts of the piece, the programme records it's own output and then uses that as source material, something that may stutter, especially if the buffer is recording it's own output. I used this effect because, as mentioned above, I want to use a computer to do things which only it can do. When writing about glitches, Vanhanen writes that their sounds “are sounds of the . . . technology itself.” (p 47) He notes that “if phonography is essentially acousmatic, then the ultimate phonographic music would consist of sounds that have no acoustic origin,” (p 49) thus asserting that skips and “deliberate mistakes” (ibid) are the essential sound of “phonographic styles of music.” (ibid) Similarly, “glitch is the digital equivalent of the phonographic metasound.” (p 50) It is necessarily digital and thus is inherently tied to my use of a computer. While my use of glitch is oppositional to the dominant style of BEAST, according to Vanhanen, it is also the logical extension of acousmatic music.

Indeed, the piece was written with the BEAST system in mind. The code was written to allow N-channel realisations. Some gestures are designed with rings of 8 in mind, but others, notably at the very start, are designed to be front speakers only. Some of the “recycled” buffers, playing back the pieces own recordings were originally intended to be sent to distant speakers, not pointed at the audience, thus give some distance between the audience and those glitches when they are first introduced. I chose to do it this way partly in order to automate the use of spatial gesture. In his paper on gesture, Paine notes that moving a sound in space is a from of gesture, specifically mentioning the BEAST system. (p 11) I think that because this gesture is already physical, it does not need to necessarily rely on the physical gesture of a performer moving faders. Removing my own physical input from the spatialisation process allowed me more control over the physical placement of the sound, without diminishing the audience's experience of the piece as authentic. It also gives me greater separation between sounds, since the stems are generated separately and lets me use more speakers at once, thus increasing the immersive aspect (p 13) of the performance.

Although this piece is entirely non-interactive, it is a live realisation which makes extensive use of randomisations and can vary significantly between performances. In case I get a additional chances to perform it on a large speaker system, I would like the audience to have a fresh experience every time it is played.

Synthesiser Improvisation

When I was a student at Wesleyan, I had my MOTM analogue modular synthesier mounted into a 6 foot tall free-standing rack that was intended for use in server rooms. It was not very giggable, but it was visually quite striking. When my colleagues saw it, they launched a campaign that I should do a live-patching concert. I was initially resistant to their encouragement, as it seemed like a terrible idea, but eventually I gave in and spent several days practicing getting sounds quickly and then refining them. In performance, as with other types of improvisation, I would find exciting and interesting sounds that I had not previously stumbled on in the studio. Some of my best patches have been live.

I've been deeply interested in the music of other composers who do live analogue electronics, especially in the American experimental tradition of the 1960s and 70s. Bye Bye Butterfly by Pauline Oliveros is one such piece, although she realised it in a studio. (Bernstein p 30) This piece and others that I find interesting are based on discovering the parameters and limits of a sound phenomenon. Bernstein writes that “She discovered that a beautiful low difference tone would sound” when her oscillators were tuned in a particular way. (ibid) Live patching also seems to be music built on discovery, but perhaps a step more radical for it's being performed live.

Even more radical than live patching is Runthrough by David Behrman, which is realised live with DIY electronics. The programme notes for that piece state, “No special skills or training are helpful in turning knobs or shining flashlights, so whatever music can emerge from the equipment is as available to non-musicians as to musicians . . .. Things are going well when all the players have the sensation they are riding a sound they like in harmony together, and when each is appreciative of what the others are doing.” (“Sonic Arts Union”) The piece is based entirely on discovery and has no set plan or written score. (ibid) The piece-ness relies on the equipment. This is different than live-patching because a modular synthesiser is designed to be a more general purpose tool and its use does not imply a particular piece. Understanding the interaction between synthesiser modules is also a specialist skill and does imply that expertise is possible. However, the idea of finding a sound and following it is similar.

Recently, I have been investigating ways to merge my synthesiser performance with my laptop performance. The first obvious avenue of exploration was via live sampling. This works well with a small modular, like the Evenfall Mini Modular, which is small enough to put into a rucksack and has many normalised connections. It has enough flexibility to make interesting and somewhat unexpected music, but is small and simple enough that I can divide my attention between it and a laptop. Unfortunately, mine was damaged in a bike accident in Amsterdam in 2008 and has not yet been repaired.

My MOTM synthesiser, however, is too large and too complex to divide my attention between it and a laptop screen. I experimented with using gamepad control of a live sampler, such that I did not look at the computer screen at all, but relied on being able to hear the state of the programme and a memory of what the different buttons did. I tried this once in concert at Noise = Noise #19 in April 2010. As is often the case in small concerts, I could not fully hear both monitor speakers, which made it difficult to monitor the programme. Furthermore, as my patch grew in complexity, the computer-added complexity became difficult to perceive and I stopped being able to tell if it was still working correctly or at all. A few minutes into the performance, I stopped the computer programme entirely and switched to all analogue sounds. While the programme did not perform in the manner I had intended, the set was a success and the recording also came out quite well and is included in my portfolio. One blogger compared the track to Jimi Hendrix, (Weidenbaum) which was certainly unexpected.

It is unusual for me to have a live recording come out well. This is because of the live, exploratory aspect to the music. If I discover that the I can make the subwoofers shake the room or make the stage rattle, or discover another acoustic phenomenon in the space, I will push the music in that direction. While this is exciting to play, and hopefully to hear, it doesn't tend to come out well on recordings. I also have a persistent problem with panning. On stage, it's often difficult to hear both monitors and judging the relative amplitudes between them requires a certain concentration that I find difficult to do while simultaneously patching and altering timbres. In order to solve this problem, I've written a small programme in SuperCollider which monitors the stereo inputs of the computer and pans them to output according to their amplitude. If one is much louder than the other, it is panned to centre and the other output slowly oscillated between left and right. If the two inputs are close in amplitude, the inputs are panned left and right, with some overlap. I think this is the right answer for how to integrate a computer with my synthesiser. Rather than giving me more things to think about, this silently fixes a problem, thus removing a responsibility. An example of playing with the autopanner, from a small living room concert in 2011, is included in my portfolio.

For future exploration, I am thinking of returning to the idea of live sampling, but similarly without my interaction. I would tell the computer when the set starts and it would help me build up a texture through live sampling. Then, as my inputted sound became more complex (or after a set period of time), the computer interventions would fade out, leaving me entirely analogue. This could help me get something interesting going more quickly, although it may violate the “blank canvas” convention of live coding and live patching. In February 2011, there was a very brief discussion on the TopLap email list as to whether live patching was an analogue form of live coding (Rohrhuber). I do not see that much commonality between them, partly because a synthsiser patch is more like a chainsaw than it is like an idea, (“ManifestoDraft”) and partly because patching is much more tactile than coding is. However, some of the same conventions do seem to apply to both.

Bibliography

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Behrman, David. “Runthrough.” 1971. Web. 15 September 2011. <http://www.ubu.com/sound/sau.html>

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*“ze” and “hir” are gender neutral pronouns