Google's Moog Doodle

Today's Google doodle honors Robert Moog, inventor of the analog synthesizer and an electronic music pioneer. The doodle is interactive and you can play, record, and share your Moog recordings.

It's not quite as awe-inspiring are remotely controlling the world's largest analog synthesizer, the Paradiso at MIT, but there's no queue to play it. And you can save your Moog noodling for posterity.  BP

Drawing Water

Artist David Wicks created a visualization of where rain falls and the vectors it follows on its way to being consumed. His latest work Drawing Water uses water consumption data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey and rainfall data from the National Weather Service and it shows how water is siphoned and diverted to areas far from where it fell.

The installation's interactive map dramatically demonstrates that your water—especially if you live in a city—most likely travels quite some distance before it comes out your tap.  BP

David Byrne Dubs London's Tempo

During his 3-day residency in a riverboat perched atop Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, David Byrne created a song from field recordings that he made of sounds around the city. His song, Get It Away, is the tempo of London, which Byrne said is 122.86 beats per minute. Very precise.

The temporary residence's installation is itself called A Room For London and celebrates London's Olympic year. Its design inspired by the riverboat in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the unique space gives its residents a new perspective on one of London's cultural centers.  BP

Reshaping The Album

Similar in appearance to the cryoscope, the upcoming release of a label sampler by Clown & Sunset will be an aluminum cube they are calling The Prism. The sampler's title, Don't Break My Love, is taken from a song of the same title by experimental electronic artist Nicola Jaar. The two headphone jacks as the album's output are intended to encourage a shared listening experience.

As sales of the main physical music format (CD's) have fallen, some labels have resorted to deluxe releases but this release is more about the aesthetic than the commercial. It is the re-imagining of the form in which music can be released—the album as a physical work of art that can be admired aesthetically as well as aurally.  BP

(Note: The Prism doesn't levitate like in this video but it's still cool.)

Play the Paradiso Synthesizer at MIT

Currently on exhibit at the MIT Museum, the Paradiso Synthesizer is the world's largest modular synthesizer built at home by Joseph Paradiso over 14 years (1974-1988). You can play it online through the web interface PATCHWERK, which was developed to enable remote users to control the massive synthesizer.



When you turn a knob or flip a switch on the PATCHWERK site, the corresponding knob or flip is mechanically turned or switched on the Paradiso synthesizer and, when someone at the museum changes a setting, you see it, too. You may have to wait in a short queue before you get to control it but it's thrilling to interact from afar with something so complex. It's worth the wait.  BP

Radio Designed to Recycle

This cardboard radio is the production model inspired by the project Environmentally Sound, created by Irish designer, Chris McNicholl. You can get one here. The design of the radio harkens back to early AM/FM radios and its case is as chic as it is eco-friendly.

As it is made of cardboard, the case is entirely recyclable (maybe even compostable) so it cuts down on the waste from discarded consumer electronics that clutters up the world.  BP

Feeling the Temperature

Sure, it's sunny out there but, if you're wondering how the temperature outside feels, all you need is the cryoscope.



It's a haptic thermometer that measures the temperature outside and transmits it to the small aluminum box that warms or cools to the outside temperature. A thermostat for the tactile.  BP

Tracking Online Music

The world of online music has been evolving and expanding for a long time now. As more people listen and discover more music online, all of our listening, viewing, 'liking', and tweeting creates a mass of data ripe for aggregation and analysis. The volume is staggering. 

Next Big Sound published a 2011 State of Online Music report that estimated there were more than 64 billion plays tracks played online. A counter on their website shows more than 52 million plays today. NBS is a startup that tracks the popularity of music across more than a dozen digital music services and social media websites. There are some notable absences in their list of services, especially Spotify that launched recently in the United States. One site I visit frequently when I'm looking for new music is Bandcamp, which is not yet on their list. 

A great way to hear new music is to stream on Spinner, NPR, and 3voor12 the week prior to their release but those plays are not counted here. I can understand why they don't track those plays as they are just a sampling of the music that you may not suit your musical palate. And there are other streaming sites that are of questionable legality when it comes to copyright that makes sense not track.

It's an incomplete picture of trends in online music but gives you a sense of the scale of our online engagement with music.  BP

Plunge by Michael Pinsky

This thought-provoking art installation in London marks the height to which sea level will rise in 1,000 years using low-energy LED light rings affixed to monuments there. The placement of the rings follows the future course of the Thames if nothing is done to curb emissions.

A span of time so vast as 1,000 years is difficult for the human mind to comprehend. It won't be that high in London for a long time but sea level rise is already impacting many nations, the artist notes.  BP

Spinning Tree Ring Records

This is a record player that creates music by reading the year rings in slices of wood. Note that more than one 'record' is played in the video.

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

The artist coated these thin slices of wood with an acrylic glass veneer to read the rings as a record player does the grooves on a record. As the artist explains, the tree's year rings are analyzed by the player for their strength, thickness, and rate of growth and this data is the basis for a generative process that produces piano music. Each type of tree ring creates a different type of music.

In the video, the first record in the video is a fir tree that makes a minimalistic sound, the second is a more complexly textured ash tree. Each 'record' is a sonic representation of the tree whose life was recorded in its rings. Music from one of nature's myriad motifs.  BP

The Evolving World of Online Music

Off Book, a web series by PBS Arts published on tumblr created this video about the evolution music distribution and discovery online. It features interviews with individuals whose blogs and sites sluice the flood river of online music for the specks of gold carried in its current. 

Websites like Pitchfork, FADER, and Hype Machine play a vital curatorial role that enable people to discover  new artists amid the host of self-produced music and videos online. (One such artist I'd like to recommend is MPSO who releases a free album this month.) These sites  do serve a function similar to the music press but they publish more reviews and daily. It is music journalism on the abbreviated time scale of the internet. Audio and video are often published with the review so you can judge it for yourself as you read their take on it.

Although I will be a subscriber to Rolling Stone for as long as it is published, these sites have been invaluable to me as a music fan.  BP

This Clement World

It is a new musical performance work by Cynthia Hopkins inspired by her recent trip to the Arctic where she witnessed firsthand the effects of climate change. She recently did a Kickstarter to finance its production and performance that closed with sufficient donations to be funded.

Writer-composer-performer Cynthia Hopkins is raising funds to produce a concert version of her work with orchestral and choral elements to fully realize her vision. The work is described by the artist as "a live documentary film infused with three fictional characters that serve as tour guides for an imaginary exhibit conveying the wonders of our currently clement world." BP

Kinetic Sculpture of Ocean Waves

An installation of the tele-present water series by David Bowen was exhibited recently in Poland's Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu as part of the 2011 WRO Biennale. The installation translates real-time wave data from a NOAA buoy in the Pacific Ocean into the undulations of this mechanical grid sculpture in the video below. It is amazing.

This sculpture gives us a glimpse into the dynamics of ocean waves in a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean that we would never otherwise see.

Bowen is an American artist who works in kinetic sculpture, creating mechanical devices that interact with natural processes and systems. His fascination with machines is evident in the intricate design of his sculptures and the integration of real-time field data makes those in Bowen's tele-present water series even more compelling as they are mechanical representations of physical phenomena.  BP

The Victrola Reimagined

On this day in 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. The iconic horn of that technological marvel has been repurposed as an acoustic amplifier for a more recent marvel, the iPad. It is the iVictrola.

The elegant devices are produced by Matt Richmond from repurposed materials. They are  produced in very limited quantities and, when available, can be found at Design Within Reach. Edison could scarcely have imagined the device that his phonograph horn would someday be used to amplify. But I think he would have approved.  BP

Farming in Skyscrapers

As farm land has covered more and more of the Earth's surface, some innovators have started looking skyward. It is known as vertical farming and it is a potential method for supplying food for the world's growing population, which is increasingly concentrated in urban areas.

One of its proponents is Dr. Dickson Despommier, professor emeritus in environmental health and micro- biology at Columbia University. He envisions vertical farms at the heart of the world's growing urban centers. These skyscraper farms would grow crops, clean waste water, and generate their own energy with rooftop windmills and solar panels. Pests could be controlled without pesticides. Vertical farming would save space and enable urban areas to produce some of their own food and recycle its water supply. Despommier's students calculated that a single 30-story vertical farm could feed about 50,000 people.

A recent Spiegel article looked at the viability of urban agriculture in vertical structures and  some examples of vertical farming in practice. One is an three-story vertical farm in Suwon, South Korea that is experimenting with cultivation methods to make it marketable. Another is the 10-year-old PlantLab in Den Bosch in the Netherlands whose produce, which includes strawberries, beans, cucumbers, and corn, is sold to supermarkets there. These are small-scale vertical farms but they are steps toward bringing Despommier's fantastic designs to life.

The main downside to the practice is the energy required to provide light to the plants because the growing surface is stacked rather than spread out. Vertical farms that make use of reflected light and draw from renewable sources of energy can overcome this obstacle. The future of agriculture is looking up.  BP

Upscale a Ukulele

Originating in Hawai'i in the 19th century, the 'ukulele is a singular instrument. Its popularity waned after Tiny Tim but the ukelele is enjoying a resurgence lately. One example is the side project of Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, whose quite literally-titled album Ukelele Songs was released earlier this year.

Rather than buy a ʻukulele, you can handcraft one from reclaimed and found materials, as Shelley Rickey did with the Hugin' Lassie. Cigar boxes are commonly used for the body of the instrument and, on the one pictured, the artisan found the piece of hardwood used for the instrument's neck on the street. Another of Rickey's cigar box ukeleles was featured in BUST Magazine's music issue this summer. She included this detailed tutorial about how to upcycle a ukelele for yourself. BP

Musical Movements in Space & Time

Click to open interactive version (via Thomson).

This interactive map was created by Thomson Holidays, a British travel company, as a guide for music tourists. The infographic traces the development of Western dance music. You'll note that the evolutionary tree branches into dance music with the advent of funk and disco and, after 1970, the visual explodes with new genres that emerge from the confluence of musical styles across the globe.

You can watch it unfold (all in about 15 seconds) or drag the counter back and forth to follow the interactions between genres more closely.  BP

Happy (Belated) Day of 7 Billion

Yesterday, the world's population reached 7 billion according to UN projections. NPR created this colorful visualization of population growth over the centuries using drips slowly filling up leaky glasses. You might also want to check out an app by BBC that estimates your number in the order of historical births.

We can't be sure who exactly was the 7 billionth person born but we know that there are now that many people in the world.

Population growth is starting to strain the systems we've built to sustain ourselves and overstress the environment upon whose resources those systems are entirely dependent. But it also gives us the opportunity to consider how they might be reshaped to better meet all of our needs in a way that the environment can support.

We just need to put all of our heads together.  BP

Found Materials, Fantastic Art: Nick Cave's Soundsuits at Seattle Art Museum

This week is your last chance to the Nick Cave exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum (ends June 5th). His soundsuits are wearable art pieces that are colorful and composed in large part of reclaimed and found materials. The bottom part of the soundsuit on the far right is a collection of crocheted pot holders stitched together and the top is made of tops.

The soundsuits were conceived by Nick Cave as a way to insulate one's self from prejudice while distinguishing one's self from the culture that sustains that prejudice. His meticulous arrangement of familiar elements into something fantastical is fascinating to see and the use of reclaimed materials is a central part of his ethos as an artist. 

Reusing cast-aside materials, Nick Cave's art combines them in ways that make us realize the volume and variety of those materials.  BP

Storing & Streaming Music from the Cloud

Apparently, this is the future of the music industry but it is Amazon that launched the first mass foray, into the world of cloud-based music storage and streaming with its Cloud Drive and Player. You get 5 GB of free storage space and, if you buy an mp3 album, you get 20 GB for a year. This is an exciting new development.

But Apple has been slowly building the infrastructure and assuaging the fears of the music industry in preparation for launching a cloud-based version of iTunes. The industry has been speculating about this since Apple bought the streaming music service Lala and shut it down. 

Lala enabled you to match your iTunes library with Lala's licensed music catalog and upload the songs that were not. You had unlimited streaming rights to those and could add to your streaming collection at 10 cents per track or buy the mp3's for about 79 cents. It was great for music discovery because you could stream any album in their collection in full once. Getting close, iTunes now has 1:30 previews.

Time will tell if Apple can play the tortoise to Amazon's hare but, for now, we can store our music and stream it from Amazon's cloud. Yes!  BP