Leaf colours

Now THIS is a Car

Tree Colours

Stepped off the plane and explored the intrigues of Berkeley. After coming from Australia, to see these yellow and red leaves was a showstopper. Well it is my first day so it doesn’t take much!! I love these colours anyway and somehow these leaves seem too perfect to be lying about on the ground.

The trees are wonderful, as a painter I can see a composition on every corner.

I have kept my word and sketched for a few minutes each day. So I’ll put them up in my next post.

By the way – what do you think of this car!! There will no doubt see more classics like this, but it’s right over the road, and it looks like an event waiting to happen.

In October 2009 the president of the USA Barrack Obama got the Nobel Peace Price. The reason for this are his activities in improving the international diplomacy.

Is it possible that a president who is on duty for less than one year has done so much for international peace, that this would justify the Nobel Price?

Up to now president Obama has made a lot of announcements in his speeches. One of his most important topics is disarmament, especially of nuclear weapons. He gave new ideas for the start of worldwide negotiations on this topic.

Another main topic is more commitment from the US in climate change. The US is the most powerful industrial country of the world, but their interests in future problems of the climate change is still very low, Obama brought a new thinking on that theme.

The head of the Nobel Price committee, Thorbjörn Jagland, explained the choice:

“Alles, was er in seiner Zeit als Präsident angepackt hat, und wie sich das internationale Klima durch ihn verändert hat, ist schon mehr als Grund, ihm den Friedensnobelpreis zu verleihen.”

On the other side Obama did not take real action for the peace in the world so far. He just talks and makes proposes, there are no results yet. Former presidents, like Theodor Roosevelt got the Nobel Peace Price by bringing a peace treaty to Russia and Japan, in 1906. Obama did not reach such a huge success.

The Nobel Prize Committee said, they want to support the progress of peace, even when they are no results yet.

Obama himself is not really happy about this prize. It forces him to do something.

A lot of people think he will have no success with his ambitious goals, because for example the war in Afghanistan is not to win and Iran and North Korea are building nuclear weapons. Only with arguments the governments of these states are not to be convinced of peace.

In my opinion the Nobel Price came too quick for President Obama. Now he has the obligation to put his goals into practice.

It would have been better, if he got this price later, when he had done something real big for the world wide peace. His ideas seems to be very good and they need to earn respect, but with a real success, nobody would doubt about the abilities of the new US president.

After a survey of the magazine “SPIEGEL”, 44% of the German are for a ban of minarets as a part of mosques, 45% are against it. So the German population has no clear position in that question. Should there be a ban to build minarets in Germany?

Most people generalize a minaret is the same as a mosque and they mean the islamic relegion. A ban of minarets is a symbol for the ban of the Islam in Germany.
An argument for the ban of minarets would be, Christian churches are also forbidden in a lot of Muslim countries, so why should Germany allow Muslim to build own religious houses?

Switzerland uses this argument among others to explain the result of a popular vote, which bans to build minarets of mosques in their country. The Islam is horrified of this result, they think the Swiss want to discriminate and provoke them. They blame them to act against international rules and human rights.

In Germany there are already some mosques with minarets, built many years before, mostly by German who liked their aesthetic. With a new law that bans them, they would have to be rebuilded.

Mosques in Germany would be a symbol for integration, the Muslims could feel home.

A lot of them have to pray in backyards, hided to others. Christians do not have to hide, they can pray in big churches. This does not show religious freedom, what is one of the basic rights in Germany.

A lot of Germans fear terrorist actions caused by a higher Islamization, that can be a result of building more mosques. But the religion is not the cause for terrorism, nobody is a terrorist because of being Muslim, so this is not a real argument for the ban of building mosques.

Many people who are for a ban think it is alright, when Germans build them, like years before. But they do not tolerate these buildings when they are built by Muslims who came to Germany as foreign workers.

As a reason for this problem it is suggested to allow mosques, when they are not recognized as a mosque. They should conform with other buildings in the surrounding, so that they do not stick out.

I think, this is a very good compromise, because it is impossible to get a solution that makes everybody happy. A ban would cause discontent of Muslims, a permission would cause it for some Christian people in Germany.

Because of a new law in Berlin, the shops can open all the four sundays in December. But the German “Bundesverfassungsgericht” calls this law unconstitutionally. After a vote it is forbidden to open the shops on all four Sundays of advent.
So the question is, why the Sunday openings are against the constitution and whether they are necessary.

The Sunday as a day without work and for recreation – this is written down in the in the German constitution, called “Grundgesetz”. A Sunday opening would really go against this.
But there are Sunday openings in other months and they are allowed. They reach a high profit for the economy, so a ban would limit that.Otherwise the church want to protect the Sunday, also as a symbol against the materialistic society – shopping as the new belief.
The people who work in that shops would have no free day in the week, when some firms cannot engage more staff. The trade unions want to protect their members for to much working at days, which are no working days up to now. They argue there would be no more time for family, when every day of the week is a working day.

On the other hand most managers are afraid of being underprivileged in contrast to other international shopping metropoles. They fear that a metropole like Berlin would be a provincially town in international contest.

As a result, the court decided to allow up to ten Sunday openings the year, two or three of them in December, which is a good solution, I think. On that days, all stores can make more profit and there are a lot of Sundays to rest and spend time with the family, what the church wants to.

The mayor of Berlin has a reason for the new law: “Wir haben versucht, ein modernes Ladenöffnungsgesetz zu schaffen, das den veränderten Lebensbedingungen angepasst ist.” A lot of people would be glad to have the possibility to buy something on Sundays, especially before Christmas.

Exotic fruits

Exotic fruit salad

I was to do the fruit for our Christmas Lunch at Mark and Carolyn’s. The selection of gorgeous stuff available at our local food market is stunning. In fact I couldn’t have fitted everything in the old crystal bowl if I’d purchased another thing.

There is the exotic Dragon fruit, which is the richest red inside with tiny black seeds. The pomegranite too adds a little sharpness. of course we have strawberries, kiwifruit, raspberries, blueberries and mango.

Yummmmmm. You should have seen us all chowing down, with Roses’s famous trifle, and the perfect wine chosen by Chris. I don’t think anyone remembered to stop at 80% full, which is apparently the answer to not being a fat little piggie. Oh well, next time.

I should just mention that the turkey Mark cooked was about the best I’ve ever tasted, The stuffing really topped it off. Definitely went past the 80% full bit. But smiling in happiness. That turkey would have been proud.

Today seems as good a day as any to do a sketch. I really have decided to do more drawing so I started this morning.

The fact that I’m supposed to be packing and still have 100 things to do – well, it’ll all get done. And as Vicki and I were discussing over a fabulous Christmas lunch ( thankyou Mark & Carolyn ) that 5 minutes drawing a day, is better than 3 hours every 3 weeks.

So – had my cup of tea, and sat right down and drew what is out there in front of me. Cannot complain about lack of subject matter!

Tomorrow’s sketch may be of suitcases at airports!

静默的散文

我什么时候开始。。。 什么时候结束？

我的答案潜伏在音乐和声音里, 记录着我生命的每一刻。。。

这些在时间里静默的散文。

When do I begin… when do I end?

I penned down my answers in music and sounds, recording moments of my life… these silent audiographies in time.

silent audiographies <<静默的散文>> is a series of 12 minimalist sound and music expositions recorded over a period of one and a half years from 2008 to 2009; accompanied by 12 proses and passages written by sonicbrat, included in the download zip as PDF booklet…

click here to download album for free

Here’s a cinematic composition I produced 3 years ago, with strings, brass, timpani, all that good stuff.

This is an instrumental I composed, to be used for film/tv/video games.  It sounds like it would be fitting for a neighborhood watch commercial.

I have it on the best authority that not only does the technology exist, but it’s being produced and sold. This is no demo.

Don’t let the silly European techno culture distract you from this incredibly glitzy and brilliant piece of computer engineering. It is an intuitive leap forward for the way we view music and music creation (or it will be, anyway, if the price drops). They even have a newer model that’s supposedly more durable and easier to use, for installation in public institutions such as children’s science centers and music/arts learning centers.

And while he wondered on the battlefield,

if it was just for man to fight another man…

… the sniper’s bullet ripped through his neck!

And when I think it’s an end to the road…

I read the sign-board saying “you’ve come the wrong way”

And so when I search for alternatives…

Another one says “U-turn not allowed”

COMPOSITION

• HAND IN: Living abroad for a year in…

385323     สังคีตนิพนธ์ของคีตกวีไทยสำคัญ     Compositions of Prominent Thai Composers

ชีวประวัติและสังคีตนิพนธ์ของคีตกวีไทยที่สำคัญ ทั้งในระดับ พระมหากษัตริย์เจ้านายชั้นสูงและสามัญชน

(The lives and works of prominent royal, noble, and commoner composers.)

(385323 มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์)

Poem number 134, better known by its first line “When,I,was,no,bigger,than,a,huge” was published as part of Jose Garcia Villa’s second anthology of poems (titled simply as) Volume Two in 1949.  The unorthodox structure the poem shares with the rest of the entries in the collection, as well as the wide use of commas, mark Villa’s shift from the experimental-yet still familiar versification of the poetry in his first compilation Have Come, Am Here, to what could be seen as a Formalist experiment with the nature of the Word itself.  It is because of this nonstandard use of punctuation that it is called a ‘Comma Poem’, but due to its subject matter it is also classified under Villa’s ‘Divine Poems’.

Structurally the poem is composed of four nonstandard-length ‘stanzas’ and a final separate line serving as a ‘statement’ or ‘conclusion’ to the thought of the persona.  The enjambment used in the poem is such that, while ostensibly created from three sentences the reader is given an impression of a consciously-constructed piece, where each stanza begins with two bold and solid ‘lines’ followed by a ‘triangle’ crowned with a single-syllable word or a syllable, embodied with a ‘line’ that could range from two syllables to five syllables in length, and based with a line composed of three syllables, as evidenced below:

Dark,and,yet,most,Lit: in,me,an,

Eye,there,grew: springing,Vision,

Its,

Gold,and,

Its,wars. Then,

Stylistically the structure of each stanza recalls a border or demarcation, where the first two lines form a figurative ‘dam’, and the following three ‘lines’ might seem like a trickle that eventually widens into a torrent.  Though what the exactly it is the dam is holding back or dividing could be subject to a myriad of interpretations (and a topic much more suited to scholars more erudite than this essay’s author), given the poem’s inclusion in the ‘Divine Poems’ a philosophical or metaphysical reading might be more appropriate—sacrilegious musings finally given light, or a divinely-inspired epiphany could be seen as valid.

The poem is classified as a ‘Comma Poem’ due to its use of placement of a comma after every word, most of the time without the space as expected in Prose.  Paraphrasing Villa’s own words from the preface A Note on the Commas, the commas not only serve to regulate the poem’s verbal density and temporal movement, it also gives each word a fuller tonal value, allowing the more measured line movement.  It also has the (possibly intended) consequence of altering the meaning of the poem when the commas are removed; as a demonstration of this (the Penguin Classics edition Doveglion: Collected Poems) a version without the commas (indeed, only three are present) immediately follows for the sake of comparison.  Thus a truly diligent reader will have to read the poem unaltered, then with the punctuation ‘normalized’ to gain a better understanding of its theme and message.

The poem begins with the persona in the midst of reminiscing with “When,I,was,no,bigger,than,a,huge/Star,in,my,self,I,began,to,write.”  If one is familiar with the way stellar bodies work, then it becomes apparent that the speaker is already of at least middling age, as stars actually grow larger (at the same time less brighter) as they grow.  It could be compared to the point where a person is past their peak (physically or mentally) but not so much that their faculties become impaired with age, and at that point in one’s life where a person has enough life experience to be considered ‘wise’.  The fact that the first line cuts at ‘huge’ (instead of the word that follows, ‘star’) seems to underscore this temporal waypoint and milestone, where the persona’s musings seem to turn towards how it defines its current existence, its ‘self’ (note how it is not myself, but ‘my’ and ‘self’).  The persona then reveals exactly what it was internalizing: “My,/Theology,/Of,rose,and”.  There’s an interesting interplay of words and references here, as one would expected philosophy (when one assumes that the persona is talking about what defines how it lives) to be a better choice; and yet with the image of the rose (which, while associated with many pagan goddesses is more recently linked to the Virgin Mary) a connection with the Divine is made.

This connection with the Divine is strengthened with the subsequent stanza’s initial two slines, recalling the image of Blake’s work (and incidentally concluding the first ‘sentence’ of the poem): “Tiger: till,I,burned,with,their/Pure,and,Rage.  Then,was,I,Wrath”.  The Tiger, despite being a creature of ‘fearful symmetry’ is sometimes interpreted to symbolize God, but not as the benevolent creator of late Christian traditions but more of a primal deity, mercurial in temperament and fiery when roused.  Contrast this with the often peaceful Romantic imagery that is attached to the Rose, and you will find a conflicting milieu between these two forces, with each seemingly trying to gain ascendancy within the persona’s being (note how the second line cuts at the word Wrath).  This constant state of opposition between Binaries is highlighted in the lines that follow (Ful/And,most,/Gentle: most,) and partway into the first part of the third ‘stanza’ (Dark,and,yet,most,Lit: in,me,an).

From this roiling conflict within the persona, however, an equilibrium of sorts finally emerges, or perhaps a paradigm-shifting revelation judging from the lines in the third ‘stanza’: “Eye,there,grew:springing,Vision,/Its,/Gold,and,/Its,wars. Then,”. It is an epiphany, yes, but of what?  The lines that follow are shed more light on this: “I,knew,the,Lord,was,not,my,Creator!/–Not,He,the,Unbegotten—but,I,saw”.  It is a strange reversal indeed, as this reads like an outright rejection of the Divine, despite the comparisons done in the preceding stanzas.  After the internalization done in the previous stanzas, the conclusion is as baffling as it makes perfect sense: how indeed can someone of the right mind (and humor one would assume) accept a Divinity so different (see unbegotten, as God was not born like People are, but simply is) and despite purported benevolence has much violence done in its name (the Crusades in the middle ages, and the brutal subjugation of the native peoples of South America by the Spaniards spring to mind), as well as the ostentatious décor being flaunted by its practitioners (after seeing the amount of gold-plated icons in some of the large cathedrals, one would think it ironic that humility is supposed to be a virtue espoused by the Church).

With this virtual rejection of the Divine, the persona also reveals the other answer it has reached: that in the end, if one cannot count on God, then one will have to rely on one’s self.  “The,/Creator,/Was,I—and,” seems like the persona’s Prideful ramblings, but in light of its view on the Divine, is a remarkably Humanistic conclusion, that only Man can truly solve Man’s problems.  Although Humanity has more often than not exhibited the capacity to destroy and create problems, one must remember that Humanity can also create, and solve problems as well…And when one accepts (somehow) a reality where the Divine is distant and seemingly uncaring, then there really is no recourse but for Man (as a whole) to rely on its own judgment to see it through into the future, something succinctly encapsulated in the final line of the poem: “I,began,to,Die,and,I,began,to,Grow.”  Despite having shades of the Biblical Resurrection, it seems to posit that, only when a Person has discarded obsolete notions (‘to Die’) will there be ample opportunity to rely on one’s own strengths to improve his or herself.

Thus the poem as a whole could be seen as a person’s rediscovery of their Self, after years or decades of being dissolute, and affirmation of the capabilities inherent in all of us, breaking through the dam built of self-doubt and entrenched dogma espoused by the society the person had grown up in, thoughts that initially trickled through cracks in the firmament, but eventually becoming a broad torrent of ideas—where Humanity CAN stand on its own two legs, without an omnipresent Divinity watching over our shoulders.  It is a revelation that can be cathartic, to say the least.

REFERENCES:

Doveglion: Collected Poems, Jose Garcia Villa, edited by John Edwin Cohen and prefaced by Luis Francia.  Penguin Classics 2008.

The Anchored Angel, Selected Writings by Jose Garcia Villa, edited by Eileen Tabios and prefaced by Jessica Hagedorn.  Kaya 1999.

These past few months have been extremely exciting for the Noteworks team.  We’ve implemented a tools palette, experimented with new node types, added multi-select functionality, and built some crazy new networks.  Here’s a collection of some of our all time favorites:

Here’s an introduction to the basic functionality of the program:

Video game music (think sonic the hedgehog):

Hip-Hop:

An arpeggiated synth inspired by a bioluminescent octopus:

A rhythmic composition:

The state of Michigan:

It’s all starting to come together!  Now we’re thinking about the next set of questions…  Who’s our target demographic?  What functionality do we want to include in the initial release?  Very exciting!

-Rob