Riffing on This Is Your Brain On Music, Part 1
Went to hear my favorite songwriter, Merlin Snider, the other night at Coffee Gallery Backstage in Pasadena. During the performance he mentioned that he was reading a great book, This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. I was in the middle of that book myself! Guess that is a clue as to why I am a fan of Merlin’s music – “synchronicity” David Peat would call it (yes, I will get to that book, too, at some point). You might want to check this Music and Your Brain book out, and I will write about it next week. My college students are walking around in a daze since I shared with them one early disclosure Levitin makes: there is no color in the world. Or sound. It is a black and white and silent world. Color and sound don’t happen until your brain registers and decodes molecular vibration waves induced by light striking an object in the case of color, and of something striking or plucking a musical instrument or object in the case of sound. So, yes, to answer the generations old question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – we can now definitively answer what we thought was just a riddle. “No!” There is no sound unless there is a brain there to turn a vibration into a sound! Sound is all in your head. Color, too. Lately I drive around my world mesmerized by the thought that it is all really black and white (well, actually, grayscale). I bet Merlin could write a cool song about that. Back with you soon.
August 15, 2010
Tags: CA, Coffee Gallery Backstage, Daniel Leviten, David Peat, Merlin Snider, music and brain, Pasadena, synchronicity, This Is Your Brain On Music Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary 
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Part 2: The iPAD iPhone Flash Adobe Apple Controversy – this new media author’s take: A Dangerous Retro Blacktop Paved Hole
Steve Jobs is claiming his iPhone and iPad to be the latest in tech, while intimating that Adobe’s interactive content creator, Flash, is something from the past to be discarded by any hip tech person. The opposite is true. The iPhone and iPad are not strong or fast enough to keep up with Flash. Further, content created by Flash would inhibit Job’s ability to control all iPad and iPhone content, including iBooks. And Jobs further made his Flash lock-out move, clearly, to break Flash’s stronghold on web video (Flash is the number 1 video streamer and has been for some time – because it works!) As Lily Tomlin’s comic character, Emily Ann, used to say: “And that’s the truth!”
A colleague of mine bought an iPad and expressed surprise that I did not already have one. “It does not run Flash,” I explained. My book cannot be read on it because my book is full of Flash animations and interactive elements like narration tracks. My colleague insisted that I was wrong. He thought the iPad ran Flash. Check again, I suggested. He did, and learned there is no Flash content on his iPad. That surprised him. Good for Jobs that so many lay people bought these devices not knowing what they were missing. Read the rest of this post »
July 5, 2010
Tags: Adobe, controversy, ebooks, Flash, interactive literature, interactive media history, Internet, Internet History, iPad, iPhone, Steve Jobs, WEB, web content, WEB history Posted in: New Media Writing and Technology Diary, Reading Diary No Comments
Part 1: The iPAD iPhone Flash Adobe Apple Controversy – this new media author’s take: A Dangerous Retro Blacktop Paved Hole
Apple Adobe Rift
Silly me. I had it all wrong. Since the early 1980s, Steve Jobs and Apple have sold their wares under the moniker of “User Friendly,” and I thought they were referring to the fact that everyman (and woman) could make use of a computer to create stuff and to accomplish just about any task – without being a programmer. Jobs and I either meant different things entirely back then by the term “user friendly,” or else Jobs has quietly redefined the term while my back was turned. Read the rest of this post »
May 24, 2010
Tags: Adobe, Apple, controversy, democratized creativity, ebook, Flash, iPad, iPhone, new media content, Steve Jobs, user friendly Posted in: New Media Writing and Technology Diary No Comments
Riffing on Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, Part 2: Does a Hotdog Have Meat in It?
previously: The next day Tess announced that she was a vegetarian.
Which brings me to our trip to the San Francisco Exploratorium and the day I almost lied to her. Tess and I had wandered through half of the science exhibits and demonstrations. She was fascinated, which made me happy as I had dreamed of turning my beloved niece on to science – one of my passions. It was about two in the afternoon, and we had not eaten lunch. We wandered into the small food bar there, and I discovered that the only foods available were little iceberg lettuce salads and hotdogs.
Knowing that a scoop of lettuce covered with a packet of dressing would not be enough to fill either of us, I ventured to ask Tess, “Would you like a hotdog for lunch?”
“Does a hotdog have meat in it?”
Nailed.
“Well . . . .”
April 20, 2010
Tags: book review, Eating Animals, Exploratorium, Jonathan Safran Foer, San Francisco, vegetarian Posted in: Book Riffs No Comments
Riffing on Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, Part 1: Little Baby Lamb
Jonathan Safran Foer at Vromans in Pasadena
At his Vroman’s Bookstore reading, Jonathan Safran Foer posited that children do not come by the eating of meat naturally. That naturally they would have an aversion to it. That we adults must lead children to meat, and ingrain the habit in them – by serving as role model meat eaters, and by serving up animal body parts as we acculturate the little darlings in the art of eating. In the case of my niece Tess at least, Foer was right on target. Her childhood instinct was to avoid eating anything she might encounter at the zoo.
Foer’s theory resonated with me because I remembered Tess’ childhood decision to follow the vegetarian path. While Foer debated whether or not he should raise his boy child as a vegetarian (the question behind his decision to research and write Eating Animals), my sister, brother-in-law and I were chided and derided by this precocious, inde girl child if we even looked in the direction of a pork tenderloin.
April 13, 2010
Tags: Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer, vegetarian, Vroman's Posted in: Book Riffs No Comments
New Media Literature as demonstrated by Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck
Hamlet on the Holodeck front cover
Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
Murray gives a thought-provoking analysis of the history, present and future of cyberdrama. By her own admission, the present and future are difficult to describe or predict given the rapid pace of change in the computer/cyber world. It is true enough that much of her book, penned in 1996 and updated in 2000, seems already quite out of date. The history she provides, however, will always make this an important reference for new media writers, historians and theorists.
For me, what is missing in Murray’s analysis is a look at the future of nonfiction cyber (new media, multimedia, interactive media, electronic literature) writing. Hamlet on the Holodeck itself, being a stationary, word-only, book-based piece of writing, misses the opportunity to stay current, to evolve, that a cyberbook would have. Murray also avoids analysis of the world of writing and reading that the computer opens to the nonfiction world, remaining focused only on the world of fiction, narrative storytelling.
One point of contention for me in Murray’s theories is her focus on the subject of immersion. For Murray, coming from a gaming background at MIT where she teaches and researches, immersive experiences appear to be the positive and mandatory goal of cyber narrative. She is not alone in this thinking. Most of the books written on the subject of new media narrative that I encounter today focus on writing for gaming. As I personally am an advocate of postmodern forms of writing that engage a reader/participant in the act of reading/viewing by reminding them of their present reality, of the constructions of the author, and through avoidance of totally immersive experiences, it was often difficult for me to “buy into” many of Murray’s theories or projected goals of cyber narrative. Read the rest of this post »
January 29, 2010
Tags: electronic literature, Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray, MIT Press, Narrative for Gaming, new media as performance, new media as story, new media literature, New Media Narrative Posted in: Book Riffs No Comments
My Electronic Book, Amy Beach and Me, Launches!
Home Page of Amy Beach and Me by Terry Bailey
I have launched my new web-based electronic book, Amy Beach and Me, at amybeachandme.com. I hope you will check it out and leave your thoughts at its accompanying blog (amybeachandme.com/blog – see button top right of the book, too). The book is a biography of the first noted woman composer in the United States, and a memoir.
My plan here is to talk about electronic literature for a while now, and to take a look at some books on the subject. Not to worry, I will get back to other books I have mentioned recently (like Foer’s Eating Animals), but think it might be of interest to all of us to explore the future of literature in terms of electronic writing here at riffing on books – since that is what I do! For the duration of my MFA writing studies, I not only wrote electronic literature, new media, but did extensive study on the topic as well, and I look forward to sharing that information here at my riffing on books site.
January 17, 2010
Tags: Amy Beach, Amy Beach and Me, electronic literature, memoir, new media literature, woman composer, women composers Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary No Comments
I’m Back
Graduation with MFA from Antioch and Holidays - 2009-2010
Away a little longer than anticipated, but, hey, how many months does one celebrate the holidays and graduate with an MFA? I could say I definitely earned a month long brief vacation! For the last two years I have worked 3 12-hour days per week in order to conjure up the four days I needed to complete a Master of Fine Arts degree in New Media Writing (officially in creative nonfiction) at Antioch University. I must say these two years have been the most demanding and most appreciated of my life. What writer doesn’t dream of four uninterrupted days in a row to write? And how few have that ideal creative space is a sad statement of our society’s valuing of the Arts. I will talk about my MFA writing experience in upcoming posts. And I will share the fruits of my labor very soon: I am primarily talking about an electronic book I have written, which I will share as soon as I get the blog for it up and running. My book riffs (i.e. the inspiration for this blog) began in that program as well. So, what did I do for my month off? Well I studied with some awesome writers for my last MFA residency, I was wowed by the final readings of all the students in my graduating cohort at Antioch, I had a successful (and controversial due to the feminist nature of it, which surprises the heck out of me in 2010, and I will write more about that to be sure) final reading, I wore a cap and gown and proudly participated in that ritual we call graduation, I partied with my cohort (go Sages!), I holidayed with my friends, I watched our National Parade, I played some music, I read (of course) and I slept a lot! Oh, and did I mention going to hear Jonathan Safran Foer read from his new Eating Animals as the kick-off to graduating – : ) ?
January 10, 2010
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A Brief Vacation
Well, it is actually no vacation. But I didn’t want my readers to think I had abandoned them. I am in the last two weeks of my MFA program, and all my time is being consumed by that right now. I sent my thesis to the printer yesterday, and now I have to finish planning my graduate lecture and a few other things. My graduation date is December 20th!!!!! Then I will be back here to continue riffing more regularly, and to introduce you to my new electronic book, too! I am reading several books for my final graduate residency. A wonderful one you might pick up yourself, and I will riff about it when I get back: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker. I am going to add it to my list of novels and creative nonfiction books that are really poetry. Beautiful language!
December 2, 2009
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Part III: Two-Bit Words, Academics v Guerrilla Artists and Digitally Influenced Print Books
For my next look at academic writing contrasted with “two-bit” vocabulary of writers of nonfiction, I explored the text of Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary by new media theorist N. Katherine Hayles. This was a painful reading experience, and dissecting it as I read to understand that pain was even more difficult.
I came to this book with excitement. The text, with accompanying CD and website promised to be a source of writing inspiration for me, and a great resource for helping me move electronic literature into the classroom. Published in 2008, I had hopes that it would address wonderful contemporary examples of new media literature; formerly most of the texts I had found on the subject, and examples of new media literature, were terribly dated, having been written in the mid 1990s when there was somewhat of a boom in the U.S. around new media literature but before technology allowed for much in the way of speed and multimedia elements like animated graphics, sound, music and digital type.
Sadly, however, this book began and ended with inaccessible passages like the following:
The subjectivity performed and evoked by this text differs from traditional print novels in subverting, in a wide variety of ways, the authorial voice associated with an interiority arising from the relation between sound and mark, voice and presence (Hayles 186).
In case anyone should think that I just pulled an overly academic sentence that would reflect my essay bias, let me share the sentence that follows the one above.
Overwhelmed by the cacophony of competing and cooperating voices, the authority of voice is deconstructed and the interiority it authorized is subverted into echoes testifying to the absences at the center (Hayles 186).
At least author Hayles managed to nail a triplet alliteration in that first phrase. Read the rest of this post »
November 9, 2009
Tags: electronic literature, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, House of Leaves, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mark Z. Danielewski, N. Katheriane Hayles, People of Paper, Salvador Plascencia Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary No Comments
Coming: Foer and animals. But first: last installment on two-bit words
riff coming soon!
Well, the synchronicity scientists would nod an “I told you so” to the fact that I went to buy a WEB magazine at Vroman’s in Pasadena on Saturday and learned that Jonathan Safran Foer would be there the next day to present his new book, Eating Animals. This after I had recently written my first book blog about this author as I sat at the Vroman’s Cafe a few weeks earlier (see Aug. 7 and 14). Of course, I will riff on his visit, and the book, and on eating animals. But first to my last installment on the two bit word essay I have been building here.
November 9, 2009
Tags: Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer, Pasadena, Vroman's Posted in: Reading Diary No Comments
Part II: Hocketing and Translating Academic Writing to Accessible English
above: an example of a modern version of hocketing in an excerpt from Meredith Monk’s “Hocket” from “Facing North” (1990), performed by Emily Eagen and Peter Sciscioli, members of The M6, at Symphony Space in New York, March 2008.
So how does academic writing differ from an author’s use of two-bit words?
I want to contrast the writing of Michael Chabon’s with an essay by Michelle Kisliuk in Music and Gender, a collection of essays by musicologists studying the participation of women in the music of various cultures.
In the varied and impressive writings of Colin Turnbull (1961, 1965, 1978, 1981, 1983), Alan Lomax (1976), Robert Rarris Thompson (1989), and Simha Arom (1978, 1991), the yodeling, hocketing sound of pygmy singing has served as an icon of social and musical utopia and an image of egalitarianism. 1 (Kisliuk 25).
[ footnote 1: Kisliuk notes that she is referencing an essay, “Can There be a Feminist Ethnography?” from the book, Women and Performance by Lila Abu Lughod]
I read this book of music and gender essays while researching my own book about composer Amy Beach. The sample sentence I provide is typical of that particular essay, and the first example I would cite as to why academic writing is inaccessible to most readers. Often academic writers fill their sentences with so many dates and references in parenthesis that a reader must really strain to find the meat. It is like having to trip over stones thrown in the path of reader comprehension.
October 11, 2009
Tags: Abu-Lughod, Emily Eagen, Facing North, hocketing, M6, Meredith Monk, Michael Chabon, Michelle Kisliuk, Music and Gender, musicology, Peter Sciscioli, Pygmy, Simha Arom, Symphony Space, yodel Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary No Comments