Archive for the ‘Book Riffs’ Category
Why Information Must Be Free, Part One: The Factory Girl
I must admit, I like the idea of having information implanted in me for immediate access to it all. A personal database. Or a link to a complete information database in the Cloud. The Internet is a start to this, but it must be better organized. And the information must be free. Not owned by [...]
May 19, 2012
Tags: free access to information, information and the Cloud, information hoarding, information wants to be free, public library system Posted in: Book Riffs, New Media Writing and Technology Diary, Reading Diary 
No Comments
Backtracking
For the last couple of months I’ve been doing a lot of music playing, concert going, technology and politics magazine reading, Caltech lecture attending and science and art book reading. Oh, and did I mention spending countless hours learning how to transpose my web-based prototype book, Amy Beach and Me, to iBook format for the [...]
April 15, 2012
Tags: Amy Beach and Me, Caltech, digital publishing, enhanced books, ePub, Freeman Dyson, iBook, iBook Author, interactive literature, Jonah Lehrer, Kevin Kelly, Mac Dowell Colony, Michael Chabon, Robert Kurzban Posted in: Book Riffs, New Media Writing and Technology Diary, Reading Diary No Comments
Music as a force for community
Merlin Snider with Pretty Good Acquaintances Goin Down the Road, February 4, 2012 I will post an essay about this performance (and some related books and lectures) next week. I had to spend this week trying out ways to embed my own video – rather that videos from services like YouTube. I still have not [...]
February 12, 2012
Tags: Deborah Snider, Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad, Merlin Snider, social justice, social justice history, social justice music, The Great Depression, Tom Corbett, union history Posted in: Book Riffs, New Media Writing and Technology Diary, Reading Diary, Terry's Reading Travels No Comments
House Concerts
When I am not working at the art college where I am employed, or reading and riffing about books, I can usually be found playing music or listening to music. I want to mention a wonderful tradition to all of you, for I have learned many people are unaware of it: house concerts. Many have [...]
January 22, 2012
Tags: Barry Maguire, Bob Dylan, House Concert, John York, the Byrds, Tom Wait, troubadour Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary, Terry's Reading Travels No Comments
A New Year!
Hi – I’m rushing off to my teaching and web/interactive media department management job, but wanted to check in this morning to let you know that I am back. It would be better to announce my holidays before the holidays, I know. My apologies. This holiday I really needed to take some down time from [...]
January 18, 2012
Tags: new media author Terry Bailey, Ry Cooder, Salome Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary, Terry's Reading Travels No Comments
Brief Interlude to Learn Processing and some other things
I have been away again for a while. The main reason is that I am learning some new software and a new graphic/interactive programming language, Processing, in order to better facilitate this new media blog. It is becoming frustrating that I build my interactive animations in commercial software which has a tendency to out of [...]
November 6, 2011
Tags: interactive art programming, new media author Terry Bailey, Processing, programming language time out Posted in: Book Riffs, New Media Writing and Technology Diary No Comments
art + science Guest Riff 01
Amidst the attention given to the sciences as how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered "useless," will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer [...]
September 30, 2011
Tags: art + science, art and science, John Maeda, science and art, science and music Posted in: Book Riffs, New Media Writing and Technology Diary, Reading Diary No Comments
On the subject of “new” writers and wordiness: what author Annie Dillard Had to Say
Here is a riff I wrote in graduate school a few years ago – about author Annie Dillard‘s first book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In an afterward to the version of the book I read, Ms. Dillard herself talks about the tendency of mature writers to be more “conservative with word count.” (written in 2009) [...]
September 23, 2011
Tags: Annie Dillard, Antioch University, author maturity, John Updike, Jonathan Safran Foer, Marius von Senden, mature author, Maytrees, nature writing, new authors and words, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Pulitzer Prize, Space and Sight, wordiness Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary, Terry's Reading Travels No Comments
check out seasoned guitarist Bob Saxton (in the back)
(media illustration for previous post) Both great players, but if you concentrate on the actual notes being played . . . Bob Saxton by two heads – minimum. Wait for Bob’s (2) solos after Scotty plays his abundance of notes. The brilliance is in Bob’s choice of notes and phrases. It’s not how many notes [...]
September 16, 2011
Tags: Bob Saxton, Everything is Illuminated, fingerstyle guitar, Jonathan Safran Foer, Scotty Anderson, too many notes Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary No Comments
On being a new (youthful) artist, composer, musician or writer
I’ve just re-read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, and what came to mind this time was a reflection on what it is to be a young artist. I think it was author John Updike whom I saw quoted once remarking about the abundance of words in his first books. Writers seem to take much [...]
September 11, 2011
Tags: artist maturity, Bob Saxton, Eating Animals, Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, John Updike, Jonathan Safran Foer, Patsy Cline Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary No Comments
Veering off the Modular Mind and the Self for a Bit
I am going to leave the self and neuroscience and the mind for a bit. But I will return to it soon. I have finished the Kurzban book, Why Everyone (else) is a Hypocrite, and have had a pretty strong reaction to it. Although I find his hypothesis about the modularity of the mind fascinating, [...]
September 5, 2011
Tags: art and creativity, art and science, mind and neuroscience, modular mind, morality, Robert Kurzban, self, self and neuroscience, Virginia Woolf, Why Everyone Else is a Hypocrite Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary No Comments
More Mind Watching and “The Self” – (continued from the previous post)
Writer Virginia Woolf watched her own mind. She had plenty of time to do so as she was sent to bed by doctors who, in the 19th century, prescribed the reverse cure to depression that is more often ordered today: get up and out! be with friends! keep yourself occupied! Woolf, fortunately spent her [...]
July 23, 2011
Tags: art and science, automatic writing, Caltech, creativity and neuroscience, Jonah Lehrer, new media author Terry Bailey, new media book review, Pasadena, Proust was a Neuroscientist, Robert Kurzban, self, self and neuroscience, self as ensemble, stream of consciousness, the self, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf and self, walt whitman, Walt Whitman and self, Why everyone (else) is a hyocrite Posted in: Book Riffs, Reading Diary No Comments