January 22nds

1/22/2002

Sent Secret Sphinx CD to Keith Hannaleck at muzikman.net

[This was demo album I did in 1998, right at the beginning of DIY music, not yet fully on the internet, although MP3.com did exist at that point. I think I had burned about 5 copies of the CD. It was never a formal release. I like some of the songs on it. It had possibilities if done as a production. I played and sang everything as an elaborate demo.]

1/22/2010           
  
Interesting: Twitter #hashtags. Excellent example of exformation: a set of meanings reduced to its smallest element. Whole communities are built around a codified tag. They’re called ‘twubs’.

[1/22/2025: Unfortunately, there is still no standardization of hashtags. They essentially drive algorithms, so they are not strictly informational as a book call number is].

1/22/2017

Lots of 60s pop songs had “easy” bass lines that were “basically” chord roots and/or arpeggios. They were easy to play from a fingering standpoint but were harmonically interesting as well. After SNL’s tribute to Obama, To Sir With Love is a good example. I think Carol Kaye played on it.

1/22/2024

As I’ve been going through some of my notes, I had been working on songs over the course of sometimes three months, so a song would have started in February and then finished in May. It’s probably best that we use rule drift because you don’t want to get too locked into rules. At some level being locked into rules as a stricture is probably a good idea if you’re trying to do something that’s minimal, for example, using only three colors, or in music using certain note values. When I was studying composition with jazz arranger Bill Russo in the 80s, one of his rules was that you couldn’t use dots or ties in your rhythms. It was frustratingly restrictive but at some level that’s probably a good idea because if you don’t have any rules, or if you’re always drifting through the rules. then you might as well not have any rules at all.

 *** 

A while back, I posed the hypothetical that in 2050 a filmmaker wanted to make a film about life in the 1970s. But at that time there might have been a global inflection point of some kind and all the servers were damaged or destroyed and data was lost across all backups, so you wouldn’t have much content to draw from and would have to confabulate it or simply use standard myths. The people that had solid memories of the 1970s would be quite old and their memories might be more fuzzy or inconsistent. What you’d be working off of would be very provisional. In 2150 some stuff might still be around and you’d think that it’s the truth but it isn’t. In 2250 people would be using what was established as truth in 2150, 2250 in 2350, and so on. It would be facts based on a foundation of endless edits. 

1/22/2047   

(Anthony Townes Diary) 

Art therapy. They had a few BCIs in the studio and data sets. I gave in and made some neuroart and showed it to the VR gallery. Walking through art as opposed to viewing it on walls has always been interesting but how is it different (or better) than works on canvas or paper in terms of color gamuts? What I thought was kind of interesting is that it’s also shadow-less. When we create no shadow, then we feel less human.

How was art therapy used to help Anthony overcome his brain injury?