I am finally home after my epic journey full of exciting research experiences, and realizing this sorry site needs a lot of updating. How does one balance the doing and the telling? As you can see, I’m not so active on the self-promo side, but I’m committed to working on it! Stay tuned…
Looking for info on Vuzik? Check out what little I have so far under “Academic Work.”
I am having an amazing time at CHI 2011, a conference on Human Factors in Computing and human computer interaction. I never thought I would meet so many interesting music and art people at a computer science conference! I feel at home!
One approach I’m going to try in studying the relationships between music and architecture is examine what vocabulary and concepts the two have in common. I intend to flesh this piece out with definitions, but for now I’m going to list those words and ideas that are frequently tossed around in both fields. I realize this vocabulary might also appear in many other disciplines – which of course attests to the many links that exist between other seemingly dissimilar fields as well – but I do believe that the sheer number of common terms may be unique to this pairing and perhaps a few others. Stay tuned as I define these terms and conduct a bit of compare-contrast of their roles in each discipline.
For those wondering, this photograph is from Xenakis and Le Corbusier’s Polytopes, a multidisciplinary experiment for 2 expos in the 1970s, combining music, architecture, and engineering.
I truly apologize for my online twin being so neglectful, and now that my head is chock full of ponderings from a year of expression constipation, I fully intend to write here more often. I would like to start this year and decade off by a quick recapitulation of activities in my musical life in the past year. I can’t have you thinking all I do is write hockey themes, now can I?
The beginning of 2009 saw the completion and realization of a major composition project for me. As an “emerging composer”, I was asked by New Works Calgary to write a piece for Rubbing Stone Ensemble, to be performed at NWC’s 25th Anniversary Gala in February. It was a tremendous opportunity to work with innovative, high-calibre musicians, and it was technically my first commission to boot. I was beside myself!
Though hockey isn’t usually my cup of tea, (or bottle of beer, as my mother added), I ventured to put forth an entry to the Hockey Night in Canada Anthem Challenge. It is a rare opportunity for me to write short catchy themes and get instant feedback from a wide variety of listeners. The first one can be found here: Read the rest of this entry »
Imagine how much money and resources could be saved if homes took advantage of the free energy sources of sunlight, wind, and other natural phenomenon around them. Am I starting to sound eco-geeky? I recently watched a documentary entitled “Building with Awareness: The Construction of a Hybrid Home” that followed a home designer in the process of building his straw-bale adobe home in New Mexico, and thought it outlined some energy-smart and resourceful home design features that could be easy to incorporate in most homes. I should clarify that I do not support environmentalism and I believe that man, and his progress, is as natural and rightful as the other animals that inhabit Earth. But in our quest to gain greater and more intelligent control of our environment, and to live sustainably so as to flourish for a long time, I think it is logical to seek the most value for the least resources, energy and money. Here are a few home design ideas for energy efficiency and aesthetics that I gleaned from “Building with Awareness” which would be easy to incorporate in most homes but are not always used on today’s building scene.
As music, architecture and all other arts are created exclusively for the human being to perceive, process, and understand, it would make sense for the creator to keep in mind the nature of the human mind when designing his art. One essential limitation and strength of the human mind, that would strongly effect the tangible communicative power of a given piece of music in particular, is outlined in the concept “Crow Epistemology”. I first heard this term in connection with music composition in a lecture entitled “Ayn Rand: Music Hypothesis & Musical Integration” by David Berry, http://www.sdavidberry.com.
I have recently been reading an inspiring book entitled “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art” by Stephen Nachmanovitch, 1990, which has put into eloquent words many concepts that I have found true about the creative process in my various pursuits of music composition, playing oboe, writing, and making art. One key element that Nachmanovitch identifies as essential to creativity and art, and more profoundly, life, is play. He defines play in the chapter “Mind at Play” on page 43 as “the free spirit of exploration, doing and being for its own pure joy.” I think it would assist in communicating his point about play and creativity for me to reprint the first paragraph of this chapter, found on page 42:
I thought I would start with a topic a little more “close to home.” In January of 2006 I couldn’t resist purchasing the unique, striking geodesic dome home pictured above. Since I was young I was fascinated by geodesic domes, and when our real estate agent took us to this “golf ball home” as a joke, I felt like this was the chance I had been waiting for. After seeing box house after boring box house, this one was like a breath of fresh air. I was willing to overlook some of its dilapidation in favor of the open lofty space inside and the bright skylights.
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