From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V4 #173 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Wednesday, June 16 1999 Volume 04 : Number 173 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: beautiful quote [RThurF@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 14:45:00 EDT From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Alloy: beautiful quote A friend has sent me a copy of a UK music magazine from 1994 which has an interview with Thomas. I'll put pictures and quotes on my page from this article, in which new technology is discussed, and which also features a beautiful picture of Thomas actaully not wearing his hat (I love his hats, but always yearn to see him without it. I do love to see a gorgeous man au natural from time to time :) I want to forward this one quote from Thomas, which I completely identified with, based on my own frustrations trying to create visual art on a computer: "... after I started to get into programming for this environment* I came back to my Mac and started working on my album, and I realised I'm very much at the mercy of Opcode and Digidesign and a couple of others. "I lie in bed awake at night dreaming this music that's in big bold strokes - tempo changes, instrumental changes and so on. And then in the morning I get in and I go, 'right, where do I start... well... um... a kick drum... er... which one?... er, what tempo? Should it be looping? How many bars? Wait... I'd better save this quick... now, what folder did I want to save it in?' And at the end of all that, all you've got is a kick drum which doesn't like having its tempo changed." ( Robin laughs and spills coffee on herself :) The quote continues: "The computer forces me into its way of thinking about things, and because using the machine you can massage things until they sound good, before very long it starts to sound like a record, and and I go, 'great, that's done then', but it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the music that I lay awake in bed thinking about the night before." He goes to describe the type of virtual reality musical instrument he wishes to create, which is wonderful in his visual descriptions of his ideas. I'll include the whole thing on my page as soon as I am able. This little piece stood out for me though, as it shows so brilliantly the many frustrations an artist might feel when trying to work creatively in media designed by mathematicians and engineers (a thing I'm always gritting my own teeth about, he described an average artistic/computer ordeal EXACTLY!) In view of this, I'm so very honestly in awe of what Thomas has done to solve these many problems and bring about change in web based music through Beatnik. It strikes me once again that he is the perfect person to have done it since he knows so much about both sides of the story. This latest clash of technology and art is making for a very intensely heated crucible all around. I just wish some similar knight in shining armor would come along and do for visual art what Thomas has done for music on the web - I'm sad that it can't be me, since I'm still only learning the ins and outs of computer 'logic', as opposed to my 'logic'. Sometimes I just get thrown for a loop and I'm helpless to do anything besides stick my tongue out at the screen, or flip it the bird. Not helpful! Robin T *the Virtual String Quartet project which Dolby debuted at the Guggenheim in late Autumn 1993 ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V4 #173 ***************************