This is of course what should happen:

“The most ambitious solution would transform Google’s digital database into a truly public library. That, of course, would require an act of Congress, one that would make a decisive break with the American habit of determining public issues by private lawsuit.”

See Robert Darnton’s article in the NYRB: Google and the New Digital Future

I’m afraid it won’t happen. Never.

Think about his too, having it done in another way:

“… with none of the missing pages, botched images, faulty editions, omitted artwork, censoring, and misconceived cataloging that mar Google’s enterprise. Bibliographers—who appear to play little or no part in Google’s enterprise—would direct operations along with computer engineers. Librarians would cooperate with both in order to assure the preservation of the books, another weak point in GBS, because Google is not committed to maintaining its corpus, and digitized texts easily degrade or become inaccessible.”

Last monday there was a double bill featuring the young Australian bass-player Mike Majkowski. His playing is stunning and subtle. In both the solo performance and in the group with Laura Altman (clarinet), Yolando Uriz (piccolo) and Angel Faraldo (computer) he focusses on textures, mostly playing with the bow, though he is capable of producing a full bodied bass sound too. Also the group improvisations are focussed on creating refined textures of bass, clarinet and flutes, with the computersounds sometimes dominating a bit (though in the last piece we got a very nice low bass from the laptop which fitted perfectly). Concentrating, deep listening, textures. They announced that they finally had come up with a name for their group, but I’m afraid I forgot what it is (I do remember it was a combination of their initials). Good concert. I don’t know many bassplayers with such a command of extended and alternative techniques.

I missed a few DNK-concerts in the past weeks. I had either a job to finish on a monday night, or I was ill, or both. But yesterday I was there to witness a performance of The Pitch. As I know Koen Nutters personally, I was well aware of the existence of this group. They’ve been rehearsing for a while now, whenever all of them could be in Berlin. These weeks they’re on a tour through Europe, and arrived at what to me feels as ‘homebase’. In The Pitch Morten Olsen plays vibraphone, Koen Nutters double bass, Michael Thieke clarinet and finally there’s Boris Baltschun who plays a small 1950s pump organ. (Is it a pump organ? They list it as such).

On a French site I read the term ‘deep acoustic’ to describe their music, and I find that quite fitting. The Pitch play structured improvisations that lead to music which is simply beautiful. The music only changes slowly, it is a layering of pitches. A note from the organ, a bowed note from the bass, a bowed note and a soft repeated single note from the vibraphone (or maybe one motif), and a note from the clarinet: it weaves a ‘tapestry’ which indeed is sometimes remininiscent of Feldman (the one influence they mention). I liked it, especially the one real drone piece, in which the sounds really seemed to take off. (Well, that’s what happens during a good drone). In that piece it almost became impossible to distinghuish exactly from which instruments which sounds were coming, and the spatial aspect of the sound (sound creating the space) was foregrounded even more. There is not a lot of tension in this music – or no tension at all even (though it never is boring). It is simple, and simply beautiful. The intention seems to be to create a soundspace in which one (player and listener) can simple ‘be’ for a certain amount of time. Also as a listener I am quite into exploring such an area.

After the applause for the last piece, the musicians retired backstage. Half a minute of silence followed and almost nobody got up to get drinks. Three people began to applaud again, the rest of the audience followed. In the concentrated and restrained atmosphere of DNK, The Pitch played an encore.

Kimberley Spreeuwenberg (designer of Gonzo Circus, MA student at the University of Amsterdam) wrote an entry for Arie Altena on Wikipedia, and wrote a blogpost analyzing that process: http://kspreeuwenberg.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/a-wiki-noob/.

Ah, I’m here: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arie_Altena.

Me, with banjo, at Cyclic! 3 weeks ago. Photo taken by & copyright Vanessa Bellaar Spruijt. In the background photo’s from Brent Humphreys ‘Le Tour’.

See also http://www.flickr.com/photos/44077252@N02/4068501923/in/set-72157622718568952

… and red. I love it that the elm (I think it’s an elm) next to the window of my workroom stays green so long. It will be beautifully yellow in a week or two. The street has been covered already in the red leaves of another tree. And I just picked up a yellow leave that had landed on the windowsill. Autumn is a good time to work.

Putting data back, re-downloading software, disciplining applications and the general behavior of the computer. I have my MacBook back.

This is my history with Macintosh computers:
– Mac SE 30, 2nd hand, already heavily used when I bought it in 1991. Still works.
– Powerbook 100, 2n hand, heavily used when I bought it in 1994 (?), worked fine, until it got troubles with the power and the battery. Loved it.
– PowerMac 4400, ugly thing, but worked fine and still worked fine when I turned it on 2 years ago.
– Powerbook G3, by far my favorite computer, the first white one. Best for typing. Bought new. Many issues: new motherboard (twice?), broken harddisk, issues with the screen. Got tired of the issues and bought a new G4. Turned it on more than 2 years ago after taking the Airport-card out. Has been on ever since and used it a while for playing mp3s and ripping dvds. But I do not really dare to touch it.
– Powerbook G4 12”, bought new. Issues within 3 months (harddisk failure? motherboard, I don’t remember), worked fine after that. It fell (strap of my bag snapped while I was running), and hasn’t been working since then.
– Macbook 13”, black. Bought new. No issues until wednesday. I hate the glossy screen.

I have enough of these exercises in detachment (or whatever).

Another laptop-harddisk malfunction and 2 weeks of work probably lost.

Hours and hours of interview transcriptions, everything I’d been working on last week (just in one instance I’d been so clever to e-mail the finished draft to myself. In all the other cases I’d thougt to back-up, later this week).

Down with a cold now and I simply do not know where to find the time to make up for this.

PS It’s the second time that this happens while editing a book for Sonic Acts.

A few days ago the American composer Maryanne Amacher died. At Sonic Acts we had hoped to invite her to the 2010 Poetics of Space edition.

http://www.maryanneamacher.org/Amacher_Archive_Project/Amacher_Archive_Project.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryanne_Amacher