Went to the Concertgebouw on saturday afternoon to hear the new composition … ci tace of the Dutch composer Eric Verbugt. I hadn’t been to the Concertgebouw since ages, I actually said to F. — who joined me — that it was probably 20 years ago since I’d been there, which is I think exaggerated, but still. I’m used to go to all kind of small places to hear new music — and now a full Concertgebouw. Quite a difference. Also for my ears: used to listen to electro-acoustic music in small places (no not loud), my own band in a rehearsal space (often too loud), or to mp3s coming from bad headphones or tiny computerloudspeakers, I now heard the music acoustic, from a distance, but with lots more coloring.

Well, it was certainly worth the price, since it turned out to be probably the longest programme of the year, almost 4 hours of music. 2 pieces for choir by Ligeti, Kindertotenlieder by Mahler, then 3/4 hours of Eric’s piece, followed by a new composition by Klaas de Vries and, to finish off, a bit of Stravinsky. The reviews today all touched upon the enormous lenght of this matinee. All works with an important role for text.

This was the programme: http://www.concertgebouw.nl/cgb/live/ConcertInfo.jsp?concert_id=13423.

I realized again why I much rather go to hear music performed live than buy a cd (euh, I mean download mp3s at Rapidshare): it is so great to hear how music is always ‘in the making’, that you can hear the process, the creation, the moulding of the clay, the material. even when it’s already composed — you hear that the composing was a ‘doing’.

Even when I would not have known Eric Verbugt personally, still his piece — for orchestra (of to be more precise 2 large ensembles), voice, oboe and choir — would’ve been my favorite. His way of writing totally comes from the classic tradition — a tradition of pushing the boundaries — it is a progression of that tradition (say, from Mahler via Ligeti and Nono to Lachenmann — well, here my knowledge is not thorough enough), with the result that, to my ears, it sounds as ‘beauty’ as beauty should be, in music, however ‘harsh’ it my sound sometimes. The writing for the ensembles is maybe stronger than the solo-pieces — though the oboe-solo, totally written-out, is very very virtuoso, with glissandi, multiphonics etc. It is virtuoso in a way one normally only gets to hear in free improv or free jazz (and that even made me think of how afro-american composers who came out of free jazz wrote for large orchestra).

To my 20th & 21st ears Mahler sounded, well, very nice, but a bit bland in comparision. (I know, that’s unfair to Mahler). The Ligeti pieces were breathtaking — but that was no surprise. Strawinsky was a first timer for me, believe it or not, I’d never heard any of his 12-tone pieces. The new composition by Klaas de Vries was nice but sounded a bit outdated due to the fairly simple, or even primitive use of tape. Would’ve been so much better if he’d processed the sound of the choir as well…

Btw, how I met Eric Verbugt is a nice story. Years ago he was googling his favorite writers — Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Arno Schmidt, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow; and every time my homepage was amongst the results. So he sent me an e-mail….

Eric Verbugt: http://www.ericverbugt.nl/.

14 – 16 november: another chance to follow the RFID-workshop at Mediamatic in Amsterdam: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-11944-en.html — it’s not booked-out yet & it’s a chance, as well, to hear the opinions of & about the projects of Timo Arnall and Julian Bleecker (http://research.techkwondo.com/); as well as Rob van Kranenburg (http://robvankranenburgs.wordpress.com/, and, yes, me.

Good reader online too: http://www.mediamatic.net/article-9691-en.html.

Btw at the public library in Amsterdam the RFID-system is installed and working & I must say, the first few times one borrows books now, it feels truly like magic. Scan your library card. Put books in two stacks on the lending table. Table ‘says’: “Are there indeed 8 books on the table?”. If the number is correct, push ‘Yes”. Books are lent to you. Takes less than 30, well, 20 seconds.

Jan van Eyck goes Second Life — led (& initiated) by Hinrich Sachs, on Friday 27th October, 5 euro entrance, 21.30 – 3.00. http://www.janvaneyck.nl/0_2_3_events_info/arc_06_galanightofthecannibals.html

Just now read Jodi Dean’s paper on blogging for Hyperpolis. Very good, makes quite a few points I would’ve liked to make. I hope it’s allright with her that I already ‘reblog’ & pick some quotes (btw, these quotes do not capture her main point really):

“To be sure, words beyond control are a noted feature of writing. Academics, journalists, and bookwriters have long been familiar with the ways our words take on a life of their own. Blogging accentuates this new life. It makes more people aware of the ways that their words are not theirs.”

“Bloggers imagine communities. In part, they mark this imagining with their link lists. Yet, these lists are as (if not more) changing, uncertain, and porous as any other border.”

“My experience with blogs is that they allow for slower reflection, the emergence of spaces of affinity through specialized writing, and the experience of a presentation and cultivation of a self. These three attributes of blogs—reflection, affinity, self-cultivation—necessarily traverse the old liberal division of the world into public and private spheres.”

“A critical theory of blogging cannot extend out of presumptions of journalism, punditry, and relations to mainstream media. Instead, it has to begin from the communicative practices specific to blogging, practices that install confrontations with difference, with otherness.”

From Jodi Dean, Blogging Difference, 2006, paper for Hyperpolis, see http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2006/10/blogging_differ.html.

With regard to the last point I cite here — basically Jodi Dean’s conclusion — I agree in principle that yes, a critical theory of blogging should start with looking at communicative practices that are specific to blogging. But there are various types of blogs: some are focussed on conversations, some (like that of Jodi Dean) are indeed confrontations with the other (but isn’t all talk, and all writing in a sense a confrontation with otherness?) And then there are also the blogs, (notably some early ones) that are not conversational at all, that do not even want the confrontation, or who prefer to not even look at comments, if there are any. (Hey, why do I write this here and not in the comments of Jodi Dean’s blog? That characterizes me…. — supposing that trackbacking does the job?). Two extremes: there’s the blog as ‘my turf’, ‘my voice’ — and there’s the blog as an invitation to chat. And on a lot of blogs there’s not much ‘otherness’ of ‘confrontation’ going on… I should say that Jodi Dean tackles this issue as well in her paper (and looks at how a blog is also ‘me talking’), yet she emphasises the confrontation with otherness where I’d put more emphasis on the ‘publish for no public’-aspect.

Monday at DNK, Amsterdam: No-Input-Night, with a.o. Lucio Capece — Toshimaru (Toshio) Nakamura: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/.

Yours truly still has to come up with a bit of publicity text … Though I like the mention that the no-input mixer is such a hip instrument that it doesn’t have a page on wikipedia.

Listening now to a duo of Capece and Yannis Kyriakides; free download here:
http://www.audiotong.net/audio/releases/tng3005-en.html
http://www.audiotong.net/audio/releases/tng1010-en.html.

“Tech refuseniks will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.”

Sez a study by PEW Internet Research: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/188/report_display.asp.

Also at PEW, the fairly extensive survey of (American) bloggers from last July — often referred to since then: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp. “A national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers”. What is ‘funny’ though is that quite a few of the respondents stated they use MySpace for blogging, and none WordPress, MoveableType &c.

And just in: a small report on the buzzword web2.0: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/189/report_display.asp.

The transliteracies-project, led by Alan Liu: http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/category/research-project/. Don’t think I linked it before, from here.

Just a quick ‘reminder’: the web has been around for 15 years now… since August 6th 1991.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5243862.stm.

And in a sense it is still so crude… Things that people 15 years ago thought would be easy to do in 15 years time, is still impossible or difficult. We have MySpace where we’d hoped (well I certainly did) to have good and usable authoring tools to deal with the richness of texts, images, music on the web. But what do we do, we copy them and throw them into separate folders into folders.

Look at Sophie, a software project of the Institute for Future of the Book to understand what I’m getting at: http://www.futureofthebook.org/sophie/SophieIntro.pdf. I’m afraid I have to say that I don’t think Sophie will succeed (I mean: become successful = widely used), but the complaints voiced in it are spot on.

(I try to use VoodooPad, I tried DevonThink, I am blogging, but still everything is a mess until I write / have to write a text for a magazine, or do a presentation or lecture). (Hence my interest in Knowledge Management ;-)

(Browsed around a bit on MySpace; it is easy to understand why it’s so successful: it’s all about identity-construction, music plays an important role in that for teenagers, apart from the ‘profile’, the ‘friends’-thing, there’s the possibility to have music playing &c. &c. But I find it equally easy to imagine that in 2 years time MySpace will be abandoned, when a new gulf of teenagers starts to use some other service. It will survive, of course, just like so many other profile-sites for chatting & dating survive. (I might be wrong — I’m mostly wrong when I predict something). But it won’t be deemed as important as it is now. I don’t think people generally feel a commitment to a service like this).

Wondering when (exactly) from all the aggregated clicking, tagging, writing &c. a ‘collective intelligence’ emerges, and wondering even more at what point we could speak of a community?

Look at the different, possible actions of a user — from low to high involvement:
– favoriting / bookmarking / clicking
– tagging
– commenting
– subscribing
– sharing
– networking
– writing
– refractoring (?) (criticizing, mirroring?)
– collaborating
– moderating
– leading
(copy-pasted from: http://ross.typepad.com/2006/04/power_law_of_pa.html.)

Blogging certainly comes with much less social pressures & social manners & sociality tout court, than for instance ‘hanging around’ on a forum taking part in a discussion. This is my ‘turf’. Every piece of software that facilitiates a link or a communiation comes with its own social script.

Hmm, I don’t seem to get beyond the truism tonight.

Arrived: Only Revolutions, Mark Z Danielewski’s new book. Looks fancy.

Comes with a fancy website, that I do not want to look at since I like to judge a book by the book — the paper tome –, not by the peripherals. (When buying a new book I try not to read the text on the cover/jacket, try not to read the reviews).

http://www.onlyrevolutions.com

Yet here I wonder if the reader is assumed to have some (what?) information before reading the book. The book, as an object, has no end, it starts on both sides, two stories that I guess will intertwine in the middle. You have to turn and keep turning the book. All “O’s are printed in green or brown (bit gimmicky?). There are two columns of text and neither is narrative in the classical sense (as House of Leaves was) — judging by the first 25 pages (Sam side). The text seems closer to poetry, even brings to mind FW — the (re)circulation-theme and well, whoever spells ‘alone’ als ‘allone’ as Danielewski does here, brings FW to mind.

I do not know of a text that ressembles this. Either Danielewski is a writer who points to a future for literature (as Joyce did), — and is ‘beyond’ Eggers, Safran Foer, even DFW — or it’s one big mistake.