Camera cross-sections at Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin

 I came across a great little article on Wired’s blog about an exhibit of camera equipment cross-sections at the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. Have you ever seen such beautiful examples of man-made geometric symmetry (particularly images 2, 3, and 4)? I’ve seen cross-sectional drawings before, but never anything like this. It’s enough to make me wish that I had studied optical physics!

These images remind me of a phrase that I thought of years ago in school. After hearing that painters who used pigments on wood panels in the Middle Ages, because of the mixing limitations of these pigments, had to create gradients of shade by painting the gradient in dot by dot and line by line, I coined a personal phrase “Patience of a panel painter”. These engineers and designers definitely have that level of patience.

Jacob Kirkegaard

If you’ve ever wondered what the internal vibrations of a bridge sound like when recorded, this man can enlighten you. Not only does Jacob Kirkegaard record bridges, he also has recorded the internal vibrations of architecture and played them back using the source structures as speakers. I became familiar with Mr. Kirkegaard’s work through the recording Four Rooms which was marketed by Touch records. Now I can see that he has made all sorts of interesting experimental recordings of all sorts of different spaces. Thankfully, he’s made plenty of samples of his work available on his site.

Here’s a description of his intent by the man himself… “Jacob Kirkegaard is an artist with an interest in the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time and hearing. His performances, audio/visual installations and compositions deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain inaccessible to sense perception. With the use of unorthodox recording tools such as accelerometers, hydrophones or home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard manages to capture and explore “secret sounds” - distortions, interferences, vibrations, ambiences - from within a variety of environments: volcanic earth, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, crystals, ice… and the human inner ear itself.”

The Rest Is Noise

I’ve only read about a fifth of the book so far, but The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by the music critic Alex Ross, strikes me as having some of the most visually exciting descriptions of music that I’ve come across. For the most part, the book is a wonderful slice-of-life history that spends time showing how the life events, relationships and personalities of some of the twentieth century’s better known composers shaped their music (and it does it with a sense of humor). But when the actual descriptions of music take place, the book can turn into something really fascinating.

In commenting about the opera “Wozzeck” by the composer Alban Berg:

“The music scrapes like a razor: one abrasive five-note string chord slides down to another, comprising ten notes in all. But the top three notes in the first chord spell D-minor; the second chord contains the notes of A-flat minor; the remaining four notes in the opening group form a diminished seventh. (Think of those paintings by Turner and Monet in which familiar forms are buried under layers of impasto paint.) The latent tonalities emerge more clearly in the following scene, where Wozzeck collects kindling with a comrade and hallucinates a world on fire.”

Granted Turner and Monet’s pieces are probably more peaceful than Berg’s piece, but what a great way of visualizing the music. Moments of tonal harmony buried in a morass of dissonance…

Technology even makes an appearance. Ross mentions how the early phonograph was used as a research tool by several composers like Percy Grainger and Bela Bartok.

On Grainger:

“Percy Grainger, the Australian-born maverick pianist-composer, was among the first to apply the phonograph’s lessons. In the summer of 1906, Grainger ventured out into small towns in the English countryside with an Edison Bell cylinder, charming the locals with his rugged, unorthodox personality. Back home, he played his recordings over and over, slowing down the playback to catch the details. He paid attention to the notes between the notes — the bending of the pitch, the coarsening of the timbre, the speeding up and slowing down of the pulse. He then tried to replicate that freedom in his own compositions.”

Wonderful stuff indeed…

Worth bookmarking is the companion site to the book. Ross has put together a blog that seems to cover all sorts of musical happenings. He also carries over the great sense of humor that is woven throughout the book.

Finally, in closing this post, I present to you the rest of the noise.

Johann Johannsson

Continuing the theme of Icelandic music from a while back, I recently came across the lovely work of Johann Johannsson by way of the wonders of Pandora. The work that I have of his is a bit like modern day chamber music that happens to include the odd bit of electronic ornament.

“Englabörn” is primarily strings (lovely strings at that). The album is sort of a distant kin to some of Arvo Pärt’s works for strings. However, the real curiosity of Johannsson’s works is “IBM 1401: A User’s Manual“. It consists of a recording of instructions that detail how to take care of the computer, very soft ambient-like tones that the machine could make under the right circumstances (see description), and strings.

What’s fascinating to me about this album is how Johannsson based the strings chord structure on the bell tone from the voice-over recording (I believe). Never have recorded instructions sounded so beautiful!

Apparently Mr. Johannsson also works with the group “Apparat Organ Quartet“. I haven’t had the opportunity to investigate any of their work yet, but judging by the groups that they are compared to on the site, they probably produce some pretty interesting work.

SIDE NOTE - I found the source recordings for “IBM 1401: A User’s Manual“. At the bottom of the page,  the file “1401 Music” links to an MP3 of the music that was performed at the decommissioning of Iceland’s only 1401. If you listen to the entire piece, you’ll here Johann Gunnarsson (Johann Johannsson’s father) speaking at the end (listen for the pronunciation of his name).

Stanley Kubrick on Theology

Some of the best quotes from Kubrick that I’ve ever read:

“2001 would give a little insight into my metaphysical interests…”

The quotes are excerpts from several interviews that Kubrick gave. Here’s the full interview from Playboy. There are a number of links in the footnotes that lead to some great sources for more reading material about Kubrick.

My favorite excerpt: “I find it very exciting to have a semi-logical belief that there’s a great deal to the universe we don’t understand, and that there is an intelligence of an incredible magnitude outside the Earth. … I find it a very exciting and satisfying hope.”