January 25, 2011
‘Ambient 1: Music for Airports‘ is an ambient album by Brian Eno released in 1978. Of four albums released on Eno’s own, then new, Ambient label, ‘Music for Airports’ was the first to carry explicitly the name ‘ambient’ – a term which he coined to differentiate his minimalistic approach to the album’s material and ‘the products of the various purveyors of canned music.’ Notice of similarly quiet, unobtrusive music had been given on his albums such as ‘Evening Star,’ ‘Discreet Music,’ ‘Music for Films,’ and Harold Budd’s ‘The Pavilion of Dreams’ (which Eno produced), but in this album it was given precedence as a fully developed concept.
The music was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent to defuse the tense, anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal. Eno conceived this idea while being stuck at Cologne Bonn Airport in Germany in the mid 70s. He had to spend several hours there and was extremely annoyed by the uninspired sound atmosphere. It was installed at the Marine Air Terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
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January 24, 2011
A keytar is a relatively lightweight keyboard that is supported by a strap around the neck and shoulders, similar to the way a guitar is supported by a strap. Keytars allow players a greater range of movement compared to conventional keyboards, which are placed on stands. The instrument has a musical keyboard for triggering musical notes and sounds. Controls for pitch bends, vibrato, portamento, and sustain are placed on the instrument’s ‘neck.’ Keytars may either contain their own synthesizers, or simply be controllers, triggering notes on another MIDI capable synthesizer.
In early 1970s, Edgar Winter often performed with keyboards slung around his neck, but they were not technically keytars because they had no ‘neck.’ One of the earliest keytars commercially released and widely known was be the Moog Liberation in 1980. Notable manufacturers of keytar models have included Moog, Roland, Yamaha, Korg and Casio. As of 2010, the Roland AX-Synth and the Roland Lucina are the only mass-manufactured keytars on the market, but with the Synthpop revival of the late 2000s, keytars are enjoying a mild resurgence.
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January 24, 2011
Electro (short for either electro-funk or electro-boogie) is a genre of electronic music directly influenced by the use of funk samples, Roland TR-808 synthesizers, and Moog keytars. Records in the genre typically feature drum machines and heavy electronic sounding deprived of vocals in general, although if present, they are delivered in a deadpan manner, often through an electronic distortion such as vocoding.
This is the main distinction of electro from previously prominent late-1970s genres such as disco and boogie, in which electronic sound was only part of the instrumentation rather than basis of the whole song. In 1982, Bronx based producer Afrika Bambaataa released the seminal track ‘Planet Rock,’ which contained elements of Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express and ‘Numbers’ (from Kraftwerk’s Computer World album). ‘Planet Rock’ is widely regarded as a turning point in the electro genre.
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January 21, 2011
A fractal [frak-tl] is any equation or pattern, that when seen as an image, produces a picture, which can be zoomed into infinity and will still produce the same picture. The word fractal was made by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 from the Latin word fractus, which means ‘broken’ or ‘fractured.’ Some fractals exist only for artistic reasons, but others are very useful. Fractals are very efficient shapes for radio antennas and are used in computer chips to efficiently connect all the components.
A simple example is a tree that branches infinitely into smaller branches, and those branches into smaller branches and so on. Fractals are not only beautiful, but also have many practical applications. There are many types of fractals, made in a large variety of ways. There are also many natural examples of fractals in nature including trees, snowflakes, some vegetables and coastlines.
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January 21, 2011
Pantone is a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, though sometimes in the manufacture of colored paint, fabric, and plastics. The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to ‘color match’ specific colors when a design enters production stage—regardless of the equipment used to produce the color.
The company provides Pantone Guides, which consist of a large number of small (approximately 6×2 inches or 15×5 cm) thin cardboard sheets, printed on one side with a series of related color swatches and then bound into a small ‘fan deck.’ Pantone recommends that PMS Color Guides be purchased annually as their inks become more yellow over time. Color variance also occurs within editions based on the paper stock used (coated, matte or uncoated), while interedition color variance occurs when there are changes to the specific paper stock used.
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January 21, 2011
A disco ball is a decorative object that reflects light directed at it in many directions, producing a complex display. Its surface consists of hundreds or thousands of mirrored facets, nearly all of approximately the same shape and size. Usually it is suspended from a device that causes it to rotate steadily on a vertical axis, and illuminated by spotlights. What are now sometimes called ‘disco balls’ were first widely used in nightclubs in the 1920s. They were already in existence and use before then, appearing in a description of a ballroom dance in 1897 in Boston. An early example can be seen in the nightclub sequence of ‘Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt,’ a German silent film from 1927.
Pink Floyd used a glitter ball on their 1987 and 1994 world tours. The glitter ball used on the 1987 tour was somewhat larger than normal but nowhere near as large as the glitter ball used on the 1994 tour. This particular glitter ball is one of the largest in the world at 16 feet in diameter. Madonna used a 2-ton glitter ball that was embellished by 2 million dollars’ worth of Swarovski crystals for her Confessions Tour in 2006. The world’s largest disco ball can be found on the promenade in Blackpool, United Kingdom; it weighs 4.5 tons and is 20 feet in diameter. With the emergence of infrared networks, glitter balls have found a new application, as a method of dispersing the infrared signals.
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January 21, 2011
The Technics SL-1200 are a series of turntables manufactured since October 1972 by Matsushita under the brand name of Technics. Originally released as a high fidelity consumer record player, it quickly became adopted among radio and club disc jockeys. Since its release in 1978, SL-1200MK2 and its successors have been the most common turntable for DJing and scratching.
The MK2 presented several improvements, including to the motor and casing. Since 1972, more than 3 million units have been sold. It is widely regarded as one of the most durable and reliable turntables ever produced. Many of the models manufactured in the 1970s are still in heavy use. In the autumn of 2010, Panasonic announced that the series was to be discontinued due to marketplace conditions.
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January 21, 2011
David Elsewhere (b. 1979) is an illusionary dancer from Santa Ana, California. He became known through a viral video of his participation in the 2001 edition of the Korean American talent show ‘Kollaboration,’ dancing to Kraftwerk’s song ‘Expo 2000.’ The clip showcased Bernal’s characteristic take on the contemporary dance styles of popping and abstract waving. Performances of these dances were rare at the time, and the clip became very popular when it circulated on the internet.
Bernal was later hired to participate in advertisements for Heineken (dancing to ‘Cobrastyle’ by the Teddybears), Volkswagen, Apple iPod, 7-Eleven Slurpee, Pepsi, Puma, and Doritos. He also made a cameo appearance in the movie ‘You Got Served.’ Computer graphics technology were used in several of the commercials Bernal took part in, superimposing others’ faces (old, young, male, female) onto his body so that they appeared to dance like him. In one of his most popular ads, a commercial for the Volkswagen Golf GTI created in January of 2005, Gene Kelly’s head was superimposed onto Bernal’s body in a re-enactment of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ remixed by Manchester group Mint Royale.
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January 21, 2011
The Book of Mormon is a musical written by South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Avenue Q writer, Robert Lopez. The show tells the story of two young Mormon missionaries sent off to spread their faith in a dangerous part of Uganda. Scott Rudin and Anne Garafino are listed as the producers. The show debuted on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in 2011.
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January 20, 2011
McIntosh Laboratory is a manufacturer of high-end audio equipment based in Binghamton, New York. Founded in 1949 by Frank McIntosh, the company is noted for its extremely high build quality and excellent technical specifications. The ‘classic’ vacuum tube components of the 1960s include the MC275 power amplifier, the C22 preamplifier, and the MR67 tuner. Later McIntosh solid state power amps are known for their distinctive blue colored meters. In 1946, McIntosh, a design consultant for broadcast and TV stations, hired Gordon Gow to help him design a high power, low distortion amplifier needed for his clients. This amplifier would become the 50W-1. It included McIntosh’s first patented circuit, the Unity Coupled Circuit, still used by current products.
McIntosh amplifiers were used at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969, and the Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound’ reputedly utilized forty-eight 300-watt per channel McIntosh model MC 2300 solid state amplifiers for a total of 28,800 watts of continuous power. The company was purchased by Japanese car audio maker Clarion in 1990. In a speech shortly after the purchase, Clarion president Yutaka Oyamada told McIntosh employees, ‘…we like McIntosh as it is, and we have no intention of changing what has made it so successful.’ In 2003, McIntosh was sold by Clarion to D&M Holdings, also of Japan.
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January 20, 2011
Cthulhu [kuh-thool-hoo] is a fictional cosmic entity created by horror author H. P. Lovecraft in 1926. Cthulhu is the high priest to the Great Old Ones and one of the central figures of the Lovecraft Mythos. It is often cited for the extreme descriptions given of its hideous appearance, its gargantuan size, and the abject terror that it evokes. Cthulhu is depicted as having a worldwide doomsday cult centered in Arabia, with followers in regions as far-flung as Greenland and Louisiana.
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January 20, 2011
Mowgli syndrome is a term used by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty in her 1995 book ‘Other Peoples’ Myths: The Cave of Echoes’ to describe mythological figures who succeed in bridging the animal and human worlds to become one with nature, a human animal, only to become trapped between the two worlds, not completely animal yet not entirely human.
It is also a rarely-used descriptive term for so-called feral children. The term originates from the character Mowgli, a fictional feral child from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book.’
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