April 26, 2012
Don Buchla (b. 1937) is a pioneer in the field of sound synthesizers, releasing his first units months after Robert Moog’s first synthesizers. Buchla formed his electronic music equipment company, Buchla and Associates, in 1962 in Berkeley, California. Buchla was commissioned by avant garde music composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender, both of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (which studies the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice), to create an electronic instrument for live performance. Under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation Buchla completed his first modular synthesizer in 1963. The result was the Buchla Series 100, which he began selling in 1966. Buchla’s synthesizers experimented in control interfaces, such as touch-sensitive plates. In 1969 the Series 100 was sold to CBS, who soon after dropped the line, not seeing the synthesizer market as a profitable area.
In 1970 the Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box was released and was manufactured until 1985. Buchla created the Buchla Series 500, the first digitally controlled analog synthesizer, in 1971. Shortly after, the Buchla Series 300 was released, which combined the Series 200 with microprocessors. The Music Easel, a small, portable, all-in-one synthesizer was released in 1972. The Buchla 400 was released in 1982, which featured a video display. In 1987 the fully MIDI enabled Buchla 700 was released. Beginning in the 1990s, Buchla began designing alternative MIDI controllers, such as the Thunder, Lightning, and Marimba Lumina. With the recent resurgence of interest in analog synthesizers Buchla has released a revamped 200 series called the 200e.
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April 26, 2012
Suzanne Ciani [cha-nee] (b. 1946) is an Italian American pianist and music composer who found early success with innovative electronic music. She received classical music training at Wellesley College and obtained her M.A. in music composition in 1970 at University of California, Berkeley where she met and was influenced by the synthesizer designer, Don Buchla. She studied computer generated music with John Chowning and Max Mathews at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Labs in the early 1970s.
In 1974 she formed her own company, Ciani/Musica, and, using a Buchla Analog Modular Synthesizer, composed scores for television commercials for corporations such as Coca-Cola, Merrill Lynch, AT&T, and General Electric. Besides music, her specialty was reproducing sound effects on the synthesizer that recording engineers had found difficult to record properly; the sound of a bottle of Coca-Cola being opened and poured was one of Ciani’s most widely recognized works, and was used in a series of radio and television commercials in the late 1970s.
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April 18, 2012
Quentin Tarantino (b. 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence.
His films include ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992), ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994), ‘Jackie Brown’ (1997), ‘Kill Bill’ (2003, 2004), ‘Death Proof’ (2007), and ‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009). His movies are generally characterized by stylistic influences from grindhouse, kung fu, and spaghetti western films. Tarantino also frequently collaborates with his friend and fellow filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.
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April 18, 2012
Dave Duerson (1960 – 2011) played in the NFL from 1983–1993. Duerson played football, basketball, and baseball in high school. He was given an opportunity to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers as a pitcher and outfielder in 1979, but declined, choosing to play football at Notre Dame from 1979 to 1982. He graduated with honors, with a BA in Economics. Duerson was selected to four consecutive Pro Bowls from 1986 to 1989 in his career, and won two championship rings, playing safety for the Bears (Super Bowl XX), and the Giants (Super Bowl XXV). He purchased the majority interest in Fair Oaks Farms (formerly Brooks Sausage Company) in 1995. Duerson grew the company from $24M revenue to over $63.5M in six years.
Duerson was found dead at his Florida home in the winter of 2011. The Miami-Dade County medical examiner reported that Duerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He sent a text message to his family saying he wanted his brain to be used for research at the Boston University School of Medicine, which is conducting research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) caused by playing pro football. Researcher neurologists at Boston University confirmed that he suffered from a neurodegenerative disease linked to concussions.
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April 17, 2012
Eric Klinenberg is an American sociologist and a scholar of urban studies, culture, and media. He is best known for his contributions as a public sociologist. He is currently Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Media, Culture, and Communications at New York University, as well as the editor of the journal ‘Public Culture.’ Klinenberg’s first book, ‘Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago,’ was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2002.
It was praised as ‘trenchant, persuasive tale of slow murder by public policy.’ Klinenberg’s second book, ‘Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media,’ was called ‘a must-read for those who wonder what happened to good radio, accurate reporting and autonomous public interest.’ Since its publication, he has testified before the FCC and briefed Congress on his findings. His latest book, ‘Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone,’ was published in 2012.
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April 17, 2012
Katie Piper (b. 1983) is a former model and television presenter from the UK. Piper had hoped to have a full-time career in the media, but in 2008 sulfuric acid was thrown in her face. The attack, which blinded Piper in one eye, was arranged by Piper’s ex-boyfriend, Daniel Lynch, and carried out by an accomplice, Stefan Sylvestre. Lynch and Sylvestre were arrested and are serving life sentences in prison for their crimes.
Surgeons removed all the skin from her face before rebuilding it with a skin substitute and then a skin graft. The procedure was the first of its kind to be completed in a single operation. In 2009, Piper chose to give up her anonymity and attempt to increase awareness about burn victims. The Channel 4 documentary ‘Katie: My Beautiful Face’ was first aired that autumn.
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April 17, 2012
Lorin Ashton, better known by the stage name Bassnectar, is a freeform electronic music and dubstep artist, DJ, and producer based in San Francisco. He is best known for his live performances, light shows, and community engagement. Bassnectar was originally influenced by heavy metal and grunge groups such as Metallica, Megadeth, and Nirvana, bringing these influences with him into his own musical career. He’s also mentioned that early IDM and Ambient artists like Orbital also played a major influence.
He has been creating genre-bending music since the 1990s, using a variety of programs such as Vision/OpCode, Reason, and Ableton Live. Bassnectar describes his music as amorphous and ever-changing, which is reflected in the distinct sounds and personalities of his numerous albums, EPs, and podcasts. He has collaborated with and remixed a host of artists and producers, including Lupe Fiasco, Ellie Goulding, Gogol Bordello, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Datsik, ill.Gates, and Jantsen, among others.
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April 10, 2012
Viola Spolin (1906 — 1994) was an important innovator of the American theater in the 20th century. She created directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called ‘Theater Games’ and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater.
Her book, ‘Improvisation for the Theater,’ which published these techniques, includes her philosophy, as well as her teaching and coaching methods and is considered the ‘bible of improvisational theater.’ Spolin’s contributions were seminal to the improvisational theater movement in the U.S. She is considered to be the mother of Improvisational theater. Her work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writers.
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April 9, 2012
Aubrey Beardsley (1872 – 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.
He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler. Beardsley’s contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant, despite the brevity of his career before his early death from tuberculosis.
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April 9, 2012
Romain de Tirtoff (1892 – 1990) was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté [er-tey], the French pronunciation of his initials, R.T. He was a diversely talented 20th-century artist and designer who flourished in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theater, and opera, and interior decor.
Tirtoff was born in Saint Petersburg, to a distinguished family with roots tracing back to 1548. In 1910, Romain moved to Paris to pursue a career as a designer. He made this decision despite strong objections from his father, who wanted him to continue the family tradition and become a naval officer. Romain assumed his pseudonym to avoid disgracing the family.
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April 9, 2012
Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (b. 1961), known professionally as Tarsem, is an Indian film director. He began his career directing music videos, including those of ‘Hold On’ by En Vogue, ‘Sweet Lullaby’ by Deep Forest, and R.E.M.’s smash hit ‘Losing My Religion,’ the latter of which won Best Video of the Year at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. He has directed dozens of commercials for brands such as Nike and Coca-Cola.
Tarsem’s feature film directorial debut was ‘The Cell’ (2000), starring Jennifer Lopez. His second film, ‘The Fall,’ debuted at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and was released theatrically in the United States in 2008. His third film was 2011’s ‘Immortals.’ He directed an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm story of Snow White, called ‘Mirror Mirror’ in 2012.
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April 7, 2012
Geoffrey Barrow (b. 1971) is an English producer, composer, disc jockey, and is the instrumentalist for the band Portishead. Portishead—formed in 1991—was named after the small town near Bristol where Barrow grew up. On his intentions in forming Portishead, he has stated, ‘I just wanted to make interesting music, proper songs with a proper life span and a decent place in people’s record collections.’ After being involved in many local rock bands, playing drums and DJing in hip hop groups, Barrow got his first job at the Coach House Studios as a tape operator soon after it opened in 1989.
In 1991, while he was assisting on Massive Attack’s breakthrough album ‘Blue Lines,’ the band allowed him spare studio time to get his own ideas on tape. A few years later, when the Portishead project had been assembled, the group came back to record ‘Sour Times’ in that same studio. At the dawn of the ’90s, Barrow was making a name for himself as a remixer, working with such artists as Primal Scream, Paul Weller, Gabrielle, and Depeche Mode. In addition, Barrow had produced a track for Tricky and written songs for Neneh Cherry.
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