Category: notebooks

The Art of Homage

March 11, 2018March 11, 2018 ~ Jillian Burt ~ Leave a comment

THE ART OF HOMAGE not FAN ART. The David Bowie Instagram account is posting images from the fan art section of the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Nick Cave has booked “talk to the audience” shows on the East Coast of America. Within the photographs and videos she’s posting from backstage and during soundchecks for … Continue reading The Art of Homage

A NOTEBOOK THAT’S AN HOMAGE TO NELS CLINE’S LOVERS ALBUM : PART 1

February 3, 2018February 4, 2018 ~ Jillian Burt ~ Leave a comment

For 25 years Nels Cline dreamed of making the Lovers Album, an orchestrated portrait of the shadings on love’s spectrum from yearning to euphoria to regret. A mix of jazz standards, film music, rock songs and his own compositions. When it was released on Blue Note in 2016 it concluded with “The Bond”, composed for … Continue reading A NOTEBOOK THAT’S AN HOMAGE TO NELS CLINE’S LOVERS ALBUM : PART 1

Reflections from the intersection of rock music and architecture, particularly within living, evolving cultural buildings.

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ROBOTICS & LAND ART Robotics engineer Ken Goldberg, from San Francisco, spoke at the University of Technology in Sydney last night. His talk focused on the current existential anxiety about humanoid robotics and artificial intelligence systems. But he also briefly touched on his work with industrial robotics and machine learning systems that are developing tools that enhance and extend human reach and capabilities. A surgical robot, for instance, directed by a human doctor that can work with more precision and endurance at a small scale. - - I’ve always been more drawn to the engineering than the existential aspects of robotics and having just watched the whole first series of “Westworld” and the DVD of “Blade Runner 2049” I’m weary of humanoid robots. - - It was fascinating and inspiring to hear Ken speak of human/robot collaborations as “inclusive intelligence” and “creative intelligence” and think back to his internet enabled robotic art projects of the mid to late 1990s that follow on from the “land art” projects of the 1970s created by Gordon Matta Clark and Walter de Maria. And thinking forward to Vivid starting at the end of next week, to Arup’s “Social Fireflies” project from 2011 based around a tiny robot drone swarm. And dreaming of how wonderful it would be to see a @survivalresearchlabs robotic performance during Vivid. - - #engineering @arupgroup @vividsydney @utsengineeringandit #kengoldberg #landart #walterdemaria #gordonmattaclark @vividlive #westworld @bladerunnermovie #robot #roboticsurgery

REMEMBERING TOM WOLFE There isn’t a single flight I’ve taken since reading Tom Wolfe’s THE RIGHT STUFF where I don’t think of his observation of Chuck Yeager’s laid back character when the Captain makes his/her announcements over the P.A. - - “Anyone who travels very much on airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot … coming over the intercom … with a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down-home calmness that is so exaggerated it begins to parody itself (nevertheless! It’s reassuring) … “ - - The human responses to advances in engineering at the heart of the book is eternally inspiring to me. And how to report the social upheaval these technological advances may cause. In THE NEW JOURNALISM he observed. - - “When I reached New York in the early Sixties, I couldn’t believe this scene I saw spread out before me. New York was pandemonium with a big grin on. Among people with money - and they seemed to be multiplying like shad - it was the wildest, looniest time since the 1920s … “ - - I refer to his skilful reporting (& Joan Didion’s & Gay Talese’s) while reporting on how advances in robotics are making this the “wildest, looniest time” since Tom Wolfe made the observation about the 1920s in the 1970s in the introduction to compendium of pieces from journalists of the Sixties and Seventies. - - #newjournalism #tomwolfe #joandidion #engineering #robotics @didiondoc #designbookoftheday

The @sydneyoperahouse account is posting photographs in honour of Peter Hall’s birthday. @annejwatson ‘s book is leading an increasing appreciation for how he completed the Opera House (with Lionel Todd and David Littlemore). Her book expands our understanding of him as an architect, and also his interests in the design and culture of the late 60s and early 1970s. - - #midcenturymodern #modernarchitecture

MUSIC, BOOK DESIGN, CANVA & SOLANGE Typography as a kind of choreography is an element of Solange’s responsiveness to architecture and design. Rather than taking her music outwards, into the orbit of design disciplines, she draws them inwards, into her her music. The special edition book of the lyric inserts from her album, A SEAT AT THE TABLE, and photography, is a valuable reference point when thinking about how to create books whose existence will be mostly as music merchandise, sold alone through a musician’s website or bundled with albums. And whose independent retail existence is likely to be in the kind of bookstalls within the Comme des Garcons @doverstreetmarketlondon , where @IDEA.ltd sells rare fanzines and art books (their own publications without ISBN’s to keep them away from AMAZON and out of the regular book stream). - - However valuable the traditional book design references and guidance one can gain from @reedsy_hq , the most valuable design tool for books in music’s orbit is the online service @canva . It’s a service for people to come to design from different directions, not from within graphic design, and an antidote to complex and expensive design software. More importantly it gathers together album cover design, social media graphics, banners for online merchandise stores, flyers and posters in one place, a musician’s version of the graphic identity that great late modern designers — Saul Bass, for instance — created to unify all of a corporation’s designed materials. - - Several people at Canva helped me with the design of my Sydney Opera House book. While it was brilliant for dealing with static elements it wasn’t good for dealing with the pages of text in a way that would allow me to continually copy edit and fact check without needing to completely overhaul the design. My text blocks (inspired by NASA’s Helvetica based standards manual & Peter Hall’s signage specifications for the Opera House) were written in @scrivener and designed in Apple’s PAGES word processing program, which has reintroduced page layout functions. - @saintrecords #graphicdesign #fanzines #designbookoftheday #midcenturymodern #sohmusic #moderndance

IN PRAISE OF THE MCA ZINE FAIR & EXPERIMENTAL BINDINGS The fantastic diversity of subject, form, & point-of-sale displays at the @mca_australia Zine fair two weekends ago was overwhelming in a positive way. There was simply too much to take in. Of particular heartwarming interest to me was the presence of the @brutalist_project_sydney publication, making it possible for a general audience interested in architecture to identify and appreciate this genre of building. - - The first self-published project that captured my attention in New York in the 1990s was @visionaireworld ‘s first edition of loose-leaf pages contributed by artist friends of the founders, people who are all at the artistically expressive heart of the fashion world (artists, writers, photographers, designers). “We couldn’t afford the luxury of binding, so the issue is unbound, loose pages.” They describe all of the contributions being on different paper stocks as they used printer’s remnants. - - Colour photocopiers were still relatively new then, and many copy shops made it possible for customers to experiment on different paper stocks, something that isn’t possible any more. Self-copying at Officeworks, for instance, is available on only one white paper stock. A @newyorkermag story recently on the escalating precision of commercial printers to try and solve the problem of paper jams as papers of different weight and texture move through a complex set of rollers means that these expensive machines can only be accessed through gatekeepers: technicians who understand the machines, and files must be designed for these machines. This is an expensive proposition, print shop employees setting up the machines to do a run. - - Experimentation is now possible with cheap printers for home computers, where papers of any kind run straight through rather than having to twist around sets of internal rollers. I print on wrapping paper, unbleached thin boxboard, vintage Kraft packing paper and more that I cut down to A4. The inks cost more than the printer. - - - #zines #independentpublishing @reedsy_hq

INSTAGRAM AS A MUSIC MAGAZINE ... @thisispattismith has started posting almost every day the kind of reflections she published in her memoir M Train, which was written mostly in notebooks while she was sitting in the cafe near her home in New York. . Having coffee at the Bar at the End of the Wharf at the @sydneytheatreco in Walsh Bay yesterday this Patti Smith quote hand-stamped onto the coffee cup made me think how comfortable she’d likely be there. Its furniture is even similar to her favourite table and chair, given to her when that New York cafe closed. . . #notebook #pattismith #rocknroll

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Architecture Australian music bibliostructures city design Engineering jazz Journalism Manufacturing Materials modern dance movies Music notebooks Paper print on demand publishing Robert Ballard robotics Sydney Opera House

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