GlitchSlapTko

3nd Laptop orchestra call for participants

The 3nd experimentation of Laptop orchestra will be held in the second week of October 2004 at Sputnik Low as an official event of Tokyo Designers Block 2004.
Laptop orchestra consists of 10 to 25 computers connected in chain (from output to input).
One computer is the source, while the others process and over-process the source soundusing any kind of real time plugins and softwares.
Finally, the resulting sound is outputed by the last computer of the chain.
This time will be a new step for LO, as a customed mixer will allow each computer to output or not their sounds.
We will got a richer and more detailed sound.
This time there will be at least one rehearsal to make the needed improvement, it might be onthe 2nd or 3rd of october, how does it sound?
If you want to join, please send an email to: laptop@listen.to
The audience is limited to 25 people due to the space.
Equipment required besides your realtime sound blender:
1 mini-jack to mini-jack cable
1 stereo RCA male to mini-jack cable
1 pair of headphones
Hope to see you and play with you for this nice event of free free free electronic music.
Philippe Chatelain
5http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~phhat99

Around the beginning of next month, I'll be heading down to Yakushima for a three-day 'medium-ard' extended hike. Yakushima is the sixth largest island in Japan, and is located about 50 km due south of Kyushu. According to what I've read on the place, this is one of Japan's last remaining terrae incognitae, featuring rich fauna and flora native only to this island. (For example, the 屋久杉 are sylvan behemoth which promise to make that tree in Miyazaki's 「となりのととろ」 look like a mere sapling.)

Jonathan Schell reports THE FOOL out of the nuclear problem.

Stay tuned for an extended thought/essay about this recent performance by Koizumi.

If I was in LA I would go and see this.

Dear Marilyn,

Thank you for reminding me about FEAR AND CONSUMPTION in America. While I was barely hanging on in LA (the most bizarre city in America hands down), I got enough of it to last a lifetime. I often wonder how things would have turned out if I'd moved to San Fran instead...there was that nice offer from Mills, but the aesthetic masochist in me picked the City of Angles. Well, I lived to tell the tale in any case.

Now? Well, I've almost completely forgotten about it - the fear - since I've been living in Japan [for too long?]. In Japan there is no fear, but there is lots and lots of consumption. Perhaps a cynic might say that there is a fear of NOT consuming enough here, and that's what makes them [the Japanese] out-consume most of the rest of the world...but that is kind of bullshit. The Japanese have plenty of real reasons to actually BE afraid, but none of them really register fully with them in their minds: how much they are really hated by their Asian neighbors, the inferiority complex they suffer from when it comes to foreign countries, 'shimakuni konjou', still stuck in the social Dark Ages, etc.

Confession? Ok...I came THIS CLOSE, JUST THIS CLOSE to using Japanese consumption as some kind of positive example for my own life. The beginning of this dangerous game started about one year ago - I was convinced I could 'ride' the wave of consumption here (according to Marxy, the tide is too low to hang five anyway, so...) - and ended just recently after reflecting on some of the alignments of some of my recent acquaintances and then just giving up. This essay by Nick has haunted me since I first read it. I wonder who, among those that HAVE read it, it DOESN'T haunt...The Athenian in me will never die, I suspect.

By the way, I think your songs and lyrics rock.

Your biggest fan in Nakmeguro,

R.

Olamm added to the 'People' section for reasons that may never become clear.

I'm riding the FUCK out of my new bike these days. Two days ago, I rode from Shinjuku to Meguro. That took about 30 min. Today I rode from Nakameguro to Oimachi. That took about 40 min. I'll post an essay I'm writing that's related to bikes up on my blog soon. The title will be something gay like: Tokyo's Polyvalent Topographies - Effects of Various Modes of Locomotion/Transportation on Spacial Perception. Stay tuned...

Reading the politically charged poems of the Russian Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) these days. Found a homey little webpage chock-full of TLC on her here.

There is a way to explain this, but if I did it would be...tactless.

Click here to learn why and how French folks used to blame their own farts on their miniature pet dogs.

Donald Richie: Fifty Years of Journal-Keeping in Japan and How to Do It
Date: October 1, 2004, Friday, 19:00
Location: Temple University, TUJ Room 206/207
Admission: This lecture is free and open to the general public, but space may be limited. RSVP is not required: seating is on a first come, first served basis.
Temple University Japan's Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies (ICJS) presents a special lecture by Donald Richie: "Fifty Years of Journal-Keeping in Japan and How to Do It," based upon the publication of his book entitled Japan Journals: 1947-2004.

I had been saving that one for way too long.

A little while back I penned something on a new Japanese acquaintance of mine who is getting his PHD in Philosophy at one of the (in)famous 'Ivy League' Japanese schools. What can I say? I like his brain, and he appears to be fond of mine. A match made in Tokyo! Anyway, I'm posting up another recent email that he sent me (slightly unedited), that contains some interesting insights. Think 'the conjunction of philosopy and Japanese psycho-cultural biology as misinterpreted by the West'. I hope you enjoy peering over my shoulder as I peer over his shoulder as...
----------
Robert,
I have no problem with being blogged. I enjoy seeing me blogged.
You have so cool blog page. I just took a browse, grinned several
times and was compelled to consider [what you wrote about the]
Japanese things a little, because you have good [in]sight on [them].
Especially in consideration to Japanese language and politics...stimulating.
I like discussing these things over drinks.

By the way, I'm convinced one title of my books in the future should be
'Phenomenology of Japanese mind' ala Hegel's book (smile).
My opinion is that Japanese are experiencing the mental process of
modernization everyday. We've never finished it and still have a
pre-modern mind deep inside. It's absolutely different from the western
mind.

Some French thinker, for example, Kojeve, Derrida, and Baudrillard
totally misunderstood the Japanese situation as 'post-historical' or
'post-modern', and [simply] flattered Japanese culture and society. They
didn't know the real Japanese. Even more foolishly, some Japanese
intellectuals believe the observations of the French intelligentsia without
any profound reflection. 'Oh, we are post-modern! We are in fashion!!'.
It sounds foolish, doesn't it?

The superficial modernized of Japanese mind is something like what
should be kept by perpetual external pressures. Mind structure is
built with language system unconsciously. Sorry, I have to skip many
theoretical steps here, but a hypothetical central element which binds
up the language's autonomies is consequently needed. Possibly I can
say it's the 'currency', refering to Lacan.

I know that true mind of history and modern is fundamentally
connected with religion as Max Weber theorized. Real modernization
requires in humans a profound inner reformation and being structured.
Lacan called it 'symbolic castration'. I don't think modernization and modern
mind are definitely right. However, we are in modern age anyway.
I'm sure I need to analyze Japanese modern mind structure if which causes
Japanese specific comedy and tragedy everyday. I'll just call it...Ethics.

Sorry for my poor English, maybe more mistakes than ever,
because I wrote it quickly. En attendant boire avec toi...

Regards,
XXX

Remember when music used to look like this? I do, since the better part of my early 20s was spend pouring over scores like these in a library and hearing them in concert. Don't worry if you can't name them all. If you could you've probably got better things to do anyway. Naturally I own a few of these, and have - ahem - penned a few myself, which are gathering dust even now as they linger in some dark space. A quick glance at the works below reveals...either a little or a lot, depending on the degree of aesthetic magnitude at which your peepers are set. My lens is zoomed way out these days, although closer look should sustain the following statement: one/two of these things isn't/aren't like the others. (However at this point the word 'negligibility' might prove useful.)
NOTE: IF THE PIC DOESN'T SHOW, CLICK ON THE THINGY WHERE IT SHOULD BE AND IT WILL.