UCSD Arts Libraries

Big changes at ARTstor

A brand new website, a blog, even new URLs, so you should definately go check it out!

U.S. researchers turn words to music

Stragely enough, this is from the CBC and not a local paper..

U.S. electrical engineers and computer scientists have developed “Google for music,” a search engine that takes words and finds tunes to match. Users can search “high energy instrumental with piano,” “funky guitar solos” or “upbeat music with female vocals” and locate the songs they want, said the researchers, from the University of California in San Diego. They have built a system that allows a computer to annotate a song using algorithms they created. Once annotated, a user can retrieve it with a text-based search engine, they said in a statement Tuesday.

But it’s not quite that simple. Before the computer can categorize songs, it has to be trained. Gert Lanckriet, a UCSD electrical engineering professor, said that the scientists have developed what they call Listen Game, Continue reading U.S. researchers turn words to music…

Solar Cinema: The Groovy Movie Picture House

From Treehugger

Even in this age of DVDs and movies on iPods, there is nothing like the collective experience of sharing a movie. In the UK, it’s a moveable treat: The Groovy Movie Picture House is a 45 foot diameter portable cinema, “with full blackout lining, a coconut matting floor, providing a cosy venue for daytime or night time screenings for audiences of over 150.” Now they have gone solar: “All of our power requirements are provided by eight large, highly visible solar panels, which charge a large battery bank, providing electricity for screenings during bad weather.” It is “an exciting demonstration of green technology in action!”
Continue reading Solar Cinema: The Groovy Movie Picture House…

Groundbreaking Czechoslovak interactive film system revived 40 years later

I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve never even heard of this–I should have gone to film school like I had thought I was going to. Anyway this amazing article and radio show highlight a Czech film that allows the audience to change the plot of the film by voting–just push a button! It’s moderated by someone who climbs up on stage and asks what the hero should do next. A hit at the 1967 World’s Fair, and why not, it sounds amazing! The thing they don’t go into, which confuses me a little, is how they do it. Are there only two choices, and then two reels threaded up in the projection room?

Source: Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague

Creepy Newspaper Sculpture

Oh boy, look at these neat newspaper sculptures over at Make. And here is the artist’s site

Music Scholar Barred From U.S., but No One Will Tell Her Why

From NYT.com Sept. 17, 2007 by Nina Bernstein

Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States.

Her case has become a cause célèbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ms. Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgar’s music.

But the door has remained closed to Ms. Ghuman, an assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who is British and who had lived, studied and worked in this country for 10 years before her abrupt exclusion.

The mystery of her case shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to defend against such a decision once the secretive government process has been set in motion. Continue reading Music Scholar Barred From U.S., but No One Will Tell Her Why…

Oliver Sacks on music and amnesia

Written by David Pescovitz, September 18, 2007 2:13 PM

In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, neurologist and science writer Oliver Sacks tells the incredible story of Clive Wearing, an accomplished musician and musiciologist who in 1985 suffered a brain infection that ruined his memory, limiting his recall to just the previous few seconds. Amazingly though, Wearing is able to remember two incredibly important things: how to make beautiful music and that he loves his wife. Wearing’s wife Deborah wrote about her experiences with her husband in the book Forever Today: A True Story of Lost Memory and Never-Ending Love. He has also been the subject of documentary films. I’d imagine that Sacks’s forthcoming book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, includes more on Wearing along with other similarly extraordinary stories. From the New Yorker article:

When I asked Deborah whether Clive knew about her memoir, she told me that she had shown it to him twice before, but that he had instantly forgotten. I had my own heavily annotated copy with me, and asked Deborah to show it to him again.

“You’ve written a book!” he cried, astonished. “Well done! Congratulations!” He peered at the cover. “All by you? Good heavens!” Excited, he jumped for joy. Deborah showed him the dedication page: “For my Clive.” “Dedicated to me?” He hugged her. This scene was repeated several times within a few minutes, with almost exactly the same astonishment, the same expressions of delight and joy each time.

Clive and Deborah are still very much in love with each other, despite his amnesia. (Indeed, Deborah’s book is subtitled “A Memoir of Love and Amnesia.”) He greeted her several times as if she had just arrived. It must be an extraordinary situation, I thought, both maddening and flattering, to be seen always as new, as a gift, a blessing.
Link to The New Yorker, Link to Mind Hacks post for more background.

Thanks Boing Boing!

Scream At The Librarian

This book looks so incredibly cool! Not cheap at $ 1,400 for the limited edition hand signed and numbered ones..But the chap book is available for just $15.

Good News From Folkstreams.net

The National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship is the highest honor that our nation bestows upon its folk and traditional artists. Each year, ten to thirteen individuals, “national living treasures” from across the nation, are chosen to
receive this one-time-only Fellowship in recognition of lifetime achievement, artistic excellence and contributions to our nation’s
cultural heritage.

This years’ recipients include two related to films on www.Folkstreams.net:

Nick Benson, son of John “Fud” Benson, the stone carver featured in “Final Marks.” Nick Benson continues the stone carving tradition of his father and grandfather at the John Stevens Shop in Newport, R.I., founded in 1705 and in continuous operation since that date.

Another artist getting the award this year is African American string band musician Joe Thompson of Mebane, N.C. He appears in Alan Lomax’s “Appalachian Journey,”

Other artists given this award in previous years also appear in films
on Folkstreams, Continue reading Good News From Folkstreams.net…

Total HD Disc Format Looks To Be A Total Bust

From Ars Technica this morning, this piece by Eric Bangeman..

Warner’s plans to straddle the fence on the HD disc format war have hit a snag, as the company has decided to shelve its vaunted Total HD hybrid format. Announced at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, Total HD was slated to arrive on store shelves by early 2008

As you may have surmised from the name, Total HD offers both Blu-ray and HD DVD content on a single disc. Warner CEO Barry Meyer pitched the format as an easy out for consumers wondering what type of HD player to purchase and studios trying to decide which of the two (make that three) high-definition disc formats they want to support. It would also make life easier for retailers that would only have to stock one HD disc instead of two. Continue reading Total HD Disc Format Looks To Be A Total Bust…