The idea has been around for millenia…ever since the hanging gardens of Babylon, the juxtaposition of buildings and vegetation has always been attractive.

I’ve always wondered why it’s taken so long for the concept of green roofs, green walls, garden rooms and roof terraces, etc…to catch on in modern urban environments. To be sure, new technologies are making the possibility of a green roof more affordable. Hardier plants, hi-tech soil, LEDs, hydroponics, aerospace materials and greater demand have all helped.

Luxury wood panelled and flushing portaloos, gourmet festival food and tents with sitting rooms are redefining our outside experiences and therefore our perception of what we use the garden, field or forest for. We are becoming more and more familiar with inhabiting the local outdoors and the goal of an outside ‘room’ is the closest that is has ever been.

From the 15th Century Tsubo Niwa Japanese 3mx3m courtyard gardens to mediterranean courtyards to such genius ideas as rooftop farms that supply local restaurants with produce while insulating the buildings beneath and using solar/wind power, this is obviously a massive and rapidly evolving subject. I’m not going to go into it in massive detail at this stage, but here are a few interesting current projects that illustrate what I hope are the beginnings of a global trend, along with the sort of factors to consider when planning this kind of endeavour on a domestic scale.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Anthropologie, Regent Street, London, UK

Internal Vertical Wall by BioTecture Ltd. The indoor living wall is three stories high (150 sqm in area) and in its second year. It features many houseplants which are known to have beneficial effects on improving air quality, including Chlorophytum (spider plant). The plants are grown vertically in a unique, patented, modular hydroponic system, designed for precise low water usage and low maintenance, proven from the USA to the UAE. The design was based upon a fluid interpretation of a woven cloth.

BioTecture Ltd

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Dickson Despommier, University of Columbia, New York, USA

Inventor of Vertical Farming in 1999. To me it makes a lot of sense and the benefits are numerous. The challenges are mainly technological as conceptually it seems to be a no-brainer.

There is enough material here for another entry on its own, but to summarize, he cites the main advantages of vertical farming as follows:

› Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (eg. strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres).

› No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests.

› All Vertical Farmed food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers.

› Vertical Farming virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water.

› Vertical Farming returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services.

› Vertical Farming greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface.

› Vertical Farming converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of evapotranspiration.

› Vertical Farming adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals.

› Vertical Farming dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping).

› Vertical Farming can convert abandoned urban properties, roofs and walls into food production centers.

› Vertical Farming creates new employment opportunities

› We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on earth.

› Vertical Farming may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps

› Vertical Farming offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical Least Developed Countries. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.

› Vertical Farming could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water
and land for agriculture

In addition, I would add the following:

› Urban Rooftop or Vertical Farming can help support local businesses, reduce food transport costs, improve the air quality and general quality of life for urban dwellers by giving them small and low-maintenance useful outside space attached to their flats.

› Rooftop and Vertical Farms can improve the insulation of the dwellings they are attached to, as they provide an additional buffer to the elements. 

http://www.verticalfarm.com/

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Eaglestreet Rooftop Farm, Brooklyn, New York, USA

On the shoreline of the East River and with a sweeping view of the Manhattan skyline, Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is a 6,000 square foot green roof organic vegetable farm located atop a warehouse rooftop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

During New York City’s growing season, the farmers at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm supply a community supported agriculture (CSA) program, an onsite farm market, and bicycle fresh produce to area restaurants.

In partnership with food education organization Growing Chefs, the rooftop farm hosts a range of farm-based educational and volunteer programs.

http://rooftopfarms.org/

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Will Allen, Growing Power Inc, Milwaukee, USA

Growing Power is a national nonprofit organisation and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Growing Power implements this mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstrations, outreach and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner. 

http://www.growingpower.org/

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Prime & Toast, Kuwait

Restaurant with Internal vertical farm.

Thomas Klein International, the Dubai based restaurant consultants, and their Chicago architectural office PS Studio, have introduced the vertical farming concept in the latest Prime and Toast food outlet in Kuwait. The feature is based on the concept of vertical farming, invented in 1999 by American professor Dr. Dickson Despommier, to grow food in crowded urban areas.

Prime and Toast’s vertical farm will be the centrepiece of the new restaurant, set to open after Ramadan, and will be watered using condensation from the air conditioning system, which is a viable solution for a climate as humid as Kuwait’s, especially during the summer months. The organic herbs and green-leaf vegetables harvested from the farm will be used as ingredients on the innovative menu.

“All the elements of the interiors will be aligned with the concept of raw, natural, high quality ingredients to complement the menu on offer“, says Daniel During, Managing Partner of Thomas Klein International (TKI).

The vertical farming section and the kitchen will take central stage in the eatery with all tables enjoying direct views into the production area. Two central tables will be available for communal seating while smaller tables have been included for individual seating. To add to the ecological approach of the restaurant, all the wood used in the production of the furniture will be from sustainable forests.

The new outlet will also feature a metre-wide blackboard ribbon running along the restaurant’s entire walls, as well as a shelf above the blackboard which will feature a selection of the finest mineral waters from around the world…though I’m not sure this is quite as sustainable as the rest of the project.

The strip of blackboard originates from within the kitchen and runs all the way around the space from the kitchen throughout the dining area, linking the restaurant and the kitchen and enabling the chefs to write on the black board not only their daily specials and recommendations, but also to express their thoughts and creativity.

The designers believe this ribbon of ideas will create a link between the chefs and the customers and will entice customers to try new food.

http://www.eyeofdubai.com/v1/news/newsdetail-43435.htm

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

To create your own roof garden or vertical farm, the checklist you might want to consider would include:

1. Suitable Plants vs Desired Plants

Questions to ask: What types of plants are most suitable? Are they shade tolerant? (Overhanging eaves) wind tolerant? Can they survive in an area of high evaporation like the top of a building? How is root growth going to affect the integrity of the material below it? Is it better to have plants in soil or in pots?

3. Soil depth vs Fertility.

To reduce weight, especially when wet, what is the thinnest mix of composite soil that still provides sufficient nutrients? Is soil necessary at all?

4. Privacy vs Sun.

Rooftop gardens and terraces are always worth more if they are not overlooked. Obviously this is a limitation of living in an urban environment, but orientation and screening can certainly minimise any overlooking if designed properly, so that the sun isn’t lost past the early afternoon. In the northern hemisphere, this would involve orientating an open terrace south, south-east, south-west, or west but if the terrace had walls and was large enough it could be both private and open.

5. Open vs Closed.

Would the outside terrace have any kind of temporary covering? Or pergola? Or overhanging eaves? Or translucent / transparent roof? Or relecting pool? If internal, how is climate / humidity / solar gain controlled? If open, how is the wind dealt with? Air currents that increase with height and can make the terrace or roof unuseable if not properly shielded. Anything above 2-3 storeys will, if not protected already by orientation, need to be protected from wind if it wants to be a pleasant space. 

6. Drainage vs Access.

By setting the terrace or garden on top of an existing roof, it can drain onto the roof below without any problem. But there would be accessibility problems as it should be easy to get to. A roof terrace you need to climb a ladder to get to compromises its useability. How easy is it to access from the kitchen / bedroom / living room will determine how it is used and how often. The less attention required, the longer it is likely to stay healthy. How is it irrigated? Where does the water come from to irrigate it effectively?

7. Weight vs Density.

Obviously the larger the trees or the denser the vegetation, the heavier it will be. If retrofitting an existing property, will the existing structure be able to take the extra weight, especially when it rains as soil and vegetation tend to soak up any water?

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

There are a growing number of companies that specialise in DIY vertical gardens. Some ideas can be found at Garden Beet, who reckon that it’s not hard but it is worth reading their ‘Build your own green wall or vertical garden instructions.’

I anticipate that there will be massive growth in this area over the next 5 years, so hopefully we will be seeing a lot more of these kinds of projects. I have a few ideas on the subject that I will try and work up over the next few months and share through the blog.

This portrait was created by a Brooklyn artist called David Kassan on an Apple iPad using an app called Brushes, which costs £3 from the app store. It’s an application that functions as a basic Photoshop, but I think the control and nuance you can achieve on an iPad is quite remarkable!

Known predominantly for his hyper-realistic oil paintings, he took to seeing what he could achieve on an iPad.

It was ‘finger-painted’ in a three hour session, and as far as I can see, it seems to have been painted all on one layer, using different transparencies. A time-lapse version of how it was created is here below:

Ever since I heard about it, one of the most obvious applications for a tablet computer, and the iPad in particular, would be multitouch CAD.

I am sure it is being worked on now by various companies, but here’s a quick sketch idea regarding how the UI might work along with a few examples of basic gestures that might be intuitively translated from point and click and hotkeys to multitouch. The applications would be numerous. From architects in the studio or on site, engineers, designers, clients and contractors, it’s usefulness can’t really be underestimated. And that’s just the beginning.

The critical factors that make this product the first viable tablet computer for CAD applications include the fact that:

1. No stylus is needed (just something else to lose, especially on site or travelling around),

2. The multitouch support allows exponentially more gestures to be interpreted than if only a single touch interface was used (which starts to approach the number of commands required for a meaningful CAD experience), and 

3. A viable screen size that has enough screen real-estate to not crowd out the CAD information with the tool menus.

What would also help is if pressure gestures were interpreted differently from tap gestures, so you would have a two-tier touch relationship which can intuitively separate and interpret your wish to access a command from your wish to manipulate the vector data, based upon pressure, the sensitivity of which you could customize like you already do with your mouse settings for things like double-click speed.

So, for example, you could rearrange the tool icons wherever you wanted on the screen and they would be 50% transparent, so you could see what they are but they wouldn’t interfere with the vector data beneath/above it. To select a tool icon, you might push down on it slightly, like dipping into a paint pot…or you could use a specific button that you hold down like a ’shift’ key with the other hand to activate the tool icons, which you would then pick with your right hand (I’m assuming a right-handed bias here).

A couple of other examples:

A finger on the screen would select an object tentatively, which you can drag around.

A tap by a second adjacent finger within a specified area would confirm the selection. This would avoid accidental selecting of objects. 

You could cycle through different snaps using a tap on a button with the other hand.

But a finger on the screen and then a slight push downwards (if the selection tool was activated) could activate a selection box and you could drag the box to the other corner, and release to activate. Or, if you are already within a command with multiple options, it could throw up a 50% transparent box with say, 3 options you could access comfortably with the adjacent finger, as shown above, which was based on the great work that Bonnier and BERG have done with Mag+, but the difference is that here you wouldn’t need to lift your finger from the surface to activate it, so the workflow isn’t interrupted.

But with multitouch it gets better of course: you could select commands with one hand while the other deals with manipulating objects that you want to move, copy, trim etc….at the same time.

And this is why this way of inputting CAD data beats any other method hands down…as it were.

Zooming via pinch (which is familiar to anyone who has ever used an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad already) could be combined with 3-finger dragging (which would pan in the direction of swipe) to yield a manoeuvre that zooms and pans at the same time…so the very way you think about manipulating the objects starts to be rewritten to become far easier and quicker. Combi-commands if you will. And then you add the pressure support, and you can start to see how your work rate could increase dramatically.

Obvious and global commands like opening files, undo / redo would be really easy to find and use, the size of certain toolbars could maybe be based upon frequency of use.

To show how all this might work…here’s the workflow of a basic copy command as an example:

1. Select the copy tool or select the object to be copied. Single finger tentative, cycle through the relevant snaps, second finger tap confirms.

(2. At the same time you can Pan and zoom until you are happy with the window you are seeing. You could do this with the other hand.)

3. Select the base point for the copy command. Again, single finger tentative, cycle through the relevant snaps if applicable, second finger tap confirms.

(4. Pan and zoom again if necessary.)

5. Specify end point of the copy command, Tentative, confirm.

No wires, can be done anywhere and I think it would take very little time for it to become second nature.

I could go on ad nauseam…from how each command would work to optimising layouts for single hand use (you’re using the other one to hold it) or double hand use.

Of course all of this is predicated on the fact that using these gestures for long periods of time wouldn’t lead to RSI or carpel-tunnel syndrome, which using a mouse for long periods without a break can sometimes induce.

Plenty of research yet to be done, but I fully anticipate it to be a reality soon…what an opportunity…I’d be very interested to hear if anyone has had any experience of this so far.

Understanding creativity or composing by proxy?

 It’s interesting that in the last week I’ve been seeing things that get us to start questioning what makes us human, as if the very nature of our being was being challenged. Last week it was Cynthia, the world’s first synthetic organism courtesy of Craig Venter…this week I discovered Emily Howell.

Click the image above and have a listen to a composition by Emily Howell.

Emily Howell, unveiled in the last few months, has actually been around longer than Cynthia and is a computer program created by US Santa Cruz Emeritus Professor David Cope that creates original, modern music. Some people find it indistinguishable from a human composer.

David Cope has spent 30 years creating computer algorithms that ‘compose’: first with ‘Emmy’ (Experiments in Musical Intelligence - EMI) from 1980, and now with Emily Howell. Via decades of studying Bach chorales and other classical composers, he has essentially coded the syntax that is the ‘language’ foundation of certain western classical music styles as they follow strict harmonic rules. Essentially he’s taught it to speak a language fluently by piecing together known phrases that have a certain juxtaposing logic (so the sequence is understandable as a thread).

While it sounds as though it is ‘played’, that it is ‘interpreted’ sound rather than ‘generated’ sound, the key questions it raises are:

1. Whether it is generating that interpretation itself. Or whether it has come from the human that programmed it.

2. If the net effect of a composition on the listener is the same emotional response, regardless of whether it has been generated by a human or a machine, is there any difference, and thus, does it matter?

I’d argue that it is essentially second-hand emotion via the programming of rules on harmonic progressions and timing which have been transcribed through careful study. Which is not the same as generating that interpretation and direction autonomously. It’s a facsimile of human interpretation programmed to mimic the way we interpret ‘feeling’. But like any computer program, it’s only as good as the instructions it has been given.

It is certainly a step up from the notion that if you plonk a monkey down in front of a typewriter for long enough, it will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare, which it does more through coincidence than design. Emily just fast-tracks this with a set of rules that tell her which bits are acceptable after which. A little bit like the 18th Century dice games, that Haydn and Mozart were purportedly fans of.

But how small do those fragments or ‘words’ need to be in order for the output to be considered ‘creative’? The dice game mentioned above uses phrases, not individual notes. The smallest unit in language is the letter, and in music, the note.

If it is making the compositions from the interactions of individual notes relative to each other, rather than set phrases, then that is impressive programming. Essentially, it’s the difference between a DJ putting together a track based on samples and someone who plays in each note from scratch on a real instrument. But is one necessarily more or less ‘creative’ than the other? Just because one is using larger chunks than the other doesn’t mean it is any less creative.

The advantage of playing each note individually as a musician does when they are playing an instrument is that they have control over microtiming, which I refer to in this post about an improvised composition I did: http://www.kevinpollard.com/blog/?p=355.

When I improvise I am definitely drawing on my grasp of melody, harmonics, timing and space. It gives me the ability to play exactly what I hear in my head. I’ve always been fascinated by looking at the MIDI version of what I just played into my keyboard in my studio…the track is all MIDI and it took me an hour and a half or so using my 88-note keyboard to put in the 4 twenty minute passes for the three instruments. (Interestingly, to methodically program it to sound exactly like this by inputing it note by note using the pencil would take weeks). It is now all represented by dots on a grid in my laptop. Playing it back, it sounds ‘emotive’ and generates an emotional response in the listener, even though now it is coming out of a box. But that is because it is a direct recording of what I played. Now, break down the sequences into small phrases and get the computer to reassemble it in different ways. It would still sound emotive, but would lack direction, which would be less of an issue in this case as it is improvised and only has a loose direction anyway. Now break it down to single notes and give the computer the rules that govern harmonic scales and sympathetic progressions, intervals, tempo and microtiming. Et voila, computer emotion. But it’s essentially still derivative of my original piece.

But so what? Is there any difference? After all, we as humans are programmed to respond (behave) to certain situations in certain ways, aren’t we just following instructions coded in our genes and replaying fragments from our memory? At what point does assisted creativity become genuine creativity? When does an idea become original?

Cope puts it thus:

“Nobody’s original. We are what we eat, and in music, we are what we hear. What we do is look through history and listen to music. Everybody copies from everybody. The skill is in how large a fragment you choose to copy and how elegantly you can put them together.”

Emily Howell has a musical conversation that includes “words” (white nodes) and the connections between them. (Catherine Karnow)

But if that was the case then there would be no innovation, and there are plenty of examples of that around us in day-to-day objects, but not necessarily in music…there hasn’t really been much widespread original music since the 1980s, but that’s largely to do with the decline of consensus through the ubiquitous availability of vast amounts of information made possible by the internet.

Music is not inherently absolute…one person’s Mozart is another person’s Rage Against The Machine…but the fact that so many people agree that Mozart’s music should be held in as high esteem as it is means that there must be a universal set of mathematical laws governing what frequencies work with each other, according to our western tastes, which means it can be categorized and replicated.

I would wager that innovation is incremental. Even major breakthroughs build on the logic of the existing and tested. It’s often a mistake that someone makes that leads to a new avenue. Which might be the key. If you program a computer to make a mistake and program it how to react to that mistake, then is that the basis for an innovative outcome? A creative direction? Emily Howell does this. She even knows where she is in a piece she hasn’t written yet and when to trigger the coda algorithms. So does that make her notionally self-aware? 

The one thing that I would say is missing is why. Humans can now program a computer to know what a Mozart chorale sounds like and how to make one, or to combine the syles of Mozart and Scott Joplin, but the computer doesn’t know why it’s doing it. Only David Cope knows. And it’s that understanding of ‘why’ that allows humans to make value judgements about which mistakes are worth pursuing and which are ones go in the bin. Humans have the advantage of understanding context and a bigger picture which inform their decisions. Once Emily can do that, she would be truly creative. Until then she’s more just a proxy for David’s compositions. The thing about music is that it is ruled by emotion, not just logic, so it’s harder to predict where it’s going to go. It’s also why you don’t necessarily need degrees and a formal educaton to succeed in music. I’d have thought that Mozart / Beethoven / The Beatles / Elvis / Michael Jackson didn’t know why they were making a new type of music, it just felt right to them, and that was their ‘why’.

It would be interesting to find out how many attempts were needed before each of these pieces reached their final form. Was it like cloning where 99% of attempts are abortive and 1% make it? Or did come out finished first time? How much editing was needed? Even my improvisations needed a couple of minutes editing to get rid of the odd duff note where I missed the one I wanted. How many attempts should there be before the piece is considered ‘coincidence’, rather than ‘composed’? Where is that boundary?

Needless to say the reaction to Emily Howell has been quite heated.

I’d be interested to do a session with an on-the-fly version of Emily or her successor where phrases are played in a call-and-response manner in real-time…improvised…and see what happens; how I would respond to the musical directions generated by the computer and how it would react to my response. To accomplish that it would need to interpret what I was playing, understand which harmonic direction and tempo it belonged to, and respond by perhaps including some of the elements but not others, deciding the relevant points and maybe adding its own direction whilst adhering to the pulse, dynamics and the unfolding structure of the shared piece, which is essentially what I do when I improvise.

Maybe I’ll try to set it up…

You can hear another sample of Emily Howell’s work here.

A longer article about David Cope and Emily Howell is here on Miller-McCune, which includes the way he programs the machine to produce the compositions.

The first CD of Emily Howell compositions, entitled From Darkness, Light, is available via iTunes and Amazon.

Just went to see this at Somerset House…well worth checking out if you get a chance before the end of the month. Entry is free. In collaboration with Sound and Music. 

Over several months, Fontana collected hundreds of hours of audio and video from above and below the surface of the Thames, from Richmond to remote locations in the Estuary, to reveal the hidden stories and sound-worlds of the river in a brand new public art work.

Images and sounds installed in the Lightwells and Dead House - spaces far below the courtyard, usually closed to the public - create an intimate, acoustic journey and reinstate the forgotten shared history of Somerset House and the Thames.

Bill Fontana, one of the world’s leading sound artists, has installed public art works at iconic locations in many of the world’s great cities, including London’s Millennium Bridge and Big Ben, San Francisco’s Golden Gate and Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. 

Admission to River Sounding is free.
Opening hours: Monday - Sunday 10am - 6pm. Late opening on Thursdays, 10am - 8pm.

Cynthia, the world's first synthetic lifeform

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8695862.stm

So far, our efforts to create life have been a bit ad-hoc…splicing a bit here, insert a bit there, basically tinkering with what already exists.

But this is different. This one you can design from scratch, email it across and watch the printout get up and walk out of the room. Ok, that is unrealistic for now…but given enough time it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

Remember, Craig Venter was the man who first mapped the human genome. So he has the launch codes. The point is, you can experiment with far greater precision if you have control over all the DNA, so making progress towards whatever organism you desire is likely to be much faster now. 

Click here to hear the whole press conference where Craig describes how his team achieved this milestone. 

Maybe we are part of a cascading Matrushka Doll God concept…where a species on one planet creates the species on another. It’s a distinct reality now: a group of astronauts could take Cynthia’s tailor-made descendents to Mars and let them evolve over a few million years. Then the sentient lifeforms that evolve will sit there pondering who they are and why they are there…until they develop the technology to repeat the process…I wonder if we would still be around?

Looks like Pandora’s box is now open for business…

This one has finally arrived just in time for the sun!

Mark E remix on the B side, in the UK shops on Wednesday 14th April.

Other Mudd & Pollard releases are available here.

www.claremont56.com

The word ‘placement‘ is a powerful word as it describes a position in both space and time relative to other events…In this post I’ll be dealing mainly with this in a musical context, but it applies to many others. Here’s a sample of a piece I wrote last week late one evening:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I by KevinPollard

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Gravity is the force that binds physical objects together, with air being the spatial medium in which they are arranged. Time is the force that binds a piece of music together, with silence being the temporal medium in which the notes are arranged. While there is a pulse or regularity that is normally dictated by gravity or time, the mediums are flexible…so it’s how you pull against a rhythmic structure, that makes a(n) : piece of music / architectural design / interior space / oratory / fragrance / food dish : …more interesting. Eg. Spaces that ‘defy’ gravity, music that ‘pulls’ against the beat, etc

With placement comes emphasis. Micro timing and incremental changes of position or aspect hopefully mean that you start listening in high resolution, rather than the low resolution predictability of a rigid well-trodden sequence, when you tend not to really hear what is happening as you are actually waiting for that point/chord/cadence which you know is…just around the corner. If you start to stretch or manipulate expectations, it starts to be become more engaging.

Of course predictability can be comforting, the key of this piece is built around a regular A maj7 drone, but with a few twists thrown in to make it less obvious. Similar to making effective points in an essay, it aims not to wander too far away from the title and start rambling, at which point the argument starts getting lost and it becomes ineffective, or worse, irrelevant.

I remember years ago as a child when I used to play local piano competitions, normally in a church hall. There was a set piece and each kid had to play it…one after the other traipsing up to the piano, adjusting the squeaky seat before letting rip with their version, which was adjudicated by a panel of stern looking people. On paper, two hours of listening to the same piece being played over and over on the same instrument sounds like a form of torture…but it was fascinating, because every kid played it completely differently, sometimes to the point that it was unrecognisable. Faster, slower, more rigid and staccato, more languid and legato, duff notes, louder, quieter, mechanical, with flair, etc…even more so if, like me, you were one of the kids who actually had to play the piece (as you knew it inside out) so you could really hear the differences.

There are many direct parallels between creative disciplines, some direct, some more oblique, this doesn’t even scratch the surface, but I’ve started research that takes this further, to see how deeply the lessons learnt in one discipline can inform another…but suffice to say that the concept of ‘placement’, both physically (in a musical context: by way of the intervals that exist within a chord, or the pitch of a melodic note) and temporal (by way of how these chords or notes are arranged relative to each other in time) creates a specific and fragile emotion, something distinct yet not too unfamiliar. Move any of the parameters and it’s a different beast. These subtleties are what is responsible for ’swing’ in jazz and for most other types of music to ‘flow’. If you can say what you want to say with less, the message is often clearer and more powerful.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

As a crude experiment, now try reading this article again, making a few substitutions:

Substitute the word ‘listening’ for ’seeing’, the word ‘piece’ for ‘theatre’, the word ‘key’ for ’style’, the words ‘timing’ and ‘intervals’ for ‘distance between structural elements’, the word ‘play’ for ‘build’, the word ‘note’ for ‘dowel’ , the word ‘chord’ for ‘chair’ , the word ‘louder’ for ‘brighter’ , the word ‘quieter’ for ‘dimmer’, the word ‘instruments’ for ‘materials’, and the word ‘piano’ for ‘mahogany’.

Thus translating a sentence such as: ‘I am going to play a piano piece in the key of B, that starts louds and ends softly’ yields:

‘I am going to build a mahogany theatre in Baroque style, the sequence (of spaces) starts in a bright (porch) and ends (in a) dim (lounge).’

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

This is but one example…try it in a culinary context, a publishing context, or a new technology context (a tablet computer called iPad in the key of Apple anyone…?)

So in the case of a temporal/spatial comparison, you can start to see how the ‘pull’ to the structure/rhythm/tempo of the piece starts to behave rather like the pull of gravity when you start to translate it to a spatial medium. For example, time stretching a piece of music or slowing down its tempo would be akin to taking a table design and starting to control relative gravity: so its structure becomes elastic and you started to have much more freedom…what would that look like? Beautiful? A mess? If you increase the scale and the complexity (orchestras and buildings), the constraints start to change. But it always needs to be relevant to the question being asked or the point being made.

These concepts informed why I did this piece, which was improvised in realtime, with one pass for each instrument. It is still a draft but I aim to expand it into an improv album…for now it would be good to hear what you experience when you hear it. Put your feet up, (hopefully) enjoy and let me know!

Puma Car-D from Canyon/Inkbox on Vimeo.

Here’s a sneak preview of some of the content that will appear on the new Inkbox site currently being lovingly built by Mike.

It’s a little promo for Puma that Dan and I did last month in a couple of days. It should be released online later this month, and Inkbox should go live in April 2010. Any comments welcome!

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

A really nice take on the possible future of publishing…rival to the iPad? But why do none of the demos show anyone with any rings, bracelets or long nails? (not that this affects the male half of the population quite as much as it might the female at the risk of sounding a tad sexist). Probably because the sound of jewellry or nails on glass or plastic is, well…like nails on a blackboard to some…a ‘clacky’ sound each time you touch it or get close to it just isn’t sexy…hence the stiff naked ‘pointy finger’ that you see in all these promo demos that keeps the majority of your hand as far as humanly possible away from the surface of the pad.

But that is not realistic now is it?

Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a ‘hands-on’ touch interface? Someone should have thought through this…Maybe holding it securely in two hands and using your thumbs or thumb tips to swipe and access the main navigational menus makes for a better experience with less movement and more control … and yes you can still use ‘pointy index finger’ to select stuff in the middle of the screen and swipe etc of course. Just maybe make the menus more thumbcentric in the zones near each edge (though it’s not that much use if you are a thumbring aficionado).

And then there are the possibilities of putting pressure sensors on the back so you can navigate that way with your fingers…maybe I’ll do a mock-up…but that’s another post!