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The D.C. Madame Jeane Palfrey, whose clients include prominent politicians (Senator Vitter, R-Louisiana), lobbyists, and other power brokers (Randall L. Tobias, a senior official in the State Department), was found hanged on Thursday. In mid-April, Palfrey was convicted of money laundering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and racketeering. She remained free while awaiting sentencing on July 24.
Palfrey’s death was pronounced a suicide, and she was quoted as saying she’d rather die than go to prison. One of her former employees, Brandy Britton (her real name, are you serious?), was arrested in January 2006, and committed suicide before standing trial. Needless to say, the names of most of their clients have probably died with these women.
This sure looks like the plot of a movie.
I saw Errol Morris’s film Standard Operating Procedure, the “documentary” about the Abu Ghraib photos. I have the term documentary in quotes because, as the interviewees describe past events, the film re-enacts scenarios not filmed or photographed at the time. For some, these re-enactments are a problem, as documentary convention prescribes a style and logic that, in most cases, simulates truth telling and objectivity. Many assume that in documentaries, the camera is a mute witness to “facts” and “events” and any interference or fictional techniques or touches destroys this, well, myth.
The re-enactments do not adhere to the form typical of those criminal investigation TV shows, which recreate the crime scenes with actors, out of focus, slow-motion shots, and voiceover narration. Instead, Morris employs fragmentary images: a close up of snarling dog, its teeth lunging at the camera; a close up of skin covered in swarming ants; and most expensive, a helicopter exploding above our heads, the flaming parts descending on the camera.
It should be obvious that all documentary filmmakers have an agenda they hope to put forward. I’m not talking about Michael Moore and Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, The Smartest Guys in the Room) who obviously have a polemic to deliver, but about the countless docs, TV shows, news reports and educational pieces that evince a style that says, “We don’t have a point of view. We’re simply recording what’s in front of the camera and you make up your own mind.”
These ostensibly objective works invoke specific filmic devices that audiences have come to accept and recognize as indicators of truth telling and impartiality. Upon examining these “unbiased” films, we may sense their deep, inherent agendas, but for the most part, the style masks the filmmakers’ underlying prejudices, and we buy into it.
In a sense then, fiction films are also just recording what’s in front of the camera, but in their case, it happens to be costumed actors staging events. Fiction films are documentaries of the performances of actors.
Next, I watched Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA, an incredible, award-winning documentary about a violent mine strike in Kentucky. It took her four years to make the film, which she originally intended to be about something related, though different. It’s obvious that Kopple was embedded with the miners. During some particularly violent confrontations, the camera is clearly on the “side” of the striking miners, as scabs and corporate toadies take shots at them. The filmmaker hung with the mining families and otherworldly community in these hollers in order to secure some of the intimate details. Upon release, the film was an exposé, drawing attention to lives and injustices that otherwise would have been ignored.
Likewise, as Errol Morris and some of his interviewees point out, the photos taken at Abu Ghraib are responsible for drawing attention to the prison’s systemic practice of abuse. Had these photos never surfaced, the whole situation would have been swept under the rug, as was the violent, habitual torture practiced by the CIA and MI, never photographed. Since these practices can’t be proven, most media outlets pretty much ignore them. To paraphrase one of the film’s talking heads: ‘These photos made the President of the United States have to apologize to the world, so someone was going to pay.’ Unsaid, although implicit, is that those who caused the embarrassment to Bush would pay over those responsible for setting up a situation where abusive behaviors were condoned and encouraged.
Morris doesn’t broach the “Chain of Command” issues Seymour Hersh examines in his book of the same title. Hersh carefully traces the legal maneuvers of Gonzales and the policies of the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush tripartite, effectively encouraging and excusing torture and anything goes behavior.
The film details the fascinating use of forensics to establish accurate information about the photographs. Metadata embedded within the digital images is extracted and cross-referenced to handwritten logs to recreate a timeline, and uncover who took the pictures and with what camera. Morris limits the focus to the Americans, not the Iraqis. Some interviewees have the look of those whose experiences have twisted and mangled their souls deeply. They seem haunted and possessed. Especially the young women, former innocents who, like characters out of some horror movie, were fucked over by some invisible, monstrous entity.
So maybe the film is not a documentary in the accepted sense, or maybe we must realize that docs are not exactly what they appear to be. At any rate, by examining a set of infamous photos, how they came to be, who authored them, and how they survived, Morris creates a meditation on the meaning and reception of images—particularly news images—in our culture at large.
As these photos are reexamined, one can’t help but wonder whether a people often rounded up, imprisoned and tortured for no reason—many prisoners are simple cab drivers and local shopkeepers—will keep their grudges and desire for revenge close. And of course, one wonders whether a terrible price will be paid somewhere down the line. George Bush might be dead by then, Cheney will surely be gone soon—he’s running on watch batteries as it is—but some naïve and “innocent” generation will pay for our current government’s policies and actions and wonder, “What did I do to deserve this?”
I’m currently working on a piece for a benefit supporting the local arts organization, The Kitchen. The event, scheduled for May 21st at the Puck Building, will honor artist and DJ Christian Marclay. I like much of Marclay’s work, so my piece is sort of a tribute to him — or at least it’s fairly inspired by his work. My piece will be comprised of a kind of carpet of one hundred guitar pedals, which benefit attendees must walk on in order to enter the main dining and performance space. A guitar will be plugged into and run through all the pedals, and then into an amp. We’ve tested a portion of it to see if there are any unexpected problems and I was surprised to discover how well it works. Of course, the sounds are fairly random, and stepping on one or two of the distortion or fuzz pedals raises the screaming noise level pretty high, but that will be adjusted. Happily, some pedals will loop whatever is going on at the time of their activation, and so there will be constant sound changing all the time. Here is a picture of it partially finished in my studio:
The organizers pragmatically pointed out that there could be issues for attendees in heels, as did CS. I had hoped to make participation in the installation mandatory, something each guest would have to experience in order to move from cocktails to the next part of the event. But women’s heels will be my Achilles heel, uh, duh…It’ll still be OK. We’ll just have to leave a narrow passageway or alternate route for the heeled ladies, or place the thing in a less obtrusive location.
Playing the Building
Thanks to the folks at Creative Time, this installation will finally open in NYC at the end of this month. Here is the press release: Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by David Byrne, will transform the interior of the landmark Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.” Byrne’s project will consist of a retrofitted antique organ placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery that will control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines will vibrate, strike, and blow across the building elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds. As Byrne explains, it is an elaborate system for “activating the sound-producing qualities that are inherent in all materials.”
Playing the Building marks the first time in decades that the second floor of the Battery Maritime Building will be accessible to the public. The space will be open and free to all visitors on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday throughout the summer of 2008. Everyone will be invited to sit at the organ, tap on the keys, and create a unique array of sounds that travel through the space. In addition, David Byrne and Creative Time will invite guest musicians to challenge his creation through a series of performances and jam sessions.
A new page on davidbyrne.com contains more info on this project, including the location and hours, pictures, videos, interviews, and all that.
Here Lies Love Continues…
Cyndi Lauper came in to the studio last week to sing 1½ songs for the Here Lies Love album. She was about an hour and a half late to the session, so I fully expected to be in for some prime diva behavior. But, as I’d run overtime on the earlier brass sessions, it all worked out great, and Cyndi gave an amazingly fine-tuned performance. Not only is she a wonderful singer from a technical point of view, but she can tailor her attitude and performance to suit the character and the character’s emotional state.
This is exactly the skill set I need for this project. After giving Cyndi the back-story on a particular song and establishing the context of the lyrics, I would give directions like, “Yes, she’s a little angry, but also heartbroken and confused.” Cyndi would then incorporate these complex emotions into her performance with seeming ease. She’d ask, for example, “You want more anger in this verse?” And sure enough, she’d dial a little more in. Very impressive.
I expected the mortgage credit crisis to affect the super rich here in NY and around the world, as did many of my friends. We gaze out at the skeletons of condos being erected in every neighborhood, with their toppling cranes and occasional shards of falling glass, and wonder aloud who is going to fill these expensive monstrosities? With the dollar so low, haven’t the Eurorich already bought their pieces of NY real estate? And if there is a financial crisis, doesn’t that mean that hedge fund guys and others whose wealth is based on not making anything will be less flush? Aren’t those guys the intended buyers for these apartments and bachelor pads? We wonder if these condos will end up empty if these guys fall on hard times.
A couple in a restaurant introduce themselves to me. She is a real estate broker mainly in the Upper East Side. So I ask her if there is a downturn in her market, and she says no, not in the slightest. The truly rich are barely affected, she says, and the hedge fund guys make so much money that even if they make ten million less, it’s not all that significant to them. Maybe they will forgo the Miami condo, for now, but this rarefied part of NYC will remain unaffected, so she claims.
Others make similar assertions. A few recent articles mention that the spending of the super rich continues unabated. It’s written about because, like my friends and I, many assume that everyone will be hurt by the falling house of cards. But so far, at least according to these articles, the super rich are immune, and they will go on partying, buying contemporary art and building condos as the bottom falls out for the bottom half of society.
So far, it seems there is some invisible financial dividing line below which low-income homeowners and all the companies that depend on their dollars—the Foot Lockers, Zales, and Office Depots—will go completely bankrupt. This is happening right now, and it’s happening amazingly fast. It’s not just one or two bankruptcies, and not just mom and pop stores on main streets, but huge chains that used to seem invulnerable in their ubiquity. These were the stores that put mom and pop out of business and now they’re going under?
What will happen when half the country is unemployed, with no medical insurance, stuck in a sheet rock house miles from public transportation? They’ll be ripe for religion or revolution if you ask me. Bibles and bullets.
Will they still support the billions a day spent in Iraq? I don’t think so—even now they don’t. One would expect they’ll be pretty pissed off watching the rich and famous party endlessly and continue their glamorous lifestyle—or maybe not. Surprising to me, those being duped and exploited by banks and entrepreneurs often envy their “betters”—they want to be that person in the Beemer or Lexus, and will mortgage everything they’ve got to have a symbolic piece of it. Instead of anger and action we get envy—the bane of every outside agitator, union organizer, and young revolutionary.
I remember when MLK decided to tie the Vietnam War in with domestic issues like poverty and racism, and many thought it ill advised. They assumed he would lose some support—there were still some in favor of the Vietnam War at that point—and that it might dilute the focus on jobs, racism, equality and votes.
I think he was right. This stuff is tied together. Katrina and Iraq are not separate issues. The securities and safeguards guaranteed to the super rich by the Bush administration and the credit crisis are probably linked as well. I don’t mean conspiracy linked—the connections and actions don’t have to be premeditated or thought out in advance to make a network. There are organic emergent forces at work, self-organizing systems arising that benefit some and not others. That too sounds complex and conspiratorial, but it’s not.
Torch Song
I don’t often indulge in the usual blog thing of aggregating, i.e. pointing to articles in newspapers and magazines, but there’s a lovely and surprising piece in the NY Times Arts section disguised as yet another article on the China Tibet issue and the Olympic torch relay. The piece points out that the torch relay originated with the Nazis. It was a bit of stagecraft thought up by Carl Diem and filmed by Leni Riefenstahl for her 1938 hymn to Aryan supremacy, Olympia.
The Wagnerian imagery is mythic: within a landscape of Greek ruins, a naked and pure human specimen holds a javelin as it is lit by a bowl of fire, and then transports the burning torch to the Rhineland—well, the symbolism is pretty obvious.
The city is building some new bike parking/shelter things. Well, they’re actually built by Cemusa, a Spanish company that makes “street furniture”, which means bus shelters and newsstands, not sofas and credenzas.
The Department of Transportation, in partnership with The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, is holding a design competition for outdoor and indoor bicycle racks, and I have agreed to judge the entries. The current standard is the U- or M-shaped steel square tube mounted on
sidewalks here and there. For me, these racks work pretty well in
isolated and lightly trafficked spots, though they could be more fun. Suggestions below:
 The real problem seems to lie at places where many riders congregate: movie theaters, offices, music clubs, schools, stadiums and arenas. A couple of U- or M-racks won’t suffice in those places. We riders end up locking up to any bit of scaffolding or parking sign within a block of the location. The issue then, seems less about the shape of the rack—we can borrow models from Europe, Japan and elsewhere—and more a question of where to put it.
It wouldn’t be right to block the sidewalk with some huge contraption, with people going to and fro. In some cases—like around offices or schools—there is often a plaza large enough to house multiple bike racks, but this is not always the case. I would suggest taking ONE parking space from the street around these potentially heavily trafficked sites and devoting it to bicycle parking instead. The DOT has already tested this at the Bedford L stop in Williamsburg: by removing three parking spaces, they were able to create enough parking for thirty bicycles. (See here and here for more info). The rack could be something similar to the one by Cemusa in the photo above, with salable ad space so it would pay for itself. One parking spot wouldn’t be nearly enough, but it would be a start.
Stay Awake and Standards
This Wednesday, I’m participating in a benefit concert for St. Ann’s Warehouse, a performance center in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Last year’s benefit consisted of performances of sea shanties and pirate ditties curated and musically directed by Hal Willner. This year he’s been brought in to (sort of) recreate Stay Awake, a record he produced in 1988 featuring unexpected singers and musicians performing songs from Disney films.
The song selection is drawn primarily from the vintage classics, movies like Snow White and Cinderella, rather than The Little Mermaid and Enchanted. For some, these older Disney tunes have become standards, and many were in fact written by the classic songwriters of that period. I would argue that the grammar and lexicon of the classic pop songs would become the classical music of the 20th Century. These songs were often innovative and complex in their construction, but always tuneful. Sophisticated short symphonies were balanced by equally sophisticated jazz and blues compositions, which at that time, held the public enthralled.
In the last couple of decades, the Disney songs are more convoluted in structure — more a mix of sung banter and hook and less compact. I prefer the old tunes, but that could be because I heard them on red and yellow kiddie vinyls as a child.
Years ago, I eventually joined the ranks of millions of others who found many of these standards moving and beautiful. I often dislike the way they were performed, all schmaltzy and with swing in inappropriate places. I don’t care for Sinatra, for example. It was probably Willie Nelson’s Stardust produced by Booker T. Jones that finally won me over. I started picking up the songbooks and fakebooks and learning the songs at home.
I have no ambition of following Bryan Ferry or Rod Stewart and recording a series of standards’ albums. But, by playing these songs, I began to sense how they were constructed, how they used certain devices to pull at the heartstrings and others to keep a melody interesting. I suspect I began to incorporate some of these “tricks” into my work, but in my own way, and with my own lyrics, which are usually miles apart from the lyrics of the traditional pop song. Although, Cole Porter’s “list” songs, and similar ones by Gershwin and others, take on a form I find easily adaptable to a lot of styles.
Under African Skies
The following week, I will join Paul Simon for a series of performances at the BAM where he currently holds a month-long residency. Simon invited a number of guest performers to cover his material, and divided the shows into three series: the Latin and doo-wop influenced material, the African and Brazilian influenced material (the nights I’m performing), and his own classic songs.
Like many others, I grew up listening to and learning the Simon & Garfunkel repertoire. However, it was one of his more recent records — You’re the One — that really knocked me out, even more than Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints, which one might expect me to identify with, since I was also collaborating with musicians from Africa and Brazil around the same time. The record didn’t sell that well, but to my ears, he had finally internalized all he’d learned from his earlier collaborations. He had made something that didn’t sound like any of his sources or inspirations, yet couldn’t have been made without them. We crossed paths somewhere and I told him how much I liked that record and maybe that helped break the ice.
Some months ago, we started meeting occasionally and we’d fall into talking about how we write and what the process is and where we get stuck and when it’s easy. I would sit, rapt, as I felt like I was hearing the words of a master songwriter, a kind of magician who was going to reveal to me, over lunch, some of his best tricks. Here was a more contemporary Gershwin or Cole Porter who was going to tell me a little of how it was done. Listen up.
Well, it didn’t happen exactly like that. Specific harmonic devices don’t always work for everyone in the same way, for example. At times, Paul and I might actually use very similar ways of writing words, but in the end, what we gravitate to — the lyrics we choose to be best and most suitable — is unique to each of us. So his tricks are essentially useless to me. I could, however, extrapolate, and find common ground in the decision-making process along the way. Our discussions yielded more about what might drive an artist to continue creating than they did songwriting advice. What does one do when confronted with a problem? And how can an artist remain passionate and interested in writing little songs?
I’m in Dallas — or more accurately, Richardson, a silicon suburb north of the city — to meet with David Hanson, a maker of realistic (i.e. human) looking robots.
We’re collaborating on a piece that, if all goes well, will be part of a group show at The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid this summer. Some time ago, the curators invited me to be part of a tech-oriented art show, and I suggested approaching Hanson to make a singing robot for which I would write and record a song.
Hanson’s robots flirt with the uncanny and test our notions of what it means to be human. They have rubbery flesh made of what he calls frubber, with tiny wires on the inside that pull the “skin” to mimic human facial expressions (to an extent). Some of them can also make eye contact and some can carry on a weird dialogue, adding to their profoundly disturbing nature. Part of what makes this human likeness so creepy is our instinctive desire to empathize with the robots and to ascribe to their behavior human motivations and even emotions.
As a result, Hanson’s machines make us wonder how much of our interaction with our fellow humans (and animals) is based on instinctual empathy. We believe that behind the actions, words and facial expressions of the people and animals we encounter there is a life force and a consciousness. But the robots force us to ask how much of that is presumption on our part.
I was curious whether a singing robot might push these reactions even further. We often assume that singing is “from the heart” — or at least some part of it is. I myself believe that it is and it isn’t: it’s both a developed skill (to emote convincingly), and a true outpouring of emotion, as the physiological effect of singing is by nature more connected to the lizard brain than to the rationalizing frontal lobes. The fact that singing can engage both parts of the brain makes it maybe the least likely thing one would expect a robot to do.
There have been other singing robots. For instance, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL sings “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)” as he is powered down. The scene demonstrates HAL regressing from independent thought to mere parroting, and was not meant to be a kind of expression of HAL’s feelings.
Before leaving for Dallas, I wrote and recorded a short song in New York, something I believe is passionate, over the top, and extremely emotional sounding. The song is sung a cappella.
Getting down south had its share of setbacks. Due to some McDonald-Douglas planes having untreated technical problems, three successive American Airlines flights were cancelled. The reason was never given at the time. They would say things like “we can’t find a crew.”
I eventually arrived in Texas and drove from the massive Dallas-Fort Worth airport (it’s larger than Manhattan) across the flat plains of northern Texas. The gracefully curving highways were the color of the surrounding earth — a sort of warm beige. After about twenty miles, I turned north on Highway 75 on what might be the mightiest and most awe-inspiring interchange I’ve ever seen. At least five levels of roads are stacked up, all swooping over, under and around each other as if in some mighty concrete mating dance. It’s a truly incredible work, graceful, and of a scale so large that it is impossible to see the whole thing from any one vantage point.
When driving on the upper levels, you are almost completely unaware that you are arcing and swooping and curving in a ballet with all the other vehicles exiting and merging down below. You simply see the curve of the road ahead, and some signs alerting you of approaching merging lanes and future exits.
 
I ate dinner at the Renaissance Hotel. The restaurant’s only other diner sat off in the distance. I’m currently reading Temple Grandin’s book Animals in Translation, which seems appropriate for this project. She’s a highly functioning autistic person who claims her autism has helped her to better understand and empathize with the animal point of view.
From the door to my hotel room I could see across the atrium to the identical rooms on the other side. The building’s massive scale, warm moody lighting, and repetitive pattern of doors, plantings, and balconies felt more like some very peculiar temple than a place to sleep. Within this strange temple, all individuality is erased, all ego lost, and, as with many religious sites, one experiences transcendence, a sense of being part of something beyond and greater than oneself.
In religious practice, this glimpse of a profound truth would be channeled via word, sound and symbol to join a pre-established system and set of myths. In this case, one wonders where such channeling might lead? To the world of meetings, creative business exchanges and exciting capitalist enterprises?
The next morning I went to Hanson’s studio, located in an office/industrial park called The Telecom Corridor, where corporate headquarters for companies like Texas Instruments, Samsung, Ericsson and AT&T abound. One building — of a new type springing up here and there — houses data archives, so it has no windows. It’s beautiful in a strange way.
It’s like being in a new world where humans are merely visitors. We work to secure the data and take care of it, like worker bees for machines.
I arrive at the studio, which is on a street called West Executive Drive. The studio itself consists of a reception area, a conference room and few workshops. Some workshops are dedicated to hand-sculpting the heads and faces that will be cast in the fleshy frubber that Hanson has invented. Others are littered with servo motors and laptops that tell the partially assembled robots what facial expression (or Viseme, as Hanson says) to display and how to move their heads and arms. It’s a scene from a thousand science fiction movies, which is pretty exciting to actually walk into.
I proposed that I be videotaped singing the short song, enabling Hanson and his crew to study the series of head movements and facial expressions that I instinctively produce when performing. I do a number of takes, some with more movement, some with less. A few of the robots have mechanical arms, so I do a couple performances moving my arms like I normally would when singing. The robot — which doesn’t resemble me, by the way — won’t mimic my particular mannerisms, but will instead render the performance of a typical singer.
I also suggested that I write and record a version in Spanish since the audience in Madrid will be mainly Spanish-speaking. So, while the wire “tendons” are being attached to the inside of the skin, I hole up in the empty conference room and come up with a Spanish verse that might work.
Just as in the English language, some words and phrases can sound strange and awkward in Spanish. Moreover, the use of melody can place the non-native Spanish speaker at even greater risk. For instance, a melodically emphasized syllable effectively accents the vowel, which, in some cases, conjugates the word into the past tense, or changes its meaning entirely.
To be sure I hadn’t inadvertently done any of that, Thomas, one of Hanson’s collaborators, took me to meet a poetry teacher fluent in Spanish at the nearby UT Dallas (a school that originated as a Texas Instruments Research & Development facility). I sang what I had written for her and she helped with a few phrases. Sadly, I discovered that two of the lines didn’t work at all — though most of the others did — leaving me with a little homework to take back to New York. But, once complete, I’ll be able to record the Spanish version, too.
We returned to the studio, and eventually Hanson’s crew of assistants and collaborators drifted off to their homes and day jobs and I went back to the towering atrium by the side of the highway. That night, Kevin — a Hanson collaborator and production manager — and his boyfriend Carter hosted a BBQ at their traditional Dallas bungalow. (The bricks used to make Dallas bungalows and many newer houses as well are the same color as the highways.) The inside of their home is filled with their paintings and artwork, some of which leans against the walls or lies stacked in piles in the various rooms. One painting displays the Kool Aid pitcher man brandishing a bundle of dynamite. Others show a young Shirley Temple making a cute expression and wielding a butcher knife. These latter paintings have been popular so Kevin will paint more of them.
Hanson once did a stint at Disney in LA, which is no surprise since the Magic Kingdom calls on sculpting and molding skills like his for their theme park needs. While there, he began to develop Frubber, but didn’t work out all the problems and get a patent until after he left the Kingdom. I hope they don’t steal the formula; the Disney folks are rumored to be ruthless. Hanson also worked at the LA studio of artist Paul McCarthy. Although McCarthy’s work leans towards the obscene and scatological, the molding and sculpting techniques are probably not much different than those employed at the Disney parks. The crossover between McCarthy and Disney is, I think, significant.
Heather, a former Hanson employee, said over BBQ that she’s heading to LA this week to apply for similar work. There’s a circle of modelers, engineers and artists mixing technology with artier impulses. They float between the art world, theme parks, Hollywood, and high-tech AI conferences.
Hanson went to RISD, the same art school I briefly attended. Early on in his attendance, Hanson wanted to mix his tech and performance interests with more traditional art techniques and skills. But the school strongly discouraged this, since they lacked a department capable of overseeing that kind of work.
I had a similar experience. While working on a photo-based semi-conceptual art project, I was advised to try my luck in NYC instead of trying to fit in to the school programs. “We don’t teach this stuff,” they told me. At the time it was very frustrating, although in retrospect it turned out to be good advice. And at least I managed to acquire some valuable drawing skills while there.
Hanson and I decide that all programming and adjustments for the English song should be complete within two weeks. In the meantime, he’ll send me a video of the work-in-progress. Once I finish the Spanish song, I might revisit Dallas to facilitate programming Julio’s face for this alternate version. The robot’s body should be ready two weeks later, and then we’ll decide whether the arms will move, whether the head will bob in time with the song’s meter, and whether the torso will sway just a little to the (implied) beat. That leaves us a month to solve any additional problems and install in Madrid — the opening is in June.
I have my fingers crossed. If it all works — even forgoing some of the more ambitious ideas — it will be pretty astounding.
Some robot and artificial intelligence labs discourage and frown on work like Hanson’s. According to his detractors, building robots to mimic human appearance and expression is for the most part irrelevant. More significant investigations will explore what actions the bot can accomplish. Can it learn? How does it process sensory information? In what ways can it react to its environment? Hanson’s work may be less academically rigorous, but it does probe at some sensitive areas that traditionally focused engineers and theoreticians might prefer not to think about.
Clients One Through Eight
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was referred to as client number nine in the prostitution sting this week. Assignations run around $4,500 for the top gals in this house, so I ask myself: why haven’t we been provided the names of clients one through eight? It goes without saying that all are wealthy men, and there are probably a few other politicians among them. The prostitution ring — the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. — was under federal wiretap, so they MUST know the identities of the others. There are probably a lot more than nine clients too, eh, so why have their identities not been released? Though they vigorously deny it, it sure smells like a Republican setup.
Alberto Gonzales was Attorney General at the time this investigation was begun — he who fired a whole slew of high level federal prosecutors because they wouldn’t kiss Bush’s ass. It’s just the sort of thing he would do, with the quiet urging of Karl Rove or Dick Cheney. The dirty trickster Roger Stone — whose work goes back to Nixon days — has been after Spitzer for some years. He was behind a threatening phone call to Bernard Spitzer, Eliot’s father, regarding campaign contributions to his son’s election campaign for attorney general in 1994. Here is part of the voice message he left: “There is not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth and the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all.” Stone was being paid by a group of Republicans to bring down Spitzer, and now he may have succeeded. (He was also involved in orchestrating protests against the Florida vote recount, the debacle that allowed George Bush to become president.)
Like a lot of politicians and people in power, it seems Spitzer believed he could get away with some shit. He should know that if he’s going to play moral crusader, he’s got to be a saint. People like Roger Stone are all too willing to make a quiet call and tip off whomever at the slightest slip or indiscretion of their enemies.
News
Good news, I hope: the city has given the Red Hook ball field vendors a reprieve, allowing them time to get their kiosks and trucks up to health code. The articles don’t specify exactly what that entails or whether the requirements are ridiculous or not. And it’s a little unclear whether each vendor or all of them together need to raise the 30k estimated to get up to code. 30k is a lot of money to come up with when you’re selling huaraches and pupusas as cheaply as they do at the ball fields. These vendors are one of the things that make New York a good place to live. They represent the opposite of the mallification of the planet.
Other good news: the city (specifically the Department of Transportation) is proposing to make Prince Street car-free on Sundays from 11am to 6pm. This experiment faces some opposition from car owners in the hood, but for most local residents, and for all the local businesses, it will be a big improvement.
Model Number 7: Fan Supported Label/Distribution
Just read the second of a number of articles on Maria Schneider, the jazz composer, and the release of her new album. She’s up for a Grammy, which probably prompted these articles, as her lovely new CD — which isn’t actually a CD — is only available as a download through ArtistShare, her current “record label”. The album, Sky Blue, is a suite composed for a seventeen-piece jazz orchestra, so it must have cost something to record and mix.
ArtistShare offers yet another alternative to the traditional record label deal — another possibility to add to the ever-growing list of other possibilities. Again, it probably wouldn’t work for everyone, but it certainly seems to be working for her. ArtistShare asks the fans of an artist to contribute to the making of a future record. (Obviously, this means the artist must have some fans to begin with, so emerging artists might give this one a pass.) A donation of $9.99 gets you a download of the album when it’s done, along with some texts, notes and images and a few other extras.
But then the deal ramps up in steps. A deeper investment gets you concert tickets and other perks and the highest you can go is 18k, which wouldn’t fund a mega pop record or a project in the cash only business of hip hop, but in this case it gets you a credit as a producer. You can attend the recording sessions, obtain tickets to live shows, and can even attend the Grammy’s with Maria and her producer or label guy.
I imagine that in Maria’s case, she spends a lot of time composing (with either a computer or with pencil and paper). And then the actual recording process might be fairly straightforward — some band rehearsals in any large room before renting a large studio to record the stuff more or less live over the course of a few days. Mixing and post-production could be done in a smaller, cheaper studio. So, though I doubt that 18k for example would cover it all — she works with a large ensemble — the sum would at least take a big bite out of the recording costs.
For the most part, distribution is through digital downloads, so those costs are kept under control (though I think the larger investors get signed hard copies as well as their downloads).
How did she do? Well, pretty good I’d say, though she didn’t win a Grammy this time (she got one in 2004). She got 200k from fan/participants for her record, of which 15% went to the “label”. The rest, 170k, went directly to the artist. (I suspect the recording costs come out of that as well, which must have been at least 20-30k). AND, she didn’t have to give up any of her publishing, which traditional labels often manage to get a big piece of.
Anyway, add this one to the list of possible distribution models.
(See the original article published in Wired Magazine here)
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