FundamentallySound Blog

San Francisco is a provincial city with a surprisingly international flavor. But its internationalism is quaint, based on old notions of what the city is about. People don't come here for cutting-edge architecture or visual art, it just doesn't exist. People here are disinterested in anything that is too new, preferring social warmth to a challenging aesthetic. The electronic music scene might be an exception to this.

LA couldn't be more different, it's rooted firmly in southern California style and unafraid to push ahead with the work of architects like Thom Mayne. The city planners seem determined to make the metropolis a distinctly world-class model of urbanism, one that might put off Europeans or those from the northeastern US, but still a well-defined version of urbanity that challenges the rest of the world into reconsidering what a city means. Comparatively, San Francisco is shockingly timid and aggressively conservative in its urban planning and metropolitan aesthetic. This is not to say that its quasi-civilized air is not without attractiveness, in fact it is very easy to be lured into the coziness of the city, seduced by the fog, convinced that the rest of the world can just go its own way without our concern, we have good views, tasty food, and pretty parks. And chances are good that the guy sitting next to you on the train actually would enjoy a conversation about the WG Sebald novel you're reading.

A friend once described the three big American cities this way: If you're tragically ambitious and smart you move to New York. If you're tragically ambitious you move to Los Angeles. If you're just tragically smart you move to San Francisco. That describes my friends in this little village, they're too smart to be ambitious. Or maybe just lazy...

Posted by at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I'm typing this from a little cafe across the road from Booksmith bookstore in San Francisco. I just finished listening to William T. Vollmann read from his new book Europe Central and answer a few questions. One of which went like this (summarized), "So, do you think we're at the point now of the German population's acceptance of Nazi techniques?" To which Vollmann replied, "No, we're not Nazis here, not yet. But the war crimes perpetrated by the current administration are easily accepted by the public, that is a similarity to Nazi-era Germany. People want to be safe and with just a few more terroristic attacks we'll start locking up Arab-Americans, no questions asked."

The man obviously eats breathes and lives words, claiming to write every day all day. When asked how he could do this, he said, "I just love to write." Sounds easy enough. His new book is based on asking poor people in different countries, "Why are you poor?" He said he's fascinated how people from different cultures answer this question differently. I'm fascinated too.

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Witold Riedel has a striking picture of New York City on his site today. Click it for the full-size version.

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The webpage of San Francisco based Marc Weidenbaum, disquiet.com, is a pleasure to read and highly recommended.

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"It’s a very damaged place, the country we live in. Its values are incredibly perverse. [...] I think there’s no place in the world where one can experience isolation and loneliness more profoundly.”

from LA Weekly magazine.

Posted by at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

In the last week I've been viewing the San Francisco electric/avant music scene through the eyes of musicians visiting from Amsterdam. And I like what I see. I'm reassesing all of my old stereotypes about what's going on here, I'd almost say there seems to be a kind of rebirth these days. From Blevin Blectum and her crew over in Oakland to the absolutely f*cking stunning new recording/installation/performance space that Naut Humon and the people from Recombinant Media Labs Compound are building downtown in SOMA (Tonight Naut said, "yeah, our first customer was Lou Reed. But we want to focus more on the edgy fringe type things"). Stuff is going on, people are going out to concerts, there's an excitmenet and energy. Somehow the bay area just keeps producing regardless of nonexistent funding and the mass exodus during the dot com boom. I don't need to explain it though, I'll just try to enjoy it while I'm here. Like tonight, getting to see Female (not sure if it's the right spelling, can't find it on google) from Norway play with Otomo Yoshihide and Ikue Mori was a real treat. And since nobody here (artists anyhow) has any money anyway, everything's free or cheap. Not bad.

Posted by at 9:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you want to see a satellite pic of rx Gallery, the space where I'm playing tomorrow night with Robert van Heumen and Dorsey Dunn at 8:30 PM, here it is.

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Robert and I played two improvisations last night at Mills College, and unlike Robert I felt like they were stronger than what we did at the Lab last week. In my experience I can never tell until I listen to the recordings. The suspended Meyer speakers in the large concert hall create a diffuse sound bubble with very little control of direct sound projection. For what I do, using less pointillistic sounds, the diffusion only helps. For others like Robert I'm sure it's a bit of an obstacle. But still the sound quality produced by the system in that room is pretty top notch. Overall the performances last night were riveting: Joel Ryan gave a sparkling and ultra-tight remix of Evan Parker samples. Laetetia Sonami presented a very introspective and powerful piece. At the end she brought out a large metal antenna, seeming to control the music while divining for signals in the air. Michel Waisvisz blazed through a sweeping musical collage that was so tight, so on. He was in top form. The audience was interesting as well, a few people I recognized: Bob Ostertag, Otomo Yoshihide, Ikue Mori, and James McCartney. All in all it was a very cool night.

Posted by at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm going to be playing with STEIM people tonight at Mills College Concert Hall, 7:30 PM, featuring Robert Van Heumen, Michel Waisvisz, and Joel Ryan. If you're in the area, stop by!

Today's STEIM trivia: the institute has a new artistic director, it's Jan st. Werner from Mouse on Mars.

venue information:
5000 Macarthur Blvd.
Oakland, California
510-430-3308

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After first meeting Joel Ryan at a show in Tokyo in 2000 (at a tiny space called Theater Poo, just east of the south exit of Shinjuku station) and then studying with him in Holland, it's an honor to get to play a show with him and the other performers tonight. It's like an electronic music all-stars gig. Plus Roddy.

Posted by at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been spending a lot of time online these days. More than usual, maybe because I am looking for something to do in my breaks between programming a SuperCollider patch for a performance tomorrow night at the Lab.

One of the blogs I've been reading a lot is Neomarxisme. It's full of debate between two basic ideological stances on Japan: that of a kind of Japanese mysticism as offered by Momus and a economic and cultural dystopianism as explained by Marxy (whose site it is). Sometimes the debates become strangely personal, maybe because everyone involved has such a large stake in that little collection of islands across the Pacific, some are tied in financially, others through relationships. In one case, that of my old friend Robert Duckworth, a regular pundit on Neomarxisme, he's actually renounced his US citizenship. This is something I'd love to hear him speak about more. Was it a political act? An aesthetic one? A pragmatic one? How does it feel to renounce your citizenship, Robert? His commentary often takes the form of visual or verbal provocation with little explanation. His blog seems like snapshots of a life lived in the fourth dimension.

One line of attack which is resorted to with regularity, usually by the expats living in Tokyo, tries to discredit the perspectives of those who do not live in Japan as being shallow because they are somehow just a "tourist." I couldn't disagree more, some of the most astute cutting observations are made by those who are not embedded in the mesh of daily life, they are then free to observe the big picture and connect the dots that the people living the life of the domestic resident are unable to see. Lars von Trier never set foot in America yet he makes some of the most painfully accurate observations of this country of anyone I have ever seen. Roland Barthes sketched a picture of Japan that was part of my inspiration in moving to Tokyo. They both painted in wide strokes, and I am grateful that they did. I love to read Baudrillard's accounts of America, he came here and he saw the country and explained it via his own theoretical framework.

Which brings me to America, this big country that I've been living in again for the last seven months. I am convinced that this country has deep cultural insecurities, probably due to its large-scale denial of the problems running under the surface. I've never seen a country that is more vulnerable and reacts so viciously to foreign criticism, or criticism of any kind for that matter. I just have to wonder was it always like this? Luckily I live in a sort of cultural enclave, but even here in San Francisco, I have to face the extreme dogmatism of the rest of the country, I am forced to engage Bush's viewpoints and those of his supporters. In fact the whole world does.

The disappointing reality though is that the rest of the world seems to be more deeply engaged with American policy than the people of this country. It seems America has resigned itself to a silent acceptance stemming from a naive trust on the part of its residents towards its leaders and an education system that does not inspire engagement with the country's power structures. I am not optimistic about the prospects of this country in the new century, far from it.

Posted by at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For what it's worth, I don't really expect to make any money from these ads, I mean I don't get much traffic here to start with, and the people who do visit are probably just as poor as I am. It's more of an experiment than anything. Google tells you nothing about how their payscale functions. To be honest if it could cover just the yearly hosting cost for this site, it'd be worth it. So if you're feeling generous, clicking a few times on those "love spell" ads would be appreciated.

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I've decided to put Google ads on my site. They're ugly and I wish I could figure out another way to help offset costs. Sorry.

I have to say, "easy love spells" being the ads displayed to the left is pretty funny to me at least. Those vaunted Google algorithms might have picked up on things in this blog that have escaped me otherwise. In fact, I might just be the first visitor from this blog to patronize those shops.

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Aki Shinomiya, a visual artist who just completed her thesis work at Mills College, had an installation of 3D images which was very fun. One part of the installation would take live video feeds and turn them into 3D images in real-time. I took a snap of myself rendered in 3D, if you have some 3D specs laying around it might help. I think I look like Max Headroom. Actually, he was a kind of hero of mine as a kid, I could have chosen worse role models.

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I've been commissioned by the American Music Center to write a piece of music for the Siday Music On Hold Program. Siday "was the first American composer to systematically utilize electroacoustic sound potential within the television medium, particularly with his 'invention' of the sound logo and the Musical Rorschach test."

In Japan composers are commissioned to create short electronic pieces to announce train arrivals. Experimental design collectives, like Tomato, create 3 second Flash animations for instant download to millions of NTTDoCoMo cell phone subscribers. Means of distribution have become equally if not more interesting than most content. A politician's soundbite or a faux-authentic record scratch: they're both part of a always-on network of highly condensed sound codes. I thrive in it.

Siday's sound logos are like sonic DNA molecules that get in your head and take on a specific and condensed meaning, usually in the form of subliminal marketing. I think the Japanese are brilliant at this, I vividly remember the very very short and frighteningly catchy theme to 7-11 convenient stores, or the train songs from various stations in Tokyo telling me that I better run before the doors close and the train leaves me waiting at the station.

For the Music-On-Hold piece, I'm thinking of making a kind of game, a collection of sound logos, maybe I can develop a system that would make it interactive, so the listener, while waiting, could actually play along with it using the touch-tone phone, a kind of audio Simon Says. Or maybe I'll just write a piece of music that is made from sound logos, a collage of international marketing logos that play nicely with one another. Or...

Posted by at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, do they?

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On my recent trip to Los Angeles, I went to the Schindler House, a small house built in the "Space Architecture" style. One gets the sense while in it that the space itself is breathing the California air, basking in the sun along with you.

For me, visiting the house was a kind of pilgrimage. I remember being a teenager in the deep south reading accounts of how John Cage would present his new works and ideas in the salons held there. When I was young I created an idealized version of this house in my mind, a free environment for artists and thinkers to talk with others who deeply care about the same things, sailing above the pettiness of the masses. Yes, I really did think this way, and on good days I still do! I had total confidence that living like this was all that was required, ideas and big art were really all that mattered.

So now, I'm 28, and I finally get to visit Schindler House and the first thing I notice is how derivative of Japanese style it is. The sliding doors could be from the most common countryside family home in Japan, the use of tall greenery to partition the inner and outer garden space is a trick from suburban Tokyo, the glass windows divided with thin dark wood is old style Japanese construction, little more.

I wouldn't say that my visit was a disappointment, the space has a magic about it. But my idealism is gone, I'm afraid, and not just for the house. In fact it is difficult to not make similar accusations of derivative aesthetics against Cage himself, in the way he was so so fond of picking and choosing from Japanese ideas and presenting them as being somehow new to the west.

Yuji Takahashi (here is previous commentary from this blog) is a composer I see as being organically creative, gaining aesthetic nourishment in a knowing way from his culture. He's not selling snake oil. He's refreshingly uninterested in playing the role of the cultural ambassador, at this time anyhow. And, on a deeply intuitive level, I hear his music as being seminally Japanese. What does that sound like? Just give his piece Ito a listen.

(A very good essay on Takahashi, as pianist, was written by Thomas Schultz).

Posted by at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was a breath of fresh air to return to San Francisco after four days in Los Angeles. I had a very nice time there, but the driving... The constant driving and the never-ending search for parking: I cannot deal with that, it brings out the primitive animal in everyone.

In other news, I'm really looking forward to checking out the student works at this year's Signal Flow Festival at Mills College, I'll be there tomorrow afternoon starting with the artist's reception at 3:00.

And a big Happy Hanami to all you folks in Japan!! Seems like just a few days ago I was wishing I were there to celebrate under the 2004 cherry blossoms.

Posted by at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)