Category: blog

Scaping the sounds

I’ve heard that some people have some wires in there head crossed wrongfully. They say, they can see sent, hear colours and smell sounds.

I heard that some folks experience the same when taking some anaesthesia, XTC or LSD. It has something to do with the brain being disoriented by the drugs and consequentially send the smell signals to the eye-part of the brain, the touch signals to the ear fibres and so on. With the ‘sick’ people with the faulty wiring, it’s something that’s really hard wired into there brain, so they’re likely to say: ‘that peanut and jelly sandwich smells green.’

It might sound strange, but I think of all super powers that are likely to happen to your average john doe, touching sound, or seeing sound would be one of the coolest. Imagine, even in the dark you would be able to see all sounds of everything, probably with even better accuracy of place and direction than you would if you would hear the sounds.

But it would be (more realistic) to edit you sounds in a visual mode. Now, I don’t mean those corny and non-intuitive technical representations of sound like a spectrum analysis or a frequency timeline, like you get from programs like Cakewalk, GoldWave and the like. No, I mean more like those graphs you get while running a WinAmp screensaver. But this time you can edit the graphs real-time, and by doing so, influencing the sound in colour (no pun intended), speed, intensity.

Next steps would probably rewriting movie-effects, postproduction tools, and Photoshop-filters to use on sounds. Can you imagine: blurring a track of the cure, alpha blending the Beatles with Foghat or texturizing the art of noise;-)

A blogging brain

Arie Altena also tries web-blog. Make sure you watch this guy, he know what he’s thinking about. He might even think your thoughts for you 😉

On a more positive note

Happy new year, and lots of instances of love, sex and luck to you

So, I guess we are now one step further from being just another citizen of a random state of the United States of Europe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a nationalist, nor a patriot, but sometimes I feel like we are all so looking for gratification from crowd individualism, that we forgot what everything is about. I just moved to Amsterdam, not so long ago and live even shorter in my current apartment, or to be more precise: my personal physical instance of a digital cage of Faraday. You see, it’s more like a small concrete box, with a large collection of electrical appliances.

Anyway, I was wondering if I could notice some change in attitude now we (read: all DING FLOP BIPS countries) all pay with currency, which is valid in over 12 countries. But, besides the wonderful weather, I did not notice any difference. I know, these things take a while, but even still; You might imagine, it’s kind of a strange feeling to pull a condom from a machine with a Euro-coin from the Vatican (besides the strange feeling condom packages have by default (what’s that all about anyway?)). I find it even slightly ironic.

But I was diverted from my doomsday remark about this crowd individualism. You might think it’s a paradox, and maybe it is, I can’t help notice that after a short period of ‘Cocooning’ in the late 90’s, people started to strive for individualism in masses. With capitalism as one of the means to reach it. In my goal in keeping this article short, I leave you with the question: what are people realy looking for? I mean, you see that lot’s of noses are beginning to point in this direction which seems to end nowhere. It is like we are collectively being put on a quest of reaching the goal of the meaning of mankind.

Thinking about the new year depression

Often you hear people talking about those pour homeless, elderly and single folk around the x-mass days. Having to spend it in dark, cold and in without any loved ones nearby. Until not so long ago I didn’t know what they meant.

They could find some way to get to other people, right? Finding some other not so dirty bum, or going to some singles bar with too much of the wrong aftershave. How hard could it be? Right? Wrong!

It’s actually hard to find somebody, when you’re not looking because your afraid of rejection; because you are afraid they will find you to different, to quiet, to loud, to dirty. Even though, it’s not true, even if you are a spontaneous guy at work. Even if you give a great show on the public square. No, you do not like the hassle, the pressure, the slim chance people might find out you are not all that. The remote chance that you find out, you are not perfect, not prepared, or not cute for everybody.

So, what to do? Prepare so devotedly, the preparation becomes a goal in it self? Saying your not well, you have plans or just went to bed because tomorrow you have the big appointment you cannot miss?

You see, there are people who do care, people who say: come on! Have another beer. They can only try this once or twice, because, the next time you will not be there, or they will presume you will not budge like the many times before. After that, you’re screwed! You’ll notice you are not in the ring anymore. Being asked was nice, saying no was a mistake, but being out of the ring is more like moving to the Andromeda system. You are not there anymore, and you will not be coming back for a long while.

Moral: go with them, be nice, and be yourself and things will work out. You will not be brilliant every time, you will not be perfect or witty, but you will be there. Some of them will find you’re perfect and keep you near them. Those will be your friends. You will not notice the cold, the lonely TV dinners, the lost in the crowd feeling; because it will not be there.