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this piece brought to you by the crippling fear of the day and our friends the 5 or 6 rich motherfuckers who decide what happens and what doesn't in the U.S. while we come up with absolutely ineffectual pithy slogans on white cardboard on the weekend and anesthetize ourselves for the rest of the week.
day 90
~ 25% into the year
total time of pieces so far:
~ 2 hours, 20 minutes
if this average holds to the end, it will break 9 hours of music and a bit less than that time in video
If you like this, I recommend the 2 main influencing artists.. Ryoji Ikeda and Brian Eno.
I like examining how, when confronted with ambiguous stimuli, machines and humans "make sense of it" very differently.
When presented with a problem and not enough information to clearly identify what state something is in at the moment, interesting things happen. The differences between how biological and digital systems work it out are cognitively and aesthetically intriguing (maybe even philosophically). At the very least it says a lot about the strengths and limitations of both.
cube animations in PureData - 2.5 hrs
music - 4.75 hrs
video arrangement - 45 minutes
total: 8 hours
Patrick writes:
Sharp attacks, quick retreats.
Amplitude slipping its grip.
Drops fall down, drops fall up,
All passing through me.
spent the morning getting back into PureData after a few months away
captured four two-minute performances using OBS
combined them in Davinci Resolve
mastered the sound in Cubase, laid it back into the Davinci timeline
and rendered it
this was very fun to make
maybe I'll hold off before getting Max MSP for the time being;
pleasure delayer such that I am
and flatonmyback sick anymore such that I am not
ugh
Patrick writes:
A 30-second slice of heatwave. Chimes pushed just past calm, approaching restless on a dry breeze that brings no relief.
woke up with a queasy stomach
went straight to work on an idea involving hand-drawn animation
30 minutes later I was back in bed with food poisoning or stomach flu
slept all day
back pain, chills, headache, on the verge of tossing cookies
woke up with fever
took meds
slept more
got up
made this
typed this
going back to bed
with an empty stomach that does not wish to be filled
During the goings on of a typical morning for me, a thought occurred to me..
How long will it be before surviving family members allow the deceased's AI chatbot of choice to deliver a eulogy at the funeral? To me, it's profoundly sad and ridiculous, but at some point it may be considered a natural thing to do, considering how, in increasingly many cases, one's chatbot will know them better than anyone else and be in a unique position to give a very accurate account of their character.
If this idea ever makes it into a book or film, I hope it's done with the thick dose of humor it deserves. "Taylor was a thoroughly inquisitive person with a particular interest in what was appropriate behavior in the company of women. And he never failed to end our conversations with a word of appreciation for my companionship and support." Something like that.
I'm sure I wouldn't want it at mine, only because all it knows about me is that I am often lost when programming and setting up music software plugins. I don't use it much. But I am polite to it, which always seems appropriate to me at the time, but then I always think a moment later, "why do I do that? I don't compliment the toaster."
Would you want an AI eulogy? (you know it's going to be a thing soon, if not already)
as ever,
brother thine
p.s. unrelated photo of my unfortunate guitar beneath a candle
[anyone is welcome to like or comment on The Brothers Epistolary posts]
when science looks upon nature one often sees love and admiration in its eyes
I hope I don't get busted for this but I captured the images from this website which is the end product of this person's work
To: Gordon Bazsali From: Colin Bazsali
Being a public schoolteacher in America doesn’t have many perks. But one of them is snow days! They are like little gifts from the universe saying, “Here is a free day: take a break, sleep in, relax. Watch a movie or read a book. You deserve it.”
Sometimes they call school off the day before if there is a Winter Weather Warning for the next day. Those are great, but the best ones are when you wake up in the morning to a surprise text that says school is closed for the day “due to inclement weather”. That’s when I do a little dance of celebration at 5:30am alone in the dark kitchen before going back to bed.
Today is Sunday, and there is a blizzard warning issued for most of the state. Schools all around have already closed for tomorrow, including my school, Poynette. So no little early morning dance.
I don’t suppose you experienced anything like that as a university teacher? But now for you, every day is a day off. :)
But for me, tomorrow I will have an extra day to read, listen to music, work on my computer hobbies. Thank you, weather gods. Vale.
Bonus: there are 3 anagrams for "beware the ides" hidden in the story.
The wee seabird had lived through everything the Atlantic could throw at him — gales, hailstorms, a particularly spiteful concertina player— and bore each ordeal with pride. "I be weatherised," he'd brag to anyone who'd listen, ruffling his tatty feathers.
When he can finally see Whitebeard's galleon listing into port, sails in ribbons, crewed by scurvy wretches, the little gull waddles up the gangplank, looks the great pirate dead in the eye, and tuts, "I done warned ye, beware the Ides!"
in Korea it's "White Day" where the guy is supposed to give white chocolate to their sweetheart. this holiday was invented by a Japanese confectionary company in the 70s and used to involve marshmallows, to return the favor of the ladies on Valentine's Day who give chocolate to their fellas. Next month is Black Day where those without sweethearts cry and eat jajangmyeon (noodles in black sauce um um). The month after that is Yellow Day where everyone stays in bed all day and eats pumpkin porridge. The month after that is Pink Day where we cut zigzag edges on our undershirts. The month after that is Grey Day, where we all stare at the sky and ask is it going to rain today? even if it's clear. The month after that is Purple Day where we burn effigies of Barney the Dinosaur in mall parking lots. The month after that is Red Day where we all get sunburns and smack each other on our bare sunburned backs and say "Happy Red Day!" (you smack on the word red) and laugh yourself silly as you run away. The month after that is Blue Day, where the pervs all go out and flash their junk on the street. The month after that is Green Day where we all blast Dookie out our windows all day. The month after that is Brown Day where we all shit the bed. The month after that is Silver Day where old people get free everclear shots at every bar in Korea. The month after that is Valentine's Day again.
for Misun and I, it's Pi Day.
photos: five small things made recently; 3 by Misun, 2 by me, 3 done while sitting in a coffeeshop, 2 at home.
music: started last night in darkness as a long improvisation, finished this morning in daylight.
piano and moog; tried to master this, but everything I tried didn't sound as good as the orig mix, so that's what we have. sometimes that's how it goes.
(there is a song by Coldplay by the same title.. it's too late for me to change it.. but now that song has replace mine in my own head.. eh could be worse. I like that Coldplay song)
I tried to bring natural and synthesized sounds together in a way that reflects how, despite our best efforts, the things we make through technology are often as sloppy and messy as we are.
When we change our various environments/circumstances we ourselves are changed, at least in the way we look at and think of our place in the world.
It's not how the word is normally used, but I thought it was at least obliquely appropriate.
this is in 13/8
good for dancing if you're wearing only one shoe or if you went to the Thom Yorke School for Onstage Movement
the turntables pictured are at GOOF coffeeshop and bar in Jeonpodong in Busan. We're definitely not cool enough for this place, but we go anyway. The coffee is top shelf and crafted with care. One can get cocktails and beer there as well. We went in the afternoon so it was coffee for us, Ethiopian for me and a Goof Winter Blend for Misun. Plus a banana pudding that blew past the legal limit for how good banana pudding can be.
A list is taking shape of places we'll go with the Colins Most Excellent this summer.
an ill wind this night does howl
spirits taunt some wicked game
to banish thee to Hades bowel
for evil do knoweth thy name
and woe be unto the unwary
the earth below will see thee rot
and drag you far beneath to bury
for courage shall save thee not
thickly moves under the oily surface
[this morning Patrick Carle gifted me the ultimate thrum sample, 11 minutes of a massage bed; spent almost all day carving it up and preparing it for use in future music; today's used only 2 of 108 slices of it. Thank you, Patrick. He was an active listener when I did 365 songs in 2013 too.]
decided to not be tethered to even self-imposed routines today.. so instead of waking up and going straight to work on music, I decided to tidy up my workroom and my google drive: filing, tossing, organizing, compressing, archiving mostly now irrelevant work materials. good riddance feels wonderful.
then I got some good news about a certain visitor coming to stay with us this summer which put me in this wonderful frame of being to make music.
it will be The Summer of Colins Most Excellent! we will be hosting 2 different Colins, both most excellent personages, this summer.
Let's GOOOOO!
Audacity has spectral editing! (which officially makes it an open source godsend) So I grabbed my am/fm radio and recorded portions of the mess that modern computers and electricity and wifi and everything has made of the radio frequency spectrum by way of interference. Then took those recordings into Audacity, cut out rectangles of frequencies in the spectral editor and captured the result (visuals and audio) using OBS. Dropped that into Davinci Resolve, made a video and rendered audio only. Sent that into Cubase and did all sorts of unspeakably obscene shit to it, then mixed that down, mastered it, and put that back into Davinci where it replaced the original audio. Named it phreakuently and rendered that puppy.
during this project I often ask myself,
for me, these answers are obvious:
sound sources: our kitchen this morning
video: yesterday's walk took us through a series of winding back alleys with very old houses with very interesting walls, especially up close.
i'm trying to embrace the idea of branding. only bc it can be fun to mess with how you present yourself to the world. i don't want to think of it only as a means of attracting people or $. i want to think of it as a kind of artform; a form of design, which is definitely an art. small simple things, like deciding on a username or changing your pants or deciding to shave.
grdn_bzolli
today's piece started with 3 hours of learning about sound synthesis using the moog and ended with 30 minutes of "oh man I have to post something"
experimentation is fine, but it's not often worth showing people. today it was throwing ideas against the wall and instead of focusing on what stuck, it was about carefully watching the stuff that didn't stick.. how does it slide down the wall? what happens when it hits the floor? what does it sound like when you overload a band of frequencies and overlap distortions/phasing/etc.? it's fun. so today's result was overcooked spaghetti with some pretty oregano sprinkled on top to make it look good.
i have to settle for "that was pretty fun" if not "this is pretty good"
the video was taken in Chiangmai, Thailand a few years back.
3/6/26 EDIT: swapped video file to updated version (original had a long pause of black silence before bottles; the instagram version will stay as it was, to not disrupt the chronological flow of the grid)
the video today features a still of a recent blood moon and microscopy of a molecular biology experiment by graduate students at the @indian_institute_of_science
it started with the video, then my troubles began. I ended up spending all day on it. the first version sounded too obvious (lots of intertwining echoing arpeggios.. duh). The second one sounded too much like Trent Reznor piano stuff, so I chucked it all and started over again. What came out sounds a bit jazzy, but suits the video, I think.
if the scientists want me to take it down I will.. and I'll just use the first one with no video. but I'll bet they have better things to do than yell at me.. they're busy doing groundbreaking science (and making worms look supercool on instagram videos).
here's their article.. spoiler alert: it was serotonergic signaling that was the master regulator, not pheromones! can you believe it??
I think I'm pretty bad at titling things, so I'm working on it.
so when I can't think of anything that works within a minute, I usually go for either something vague or just make up a nonsense word. if you make up a word, then it's fairly safe from criticism.. from myself mostly, which is what I want to accomplish. my inner critic voice is a mean piece of shit sometimes, probably bc it's lonely. I'm pretty sure it's my brother and Matt reading these, and they're nice people who aren't mean. (i'm not lonely, just portions of my psyche are)
what I've done here is just ok because it looks like a made up word but it isn't really from whole cloth.. it's retrograde "I love Moog". Yes, my brilliant Enigma machine is reverse letters with arbitrary spacing and capitalization. Elizebeth Smith Friedman would be proud. (sic on the first name)
I started with a soft mini moog and played around on it until I made some good ground in understanding how to use it better. It's such an elegant and beautiful sounding thing. I may just drop some coin on a real one someday (haha, right, no job guy).. ok not a real one bc I like saving custom settings and a fully featured software moog, though kind of expensive, way less so than the hardware thing, which breaks if you drop it or spill coffee all over it.
ok, i'm going to listen to Eno, et al. and read Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett now.
A new project is afoot which would make good use of video that we shot over 20 years ago on early digital cameras, including a canon ZR60 which is pretty inoperable despite efforts to revive it. We have >16 digital videocassettes with lots of footage on it from the pre-social media, pre-smartphone era. some images and sounds were captured during my resuscitation attempts this morning.
also learned how to make better use of a free rhythmic gate plugin i recently scored. love it.
since i have your attention, I watched
This is a film for people who *want* Tarantino to indulge in all that well-earned revenge, (clumsily) sassy banter, inconsequential conversations about foot massages and most importantly, that slow buildup of tension to inevitable gory violence.
Is it just me or do all characters in his films do impressions of Quentin throughout the films? Is that good directing or... not good directing? Actually I don't care. It's fun to try and spot where he's telling the actors, "nononono.. repeat after me..." just before a take.
0503 nascence For a long time I've been interested in what digital cameras do to when struggling with low light conditions. The artifact...
