Friend Feed
I have come to really like FriendFeed. It’s a great way to follow someone and keep in touch with their activities and interests. It’s a good surface level browser, with an easy to navigate interface. It also does what it says on the tin – it’s an RSS Feed reader. But like Facebook and Twitter, it enables conversations and comment threads.
I read my own feed to catch up with my own thoughts and think twice about things. Using it can be like keeping a kind of public notebook.
Postscript: After a I wrote this, I noticed that FriendFeed was coming far too high up in search results and drinking far too much of my Google juice, so I stopped using it. How fickle we are, us internet folk, and yet how wise.
New Music Releases
I’m very pleased to be working with a couple of fellow Pisceans on remixes of one of the most popular pieces of music from the Rise and Shine show, Water on the Moon, released today on dPulse.
Just to increase the fish connection, Tom Sparks who is featured in the track is also Piscean. Coincidence? Well, obviously.
Andrew’s two mixes are intense, deep and sonically scupltural, and my own remix did the logical thing and extended the fast techno-funk groove into danceability.
I also decided to use the excellent DIY site Bandcamp to publish a disco synth tune I wrote for Jack Cheese’s new video trailer, which I dubbed Tasty Disco Slice.
It’s just like Christmas and New Year have come at once! Which is what normally happens, in fact.
The End of an April
Dedicating more and more time to my music projects I have been considering the much changed online media landscape I now inhabit.
Podcasting has changed, and the practises of media makers have evolved out of recognition.
I seriously doubt that the core community of podcasting per se that once existed still exists. It’s been diluted, members have drifted away into other activities, media making habits have changed. With widespread broadband, non-linear delivery is less important, and with streaming services such Mogulus, UStream, Bambuser and Qik, and ever more efficient computers, self-powered live broadcast is now normal.
The content has changed, too. PR, marketing and mainstream media types now enforce old-style, predictable conformity upon this once free, wild and hugely entertaining frontier. Old style Blogging, which kicked off this social media revolution, has been largely replaced by mich lighter, less time-intensive, less literary forms such as Twitter and Tumblr, at least among the large community of non-writers. Carefully produced programmes by passionate amateurs with normal sounding voices are now made by media corporations. Not only do BBC announcers no longer speak the Queen’s English, they make the same kinds of pronunciation gaffes as the ill-educated public.
But all is not lost. Though I hereby pronounce the online media revolution phase one to be finished, revolution phase two began a while back, and its results will be upon us before we even notice. I do have some clear ideas about how this next phase will manifest, but I’m not in a position to share them here. Instead, look for clues in your sock drawer, which as everyone knows, is where lost things gather.
Strike for Free Music
In full sympathy with the workers of France who are giving Sarkozy’s government such a hard time, I’m celebrating the Vernal Equinox by working to rule.
March 20th 2008 saw the writing of the song “Strike!” in the Rise and Shine show.
It’s just been released along with 25 other songs and this is a blatant plug.
You can listen and download MP3 versions of the song free.
Funky Fruit
I have been logical.
I set up a website for my songwriting and composition, dubbed “Funky Fruit” in which I write about the joys and travails of song.
Help Gaza Victims – Four Easy Things To Do
Whatever your views on the causes of this conflict, it is largely a massacre of unarmed civilians, including 265 children as of today.
Write to your MP: I wrote this:
http://theothersideofeverything.com/flip/2009/01/letter-to-emily-thornberry-mp/
Use this as a template if you like, but make sure you change the wording.
Petition Downing Street:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Israel-Sanctions/
Petition the UN:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/
Donate to Medical Aid for Palestine:
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.
An Experiment in Provocation – Stealing Gaza by Brian Eno
From The Daily Swarm. My own response to the war is here.
It’s a tragedy that the Israelis – a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression – are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked “Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it’s the Palestinians”. By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they’ve forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians – with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers – and themselves – with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world – they sacrifice all credibility.
The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.
Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly…and, surprise, surprise – they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?
Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now ‘under attack’ you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn’t possibly reach an accommodation.
And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.
Rise and Shine, Yuletide Edition
You can’t keep a good idea down, and despite the fact we’re still putting the finishing touches to the Daily Song Limited business plan (yes, we have one) we thought we’d better produce a holiday edition of our original songwriting show, Rise and Shine.
Here’s the widget – put it on your website, why don’t you – and please donate to our good cause fund – see the ChipIn box top right column of this blog.
Punk Omelette: A Fist Full of Eggshells
Back in 2003 I began formulating a series of surreal video ideas, born out of frustration at the crop of identikit television programmes that were coming out of Britain at the time, and my naturally warped sense of humour. I made a series of monologues called Punk Omelette – the phrase deriving from my slapping music styles together with TV content, in this case, cooking.
By doing so I invented an entire genre of media-bending formats. Now that I’ve helped put podcasting on the map and it’s accepted as proper grown up media, and now that I don’t have to be so damn serious all the time, I think it’s time to pick that particular pantyhose up off the floor once more, and get moving with the eggs and the nails.
After all, as I often say – what is the point, except the sharp bit at the end?
Profiles
I’ve been very cautious about adding new “social media” (or as I call them, so-called media) to my life, but being experimental and also to a certain extent sentimental, I’ve added a few this year, and I’m seeing how well served I am by this proliferation of profiles.
Seesmic seems to be part of the furniture now. The original video conversation network, I keep returning to Seesmic for social reasons, much as others use Facebook, which I completely neglect. I find it’s one-to-one video messaging invaluable for both private messaging and business.
12seconds.tv I quite enjoy for it’s quickfire nonsense. I have the domain 12hours.tv ready to go – need a backer to help me build a website for 12 hour-long Warhol-style (or not) webcam videos “because anything less is superficial”.
Vimeo is a totally splendid video site, very useful for work, with a great and talented community. HD quality, fast uploads, fast conversion to flash, passwords, and the free version gives you 500MB a week upload. Great package.
I already mentioned Blip.FM, from which I take teenage delight – I should also add I love any site which allows me my first name as a user ID. I carefully update the professional network LinkedIn because it’s so very sensible.
I’ve just added Behance to see what will happen. I’m also a member of Discogs.com, in order to reclaim my musical past in the name of my future, as I return once again to the path of inner truth.
John Cleese on Sarah Palin
Quite proud of this video, executively produced by myself and my fellow Small Pictures director Garry Scott-Irvine, which appeared absolutely everywhere and seems set for one million YouTube views. From Seesmic, Vinvin presents and interviews, and Whit videoed and Jeremy edited.
Applause all round.
Open Rights Group Video
Who’s Watching Who? from Dean Whitbread on Vimeo.
Just completed this video for the Open Rights Group, the first of a few that in the pipeline from video production company Small Pictures. One of our “actors” dropped out for the second shoot, I had to step in last minute and pick up the baton. Thankfully the team did a lot better than the UK olympic relay teams…
Bliptastic: Blip.FM Social Radio
I try not to be too faddist. It helps that I am not a gamer. Every so often however, along comes a website which combines function with form in delightful way, and such is Blip.FM which in a nutshell is no more than community DJing. I haven’t found anything so immediate and addictive since Seesmic, the video conversation site, came along almost a year ago.
Its simplicity is very effective. Whilst in all other social networks I add my friends with some level of caution, on Blip I am happy to add DJ buddies purely on the basis of shared music likes. Leaving the page on autoplay, I am happy to let my friends and DJs play music for me all day long, and when I want to join in, I provide the same experience for them.
I don’t know quite how the music industry will respond to this – they don’t seem to have taken on board Seeqpod as yet which does a similar thing, scraping the web for MP3 files, millions of which are out there “in the wild” – but it treats the whole experience very differently because it has understood the crucial aspect of modernity which is that we are not alone. Like Last.FM it offers music streams easily shared and personalised according to taste, but unlike Last it offers a more genuinely live experience, with more in common with micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter. For me it beats Last.FM hands down on the basis of sheer ease of use.
You’d hope that labels and artists will see Blip.FM as a positive thing, as it unleashes a veritable army of amateur pundits and tastemakers.
Blip.FM also sensibly includes a “buy this” button prominently in its interface. This currently only searches Amazon, which is a bit useless, but the concept is sound. It works: in a few short days, I have had my ears opened and found many new artists via Blip, as well as been reminded of gaps in my own library which I have forked out cash to plug. There is an upload function (complete with cautionary copyright warning) which I have used to place free downloads from my MySpace music friends, CC-licensed podcasts and my own unreleased tracks in the Blip catalogue.
One word of warning: if you join, make sure you don’t let Blip.FM spam your friends with invites! There is an “uncheck all” option when you get to the “invite your friends” page which should prevent this happening.
If this takes off as I think it might, traditional music radio will soon be quaking in its boots. Of course, if I were running a station, I’d be uploading shows to Blip on a daily basis with a link to my internet stream in the accompanying text. As my friend and colleague Brian Greene says, radio is about to get social.
I’ve added the Blip widget to the right column of this blog.
Wordle
I can’ resist Wordle. You can even learn something about yourself by using this random replay of your writing (demands chicken?)
Meanwhile, back to making videos – four coming up in August and September, three to direct, shoot and edit, and a soundtrack to compose.
July
Honestly, I was really busy in July.
Creativity and Business: Priceless
Creativity is inherently revolutionary. Business is inherently exploitative.Is creativity inherently anti-business?
These thoughts have been rolling around my mind like a marble in a sweet jar for some time now, as I ponder my own paths in creativity and in business.
Business requires predictability, results and judges by the balance sheet. It demands efficiency, proof and reports. Business exploits ideas for profit. Business people have a platform, a position, and a salary. Creatives on the other hand have a trajectory, a vocation and a journey. Creativity generates ideas, celebrates strangeness, and messes with your head. Business makes money, maintains the market and will sell you whatever you will buy. Creativity wastes time, disrupts the market, and even if you can own it, it’s probably worthless.
The art business is the most conflicted in the world.
Creative people alight upon something new and invest it with form and meaning, showing the way forward and lighting the path. Business people seek financial gain, and will gladly steal the patent for the lighting system.
Not being able to sell your idea means nothing to the truly creative person. Ignoring trends is essential if you are to follow the thread of your inspiration, wherever it might lead, even to your personal extinction – although that is not essential. Creativity reinvents itself just by continuing – change is its only constant. Creativity demands the pointless. Blind alleys are the stuff of life. Purpose is a necessary sacrifice along the path of enlightenment. The search for enlightenment is packaged and sold as weekend breaks in the picturesque Cotswolds, £400 per person including organic meals.
Thanks to television, radio and the internet, there is now little left of undivided attention, lingering examination, or even careful re-reading. All is subservient to the immediately useful, the entertaining or the alarmist. The timelines speed past like landscapes viewed from a train, remote, unvisited, unless robot search alert takes you back there. The windows of attention are shrinking as we stare more and more at screens, and less and less at the faces of individuals.
“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – T. S. Eliot“Finding a businessman interested in the Arts is like finding chicken shit in your chicken salad” – Alice Neel
Gore Vidal – American Hero
What I love about the United States is that they have produced people of the stature of Gore Vidal. I wonder how many more sharp, fiercely intelligent, independent thinkers will arise from that nation.
I’m Voting For Aled Fisher, Green Party
Aled Fisher (LSE SU General Secretary-Elect) at 21 is the youngest candidate in this year’s London Assembly elections, which are to be held tomorrow, so I thought I’d check him out. He seems to have good values, has succeeded in raising standards of pay for poorly paid college cleaners, and has been involved in twinning the LSE SU with An-Najah University, in Nablus, north of Ramallah, so he gets my vote.
Whatever Happened to March?
Rise and Shine happened to March… I was so involved in making this show, that I completely forgot my once-a-month post to this, the driest of all my blogs. And I’ve only just remembered that this is the last day of April… but then, I’ve been on holiday, so that’s a permissable exception.
After one hectic month, I was very happy with our pilot show. We proved that the concept of a live, news-based songwriting show works really well. It generated the interest we thought it would, raising over $1000 US in sponsorship and song downloads. Plus, we have a whole series of songs presented in a brand new context – more about that later. Most importantly, we have a road-tested original show format, and people to who want to franchise it, which is a really nice thing to return to…
Rise and Shine: My Triple Challenge
I’ve set myself a triple challenge.
- Write a song (with assistance wherever possible) every weekday for a month;
- Broadcast the whole event as a breakfast show from 7am to 10am;
- Raise money for a good cause – BuskAid
I’ve dubbed the project Rise and Shine, and I’ve every intention of making this pilot show into a robust vehicle, combining creativity, commerce and charity, capable of traversing mighty landscapes.
Media moguls, commissioners, patrons, sponsors, and all-round nice people, feel free to contact songs [at] riseandshine [dot] tv to learn more.
Work Changes Everything
The year 2007 was a sometimes astonishing journey into places I had never been, which changed what I’m working on, where I work, with whom I work, and how I work, and for simplicity’s sake, I’m outlining these changes here.
What I’m Working On
I’m still working on podcast production, notably for John Cleese, Rob da Bank, JM Soul and others, but also now working on live radio and video projects, with music, art, performance and comedy. I will also be producing a brand new live radio format, which pilots end of February 2008, and I continue to write regularly.
Where I Work
Thanks to Michael Franklin, we’ve moved the centre of our operations to a new office / studio right in the heart of London’s West End – 4 Denmark Street, London, WC2H 8LP.
With Whom I Work
Talking Voices Ltd., the company which Funk started in 2006, is still going strong with some personnel changes. Mark Crook, Paul Carey and myself have been joined by radio industry stalwart Michael Franklin, and we’re pleased that our Irish colleagues Brian Greene and Sinead Murnane have come centrally into the business. I’ll post more about that soon on the Talking Voices blog.
How I Work
Those of you who want to engage my services either to speak, write, or to consult for very reasonable fees, please contact me direct by leaving a comment here. All podcast-related business is channeled through Talking Voices. For music production, contact me via Funk.
And Finally…
I’m really pleased to report that the Cinema du Lyon album I completed at the end of 2007 with Mark Crook is on sale and has some really nice reviews (see below).
I’m also still very much involved in the UK Podcasters Association – will be attending an interesting session on January 15th at Channel 4, held by the Radio Academy.
CINEMA DU LYON: The Particle Zoo
Buy from iTunes Plus (NO DRM!)
ABOUT CINEMA DU LYON: Cinema du Lyon are a European art/music group with the self-avowed intent of being “as pretentious as possible”. Amoral rather than immoral, they shun publicity at all times, with the intention of creating a more ego-less space for their consummate artifice to construct within the imagination of their unprepared audience. They constantly collaborate, and release very little of their compositions, preferring to infiltrate the real world and non-music spaces in unexpected ways via guerilla methods.
Their first public performance was at the Hanbury Ballroom, Brighton, April 2004. They played cards, smoked Gauloises, read Le Monde, and treated the astonished audience to art. By the end of the performance, with the venue resounding to avant-garde beats and fabulous visuals, they were celebrating with flowers and champagne at the bar.
Cinema du Lyon – “The Particle Zoo”
“If you would be a real seeker after truth,
it is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” – René Descartes
Full of shifting possibilities, alive with a seething miasma of portent, a fiercesome force of nature – “The Particle Zoo” is a place for the uncaged.
Shredding all previous works to relay an absolute truth about the new environmental sonic landscape that escaped from the laboratory and found its way into the world, full of awe, a measurement in the strength of the aural message, given that this is not a pipe, but a maze, lies in the unwavering conviction of the artists themselves to achieve excess in the name of truth itself.
“The Particle Zoo” is Cinema du Lyon’s twelfth audio collection, but the first to be made publicly available, the previous eleven having been private commissions and art events.
For more information and a beautiful audio-visual podcast, visit http://cinema-du-lyon.eu
Bear A Grudge This Christmas
I managed to avoid November entirely this year, but now we’re at the period of festive fun, I’ve decided to add my scrooge-like tuppence to the holiday season with a reading from my favourite author, Deek.
PodCamp Boston
As if I can’t get enough of the Open Learning experience, I’m scheduled to visit the USA this coming weekend to attend PodCamp Boston where I am speaking on “International Dimensions – The Wonderful Wide World of Podcasting – Dean Whitbread from UK Podcasters http://ukpa.info shares his experience in the online rights field, explains why belonging to a podcast group is more than just tribalism, and why it’s important to make sure that your right to podcast is protected.” – it says here.
Appropriate for everyone, apparently.
PodCamp Ireland
As if I haven’t had enough exposure to the podcasting, blogging and social media community recently, I’m off to this one, which is conveniently being held in the country next door.
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