I pretty much agree with this, and I like that they use actual demographics statistics, especially in “self-identified geeks.”

Like Ms. Sherman, my creative process involves being alone, thinking, devising, mentally-sketching, tweaking, re-tweaking, re-thinking; sharing for feedback, and then re-tweaking some more. It’s emblematic of the contemporary, technology-enabled artist, in a way. Creative types have so many resources available: so many mediums to muck around in, so many visual sandboxes (like Adobe CSx–Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier); audio playgrounds (like Reaktor, Ableton, FL Studio) and platforms for interdisciplinary / cross-medium work (like Max/MSP, etc).

…

When I applied to art colleges, I was so disheartened by the rampant insistence that I choose a medium. I didn’t like the feeling of being forced to create within an established “language” (medium) that could be critically evaluated (by critics who specialized in media). Then I found California Institute of the Arts, was accepted, and played and played and played and finally found my voice. A voice that was me, and not limited to choice of media, but one that used media to express the ideas I wanted to introduce to the world.

And that, I feel, is true contemporary artistry. Knowing that the clay of the world is yours to play with and yours to enjoy.

Full Quantazelle rant is here.

Check out our Soundcloud Meetup at Transistor. The folks from Transistor, a cool music and bookstore in Uptown have kindly agreed to host this Meetup. Also, this Meetup will be a bit tricked up. There will be Soundcloud swag and wi-fi, so people can share their tracks.
From the Soundcloud Meetup Group:
Also, the folks from Soundcloud would like for us to record some audio (music, interviews, whatever) from the meetup to share with the Soundcloud community.

I made a Group on Soundcloud where you can post your tracks: Chicago Innovative Electronic Music Soundcloud Group

When: Wednesday, February 9, 2011
7:00 PM
Where: Transistor, 5045 N Clark St
Chicago, IL

Anther awesome t-shirt at Threadless.

Pretty good.

The SEO Rapper describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site with dope lyrics. Ha! Love me some nerdcore hip hop.

Watch Motherboard – The Granular Synthesis of Curtis Roads

This is a pretty amazing video. Granular Synthesis I can wrap my head around (imagine a more complex version of additive synthesis, but on a micro-scale), but what really amazes me is Curtis Roads was doing it in 1975 on a mainframe with punchcards. You heard me. How much more nerdcred does this guy need? Ok, lemme back up for a minute. I am, actually, old enough to know what punchcards are (but, keep in mind I was like 5 years old and hanging out at my mom’s company to learn about them). Back in the day (and my intro to computer science teacher in college was amazing because he explained this to us and made us basically write out our algorythms before we came to class to program them), a programmer would have to write out a program in its entirety and then wait for days sometimes, to get the program to execute. This is totally the opposite of people can work today, where they can see the results of a coding change realtime, or, on the web, with a simple page refresh. Pretty leet, I gotta say.

Check out this video–even an Autechre song makes a cameo (but, I would add to the video’s description that what made Autechre and similar IDM artists’ work so mindblowing wasn’t simply due to complex rhythms, it was that plus the unheard-of-before combination of electronically-generated revolutionary sounds while still maintaining a “more accessible” composition in terms of melody and so forth. At some point Roads says he considers his music “point, line, cloud” because a grain, or sound particle is a point, a series of points on either or both the x or y axis, and a cloud,–IMHO–is actually “a left-to-right series of chords”) BECAUSE CURTIS ROADS OPENED FOR THEM in the early 00s. Uh-huh.

He also recommends a book for sound-design inspiration. It’s called Education of a Gardener. Really. Just go watch this thing, ok?
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