Aram Squalls

God's-eye astigmatism in Google Maps

I was cruising Google Maps this morning, looking at the building in Brooklyn where I grew up, and noticed an interesting anomaly: the satellite view of my old building and the adjacent one are taken from different angles, producing a kind of Escherian paradox that violates the basic tenets of photographic perspective.

Of course, on a rational level I know that the maps data are assembled from millions of individual pics, and that although the seams are "invisible," the algorithm's not (yet) smart enough to account for the distortions and contradictions between its constituent elements.

But on an experiential and emotional level, I personally find the image very jarring. Google Maps and the like give us the false promise of a God's-eye view, a vantage point far above the more pedestrian "street view." As any student of art learns, the perspective an image offers us tells us something about ourselves, or about the positions we're supposed to inhabit. I think the reason so many of us like to look at our childhood homes on Google Maps is to gain the distance, detachment, and illusion of total understanding that the God's-eye view offers; it presents a welcome counterpoint to the confusing, subjective and incomplete memories we keep from our earlier years, and allows us to distance ourselves from the power of those memories.

I'm pretty sure that's why I find this image so unnerving; it punctured my sense of remove, and reminded me that I'm not God -- in fact, I'm not even that far from the location where my childhood took place (about a mile and a half, as the crow flies). The good news is, the view from my new apartment offers a more consistent and convincing angel's-eye view (32nd floor -- not quite God height, but pretty darn high), and I can actually see the old place from my living room window.

My new webcomic in the Vilage Voice: Liberty

Those of you who know me (and a very few others) know I've been drawing comix on and off since the puberty years. I just started a new strip, called "Liberty," on the Village Voice website. It'll be a weekly (we're not sure what day yet, so stay tuned).

Below is the first panel of the first strip:

(thanks for the hook-up, Mike!)

UPDATE: There's a bit of a political struggle at the Voice site over whether this strip will continue to run. How very exciting. Either way, I'll let you know.

Click "forward" to show the world you're a n00b

One of the nice things about having worked in the media/tech industry for so long is that I know a lot of interesting people who have done a lot of interesting things. One of the interesting things I often do with these interesting people is get together and bemoan the fact that the whole world isn't as "media literate" as we are, and discuss ways in which we can remedy the problem/exploit the remedy.

Therefore, it's been absolutely incredible to me what a large percentage of my Facebook friends who rank among the media- and techno-elite (including CEOs, heads of major trade organizations, tech gurus for international conglomerates, etc.) fall for stupid gags, especially the funwall rich media messages that say "Click Forward to See What Happen" [sic] or some variant thereof. Many of these folks are 40+, making me wonder whether subtle generational digital divides persist despite professional expertise.

Just for the record, guys:

NOTHING HAPPENS WHEN YOU CLICK FORWARD!

There, I've said it. Now stop forwarding me all that crap. You're only polluting an otherwise surprisingly functional communications platform.

Jay-Z and I on Reuters TV

I was on Reuters TV a day or two ago, discussing the all-encompassing, $150 million deal that Jay-Z cut with LiveNation. Here's the clip:

Logos of my life, part 2: torches

For some reason, torches seem to come up a lot in my iconic life. Maybe it's because I've spent so much time in and around universities over the years. Maybe it's the Jeffersonian adage that "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." Maybe it's just the Olympian notion of "passing the torch" from generation to generation. I don't know...

Anyway, both the Columbia School of Journalism (where I got my first Masters) and NYU (where I currently teach) use the torch as their symbols. Which is kind of weird, considering that they're competing entities in the same geographical market. That would be like two New York baseball teams both using superimposed N/Y symbols for their logos. Wait a second...

Whoa, oh, oh, oh, on the radio

I was interviewed on KCBS radio twice this week, opining first on the impending satellite radio merger ("creates a monopoly in a doomed industry"), and then on the subject of Elvis Costello's new vinyl+download album release (in which I summon the ghost of Walter Benjamin).

Check 'em out, they were both fun little interviews.

Logos of my life, part 1

In this age of MySpace and Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr, I find an increasing amount of information about me as a person is presented through little square "thumbnails." My friends, my family, my affinities -- all neatly tucked into little boxes, all equivalently sized and complacently stacked side-by-side.

The scary thing is, I spend so much time now managing my online identity that I've started to think of myself in terms of those little boxes, too. The strange little baby pic with the neat 60s-style bouffant? It's got something to do with some of my memories about a job I used to have and someone I'd lunch with on occasion. The black-and-white image of a woman with an afro? That's my band logo, and it has something to do with hours I've spent making sound with friends in studios and on stages. The blue thing that looks like a smirking egg? Wait a second, that's me! All 36 years worth of me, reduced to a little, blue, smirking egg.

Anyway, I thought maybe if I really take a look at the icons and the logos and the thumbnails of my life, they'll tell me something I don't already know about myself. Are there images that pop up more consistently than you'd expect? Are there stories hidden in the negative space between those boxes? Is there any relationship whatsoever between signifier and signified?

I've decided to start with a few logos of my past: a sun (the theatrical summer camp I attended as a young teen) and the earth (the political activism and social group I attended as a mid-teen). Maybe next time, If I think of it, I'll find a moon.

Last in the Union, first to Web 2.0

My friend Arnie, with the assistance of the state of Hawaii, just launched two sites pegged to the fiftieth state's 50th anniversary: a general-purpose site called StatehoodHawaii.org, and a Web 2.0 social-networky site called fifdififdi.com (think phonetically).

The sites are pretty cool. Lots of archival photo/video (much of it licensed under Creative Commons 3.0), plus tons of Web 2.0 features -- geotagging, social networking, blogs and so forth. Nice work, man. Wish I was Hawaiian.

Music software I want to develop: "Algo-rhythmic" evolutionary composition

I've got an idea for a piece of music software, and I'd love to collaborate with an interested programmer (my inability to code has long been one of my greatest Achilles' heels).

The basic pitch is: random mutations in musical information are voted on collectively by thousands of Internet users, and those that benefit the music are kept, while those that hurt it are abandoned. In essence, each composition "evolves" within the ecology of the taste-universe comprised by listeners.

Here's the basic mechanism:

- Visitors to a web site are played a short clip of audio, and they rank how "beautiful" or "funky" (or any other qualitative assessment) that audio clip is, along a Likert scale (e.g. 1-7).

- The software aggregates a "beauty" or "funkiness" quotient for that given clip, based on a predetermined n number of scores.

- The software then mutates the audio clip, within a range of pre-set parameters (e.g. changing or reordering the pitches or drum samples).

- A new score is established for the mutated clip. If it's higher, the mutation is retained. If it's lower, the mutation is abandoned.

- Either way, another random mutation is applied, and the process repeats algorithmically, until such a time as the experimenters/composers deem the process over, or until the software meets some predetermined definition of immutability or some predetermined average score.

Obviously, there are a lot of potential questions here. What kind of seeds do we begin with? How many parameters will be varied, and by what amounts? What mechanism will establish the right number of user inputs per score? Etc.

I'm really curious to see what would happen. Would each composition evolve differently, or would taste-patterns emerge? How would minor changes in operating instructions emerge into major changes in the net product? Would it be possible to reproduce known styles, and if so, what would the constituent algorithms tell us about the industrial or productive processes underpinning those styles? As people who know me or my work no doubt remember, I basically think of the music industry as a highly stylized algorithm in the first place...

I'm serious. If you're interested in working on this (or funding this), contact me.

3 Gig Week

In addition to my usual teaching load, and finishing up the annual SEMPO survey for Radar, this is gonna be a busy week. I've got three very different gigs coming up.

First, on Wednesday afternoon, I'll be moderating a panel on tweens at the Digital Music Forum (a few months ago, I moderated a panel on music at a tweens conference -- there seems to be a trend here). Should be interesting -- my luminous panel includes:

• Jim Donio, President, National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM)
• Mike Bebel, President & CEO, Ruckus Entertainment, Inc.
• Edith Bellinghausen, SVP, New Media, Razor & Tie / Kidz Bop
•   Matt Mason, Author-The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism

Then, on Friday, I'll be presenting, for the first time, an in-depth talk based on my recently completed doctoral dissertation, Configurable Culture. That'll take place on the 4th Floor of NYU's Pless building, from 2-3:30. I'll try to make an audio/ppt presentation out of it for online consumption.

Then, on Saturday night, my band, Brave New Girl, will be playing at the Knitting Factory (in the Tap Bar), as part of Stubborn Records' Version City night. We lobbied for an early slot (we're all parents!) -- so come at 8 if you want to check it out. Here's the Facebook link.

Let me know if you're planning on coming by any of the above.