There comes a point where you just have to let the music speak for itself…
I hope everyone’s previous year ended well, and you are now ready for the new one! For myself, I just spent a little while trying to figure out a new animation program in my collection, and used it to create this primitive but well meant Seasons Greetings video just for you. And since I made my own, it does belong in the Build Your Own category.
Those of you who watched the BBC America presentation on Christmas Day of Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol probably noticed an add for Where’s The Tardis. If you didn’t follow up on it, you should have, because it is a contest with prizes that include a private Doctor Who screening event in September and over 100 Doctor Who DVDs. Whether you win or not though the fun bit for me is stated right in the rules where it says you have full permission to build your own anatomically correct Tardis and display it in public. In fact, it is a requirement, since you have to submit pictures or video of your Tardis located in interesting but legal public places. They also want at least three videos of you creating your Tardis, and the contest will be judged on four points:
1) Most Original Design of the Tardis
2) Most Creative use of Materials
3) Most Creative Placement in a Public Location
4) Most Facebook Likes on wheresthetardis.com
I am obviously not going to win, since I don’t have a Facebook account, but that will not stop me from entering. You should do the same; the contest is now open (it started when the Christmas Doctor Who episode aired), and they will be accepting entries until May 15th 2011 at 11:59PM ET. Good luck to all of us, and if you win, I am willing to travel to be in the audience for the private screening event!
BTW, do you suppose the private screening event in the US has anything to do with the fact that some of the new Who season, not to mention some new Torchwood episodes, will take place in America?
The Alice Files is the first performance I know of that combines smart phone apps with musical instruments and video processing and display in real time for stage presence, all from only hand held devices. For the example included here, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland was the narrative starting point, and I managed to locate both of the parts. And then there was the Doctor Who theme song…
Happy Holidaze! This amazing holiday music set is performed entirely on smartphones and tablets by the North Point Ministries and presented online for your holiday listening pleasure. They got a lot of requests from folks wanting to know which app allowed them to play which instrument, so they assembled a list that will lead you right to them. As with other entries under Singularity Music, I had to immediately start tracking down and installing a few of these, in the hopes I could learn how to make more than random noise out of them.
There is, of course, the iGuitar or the Pocket Guitar, each allowing you to play any song a physical guitar will allow you to play, but fitting into your pocket much easier. But what if you took two or four smart phones and set each of them up to do a different musical task, and played them all together? Rick Wakeman used to need 400 cubic feet of stage space and a dozen hours per show to assemble a fraction of this audio power, and that only after a crew of teamsters moved, mounted, and bolted together the gear for him. Today it can be done by a single girl with four smart phones, one for voice processing and the others to do the band instrument parts. The Futures so bright, I gotta wear shades!