Sometimes the world hand you some truly beautiful things. Tonight’s special treat came in the form of a Tweet from William Gibson, pointing to a stream of William Burroughs doing his Words of Advice poem. So I figured his collaboration with Jim Morrison was also worth posting, and as long as the music link was there thought I might as well include the other Gibson link that attracted my attention this evening, an Acapella version of a Who medley. On occasion, art trumps science.
Anime South runs from the 18th to the 20th in Destin, FL. Besides the usual Cosplay, Panels, Viewing Rooms, and Maid Cafe, they have some unusual events, like Anime Speed Dating and the Anime Tractor Pull. Musical guest Eyeshine seems to be touring the Anime and Sci-Fi Con circuit this winter, so they may be playing near you sometime soon.
Also this weekend, Tsunami 16 2009 happens in Merida, Yucatan Mexico. Unfortunately the homepage, while one of the most visually stunning images I have seen for an Anime con, is just that: a JPG image. A bit difficult to click on anything and get more information.
No real film fests this week except for the tail end of a few winding down, so a good time to talk about building your own. One thing you will need when creating your own Sci-Fi movie, animation, or radio play is a good sound bed of themes and incidental music. The Super Collider at SourceForge has a single primary purpose; to generate quality music with a command/control string of only 140 characters. These Twitter-sized bites of code play entire musical masterpieces when run through the original program. You can view the source code for the first 120 entries, to give you an idea of how to create your own.
The SuperCollider real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition program that takes the source code and converts it into music you can actually listen to is part of the SourceForge family of software. There are more projects you will want to track, so please follow the Wire’s Rendition of the SuperCollider’s instruction set so you don’t miss anything.
There are some days when your native language just won’t express what you have to say in satisfactory manor. For those occasions, you can just Tweet in Klingon, and have the same sounds you get when you hear a Sysop yell at his/her server farm in Spoken *Nix (Ch’Mod! Mk’Dir!) echoing through your posted environment.
You might rather play a Toy Building Game over at the History Channel web site, or for a different kind of silliness, enjoy the Dresden Dolls doing this White Stripes cover (complete with the trangender costuming as a visual aid for those in the audience slow to pick up on the parody). Whatever you choose, I hope you have fun this holiday!
( translation, * = LInix, Unix)
You can’t get much sillier than Gadgets you’ll need to Survive a Zombie Attack; thanks, Crave!
When I see a link from William Gibson on Twitter, I make a point of following it. He has found some of the most interesting things, most of which I was unaware of. This video is a case in point; A musical video clip by Yannick Puig Inspired by the sound track “I lived on the Moon”, of the Kwoon’s album “Tales and Dreams” (description from the creators YouTube page). Another great one is the Norism series of images.
And did I mention the Muppets do Rhapsody?
The New York City Horror Fest starts off tomorrow with the Kick Off Party at BLVD, Five bands / 11 Films / One hour free beer!, and runs through the 22nd. One of the interesting things they are doing is the Killer Shorts Sudden Death Film Competition in cooperation with the Monster Mania Collectibles Con held semi-annually in NYC. The opening band has songs called things like “Video Vixen Vampire”, “Mermaids in Outer Space”, and “Spooks on the Loose”; I would probably have spent more time watching Witches In Bikinis than the actual movies.
I should also mention that the Sundance Film Festival (No, that is NOT this weekend) just announced the Sundance Film Festival U.S.A., where they will be presenting festival films in other cities around the country on the 28th of January.