Haus Der Musik
HAUS DER MUSIK is an interactive discovery museum located in the heart of Vienna’s first district nestled between St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the Vienna State Opera. A host of interactive installations playfully communicate openness to new things, understanding and enthusiasm in approaching music
HAUS DER MUSIK was awarded the Austrian Museum Prize for its innovative design and is located in the former Palais of Archduke Charles. You will find all 67 of its new inventions here. A total of 5,000 square meters has been set aside exclusively for areas dedicated to a wide array of approaches to music, and most of all, to the experience of music.
It is thanks to a private initiative that HAUS DER MUSIK was established at Sailerstätte 30 without public funding. Particular thanks goes to our partners from the business community who recognized that HAUS DER MUSIK represented a worthwhile investment. As per January 15, 2005 HAUS DER MUSIK is owned by Wien Holding.
How does it feel to beat a drum three meters in diameter, what do “notes” sung by vocal acrobats sing look like, what does Marvin Minsky have to say about the structure of the Brain Opera in comparison to the human brain, how does the Shepard-Scale continue on, seemingly for eternity, how does it feel to be applauded by the Vienna Philharmonic or to play the world’s largest electronic percussion instrument, the Rhythm Tree – these questions and more will whet your appetite to know, experiment and discover more about music. And this is exactly what HAUS DER MUSIK is all about.
I was really looking forward to the “Virtual Conductor” exhibit at Haus der Musik. It wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t as responsive as it could have been. I’m not sure what kind of motion capture technology they are using, but obviously it wasn’t such a mainstream technology in 2001 as it is nowadays with Nintendo Wii and PS3.
All in all, Haus der Musik was a great experience. By coincidence, I’ve previously worked on exhibits dealing similar subjects such as Shepard’s scale and the treshold of hearing so some of the subject matter was familiar to me. There was a nice a mix of traditional museum content (eg. historical items), various artistic “chill out” spaces, physical instrument exhibits and computer based interactive touch screens. Some of them were quite sophisticated. My personal favorites were the ones which let you “compose” little musical works and the ones that were dealing with the pitch of sound.
It’s a huge space and you can easily spend several hours over there. They have a 50% Happy Hour discount on Tuesdays from 5 pm to 9 pm.
Posted by api at 09:46 - 2 Comments »
It’s a plastic straw, it’s a post-it note… it’s the ingenious Gedankenstütze!
Object art. There’s plenty more at Atelier V.
I also like the tissue paper tea bag and the window sleeping support goggle.
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What is the common denominator for the Woodstock documentary, Michael Jackson’s Bad music video and The Departed? Why, Thelma Schoonmaker as the editor, of course! This lady has won 3 Oscars. She began her film career assisting an editor removing random frames from the classic films of Truffaut, Godard and Fellini in order to conform their length for the U.S. television broadcasts.
While giving one of her keynote addresses she has noted that she doesn’t feel like the computer based editing saves her any time cutting a film, it just allows her to experiment more. (She is using Lightworks instead of Final Cut Pro or Avid, by the way.)
Film editing is an invisible art. The rule of thumb is that the better the editing, the harder it is to observe. But… she obviously has the courage to break the rules and be truly innovative with her cuts. Her style is just phenomenal.
IMDB Trivia
Works mainly as editor to Martin Scorsese, who tried to convince her to work for him for years. She was unable to work in Hollywood, however, because she couldn’t get into the union. When Scorcese called to ask her to work on Raging Bull (1980), she again demurred because of lack of union membership. However, she believes that Al Pacino got her into the union. To this day, she does not know what influence was used to gain her union membership.
Martin Scorsese introduced her to her husband, Michael Powell.
Her father worked for an oil company, so she was born in Algeria, but grew up in Aruba. She did not live in the United States until her teens.
She met Martin Scorsese during a summer program at New York University, where she was taking an editing course. As she had some professional experience editing movies for late night television, she was brought in to help student director Scorsese with problems on his film.
Honorary doctor of the School of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design in Helsinki, Finland.
Posted by api at 19:36 - 1 Comment »
Last night I tasted one of the best Riojas I have ever tasted. There’s a little Tapas joint down the street called El Español. They have a non-smoking buffet night on Tuesdays. I can’t remember the vintage, but the 25 centiliters of Marqués de Riscal Grand Reserva I had was simply divine. The Tapas were super delicious as well.
The grand reserva was being served from miniature half liter bottles. That is actually a really convenient size for fine wines like this.
Here’s what an australian wine site had to say about Marqués de Riscal Reserva 2001.
Tasting notes
Strong dark colour. It smells of black and red fruits but mainly the black ones - blackberries, cherries. There’s also coffee, mineral, earth and spicy vanilla oak that is beautifully applied to the lush dark fruit. On the palate medium to full bodied and still pretty tight. There are flavours of blackberry, spice and again those earthy minerally flavours. The oak adds a layer of cedar and vanillin flavour. The tannins are really what I like here though - mouthcoating layers of powdery firm tannins that reach into every corner. Long finish that makes you think -’ooo this really is a most excellent wine’. At the moment this is a Reserva showing some reserve so give it a few more years if you are lucky (or smart) enough to own a few bottles.
EDIT: The small bottles are actually 0,375 liter ones. I managed to get the last two from their current batch.
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I spent the weekend in the Imst valley area with my friend Armin and his girlfriend Sandra. He is designing and building avalanche control devices over there. I was originally planning to make a little hiking trip to the finding site of Oetzi the Iceman, but it turned out that snowshoeing at high altitudes is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It has also started snowing, so I’ll give it another go in April. Nevertheless we had a great time hiking up one of the local mountains and running down the ski slopes back to the valley floor. Here is an album of pictures from the trip.
The Austrian railways have a weekend ticket that lets you travel as much as you like on any given Saturday for only 11 euros. It’s a great deal, but unfortunately the offer expires at the end of March.
I’m back in Vienna now. The pit stop for next weekend is Bratislava, Slovakia.
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M.A.NUMMINEN & DJ SANE - THE STORY SO FAR
M.A.Numminen, the legendary figure in Finnish underground (and also popular) music and culture since the 60’s, is known for his need and ability to always move forward and seek new dimensions and ways for expression.
In 2003 he came up with an idea for a new band: M.A.N. Scratch Band, which consisted of keyboardist Pedro Hietanen (his long term accompanion and a member of the legendary prog rockers Wigwam), young jazz cats Olavi Louhivuori (Ilmiliekki Quartet, Oddarrang…) on drums and Lasse Lindgren (Severi Pyysalo Band etc.) on bass and Santeri Vuosara as Dj Sane on turntables. M.A.N. Scratch Band played Numminen’s greatest hits with a groovy, jazzy and sometimes quite strange touch. Sane had a stack of original M.A.N. vinyl records that he used to add scratches and effects on top of the band’s playing.
The friendly neighbourhood club Musik Kiosk had a night of Finnish Tango on Sunday. As a strange conincidence I stumbled upon Myspace page of another Finnish gift to the music lovers of the world… M.A. Numminen. Needless to say, I am not surprised at all that he has recently released an album of poems by Heinrich Heine.
Other recent cultural delights include a Mozart concert at Musik Verein and a visit to the Spanish Riding School. To ensure an overdose of high culture, we booked tickets to Wagner’s last music opera, Parsifal.
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Sony Home - Hollywood Reporter
In the wake of virtual worlds like Second Life and such file-sharing stalwarts as YouTube and Flickr, Sony Computer Entertainment is using its PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable to usher in its own virtual online-connected community.
The initiative, dubbed “Home,” will allow gamers to create virtual avatars and congregate in 3-D homes and halls to socialise via text, audio or video chat; watch movie trailers or feature films; and play casual games. Gamers will be able to do all this via a free download that will be offered in the fall in the U.S. and Europe.
“We believe there are now incremental opportunities for publishers to create their own ‘homes’ for gamers to visit and play games while being served up streaming trailers and sponsored advertisements in a reasonable fashion,” he said. “Sony’s online strategy, while behind Microsoft’s Xbox Live service and its 6 million global users, appears differentiated and impressive on first pass.”
McNealy cited an example of how Electronic Arts could make money by selling virtual “Madden NFL 2008″ T-shirts for avatars in the “Home” world. In addition, streaming video content for upcoming games, movies or TV shows could be shown on walls throughout the “Home.”
This came totally out of the blue for me. Sony is a strange creature. On the other hand, they have been mimicking the successful products of other companies since the very beginning. On the other hand, they have shown over and over again that they are not following others when it comes to big, strategic moves.
Sony “Home” essentially seems like a Second Life clone without the ability to build your own objects except in a very limited way. Having total freedom to build your own structures and scripts is both the strength and weakness of Second Life. Over time, it has been riddled by a number security incidents… self replicating virus objects, stolen customer data etc.
I have high hopes for this initiative. It will finally bring secure 3D virtual communities to the masses.
EDIT: Here’s a promotional video clip of the project
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Drawball.com is one of the collaborative art creation sites. You can zoom in on the ball and draw on any part of it. The beauty of it is that anyone else can do the same. Have a look at the playback of the project to get an overview how spaces like this evolve over time.
I find the Marilyn Monroe spot especially fascinating. It is not just the subject that reminds me of Andy Warhol here.
Posted by api at 12:24 - 1 Comment »
New York Surveillance Camera Players
Debut Performance
At around 11 pm on Tuesday 10 December 1996, six members of the Surveillance Camera Players (Michael, Katie, Bill, Susan, Lisa, and Orrin) performed most of Art Toad’s special adaption of Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi in front of a surveillance camera in Manhattan’s Union Square subway station. At the same time, three other SCPers (Grrrt, Michelle and John), as well as several on-lookers, watched the play on one of the station’s closed-circuit television monitors.
It is interesting to note that An International Day of Action Against Video Surveillance was organized on September 7th, 2001… just two days before the incident that changed the public opinion about government surveillance in general.
Here in Vienna they have a surveillance camera at the top of every escalator on the U-bahn stations. In contrast, the density of cameras at the Tube stations in London was phenomenal. Each staff member monitors up to 60 cameras. The New Scientist has an interesting article about new software that can spot dubious behaviour, suicide attempts, abandonded packages etc.
Face recognition technology is slowly crossing over from security products sector to consumer electronics. Canon’s new Powershot TX1 has a rather advanced face recognition system that can even recognize multiple faces in a scene while shooting video at HD resolution!
It just occurred to me that it wouldn’t be all that difficult to implement an “identity search” on Google Images. All it would take is to automatically index every face in each image and link it to the profile picture of your Gmail account for example. It won’t probably happen in a year or two, but who knows about the future? The technology is already here.
EDIT: I just learned that Royal Caribbean has a ship-wide surveillance systems utilizing facial recognition technology. This enables security personnel to locate any passenger on the ship, except in private areas (such as staterooms and restrooms).
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