Author: catsynth

Weekend Cat Blogging #194

We at CatSynth welcome everyone to Weekend Cat Blogging #194! We’re excited to be hosting again, and have been busy getting prepared.

To participate, please leave you link in the comments, and we will include you in the big roundup on Sunday.

We are dedicating this edition to Socks Clinton, the former “First Cat”, who passed away this week at the venerable age of 20.

(February 20, 2009) Word tonight that Socks Clinton, the one-time Arkansas stray adopted by the Clintons who rose to international prominence and literary fame as sole feline inhabitant of the White House, died today.

Butch, Jules, and Vincent use their Weekend Cat Blogging to pay their respect to Socks.

 

Meowza shows some leg this fine Caturday. Meanwhile, Cece feigns innocence at iInfidel.


LB and Breadchick Mary have been lazy this weekend. But not really, as time away from work for ourselves is important. LB enjoys relaxing by the sofa and subwoofer. And we at CatSynth really like the header for the The Sour Dough.


Most of us are eagerly anticipating the transition from winter to spring, and for Smudge of sidewalk shoes, that means patiently waiting for the catnip.


Maruschka poses elegantly (and sleepily) at Rosa’s Yummy Yums, with an accompanying quote on being a cat.

Babeth presents Happy Hour, a tale of cats’ sleeping habits, at House of Chaos.


We go from sleeping habits to playing habits at Gattina’s, where Rosie has adopted a toy turtle as her new doll.

Samantha and Tigger are basking in the sunshine at Life from a Cat’s Perspective. Together with Granddaughterbean, they are a quite a trio, enjoying the warmth. We could use a bit of warmth here in the midst of our cold rainstorms – but we do need the rain in California.

Kashim, Othello and Salome are feeling a bit neglected this weekend, as their mama has been out celebrating her birthday as well as other human social activities. Clearly, those are lower priority than spending time with kitty cats. On a happy note, Kashim’s paws have nicely after his unfortunate accident a couple of weeks ago.

Tillie is being lazy in the sun over at Mickey’s Musings. Meanwhile, Mickey and Georgia are being lazy somewhere else, and their mom is “laziest of all”, as she hardly helped the cats blog all weekend. However, she did help them participate in WCB, and we’re glad to have our friends from Nova Scotia join us!

That concludes this Weekend Cat Blogging for now. Thanks to everyone who participated, and we will continue to post entries through Monday as we receive them.

This weekend, you can also visit the Carnival of the Cats at When Cats Attack, and the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos with Samantha and Tigger at Life from a Cat’s Perspective. And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Greenlief @ 50

On Tuesday, I attended the fourth greelief@50 concert, a series marking the birthday of local musician and composer Phillip Greenlief. We haven’t actually played together, but have been on the same program several times, and we have crossed paths and numerous Bay Area new-music events over the last few years. The show took place at The Uptown in (downtown) Oakland.

The opening set was a performance by Weasel Walter/Devin Hoff/Darren Johnston/Damon Smith. I hesitate to say whether or not it was an improvisation set because they did have scores, but in any case it had the sound and structure of a free jazz improvisation set. The best moment was when a particularly dense section suddenly gave way to a tenor solo, and then back to the full ensemble just as suddenly.

The main set was a large ensemble, consisting of orchesperry (named for local musician Matthew Sperry) and the Cardew Choir. In total, this was indeed a large ensemble.

I’m not sure what the lab coats were about.

The group performed several compositions by Greenlief, who conducted in bold and dramatic style. Of particular note was the second piece, which opened with percussion and a string sound that seemed electronic. This was followed by a saxophone solo that was rather melodic, a voice solo, and then bursts of sound from various musicians. The piece then built up towards the standard loud and dense improvisation, before quickly coming to a close. The piece was rather short, so short that it seemed the audience wasn’t sure it was over, and performer Bob Marsh had to cue the audience to applaud.

Another piece of note, for me at least, was Monument, dedicated to work of artist Eva Hesse, whose work I have seen on several occasions here in San Francisco and elsewhere. The piece was “dedicated to the electronic musicians in the ensemble”, and featured the electronic sounds and textures to which we at CatSynth have become very accustomed – so that hearing synthesizers and processors in the midst of a large mostly-acoustic concert can have a very familiar and inviting quality – especially when one thinks about in the context of modern and contemporary visual art.

As is often the case, there are a fair number of familiar faces at these performances, so a certain amount of time is spent being social in addition to the music itself. Nothing wrong with that, though it was a Tuesday and I ended up not staying very long.

NOTE: this was the 800th post for CatSynth

Museum of Broken Relationships

On Saturday (the 14th), a friend and I visited the Museum of Broken Relationships, which is currently at Root Division here in San Francisco. The museum was founded in Zagreb, Croatia in 2006, “dedicated to broken hearts”:

The Museum of Broken Relationships is an art concept which proceeds from the assumption that objects possess integrated fields – ‘holograms’ of memories and emotions – and intends with its layout to create a space of ‘secure memory’ or ‘protected remembrance’ in order to preserve the material and nonmaterial heritage of broken relationships.

It has toured several countries – this is its debut in the United States.

The museum is built of donated artifacts, each with an anonymous story about the relationship it represented. There was a large variety of artifacts, such as the handcuffs in the poster shown above. There lots of love notes, the most interesting was one that was pasted to a mirror which was then shattered and the pieces cut out and encased in glass. There was also a large number of stuffed toys, such as Valentin below:

Some more toys, a prosthetic hand and a wedding dress:

There were a surprising number of prosthetic body parts on display, including the hands shown above and a leg with an interesting story. The story for the wedding dress can also be found online here.

The stories are as diverse as the artifacts themselves. Many of the standard broken-relationship variety: “it wasn’t meant to be” or “over the years we drifted further apart.” Some involved tragic events, the death of one or the other parter in the relationship.

One image that was rather sad involved a small painting of the Sesame Street character Grover. It was painted as an affectionate handmade gift to someone who kept a stuffed version of Grover, but the recipient then dismissed this gift as “childish.”

A funny piece was a set of shot glasses donated by someone in San Francisco (there were several local pieces donated), with the tag line “PS: his name is Larry and he is an asshole.”

The evening opening was actually quite crowded. I suppose I should not have been surprised so see so many people out to celebrate broken hearts on Valentines Day. However, judging from the attire of many of the visitors, they were stopping here either on the way to or the way from a romantic dinner. Or maybe this event was their “date”, as there was plenty of food and drink provided.

There was a brief performance piece involving an accordion and a dancer in a symbolic tying and unraveling of knots. It was rather difficult to see or here, given the density of the crowd.

Root Division does seem to have some interesting exhibits. Next month is an exhibit dedicated to algorithms, mathematics and problem solving. Now attempting to relate that back to broken hearts…

AXIS keyboard for Bohlen-Pierce Scale

Cats, alternate music controllers and tunings collide in this video on YouTube, via matrixsynth:

C-Thru Music has lent me this keyboard, called the AXIS, for a few months, and I am rearranging the keys for the Bohlen-Pierce Scale, a macrotuning based on a 3/1 frequency ratio, divided by 13 equal steps. See http://www.ziaspace.com/elaine/BP for research on the BP Scale. This particular AXIS toured with the Lionel Richie Band on loan, went to me, and in two weeks I will be flying to Boston to give this AXIS to the Berklee College of Music, Synthesis Department – namely to Dr. Boulanger who will use it for his classes and for the new microtonal club. I teach Electronic Music at Scottsdale Community College. Come join the fun!

We have discussed the BP (Bohlen-Pierce) scale here at CatSynth in the past (and reviewed a piece by John R Pierce SF Tape Music Festival).

You read more about the C-Thru Music AXiS. It’s another interesting controller that I haven’t had the opportunity yet to try out.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Sunshine

On this rather busy weekend, we take a moment to enjoy the sunshine:

I have heard several people refer to Luna as “sunshine.”

Weekend Cat Blogging (Valentine’s Day Edition) is hosted by Gree and Othello.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be at Digicats.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Kashim, Othello and Salome. (Looks like Othello is pulling double duty.)

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.