Modernism

Detroit

In keeping with our “road geek” tour of the US presidential primaries, we at CatSynth visit the city of Detroit, Michigan:

And the winners of today's Michigan primaries are…well, it doesn't really matter. This is really just an excuse to explore a place that I think is fascinating.

One would expect “motor city” to have quite a network of freeways. Well, it's not quite Los Angeles, but in the 1950s and 1960s it was quite impressive, and can be seen on this Detroit Freeways site. I am particularly fond of this photo of the interchange between I-75 (Fisher Freeway) and the Chrysler Freeway. It has the 1960s “futuristic” look, which some of us may look back upon fondly. (Click on the photo for larger version.)

So much from that era has fallen into decay, and that is perhaps no more visible than in Detroit. Indeed, a favorite site of mine is The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit. For whatever reason, these “ruins” from the 20th century fascinate me, especially those that we in their time “modern.” I highly recommend this site!

And I would also like to visit Detroit and its ruins some day.

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Intermezzo: Headphone Festival

Well the :plug3: headphone festival is done. Thanks to the deletist for putting this together once again.

I'm going to have to keep my report short, given that I have to focus soon on tonight's performance and the tour. So here are a few photos:

The above photo, which features Cypod performing, also gives a sense of the venue and how the audience works. The venue, “The Lab”, is an art gallery and performance space. The audience were clustered around stations where they could see the performers, but listen by plugging headphones into provided jacks.

Attendance was somewhat sparse, but people seemed interested. And the calm, sparser audience also worked with the venue, which had relatively minimalist media art on display, and plenty of empty space. All of which puts me very much at ease, it's part of why I like playing galleries.

Below, we see Bruce Bennet and Michael Zbyszynski performing:

And in the background is another friend no.e from Santa Cruz, who performed after me this year.

So here we are, all set up and ready, including the obligatory animals (cat and fish):

Unfortunately, someone seems to have gone wrong with the audio interface (E-MU 1616m) just as performance time approached – everything was still on, but not functioning, which I have seen happen occasionally with the E-MU interfaces and sadly means an embarrassing silence and reboot – fortunately I was able to recover by playing the evolver while rebooting, and I think the set came out OK in the end.

Unfrotunately, one of the casualties was being able to make a recording, so no podcast from yesterday :(.

But it was still and overall good experience, venue and people-wise, and thus worth the effort.

It might also be worth noting this was the first performance where I listed myself as “CatSynth” on the bill…

Weekend Cat Blogging #118 and more: Luna in Late Summer, Strays and Project Purr

We begin our Weekend Cat Blogging with Luna, in a photo taken last weekend:

Late summer (August and September) has a particularly quality of light I have always enjoyed, both clear and melancholy. I am particularly fond of this photo of Luna, not only does the light work great on her, but also the texture/geometry of the shadows from the blinds adds a stark, modernist touch.

Plus, the way Luna's expression complements the fish? Priceless.

I continue to see cats quite often in this one triangular vacant lot, not too far CatSynth HQ. Here is a grey cat I saw the other day :

I often see them stalking and hunting in the grass in this lot, which is bounded by a shopping center, a residential street and train tracks. The tracks have a nice walking path alongside, which I often use.

We previously featured a stray cat spending time in this lot in June.

In that same article from June, we mentioned the semi-annual rummage sale held by Project Purr, a local “cat rescue organization dedicated to FERAL cats and kittens.” The end-of-summer edition of their sale is this weekend. This time, we at CatSynth were prepared and donated some useless junk “quality household goods” for the sale. And bought some books. While I am primarily looking to reduce the amount of stuff here at CatSynth HQ, there is always room for more books.

Don't forget to check out all the other cats, domestic and outdoor, at What Did you Eat, where our friends Sher and Upsie are hosting.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is being hosted by the “catboys” Kashim and Othello. Seems like they have been busy of late.

Carnival of the Cats is at Mind of Mog, and of course Friday Ark #155 is hosted by the modulator.