I will be posting a selection of podcasts and links that have caught my attention recently. In the meantime, here’s a podcast from the always enlightening CBC Ideas program. It explores the fundamental conception of time in relation to modern physics and reveals that our common sense understanding of time is terribly flawed.
CBC Radio | Ideas | Features | Living On Oxford Time.
Link to mp3: Living on Oxford Time.
CBC Ideas podcast feed.
In Memoriam Andrey Tarkovsky, a a compilation of music dedicated and inspired by Russian film-maker Andrey Tarkovsky has just been released on the Musica Excentrica netlabel. It features tracks by Kim Cascone, Kenneth Kirschner, Alva Noto and other excellent experimental artists. You’ll also find a new 833-45 track entitled ‘Marshlands‘ on it.
Direct ZIP file download: In Memoriam Andrey Tarkovsky
Muxtape is a young website that went online in March of 2008. While it lacks an exciting, glossy interface that the iTunes generation has come to expect (or even a search function) it excels in two things:
1) It makes it dead simple to share a mix-tape of your favourite music anywhere an internet connection exists.
2) It lets you find new music and bands in an organic and spontaneous manner that is unmatched by any other online music site. Oh, and it’s entirely free.
Those of you who are old enough to recall those hours spent to make the perfect mix-tape to impress your friends will enjoy this digital take on the process. No more worrying about the tape running out half-way through the final track you’re desperately trying to fit on the cassette. It also now integrates with Last.fm, so what you listen to will be tracked on your last.fm profile.
While the Muxtape site has a rather sparse interface, there are a few ways to get more out of it:
Muxtape.com/random - which does what you’d expect — take you to a random Muxtape playlist
Muxtape Stumbler - allows you to search out playlists by artist or song titles.
Muxtape’s quickly growing popularity has been noticed in the music industry, with some chatter that it may be facing legal challenges in the near future. But, it has also been praised by a number of smaller independent labels who understand the potential of digital distribution and the fundamental changes that the music industry is undergoing (or rather is in deep denial of). Whatever the future of Muxtape may be, head there now and enjoy!
And this wouldn’t be complete with-out a link to my current Muxtape: kmkrebs.muxtape.com.
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand — An engaging article in Wired exploring the future evolution of the English language. It is sobering and somewhat ironic to consider that English, with its incredible capacity to absorb other languages, is growing and developing most outside of what we consider ‘English nations.’ It ties in very well with a documentary series I’ve been watching entitled ‘The Adventure of English‘ which explores the past, present and future of the English language.
Gallery Crawl - a monthly vidcast of visual art from art galleries in Northern California. Broadcast by KQED, PBS-member station in San Francisco, California.
And, the Open Culture blog helps prove that the hard drives at YouTube contain more than discomforting video blogs or 80’s music videos: 70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube
K.M.Krebs | July 25, 2008
