LMNTS OF SYLE

Yea, this is a pretty good book. This type of criticism was never welcome when I got it as a kid, but I think these are fantastic recommendations, which help ones writing sound so much more thoughtful, clear and literate. I would never want someones personal voice to become lost in the pursuit of "perfect" grammar, uniform sentence structure and vocabulary, but you can easily see how most anyone would benefit greatly from using this manual.

I happen to enjoy common misuse of words and phrases, because they're often funny, and they demonstrate that the speaker ultimately owns the language, not a textbook or a tradition. One of my favorite non-words, which I actually used to use, and then kept using because I liked the sound of it, was "irregardless". I still like that one.

That having been said, even I, a writer with an inscrutationable vocaballary, will benefit.

Ain't nothin' gonna stop me now but my innate inability to process cognatious thunk.

some links to other people's work

Recently, I've been exploring the musical stylings of Andy Jenkins, the differently talented brother of Thomas Jenkinson, AKA Squarepusher. This photograph is about 10 years old.


His music is quite interesting, it tends to sound something like this:

You can hear and download tons of his music for free here:

http://www.ceephax.co.uk/Music.htm

He also has an excellent collection of jumpers, (sweaters):

http://www.ceephax.co.uk/Ceedrobe%201.htm

Peer Review

I normally loathe group work, but peer reviewing is another story. Just having a 5 minute conversation with someone about a paper helps make the assignment feel like something that I've acknowledged as part of my life, rather than a task to be agonized over and then forgotten. Also, the suggestions of a friend or classmate encourage me to think of improvements as a much less daunting task. Looking at classmates essays also helps give me an idea what mine might look like. This way I'm less intimidated by the blank piece of paper in front of me. Marisa and Steve were very helpful! Good stuff.

Light and Time

Usually I create writing using a PC and a keyboard. I have a folder on my PC which houses no only my academic assignments, but anything that might fall into the category of primarily "text" documents. This includes letters I have written which I might like to keep records of, Downloaded texts, excerpts and instruction manuals. Virtually everything else on my computer is set up for audio and visual editing.

I only began to regularly use a computer for word processing once I purchased my first computer in 1998. Prior to that I hand wrote, which was unreasonably difficult for me. My hands would cramp up almost instantly, and my handwriting has always been wildly inconsistent. I actually enjoy handwriting now quite a bit for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I tend to hand write for shorter periods of time than I did when I was in grade school.

This time-lapse photography thing came about rather spontaneously. I wanted the medium and the text to be related. I wanted to write, "Passion" in lighter fluid on the wall of my apartment building, but obviously, that wouldn't look good to any passerby. Then I thought about writing "Ants" on my kitchen floor with honey, allowing the ants to join in and promote their own species linguistically and nutritionally.

Ultimately, For this experiment I had to use my imagination and come up with words I could:

A. Spell with a laser pointer within 15 seconds (the minimum shutter speed of my camera)
B. Somehow convey the essence of using a non-text visual cue.


Word up, Holmes. Hope you enjoy!

What is style

Style is something apart from substance.
Like flavor.
Traditional music notation is mostly obsolete with regards to modern music, where
the inflection and sounds are the defining characteristics.
One thousand musicians will likely play a written piece of music one thousand ways.
Style is how billions of humans differentiate themselves from one another.

Sometimes, style is the point.
Sometimes function and format are incidental, like the 12 bar blues.

The format is just there so you can forget about writing a format and get on with the
business of expression.

I will now liberally quote one of my favorite books of all time, The Manual: How to
Have a Number One the Easy Way, by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, A.K.A.,
The KLF.

"We await the day with relish that somebody dares to make a dance
record that consists of nothing more than an electronically programmed
bass drum beat that continues playing the fours monotonously for eight
minutes. Then, when somebody else brings one out using exactly the
same bass drum sound and at the same beats per minute (B.P.M.),
we will all be able to tell which is the best, which inspires the dance floor
to fill the fastest, which has the most sex and the most soul. There is no
doubt, one will be better than the other. What we are basically saying is,
if youhave anything in you, anything unique, what others might term as
originality, it will come through whatever the component parts used in
your future Number One are made up from. "

This phenomenon is prevalent in the field of visual art as well. 

Figure 1.
TKS


Figure 2.








In this case, the artist has taken the source material, the three letters "TKS" and turned them into something unrecognizable, so that they have merit entirely independent from the source.

For example, this nine second drum solo: (1:42-1:51)

from an old soul/gospel record has been sampled, reworked and mutated across a slew of genres, in many cases leaving the original drum pattern totally unrecognizable.

Such as in this case:




I'm having a hard time putting this post in a tidy package. I think I need to learn a lot more about multimedia blogging before I can inflect it with any style of my own.

Vocoder test