Thursday 24 January 2008

The Macintosh with the first graphical user interface presented in 1984



http://static.hugi.is/misc/movies/1984macintro.mov

DJ Scotch Egg

Had a presentation by Dj Skotch Egg, interesting stuff. He played a series of his tracks whilst explaining the inspiration that formed the style for each track. All the music was made using sounds from gameboys. What I particularly found interesting was the range of different inspiration he had incorporated into his music. By having an instrument so controversial as a gameboy he is able to work with a whole range of genres, from Dub to Barch to Stoner rock. Very experimental. In most cases mucisians tend to stick to certain style according to what instrument they play, for example a saxophone for jazz and a violin for classical. DJ Skotch Egg likes all genres and expresses this in his music. He also talked about the idea of limiting himself (or his amount of tools) in order to be more imaginative and creative. This is a concept I have been interested in for a while, and tried to explore in my final piece last year by making an animation based on rules and limitations, inspired by Lars von Triers experimental film "The five obstructions". I agree that if you limit the amount of options you have you force yourself to be more imaginative.
We were also shown the piece by John Cage "4'33" which is a a 4.33 min long composed piece of complete silence. |It was interesting to see the idea of silence as being a piece of sound in itself, it got me thinking if you could make film with no content, but even a black or white screen would seem like content, so maybe no screen at all. I guess the reason why the 4.33 piece worked was because it had a conductor and an orchestra and everything was timed in fine detail.
The sounds used by DJ Skotch Egg were old school gameboy sounds which bring a sense of nostalgia for people who used to play these games, adding to the overall experience.

http://www.djscotchegg.com/