The art of sound organization, also known as electroacoustic music, uses sounds not available to traditional music making, including pre-recorded, synthesized, and processed sounds. The body of work of such sound-based music (which includes electroacoustic art music, turntable composition, computer games, and acoustic and digital sound installations) has developed more rapidly than its musicology. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization proposes the first general foundational framework for the study of the art of sound organization, defining terms, discussing relevant forms of music, categorizing works, and setting sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts.

Leigh Landy's goal in this book is not only to create a theoretical framework but also to make sound-based music more accessible--to give a listener what he terms "something to hold on to," for example, by connecting elements in a work to everyday experience. Landy considers the difficulties of categorizing works and discusses such types of works as sonic art and electroacoustic music, pointing out where they overlap and how they are distinctive. He proposes a "sound-based music paradigm" that transcends such traditional categories as art and pop music. Landy defines patterns that suggest a general framework and places the study of sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts, from acoustics to semiotics, proposing a holistic research approach that considers the interconnectedness of a given work's history, theory, technological aspects, and social impact.

The author's ElectroAcoustic Resource Site, the architecture of which parallels this book's structure, offers updated bibliographic resource abstracts and related information.

Understanding the Art of Sound Organization

Every writer is an editor if only for choosing one word over another. However, the ability to edit your own work consciously as you go along or after the work is done is another thing altogether and one that leaves many a writer nonplussed.

Enter Bell, a long-time professional editor of both fiction and nonfiction (Dare to Hope: Saving American Democracy) as well as a teacher of editing at the New School in New York. Bell flat out states that self-editing is not only possible, it's necessary, and it can be learned. She provides a slew of ingenious methods for viewing your work with fresh eyes (hang the pages on a clothesline, use a different font when printing out). She also supplies exercises on macro-editing (dealing with structure, character, etc.).

Neither how-to nor memoir, the book includes a little bit of everything: Bell's own experiences editing writers; a long section on how F. Scott Fitzgerald—the consummate self-editor—produced The Great Gatsby; lengthy quotes by well-known authors on their self-editing process; and a list of editing symbols.

Bell's prose is elegant and wonderfully readable in this artful guide.

See more at The Artful Edit, including excerpts.

The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself

CARTOGRAPHIA offers a stunning array of 200 of the most beautiful, important, and fascinating maps in existence, from the world's largest cartographic collection, at the Library of Congress. These maps show how our idea of the world has shifted and grown over time, and each map tells its own unique story about nations, politics, and ambitions. The chosen images, with their accompanying stories, introduce the reader to an exciting new way of "reading" maps as travelogues---living history from the earliest of man's imaginings about planet earth to our current attempts at charting cyberspace.Among the rare gems included in the book are the Waldseemuller Map of the World from 1507, the first to include the designation "America"; pages from the Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570, considered the first modern atlas; rare maps from Africa, Asia, and Oceania that challenge traditional Western perspectives; William Faulkner's hand-drawn 1936 map of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi; and even a map of the Human Genome. In an oversized format, with gorgeous four-color reproductions throughout, Catrographia will appeal to collectors, historians, and anyone looking for a perfect gift.

See also, I am legend, an interview with the author, Vincent Virga, in the latest issue of Time Out New York.

Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations

From Publishers Weekly:

Environmental journalist Peter Thomson, founding producer and senior editor of National Public Radio's Living on Earth, combines introspection with objective reporting in this engaging account of his six-month pilgrimage to Siberia's Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest and supposedly purest body of fresh water on earth. Thomson includes everything from thoughts about his failed marriage and his relationship with his brother and fellow traveler James to colorful impressions of the people he meets as he documents his quest, shattering the myth of the lake's reputed capacity to cleanse itself. Researchers tell him that the air and water are full of thousands of tons of pollutants and contaminants from Baikal's paper mill and nearby farms, industry and power plants. Tiny filter-feeding shrimp do cleanse the water, but in the process they move the contaminants into the food chain and concentrate them, so the fish eaten by the people living around Lake Baikal now pose a serious health threat. Nevertheless, many Russians continue to believe that the waters of the Sacred Sea are pristine. Thomson's book is a lucid and sobering reminder of the destructive effects human activity has on the planet.

Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal

I covered the code back in May; now you can buy the highly anticipated book.

It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it's clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing, an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity.

The ideas in Processing have been tested in classrooms, workshops, and arts institutions, including UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, and Harvard University. Tutorial units make up the bulk of the book and introduce the syntax and concepts of software (including variables, functions, and object-oriented programming), cover such topics as photography and drawing in relation to software, and feature many short, prototypical example programs with related images and explanations. More advanced professional projects from such domains as animation, performance, and typography are discussed in interviews with their creators. "Extensions" present concise introductions to further areas of investigation, including computer vision, sound, and electronics. Appendixes, references to other material, and a glossary contain additional technical details. Processing can be used by reading each unit in order, or by following each category from the beginning of the book to the end. The Processing software and all of the code presented can be downloaded and run for future exploration.

For examples, see Ink Trails and Tendrils.

Processing

It's an extended riff on rap, in the style of Jessica Hagy at indexed, only made with Excel instead of index cards. PNSFW.

See also, Jay Z's Blue Magic:

When I start seeing rap stars flashing euros instead of U.S. dollars, I know our economy is in trouble.

rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs

Every Halloween, West 69th Street closes to traffic, and thousands of kids go trick or treating from building to building. This year, I set up my camera in one building’s lobby and photographed some of the kids in their costumes. I thought I’d share a few of the shots.

Ironic Sans: Halloween on the Upper West Side

I found this fantastic book in our local Oxfam shop on Friday. It's a simple thing. Pictures of famous people jumping.

russell davies: jump

To many readers, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is the most intimidating of literary monuments. It is there, like a vast, unexplored continent, and all sorts of daunting rumors circulate about life in the interior. But once you cross the border, you discover that the world of “War and Peace” is more familiar and at the same time more surprising than the rumors suggested.

Tolstoy’s Transparent Sounds

We are sliding towards an irreversible obsession with totally visual communication. Text is struggling to keep up. Only dense, layered, information-rich text cuts it in the online world, preferably broken up with images and other information, which might explain why the blog form, in particular the visual blog, is currently so successful.

things magazine