http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php babblings ! en osonicsc@osonics.com Copyright 2012 2012-02-07T14:49:47 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=220&c=1 2012-01-27T21:17:31 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 220@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php So... when I first had the idea to do "Quarterly Reports" it was based on the notion it’s important to make clear I'm a diligent and committed artist, as diligent and committed as someone working a job. The thing that I've realized over time is while it is important to remain diligent and committed one of the central problems of ... well it might be over reaching to say society... (Not that that there is anything wrong with over reaching in the arts)... so... society.... One of the central problems of society is trying to link and associate all means of production and output with MBA thinking and corporate logic. No place else is this association more off the wall than in the arts. In fact... as a wage slave in Internetlandia I'm beginning to think that technology and innovation are leaving the whole concept of "Business Administration" in the dust. Devotes of this site will know I tend to do a lot of my musical work over the last week of the year, the week between Christmas and New Year's when my office is closed. This year was no exception. In fact I went down to Atlanta and shipped myself a large amount of recording gear to work on a project ... which it will take me many moons to finish. During this time off I also met a wise old owl in a bar who explained to me that the reason class room periods in middle school are 45 minutes long in the US is because that's how long assembly line shifts used to last. Our entire education system, he posited, was built around the needs of a manufacturing economy. This is of course thought provoking on a few levels... but it raises the possibility that entire institutions... even sacred cows, can be completely out of sync with the culture they are meant to serve. Similarly, the whole notion of a Business administrative class may now be anachronistic, a carryover from the days when an intelligent individual, say a Robert McNamara, could be brought in to run the Ford Motor Company, or Department of Defense, when he had no real background in manufacturing automobiles or running a military. When manufacturing techniques, distribution channels, and communications platforms all ran on gears, or telephones without answering machines, a particularly gifted thinker probably could get a handle on the bulk of an organization's functions and delegate what he couldn't grasp to a handful of similarly intelligent trusted lieutenants. Today... from what I'm seeing, the pace of technical change, the volume, and ever increasing, ever accumulating impact of it, make a mockery of the notion that one individual or group of individuals can keep track of the systems and organizations they are managing from the top of a removed management hierarchy. When Google changes its security policy as it did earlier this week, the impact is immediate and far reaching. There is no way for entrenched bureaucracies to rapidly and immediately assess all the ramifications. When assembly line shifts were each 45 minutes long, and people communicated via forms written on carbon paper in triplicate... a detached board of some kind might have been able to monitor events and keep track of changes before they could radically transform a business. That is no longer the case. It seems to me in my day to day endeavors the entire culture of removed management elites is as out moded as synchronizing the nation's education system to the rhythms of non-existent factory jobs. Trying to synchronize artistic output around business cycles is therefore equally ridiculous. Art is art. Music comes from my blood, the rhythms of my heart. The affectation of quarterly reports was a sort of narrative device I thought might serve the site... but at the end of the day if I really am committed to the arts, it is my duty to serve my muse. With that in mind, I want to assure visitors that the lack of site updates has nothing to do with a lack of musical activity. It’s just that I need to let the things I'm working on dictate what and when things are done, and not be tempted by deadlines imposed by a desire to emulate the fundamental dysfunction of contemporary society. So... music... I have two projects which are very near ready for posting. An "album" of music made with others, and a long form piece of music mentioned down below called Joy Response which I've worked on by myself. Both require more time in the mix... and the mix can take time. Then again... I've been working on mixing each for quite a while... so they could emerge relatively soon. The Atlanta project meanwhile represents yet another horizon, already cued up and ready to go. So there should be plenty more to listen to before this site finally stops expanding. Keep checking back for more.
No place else is this association more off the wall than in the arts. In fact... as a wage slave in Internetlandia I’m beginning to think that technology and innovation are leaving the whole concept of “Business Administration” in the dust.

Devotes of this site will know I tend to do a lot of my musical work over the last week of the year, the week between Christmas and New Year’s when my office is closed. This year was no exception. In fact I went down to Atlanta and shipped myself a large amount of recording gear to work on a project ... which it will take me many moons to finish. During this time off I also met a wise old owl in a bar who explained to me that the reason class room periods in middle school are 45 minutes long in the US is because that’s how long assembly line shifts used to last. Our entire education system, he posited, was built around the needs of a manufacturing economy. This is of course thought provoking on a few levels... but it raises the possibility that entire institutions... even sacred cows, can be completely out of sync with the culture they are meant to serve.

Similarly, the whole notion of a Business administrative class may now be anachronistic, a carryover from the days when an intelligent individual, say a Robert McNamara, could be brought in to run the Ford Motor Company, or Department of Defense, when he had no real background in manufacturing automobiles or running a military. When manufacturing techniques, distribution channels, and communications platforms all ran on gears, or telephones without answering machines, a particularly gifted thinker probably could get a handle on the bulk of an organization’s functions and delegate what he couldn’t grasp to a handful of similarly intelligent trusted lieutenants.

Today... from what I’m seeing, the pace of technical change, the volume, and ever increasing, ever accumulating impact of it, make a mockery of the notion that one individual or group of individuals can keep track of the systems and organizations they are managing from the top of a removed management hierarchy.

When Google changes its security policy as it did earlier this week, the impact is immediate and far reaching. There is no way for entrenched bureaucracies to rapidly and immediately assess all the ramifications. When assembly line shifts were each 45 minutes long, and people communicated via forms written on carbon paper in triplicate... a detached board of some kind might have been able to monitor events and keep track of changes before they could radically transform a business. That is no longer the case.

It seems to me in my day to day endeavors the entire culture of removed management elites is as out moded as synchronizing the nation’s education system to the rhythms of non-existent factory jobs.

Trying to synchronize artistic output around business cycles is therefore equally ridiculous. Art is art. Music comes from my blood, the rhythms of my heart. The affectation of quarterly reports was a sort of narrative device I thought might serve the site... but at the end of the day if I really am committed to the arts, it is my duty to serve my muse.

With that in mind, I want to assure visitors that the lack of site updates has nothing to do with a lack of musical activity. It’s just that I need to let the things I’m working on dictate what and when things are done, and not be tempted by deadlines imposed by a desire to emulate the fundamental dysfunction of contemporary society.

So... music... I have two projects which are very near ready for posting. An “album” of music made with others, and a long form piece of music mentioned down below called Joy Response which I’ve worked on by myself. Both require more time in the mix... and the mix can take time. Then again... I’ve been working on mixing each for quite a while... so they could emerge relatively soon. The Atlanta project meanwhile represents yet another horizon, already cued up and ready to go. So there should be plenty more to listen to before this site finally stops expanding.

Keep checking back for more.
]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=219&c=1 2012-01-18T15:01:38 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 219@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php Greetings. I found an old CD of Walking Music today and ripped it at 320k. I've uploaded the higher quality sound file to the site. With the passage of time I tend to think of this track as among the finest things posted here to date. I hope you'll find time to enjoy the higher quality file. Walking Music today and ripped it at 320k. I’ve uploaded the higher quality sound file to the site. With the passage of time I tend to think of this track as among the finest things posted here to date. I hope you’ll find time to enjoy the higher quality file. ]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=218&c=1 2012-01-10T19:44:51 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 218@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php Greetings and Happy New Year! You wouldn't know it from the relative quiet on the site, but I've really been quite active musically. The challenge is I've also been extremely active professionally. This doesn't prevent me from getting 80% of the way done with compositions and recordings... but it makes that last 20% ... the obsessive focus part which I feel the need to engage in before letting things go... next to impossible. Anyway, one of these days I will finish off a few things... and there is a good chance they will all be finished in fairly close succession. So... keep checking back... you never know. I will try to post an audio update soon I've posted a text "Status Report" above to share some details about what I've been working on and what's been going on. In the meantime, a friend of mine posted this on Facebook recently... and I found it tremendously ... challenging, thought provoking, engrossing... you name it. At any rate... I thouroughly recommend this video below. It works just as effecitvely as a bit of radio... so if you are at work or similar you can listen to the discussion without watching and miss very little overall.
Anyway, one of these days I will finish off a few things... and there is a good chance they will all be finished in fairly close succession. So... keep checking back... you never know.

I will try to post an audio update soon I’ve posted a text “Status Report” above to share some details about what I’ve been working on and what’s been going on. In the meantime, a friend of mine posted this on Facebook recently... and I found it tremendously ... challenging, thought provoking, engrossing... you name it. At any rate... I thouroughly recommend this video below. It works just as effecitvely as a bit of radio... so if you are at work or similar you can listen to the discussion without watching and miss very little overall.

]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=217&c=1 2011-11-22T13:43:06 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 217@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php "The Umbrella Man" "The Umbrella Man"]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=216&c=1 2011-11-01T13:38:30 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 216@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php >Sigh. >Sigh.]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=215&c=1 2011-10-19T20:03:05 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) 2006 215@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=214&c=1 2011-10-14T12:37:40 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 214@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php Greetings. I am sitting in my office. It is 8:43am. I just arrived from a morning spent in Zuccotti park. Yesterday afternoon I was writing about my experiences at the Occupy Wall St. rally over the Columbus day weekend when two things happened. First, my barely restored site crashed on me, erasing everything I’d written. Second, I heard word the city was planning to clear the park this morning at 6am. The one-two punch left me with the feeling this event was slipping away before I quite knew what my opinion of it was. So when I left work yesterday I decided to get a cheap hotel room downtown a couple of blocks from the protest and rise before dawn. The gothic majesty of Wall st. is especially compelling before the sun has come up, with steam rising from grates in the ground giving everything the aura of a medieval forrest burdened by cold stone castles. I walked from a Holiday Inn on Water St. through otherwise narrow alleys around 5:30am to Zuccotti and waded into the crowd. My initial thought had been to stand on the sidelines, and take pictures with a crappy digital camera I bought at a Duane Reade the night before. But the sight of an island of humanity… compelled me to enter in. The island had a rising and falling landscape, a topography composed entirely of people with those standing on benches and barricades forming the island highlands, marchers and musicians weaving their way along low lying pathways composing lowlands. The photos here are not from this morning, but from visits I took over Columbus day weekend. I had a mixed impression of the protest scene from the handful of times I visited it before today. But something about the prospect of … a clash compelled me to become a part of either memorializing, or defending the protest. The protest itself is motley. I’ve been talking about it with friends for a couple of days, and in the process I've overheard myself making two points which it occured to me to share here. First I’ve been struck by the visceral feelings this chaotic gathering of people dredged up in me specifically because of where it is happening. I don’t mean to be crass or maudlin, but it is a simple fact I was only a few blocks from this park on 9/11 when the second plane hit. I was in this neighborhood when I witnessed the towers go down. Again this is just a fact. I don’t mention 9/11 because I’ve spent a lot of time watching people blather about it on TV. I had so little patience for the 10 year anniversary media smorgasboard that I flew down to Atlanta recently to avoid it. The sight of Matt Lauer presenting himself as some sort of national avatar of understanding about what happened that day while mistily reliving the “chilling moment” when he had to interrupt his book segment interview on "The Today Show" with some otherwise forgettable author to take note of a "a call about terrible news downtown" still bugged the crap out of me during the 10 seconds I had a TV on in Atlanta. My thoughts about 9/11 are less thoughts than they are visceral feelings and physical sensations of stress or horror. They can only really be triggered by extreme disruptions of my environment on par with what I experienced that day. As strange is it may seem, being present amidst the protest in Zuccotti park rose to that level. It rose to that level not because the scene there is violent, horrific or disruptive, but because it establishes a subtle tear in the fabric of New York's environmental equilibrium. New York is known for its hustle and bustle. But this hustle and bustle is extremely direct. It is linear. People push past each other like trolly cars on invisible rails. They race and dart along straight paths to individual destinations, unknown to one another. In New York people only engage in circular motion, turning and spiraling around each other… taking notice of each other, interacting… questioning… when something has disrupted the invisible network of rails everyone runs along. In this city, when people aren't lancing past each other in deliberate straight lines it represents a preternatural disorder of the urban compact. This disorder takes place only in periods of crisis or celebration and what I realized this past weekend in Zuccotti park is I have only experienced this sort of disorder once before in this part of town... on 9/11. Having such a visceral connection form in me gave me pause. On an emotional or physical level I was experiencing something which my mind itself would not have come to. There is a symetry between how people outside this nation were attacking this part of Manhattan as a way to get at Wall St. ten years ago, and the way even the people within this country have come around to targeting Wall St now. “Where have you gone Joe Dimagio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you” Paul Simon once sang. Today it seems as though an entire planet is increasingly turning its eyes to Wall street, the dark majestic gothic heart of a system that pumps blood and wealth unevenly throughout the body politic. Aside from this soundbyte about the personal connection I felt between the protest and 9/11, another thumbnail point I’ve made in discussing the protest with friends is that it is full of incoherence. The problem with some of the more glaringly strident statements such as the one about JFK above wasn’t specifically ignorance though. On the days I was there a large “People’s library” was set up on tables and marble walls surrounding the park on its north east edge. There was plenty of focus on sharing information and ideas, the problem was people had so many different ways of expressing them. To some of the people JFK was an historical figure, one associated with specific biographical facts. To others he was a vague sort of pop cultural apparition, a character from some mass media maintained pantheon of pseudo icons who was entirely mutable the same way photos of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix can be easily photoshoped and droped into mass marketing campaigns by Apple to "Think Different", as though either one of them had any direct association with the Personal Computer. Similarly there were disconnects between those in Zuccotti park who wished to speak factually, and those who sought to communicate figuratively. It is the process of working through these disconnects which I ultimately find most intriguing about this ongoing phenomenon. One of the central memes of the protestors centers around the notion they are representatives of “the 99%”, the “99%” not designated by the “1%” said to hold nearly 82% of the wealth in this country. As it becomes more and more true that 99% of Americans are being herded into a gigantic homogenous underclass of the barely and semi-employed, the distinct cultural groups we all thought we belonged to become increasingly irrelevant. We may have thought we belonged to a “working class” or an “educated class” or a “professional class,” or a "hipster class" or a "hip hop class", each with its own peculiar modes of communication and personal expression, but as the boundaries between these groups become shattered by the downward pressure compacting us all together, we find ourselves confronting literally a sort of poor man’s tumble of the tower of Babel. What struck me most about the discourse in Zuccotti park were the numerous perspectives on a shared experience of disenfranchisement. People there were trying to communicate around cultural and class distinctions which have jarringly ceased to have meaning in a melting pot of foreclosure and unemployment. It is easy enough to dismiss placards like the one concerning JFK above, but it is less easy to dismiss the spontaneous organization of green kitchens and self sustaining water stations such as the one pictured below. While I was more ambivalent on the weekend when I took these photos, what I came to believe this morning standing in drizzle and dark with thousands of other New Yorkers who came out as I did, in answer to some sort of last minute subconscious calling in the early morning hours to reinforce the tenuous toe hold held by a handful of people camping there, is that Zuccotti park represents not so much an organized political movement as a place for basic human congregation free from too much organization. New Yorkers might not think of their city as lacking in places for congregating… but this is a myth reinforced only by legacy works of urban planning. The city is full of parks, vistas and squares where people might gather. But the truth is these are inherited from an earlier and healthier age, one predating the rise of cell phones,TVs, 9-9 jobs, boasts about the mercilous nature of "The New York minute" and "not enough hours in the day". We all hustle and bustle by each other like the trolley cars I mentioned before inadvertently mimicking the rumble and sway of the subway cars, the busses and taxi cabs which surround, define and subsume us. Even in New York's great museums most people are striding purposefully with maps or audio guide headphones from one set destination to another on a schedule. Zuccotti park, it turns out, is a place where people are gathering to stop and breathe, meet and discuss free of constraints such as a specific closing time. People arrive at Zuccotti park with their planned out social identiy as though they were walking along the street with it, holding and slapping it as though it were a buzzing defective radio. They start out by complaining to each other about why the radio won't work, before just setting it down, and stopping to learn that no one else's radio has been working lately either. The repeat visitor to Zuccatti park eventually realizes he or she is there discussing what this means... trying to make sense of it. To me it seems Zuccotti park is very much becoming the Hyde Park of Bernard Shaw’s age, when sages and skeptics, luminaries and lunatics would debate each other atop soap boxes in 19th century London. Those pontificating about every sort of imaginable conspiracy and avant garde aspiration could be as readily dismissed as discussed by others who visited the park, but it was a significant part of that city's character that this open ground for discussion of every sort was available. Don't misunderstand me, there is a darkside to the "Work Groups" and "PR Groups" the protestors have organized. There is an Animal Farm component of fledgling protocomunism at work. There are sprinkles of anti-semitism and wild conspiracy theories of every stripe, such as the one involving JFK pictured above. But I think what is taking place in Zuccotti park is in enough of an embryonic stage so that its fair to see these negative leanings as fumbling attempts to understand the way the world works by people who (as is obvious from some of their theories) haven't given it a lot of thought before. In this way it is not the specific discourse taking place in Zuccotti park which matters, it is the *return* of discourse as a public, civic, ongoing, cosmopolitan phenomenon. To understand what sets the current events in Zuccotti park apart from the normal patterns of this city all a native New Yorker need think about is a Friday night in Union Square. The park and people in that section of town might present a sense of meaningful interaction amongst different strata of the city. But the torrential forward force of each individual darting past every other around 14th st. in a mad dash to one nearby store or another is a perfect example of the illusion of interaction this city has come to provide. It is this illusion of interaction which is being disrupted in Zuccotti park today. There linear energy, the manic striving to get from point A to B is being supplanted by people milling about, circling and gathering together to meet and discuss what's going on in the world today. This is in fact a public park’s true purpose. To get caught up in what the protestors are talking about per se is to miss the point of the Occupy Wall St. phenomenon. The point is not what they are saying, the point is they have created a beach head, an island as I wrote above where people not only can, but actually are comming together to partake in the actual process of talking to others from every walk of life about just what in the world is going today. The most amazing thing about Occupy Wall Street is not how radical or political a movement it is or represents. The most amazing thing about Occupy Wall Street is that its organizers have shown us that simply turning a park into a place where people can gather to speak their minds freely at any hour of the day or night is considered a bold and radical act in today's world. What does this say about today's world? Zuccotti park is the place where many people from across the country are currently gathering to have this conversation.

Greetings. I am sitting in my office. It is 8:43am. I just arrived from a morning spent in Zuccotti park. Yesterday afternoon I was writing about my experiences at the Occupy Wall St. rally over the Columbus day weekend when two things happened. First, my barely restored site crashed on me, erasing everything I’d written. Second, I heard word the city was planning to clear the park this morning at 6am. The one-two punch left me with the feeling this event was slipping away before I quite knew what my opinion of it was. So when I left work yesterday I decided to get a cheap hotel room downtown a couple of blocks from the protest and rise before dawn.

The gothic majesty of Wall st. is especially compelling before the sun has come up, with steam rising from grates in the ground giving everything the aura of a medieval forrest burdened by cold stone castles. I walked from a Holiday Inn on Water St. through otherwise narrow alleys around 5:30am to Zuccotti and waded into the crowd. My initial thought had been to stand on the sidelines, and take pictures with a crappy digital camera I bought at a Duane Reade the night before. But the sight of an island of humanity… compelled me to enter in. The island had a rising and falling landscape, a topography composed entirely of people with those standing on benches and barricades forming the island highlands, marchers and musicians weaving their way along low lying pathways composing lowlands.

The photos here are not from this morning, but from visits I took over Columbus day weekend. I had a mixed impression of the protest scene from the handful of times I visited it before today. But something about the prospect of … a clash compelled me to become a part of either memorializing, or defending the protest.

The protest itself is motley. I’ve been talking about it with friends for a couple of days, and in the process I’ve overheard myself making two points which it occured to me to share here.

First I’ve been struck by the visceral feelings this chaotic gathering of people dredged up in me specifically because of where it is happening. I don’t mean to be crass or maudlin, but it is a simple fact I was only a few blocks from this park on 9/11 when the second plane hit. I was in this neighborhood when I witnessed the towers go down. Again this is just a fact. I don’t mention 9/11 because I’ve spent a lot of time watching people blather about it on TV. I had so little patience for the 10 year anniversary media smorgasboard that I flew down to Atlanta recently to avoid it.

The sight of Matt Lauer presenting himself as some sort of national avatar of understanding about what happened that day while mistily reliving the “chilling moment” when he had to interrupt his book segment interview on “The Today Show” with some otherwise forgettable author to take note of a “a call about terrible news downtown” still bugged the crap out of me during the 10 seconds I had a TV on in Atlanta.

My thoughts about 9/11 are less thoughts than they are visceral feelings and physical sensations of stress or horror. They can only really be triggered by extreme disruptions of my environment on par with what I experienced that day. As strange is it may seem, being present amidst the protest in Zuccotti park rose to that level. It rose to that level not because the scene there is violent, horrific or disruptive, but because it establishes a subtle tear in the fabric of New York’s environmental equilibrium.

New York is known for its hustle and bustle. But this hustle and bustle is extremely direct. It is linear. People push past each other like trolly cars on invisible rails. They race and dart along straight paths to individual destinations, unknown to one another.

In New York people only engage in circular motion, turning and spiraling around each other… taking notice of each other, interacting… questioning… when something has disrupted the invisible network of rails everyone runs along. In this city, when people aren’t lancing past each other in deliberate straight lines it represents a preternatural disorder of the urban compact. This disorder takes place only in periods of crisis or celebration and what I realized this past weekend in Zuccotti park is I have only experienced this sort of disorder once before in this part of town... on 9/11.

Having such a visceral connection form in me gave me pause. On an emotional or physical level I was experiencing something which my mind itself would not have come to. There is a symetry between how people outside this nation were attacking this part of Manhattan as a way to get at Wall St. ten years ago, and the way even the people within this country have come around to targeting Wall St now.

“Where have you gone Joe Dimagio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you” Paul Simon once sang. Today it seems as though an entire planet is increasingly turning its eyes to Wall street, the dark majestic gothic heart of a system that pumps blood and wealth unevenly throughout the body politic.




Aside from this soundbyte about the personal connection I felt between the protest and 9/11, another thumbnail point I’ve made in discussing the protest with friends is that it is full of incoherence. The problem with some of the more glaringly strident statements such as the one about JFK above wasn’t specifically ignorance though.

On the days I was there a large “People’s library” was set up on tables and marble walls surrounding the park on its north east edge. There was plenty of focus on sharing information and ideas, the problem was people had so many different ways of expressing them. To some of the people JFK was an historical figure, one associated with specific biographical facts. To others he was a vague sort of pop cultural apparition, a character from some mass media maintained pantheon of pseudo icons who was entirely mutable the same way photos of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix can be easily photoshoped and droped into mass marketing campaigns by Apple to “Think Different”, as though either one of them had any direct association with the Personal Computer.

Similarly there were disconnects between those in Zuccotti park who wished to speak factually, and those who sought to communicate figuratively. It is the process of working through these disconnects which I ultimately find most intriguing about this ongoing phenomenon.

One of the central memes of the protestors centers around the notion they are representatives of “the 99%”, the “99%” not designated by the “1%” said to hold nearly 82% of the wealth in this country. As it becomes more and more true that 99% of Americans are being herded into a gigantic homogenous underclass of the barely and semi-employed, the distinct cultural groups we all thought we belonged to become increasingly irrelevant. We may have thought we belonged to a “working class” or an “educated class” or a “professional class,” or a “hipster class” or a “hip hop class”, each with its own peculiar modes of communication and personal expression, but as the boundaries between these groups become shattered by the downward pressure compacting us all together, we find ourselves confronting literally a sort of poor man’s tumble of the tower of Babel.


What struck me most about the discourse in Zuccotti park were the numerous perspectives on a shared experience of disenfranchisement. People there were trying to communicate around cultural and class distinctions which have jarringly ceased to have meaning in a melting pot of foreclosure and unemployment.

It is easy enough to dismiss placards like the one concerning JFK above, but it is less easy to dismiss the spontaneous organization of green kitchens and self sustaining water stations such as the one pictured below.



While I was more ambivalent on the weekend when I took these photos, what I came to believe this morning standing in drizzle and dark with thousands of other New Yorkers who came out as I did, in answer to some sort of last minute subconscious calling in the early morning hours to reinforce the tenuous toe hold held by a handful of people camping there, is that Zuccotti park represents not so much an organized political movement as a place for basic human congregation free from too much organization.

New Yorkers might not think of their city as lacking in places for congregating… but this is a myth reinforced only by legacy works of urban planning. The city is full of parks, vistas and squares where people might gather. But the truth is these are inherited from an earlier and healthier age, one predating the rise of cell phones,TVs, 9-9 jobs, boasts about the mercilous nature of “The New York minute” and “not enough hours in the day”. We all hustle and bustle by each other like the trolley cars I mentioned before inadvertently mimicking the rumble and sway of the subway cars, the busses and taxi cabs which surround, define and subsume us. Even in New York’s great museums most people are striding purposefully with maps or audio guide headphones from one set destination to another on a schedule.

Zuccotti park, it turns out, is a place where people are gathering to stop and breathe, meet and discuss free of constraints such as a specific closing time. People arrive at Zuccotti park with their planned out social identiy as though they were walking along the street with it, holding and slapping it as though it were a buzzing defective radio. They start out by complaining to each other about why the radio won’t work, before just setting it down, and stopping to learn that no one else’s radio has been working lately either. The repeat visitor to Zuccatti park eventually realizes he or she is there discussing what this means... trying to make sense of it.

To me it seems Zuccotti park is very much becoming the Hyde Park of Bernard Shaw’s age, when sages and skeptics, luminaries and lunatics would debate each other atop soap boxes in 19th century London. Those pontificating about every sort of imaginable conspiracy and avant garde aspiration could be as readily dismissed as discussed by others who visited the park, but it was a significant part of that city’s character that this open ground for discussion of every sort was available.

Don’t misunderstand me, there is a darkside to the “Work Groups” and “PR Groups” the protestors have organized. There is an Animal Farm component of fledgling protocomunism at work. There are sprinkles of anti-semitism and wild conspiracy theories of every stripe, such as the one involving JFK pictured above. But I think what is taking place in Zuccotti park is in enough of an embryonic stage so that its fair to see these negative leanings as fumbling attempts to understand the way the world works by people who (as is obvious from some of their theories) haven’t given it a lot of thought before.

In this way it is not the specific discourse taking place in Zuccotti park which matters, it is the *return* of discourse as a public, civic, ongoing, cosmopolitan phenomenon.

To understand what sets the current events in Zuccotti park apart from the normal patterns of this city all a native New Yorker need think about is a Friday night in Union Square. The park and people in that section of town might present a sense of meaningful interaction amongst different strata of the city. But the torrential forward force of each individual darting past every other around 14th st. in a mad dash to one nearby store or another is a perfect example of the illusion of interaction this city has come to provide. It is this illusion of interaction which is being disrupted in Zuccotti park today. There linear energy, the manic striving to get from point A to B is being supplanted by people milling about, circling and gathering together to meet and discuss what’s going on in the world today.

This is in fact a public park’s true purpose.

To get caught up in what the protestors are talking about per se is to miss the point of the Occupy Wall St. phenomenon. The point is not what they are saying, the point is they have created a beach head, an island as I wrote above where people not only can, but actually are comming together to partake in the actual process of talking to others from every walk of life about just what in the world is going today.

The most amazing thing about Occupy Wall Street is not how radical or political a movement it is or represents. The most amazing thing about Occupy Wall Street is that its organizers have shown us that simply turning a park into a place where people can gather to speak their minds freely at any hour of the day or night is considered a bold and radical act in today’s world. What does this say about today’s world? Zuccotti park is the place where many people from across the country are currently gathering to have this conversation.



]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=213&c=1 2011-08-29T17:14:06 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 213@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php A new "Album" will be posted soon. By soon... I mean no later than the start of the new year... And possibly as early as just after labor day. Its all a function of how much I can get done on the margins of my day job. Everything is in the final mixing stages, so it shouldn't be too much longer. Keep checking back in the next several weeks. Ok... I was a *bit* off with this prediction. The "album" is done... well... musically... but needs a bit more work in the mix. As noted in the "Happy New Year" post above... finding time for this tweaking is prooving difficult. But I will find it. There is no way a whole album of material won't get posted here. I think it should be up by or before it gets warm again... but... I've been wrong before. Hang in there (note to self as well as you dear reader...) A new “Album” will be posted soon. By soon... I mean no later than the start of the new year... And possibly as early as just after labor day. Its all a function of how much I can get done on the margins of my day job. Everything is in the final mixing stages, so it shouldn’t be too much longer. Keep checking back in the next several weeks.

Ok... I was a *bit* off with this prediction. The “album” is done... well... musically... but needs a bit more work in the mix. As noted in the “Happy New Year” post above... finding time for this tweaking is prooving difficult. But I will find it. There is no way a whole album of material won’t get posted here. I think it should be up by or before it gets warm again... but... I’ve been wrong before. Hang in there (note to self as well as you dear reader...)]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=212&c=1 2011-08-16T13:28:19 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) 2007 212@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php More on the persistent state of internet tracking: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/undeletable-cookie/ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1898390
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/undeletable-cookie/


http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1898390 ]]> http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=211&c=1 2011-07-28T14:29:14 admin (mailto:osonic@osonics.com) News 211@http://osonics.com/v-web/b2/index.php Sitting at my desk at work listenning to "In my time of dying" by Zepplin. In about 10 mins I have to duck into a very very stuffy and formal meeting. Tis the summer... and its been some time since I've blathered here on the site. A lot has changed in that time. I blather less... have fallen behind on things like "quarterly reports" and so on... well ultimately I guess because my life has expanded somewhat... and that's a good thing. I have a broader range of interests than I think I did a while back when music was the be all and end all... that said... music is still... well a good part of the all. Another reason for writing less is the changing climate, environmental, political, professional... I've been promoted at work, where I work with a lot of emerging technology on the internet... so that takes up more time... and creates greater awareness of how with a little scratching, esspecially if the scratching is informed by a little tosh... nothing is anonymous online. There was a time when cover names and aliases ammounted to something... but at this stage its important no one underestimate how easy it is to synthesize user information online, or link seemingly distinct accounts and transactions if they all originate from a handful of devices with corresponding IP addresses and or device IDs. For a person, linking so many data points might seem like a crazy prohibitive amount of effort, but then people have difficulty remembering phone numbers. As early as the 1990's even a Pentium processor could easily render calculations on massive spreadsheets and or Access databases with thousands of different criteria. These days retail stores are full of multi core machines. At the level of enterprise data aggregators, social networks, search providers or similar the infrastructure is in place to concatenate data points and establish "User IDs" which leverage the cookie as only a small component. Your IP, browser, time of day for consuming certain types of content... all of these things are "difficult" for a person to plot... but scripts that try to link user interactions with servers based around these criteria are not difficult to configure. Computers are literally there to plow through what might seem like complex and convoluted numbers analysis... make it easy... and do it millions of times a milisecond. The bottom line is... today the internet is in every aspect the same thing as the lobby of a bank or office building. It is as public, with cameras... and stuffy. We feel like its "cool" because it *was* in the 90s. But it is no more. It is a tool... as powerful and precise a tool as has ever been deployed, and it is increasingly susceptible to being used by the "haves" to manage and corral the "have nots". As a tool it is still great for getting information... maybe even conducting business... anything one would do in the lobby of a Bank. But... well... Art is defined to some extent by its medium. A few years back the internet was a suitable medium for the more transparent and confessional approach I was taking... as is evident from what's been posted. But now... things are shifting. I think art still has its place... even in the lobby of a bank of america. But since the goal of... well *my* art... is to ... be a presence in the lives of others... I don't want to do anything that will get me kicked out of the lobby. This is not quite the same thing as being afraid to speak my mind... It is the same thing as wanting to do the careful work necessary to remain present so as to speak it. Speaking of the lives of others I can not recommend that film highly enough. Considering how the internet is being deployed at this time... I think it is an amazing metaphor for the world we are moving into. I posted a link down below for a video called "The Truth about Facebook". The video has since been taken down. I've since found this this link suggesting it was all guff. Of course the assertion that it was guff co-exists uneasily with articles on the existence of persistent cookies. For those seeking more on the topic a full research paper can be found here. Basically what was under consideration in that video was exactly who were the angel investors who invested in the company, the two men in the room who agreed to spend $500 million on the company in another film, The Social Network. To be fair, its bound to be easy to debunk alarmist concerns about specific companies. This is because there is no centralized organization driving data acquisition or monitioring, there is no East German state pulling the levers today as in the film The Lives of Others. What there is, however, undeniably is an infrastructure... an increasingly refined infrastructure for gathering, collecting and correlating data on individuals in increasingly sophisticated ways. For the moment that infrastucture is being used for one thing only, so far as I am personally aware, and that is... profit. I happen to think this is a good thing. The people who are pushing to make data gathering more sophisticated, frankly, don't care about you, or who you are. User behaviors are aggregated and evaluated to figure out who to sell cans of coke, and who to sell slices of pizza. I think this is a good thing because it employs people. It pays for the college educations of many a middle aged mom's children. It pays for the health care of many a middle aged man's mother. I'm not opposed to jobs and I'm not opposed to making money. I'm not *opposed* to anything. I am however concerned that the profit motive is driving the constuction of an infrastructure for data gathering that could be used for other purposes apart from driving profit... without any public debate or consideration. As an artist I would even go so far as to use a couple of poetic lines simply for the purpose of provoking thought: The police state has become privatized. The construction of ever more sophisticated means for peeking into the lives of others has been incentivized by the profit motive. No one feels accountable for this because no one entity is. The result is plausible deniability for everyone... and total complete data retreval on the lives of others for a privaleged few. I write this not as an *enemy* of the privatized police state... I say this as a member of the state. As a member of the state I write this for all my colleagues and contemporaries. This is something we should all give thought to. I think everyone in my line of work or similiar should take time to watch The Lives of Others. I think everyone who uses the internet should as well. After viewing this film about life in East Germany in the 1980's I'm sure it will be easy to say: "Oh its not the same!" or "That can't happen again now." but to say that is to say that sex can't happen, or food won't be eaten, or that children won't fight. Human drives and impulses are timeless. They play out again and again across each generation. What changes are the fashions. The clothes change. The furniture. Yes, also the tools. But not the drives. I think it is naieve to think data gathering tools of the sort that are exploding across our society can be deployed and *not* appeal to the same basic human propensities described in that film. Perhaps the film is not relevant *yet*... but I think the film makers knew full well they were documenting something more than a bygone historical moment. Perhaps these drives can't be tamed even by considering them. If so... then the film is still worthwhile as a document of the sort of quiet annoymous compassion and kindness these tools can enable depending on the willingness of those using them to face up to the full reality of what they can mean. Oh! I alsomost forgot... Music is still being made... and I think I will shift to "Anual Reports". I'll post one in the next few weeks to say more. Highlights will include detail about how I've relocated from a rehearsal / recording setup in Greenpoint to one in DUMBO. Also I'm working on a nice long piece of music that will be similar in style to Walking Music which will be called Joy Responsibility. Its a big beautiful lush organic taphistory of sounds and I'm having a great time watching it develop and evolve. Not sure when it will be done, but thought I would drop its name now for those who are interested. There has been a band... it may have fallen apart... it may be on hold... not sure. I have a lot of other recorded stuff to finish and post... but there is the workaday world which makes it difficult to find time for doing so. On that note... Off to my meeting!
There was a time when cover names and aliases ammounted to something... but at this stage its important no one underestimate how easy it is to synthesize user information online, or link seemingly distinct accounts and transactions if they all originate from a handful of devices with corresponding IP addresses and or device IDs.

For a person, linking so many data points might seem like a crazy prohibitive amount of effort, but then people have difficulty remembering phone numbers.

As early as the 1990’s even a Pentium processor could easily render calculations on massive spreadsheets and or Access databases with thousands of different criteria. These days retail stores are full of multi core machines. At the level of enterprise data aggregators, social networks, search providers or similar the infrastructure is in place to concatenate data points and establish “User IDs” which leverage the cookie as only a small component. Your IP, browser, time of day for consuming certain types of content... all of these things are “difficult” for a person to plot... but scripts that try to link user interactions with servers based around these criteria are not difficult to configure.

Computers are literally there to plow through what might seem like complex and convoluted numbers analysis... make it easy... and do it millions of times a milisecond.

The bottom line is... today the internet is in every aspect the same thing as the lobby of a bank or office building. It is as public, with cameras... and stuffy. We feel like its “cool” because it *was* in the 90s. But it is no more. It is a tool... as powerful and precise a tool as has ever been deployed, and it is increasingly susceptible to being used by the “haves” to manage and corral the “have nots”.

As a tool it is still great for getting information... maybe even conducting business... anything one would do in the lobby of a Bank. But... well... Art is defined to some extent by its medium. A few years back the internet was a suitable medium for the more transparent and confessional approach I was taking... as is evident from what’s been posted. But now... things are shifting.

I think art still has its place... even in the lobby of a bank of america. But since the goal of... well *my* art... is to ... be a presence in the lives of others... I don’t want to do anything that will get me kicked out of the lobby.

This is not quite the same thing as being afraid to speak my mind... It is the same thing as wanting to do the careful work necessary to remain present so as to speak it.

Speaking of the lives of others I can not recommend that film highly enough. Considering how the internet is being deployed at this time... I think it is an amazing metaphor for the world we are moving into.

I posted a link down below for a video called “The Truth about Facebook”. The video has since been taken down. I’ve since found this this link suggesting it was all guff. Of course the assertion that it was guff co-exists uneasily with articles on the existence of persistent cookies. For those seeking more on the topic a full research paper can be found here.

Basically what was under consideration in that video was exactly who were the angel investors who invested in the company, the two men in the room who agreed to spend $500 million on the company in another film, The Social Network. To be fair, its bound to be easy to debunk alarmist concerns about specific companies. This is because there is no centralized organization driving data acquisition or monitioring, there is no East German state pulling the levers today as in the film The Lives of Others.

What there is, however, undeniably is an infrastructure... an increasingly refined infrastructure for gathering, collecting and correlating data on individuals in increasingly sophisticated ways. For the moment that infrastucture is being used for one thing only, so far as I am personally aware, and that is... profit.

I happen to think this is a good thing. The people who are pushing to make data gathering more sophisticated, frankly, don’t care about you, or who you are. User behaviors are aggregated and evaluated to figure out who to sell cans of coke, and who to sell slices of pizza. I think this is a good thing because it employs people. It pays for the college educations of many a middle aged mom’s children. It pays for the health care of many a middle aged man’s mother. I’m not opposed to jobs and I’m not opposed to making money. I’m not *opposed* to anything. I am however concerned that the profit motive is driving the constuction of an infrastructure for data gathering that could be used for other purposes apart from driving profit... without any public debate or consideration.

As an artist I would even go so far as to use a couple of poetic lines simply for the purpose of provoking thought: The police state has become privatized. The construction of ever more sophisticated means for peeking into the lives of others has been incentivized by the profit motive. No one feels accountable for this because no one entity is. The result is plausible deniability for everyone... and total complete data retreval on the lives of others for a privaleged few.

I write this not as an *enemy* of the privatized police state... I say this as a member of the state. As a member of the state I write this for all my colleagues and contemporaries. This is something we should all give thought to. I think everyone in my line of work or similiar should take time to watch The Lives of Others. I think everyone who uses the internet should as well.

After viewing this film about life in East Germany in the 1980’s I’m sure it will be easy to say: “Oh its not the same!” or “That can’t happen again now.” but to say that is to say that sex can’t happen, or food won’t be eaten, or that children won’t fight. Human drives and impulses are timeless. They play out again and again across each generation. What changes are the fashions. The clothes change. The furniture. Yes, also the tools. But not the drives. I think it is naieve to think data gathering tools of the sort that are exploding across our society can be deployed and *not* appeal to the same basic human propensities described in that film. Perhaps the film is not relevant *yet*... but I think the film makers knew full well they were documenting something more than a bygone historical moment. Perhaps these drives can’t be tamed even by considering them. If so... then the film is still worthwhile as a document of the sort of quiet annoymous compassion and kindness these tools can enable depending on the willingness of those using them to face up to the full reality of what they can mean.

Oh! I alsomost forgot... Music is still being made... and I think I will shift to “Anual Reports”. I’ll post one in the next few weeks to say more. Highlights will include detail about how I’ve relocated from a rehearsal / recording setup in Greenpoint to one in DUMBO. Also I’m working on a nice long piece of music that will be similar in style to Walking Music which will be called Joy Responsibility. Its a big beautiful lush organic taphistory of sounds and I’m having a great time watching it develop and evolve. Not sure when it will be done, but thought I would drop its name now for those who are interested. There has been a band... it may have fallen apart... it may be on hold... not sure. I have a lot of other recorded stuff to finish and post... but there is the workaday world which makes it difficult to find time for doing so. On that note... Off to my meeting!]]>