Andrew Speaks

A night at the Opera House

Tujiko Noriko performed at the Sydney Opera House’s The Studio last Friday night (22/8/08). I went along to the concert not knowing very much at all about the avant-pop experimental artist from Japan and came away pleasantly surprised. Before the concert, I had heard one song called ‘Penguin’ (see below) and had read a short piece about the singer in The Sydney Morning Herald.

The concert was completely different to what I had originally imagined. The ambience in The Studio was very relaxing; the whole experience could be described as minimalist. Just one door out of four was opened for patrons to enter the venue. Comfortable chairs with the option of cushions on the floor for those who were keen were provided, low-lighting added to the calmness and on the stage, a single table covered by a black cloth. On the table was a silver Macbook with a microphone just above it. Two large amps on the left and right of the stage completed the picture.

After fbi Fat Planet DJ Stuart Buchanan, who had been performing near the exit, finished his set, the lights dimmed a little more and a pattern of thin white clouds lit up the red velvet backdrop. Tujiko Noriko entered stage left. The only accompaniment for the singer during her set was the Macbook, which, I was later told by someone more knowledgeable about her music, had actually played up a little. I had thought the occasional short, sharp pauses in the music were actually part of the music; they really didn’t sound out of place with the electronic blips and drum beats, over which her voice kept singing making it sound, and look, like it was all part of the show. The audience were silent for the most part except for an over-enthusiastic fan who made a song request (which Tujiko politely performed) and then tried to hand over a present at the end of the set (which was politely rejected).

Tujiko’s music has been compared to Bjork, but the singer said in an interview earlier this year with The Japan Times,“I really like (Bjork’s) early work, but when I started playing music, I was already too old to be impressed so much,” she considers. “I don’t think we’re so similar.” According to Tujiko’s website, her discography includes 13 releases since 2000 and there is another on the way. This concert was part of her promotion for the upcoming release U, which will be released soon through room40 in Brisbane.

The night sky

At the end of last year, I bought a telescope. Not knowing anything about astronomy, I waltzed into the Bintel (Binocular and Telescope) shop in Glebe, failed to hide my complete lack of knowledge about the hobby, and eventually walked out with a 10” Dobsonian telescope (photo on left).

Ironically, it rained that day, and it either poured or remained overcast for the next couple of weeks. I have now come to learn that one should be spontaneous in choosing an evening to view the sky because making plans to use a telescope on a predetermined date will almost certainly jinx the weather.

Two things that inspired my foray into what the universe has to offer:

1. A Briefer History of Time written by Stephen Hawking and co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, a book detailing what science is known about the universe;
2. Images such as that of the Crab Nebula taken by the Hubble Telescope, or the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image that shows about 10,000 galaxies.

A Briefer History of Time is, as it says on the front of the book, “The science classic made more accessible.” That “science classic” is A Brief History of Time, a book that requires quite a strong understanding of mathematics. The book was referred to as an “unread bestseller” by Robert L. Pollack in the Wall St Journal. An “unread bestseller,” as defined on Word Spy, is “a book that many people purchase but few read in its entirety.” The top 10 “unread bestsellers” according to the writer of that entry are:

1. The Bible
2. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
3. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
4. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
5. The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
6. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
7. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
8. The Bell Curve, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein
9. The End of History, Francis Fukuyama
10. Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (trans.)

Apart from the weather, which can’t be helped if we are to live on a ‘healthy’ Earth, one of the main frustrations of using a telescope in Sydney is light pollution. Interestingly, there is an organisation that is trying to improve the situation.

Viewable objects in the Sydney night sky are limited to those which are the brightest. At the moment, one of the easiest objects to view (apart from the moon which is visible all year round) is Jupiter. Below is an image I took recently through the telescope. Look up!

A film list

With all these film lists on blogs and websites around the Internet, I decided to create a list of my own. There is a scene in The Matrix where Neo (Keanu Reeves) observes Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) jumping from the roof of one building to another. Neo stands there stunned and states the word: “Whoa”. So it is from this utterance that I decided to create a non-exhaustive list of:

“Four films that made me feel like Neo after he observed Morpheus jumping from building to building in downtown Sydney”

A Clockwork Orange (1971) – Directed by Stanley Kubrick

The Beethoven loving Alex and his three droogs terrorise the neighbourhood with a bit of the old ultra-violence before Alex is betrayed by said droogs when they decide to rob a house. Alex is ultimately sent to jail and becomes a guinea pig for a new technique that is meant to “cure” criminals so they can re-enter society. The results turn out to be negative for everyone involved. This is a very unique and highly satirical film with some fantastic sets and cinematography. The film is based on the book written by Anthony Burgess.

Blade Runner (1982)– Directed by Ridley Scott

Los Angeles  in 2019. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is on the hunt for escaped murderous replicants, led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who are in search of their creator because their controlled life-span is almost up. The film has had three releases over the years, the original in 1982, then a Director’s Cut in 1992 and then a Final Cut this year. I watched the Final Cut at the cinema earlier this year and the visuals have most definitely stood the test of time without needing to be updated with copious amounts of CG. The movie is based on the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick.

Fight Club (1999) – Directed by David Fincher

A bored insomniac office worker (Edward Norton) has his life completely turned around when his apartment blows up and consequently decides to call the soap-making carefree Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) whom he had just met on a flight. After a few drinks at a bar, Tyler tells the office worker to hit him, resulting in a “friendly” fight between the two men, which eventually attracts a following of other men. Tyler and the office worker start a Fight Club in the basement of the pub where the first two rules are “You do not talk about Fight Club.” Despite this, the organisation begins to expand and get out of hand which eventually leads to absolute anarchy. It’s amazing how close the style of the film is to the book written by Chuck Palahniuk. The Pixies “Where is my mind?” is very fitting for the end of this film.

Oldboy (2003) – Directed by Chan-wook Park

Oh Dae-Su (Minsook Choi) is locked up in a room for 15 years without knowing the reason why. His meals are delivered daily and the only connection he has to the outside world is a television. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, and none the wiser to his situation, he is released. From here, he befriends a sushi chef (Hye-Jeong Kang) and goes on the hunt to get his revenge on those responsible for his incarceration. There is some very impressive cinematography in the film, and the story is unlike anything I have ever seen. One particular scene that utilses Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ from The Four Seasons has changed my impression of that piece of music forever.

Interacting with fans

The Internet has changed the way in which bands can interact with their fans. Pitchfork reported that the finalists of an online competition to create a video clip for a Radiohead song were announced on the aniBOOM website today. Back on 10 October last year, the ever inventive Radiohead released their album In Rainbows online and allowed listeners to pay whatever they felt the album was worth. The decision to release the album in this fashion was an apparent response to their recently ended contract with EMI.

In the aniBOOM/Radiohead competition, people were required to make an original animated video clip for any song off the In Rainbows album. The competition began on March 17, 2008 with 900 people submitting a range of original storyboards. These were scrutinised and voted upon by viewers and 10 semi-finalists were chosen and given $1000 each to create a video clip based on their storyboards (although even those who didn’t receive funding were still able to compete and a final three were chosen by the aniBOOM editorial committee). The highest ranking five were then handed over to Radiohead who were meant to choose one clip. However, as reported on Pitchfork, a press release stated that Radiohead front man Thom Yorke was “totally blown away” and as a result they chose four. The finalists will each receive $10,000 to complete their music videos.

Last month, Radiohead released a true-to-form eerie video clip for their song ‘House of Cards’, also from the In Rainbows album, which was created entirely using “3D plotting technologies”. No cameras, no lighting. In a further example of interaction, the data used to make the clips was made available on Google code so that users can download and create their own version of the clip and upload it to a Google group.

Radiohead are not the only band to be attempting to use the Internet in imaginative ways to connect with their fans. Earlier this year on March 2, industrial rockers Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV for US$5 a download, and then shocked everyone by releasing their newest album The Slip absolutely free. This move, like Radiohead, followed a break from their record label. After Ghosts was released, Nine Inch Nails posted a video on YouTube of Trent Reznor announcing a new project in which the online community can “create visuals to accompany the album’s music.” The best clips will be chosen by Reznor and crew to be brought together to create an online film festival.

The Radiohead competition appears to have been successful and it will be interesting to see the results of the Nine Inch Nails film festival. What better form of publicity is there than allowing people to use songs they like to express themselves through interactivity with the composers and creators of that music?

Uniforms

The Oscar’s red carpet this is not. Green and gold, or shades of blue, grey and silver? Bleary eyed Australians who stayed up until 1:00am to see the Australian Olympic team march into the Bird’s Nest on Saturday morning were apparently shocked by the design of their uniform. After watching 201 other countries and territories enter the stadium during the opening ceremony in Beijing, viewers had a fair amount of uniforms with which to make comparisons. Newspapers yesterday and today ran stories about the outfits; the green and gold had been dropped in favour of the blue and silver. Why? The Daily Telegraph published Sportcraft’s defence of the uniform which stated that two different designs for the outfit had been presented to the AOC, one sporting (no pun intended) the traditional green and gold, and the other being what we saw on that cold morning. It was decided the latter was a winner. The athletes were also happy with the design. But not everyone agrees the uniform deserves a gold medal (oh no!). Project Runway Australia judge, Sarah Gale, even went as far as to call the outfit un-Australian!

The Herald Sun reported that someone had made the comment on the Sunday Herald Sun Olympic Games website, Beijing Now, that the uniforms looked like “sucked iceblocks”. This comment was broadcast around the world with The New York Times publishing the quote in an article on their olympics blog. It appears that some countries around the world are having similar conundrums with their Olympic uniforms. Regarding the American uniform, while it was rather classy, it had come under a fair amount of scrutiny because the Olympic rings and logo on the right side of the jacket were matched in size (and noticibility) by the unmistakeable Polo Ralph Lauren logo. Gawker posted an article about the issue, saying they looked “elitist”.

And in this same post, next to a photograph of the Australian team, they describe the “New Zealanders” as looking “like they were all in some sort of spray-painting accident.” Well, there are 4 years until the London Olympic Games. Will the green and gold make a return?

Power of the internet

Strange things seem to happen in Martin Place in the city. Only a couple of months ago on June 24, I was making my way toward Wynyard station at lunch time when I realised I was in the minority of people actually moving. This was a bizarre contradiction to the usually frenetic promenade I was used to. All these people were standing dead still in a variety of poses and it was eerily quiet. That night I found out thorugh the news that it was a flash mob. Hundreds of people had agreed to meet at a particular place at a specified time to arrange an activity for the sole purpose of freaking people out. And it had all been organised on Facebook.

Fast forward to lunch time last Friday August 1. As I was making my way up Hunter Street towards Macquarie Street, I began to hear heavy guitar riffs blasting down Elizabeth Street from the vicinity of Martin Place. Martin Place sees its fair share of buskers, but this sounded a little different. Intrigued, I walked over to the corner of Martin Place to find that a band performing on top of a car trailer. They had pulled quite a crowd as is evidenced in the photo above. However, I couldn’t stay long and didn’t get the name of the band.

When I got home, I trawled the Internet to see if any articles had been posted but could find nothing. It wasn’t until tonight that I checked YouTube and finally the band was revealed. 7 News reported that a band called ‘Raise the Crazy’ were promoting a gig that will happen at the Gaelic Club this Friday. It was also reported that they didn’t have a permit to be performing and as a result were issued a ticket by a council inspector. Raise the Crazy had posted the Channel 7 report to YouTube as well as their MySpace page.

It is interesting that both the Flash Mob and Raise the Crazy used news reports to promote their activities as original and to show they had been successful in what they set out to achieve. I wonder what will happen next in Martin Place…