The Virtual Revolution

Posted on 2 March, 2016 by odo

the cost of free

This is becoming a recurring theme. We are being lassoed by free while complacently accepting, even expecting as much free as possible. Free is nice. Free always has a price. The insidious part of it is the indirect nature of the payments that must be made—payments hidden under the masquerade of transparency, or behind our interactions on the internet. Hidden under the ruse of giving us what we want. Hidden in the price of the products we buy. Hidden in lower wages and fewer jobs. Hidden in the incessant barrage of visual, auditory, and mental pollution from advertising.

It’s time for us to break out of the trap. It’s time to start paying directly. Opt-out of free. Demand a direct pay option. If you still think it doesn’t matter, or that free is good, watch the documentary Terms and Conditions May Apply.

This subject is Jaron Lanier’s major point in his book, Who Owns the Future?, and pops up many times in Julia Angwin’s Dragnet Nation as “pay for performance.” It’s reiterated in Marc Goodman’s Future Crimes. Bill McKibben argues for the need to decentralize banking, commerce and government in his book, Deep Economy. McKibben relays multiple examples of why smaller, local models are not only beneficial, but necessary, and how a few grassroots efforts are successfully applying the principles of decentralization. And in a less direct way, it’s related to Margaret Heffernen’s A Bigger Prize, a book about the destructiveness of competition.

Free is the hottest bait. It’s used to outcompete and squelch diversity while simultaneously clamping a ring in your nose and leg irons on your ankles.

Free is a gambit. Be on guard. Free yourself.

Read part 1 [Based on Science : the cost of ignorance]
Read part 2 [Falsehoods, Fabrications, Fictions : the cost of negligence]
Watch the BBC documentary on the cost of free : [The Virtual Revolution] 

See [Who Owns the Future?], [Info-Elitism], [Idiots & Tossers], [Competition Makes the World Go ’round].

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Take It and Run

Posted on 17 February, 2016 by odo

Give an artist a millimeter, and she’ll take kilometer. Violinist Sarah Nemtanu did just that. It’s not often artists get free range for their recordings. You’d think they would, but produces are always second guessing what they imagine you want. You know what I want? I want an artist to give it all. It shows when that happens. It may not always be the biggest commercial success. Who cares if not? But, it’s happened, big time, on Sarah’s 2010 release Gypsic.

Here’s the CD’s contemplative cover. . .

Nemtanu

Here’s what the music sounds like. . .

NemtanuInside

These images reveal all. This is serious, joyous music. This is artistic expression from the head, the heart, the bowels, the gonads, and the feet. And the selections are equally diverse, from the popular and well known Czádás, by Vittorio Monti, to the seriously profound Violin Sonata #3, by Georges Enesco (a.k.a. George Enescu). Striking, unexpected, even odd diversity makes the album seem at first glance haphazard. Ah, but there’s something holding it all together.

Nemtanu’s soulful, opulent, sumptuous, hefty, chesty tone. Imagine, if you can, the richness of a cello coming out of a violin. It’s unimaginable, but she does it. With impeccable technique and unrivaled expressivity Sarah is able to bind these disparate composers and their compositions into a sequence that makes musical and artistic sense.

But she’s not alone. Along with Chilly Gonzales, on piano, organ farfisa, drums and percussion; Romain Descharmes, piano, luthéal (a type of prepared piano); and Iurie Morar, cimbalon, they forge artistic collaborations that are likewise unimaginable—until you listen. The curious and unique sounds of the organ farfisa and cimbalon add yet more penetrating and euphoric pleasure.

Words are inadequate. Listen—

Tzigane, Maurice Ravel (Violin & Luthéal)

 

Aires Bohémiens, Pablo de Sarasate (Violin, Cimbalon & Strings)

 

Blues, Maurice Ravel, arr. Chilly Gonzales

 

Although the producer gave Sarah artistic free range, the recording engineers took it away from her. They decided to second guess her and the listener. They don’t think you want to hear the full range of dynamics. They think Nemtanu and her sidemen didn’t really mean to express the music so greatly. And they think that you don’t deserve to hear the full expression. Had the audio engineers respected the artists and their music this would have been a triple A production.

(||) Rating — Music : A+ ║ Performance : A+ ║ Recording : D- ║
 Sarah Nemtanu, Gypsic, Naïve, 2010

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