wikipedia.org: "Yma Sumac (September 13, 1922 – November 1, 2008) was a noted Peruvian soprano. In the 1950s, she was one of the most famous proponents of exotica music. She became an international success based on her extreme vocal range, which was said to be "well over four octaves" and was sometimes claimed to span even five octaves at her peak.
Yma Sumac recorded an extraordinarily wide vocal range of slightly over four octaves from B2 to C#7 (approximately 123 to 2270 Hz).[4] She was able to sing notes in the low baritone register as well as notes above the range of an ordinary soprano. Both low and high extremes can be heard in the song Chuncho." Read on
Review by Clive Bell in The Wire Magazine: "Record of the month, no question. Released on miniature 3" CD - after the 12" single my favourite format - this is 20 minutes of North African muezzins calling the faithful to prayer through their lo-fi mosque-top PA systems. It begins and ends with Mediterranean dawn ambience, cicadas and cockerels. We hear the first call, maybe a mile away; gradually other calls are layer in, but the best moments are to do with the eerie beauty of sound heard at a great distance. Presumably the recordist, Justin Bennett, has discreetly stitched the whole thing together from several recordings. The ear can roam freely though the soundscape rather like exploring a city on foot, enjoying aural accidents."
The Secret Life Of The Brain, a David Grubin Production, reveals the fascinating processes involved in brain development across a lifetime. The five-part series, which premiered nationally on PBS in winter 2002, informs viewers of exciting new information in the brain sciences, introduces the foremost researchers in the field, and utilizes dynamic visual imagery and compelling human stories to help a general audience understand otherwise difficult scientific concepts." Read on
The Wire's contributor Philip Sherburne's Future Shock mix for the unsound festival in Polad "leans heavily on broken-down techno and tangled retro-futurism. Instead of the streamlined designs and elegant circuitry that electronic music has supposedly promised, this mix is all about shuddering gears and time out of joint." Read on
A nice little feature by the BBC explains the similarities between robots used for cleaning and those used by soldiers in Afghanistan. Watch the feature at news.bbc.co.uk
detektor.fm: "Wie Glühwürmchen leuchten, konnte lange nur ungenau erklärt werden. Ein neues Modell aus der Quantenmechanik könnte dieses Problem lösen." Weiter
wikipedia.org. "Christian Ernest Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer. At the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marclay was recognised as the best artist in the official exhibition, winning the Golden Lion for The Clock, a 24-hour compilation of time-related scenes from movies that debuted at London's White Cube gallery in 2010." Read on
swr.de: "Totenköpfe gehören heute zum Alltagsdekor - man sieht sie auf T-Shirts, Tassen oder als Tattoo. Wofür stehen sie eigentlich? Warum spielen sie in der Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit eine so große Rolle?" Weiter
hr-online.de: "Harald Lesch ist ein Erzählkünstler, der es liebt, seine Zuhörer mit schwierigster Materie glänzend zu unterhalten. Diesmal stellt er sich einer besonderen Herausforderung: Er nimmt sich die großen Weltmaschinen vor, Maschinen, mit deren Hilfe seine Kolleginnen und Kollegen die Grenzen der erkennbaren Wirklichkeit testen wollen."
Harald Lesch: VLT - Very Large Telescope
In der trockensten Wüste der Welt, in einer Höhe von 2.600 Metern, haben Astronomen vier 8,2 Meter große Spiegel errichtet, um dem Universum mit bisher ungekannter Genauigkeit auf die Spur zu kommen." Weiter
Harald Lesch: Large Hadron Collider
Auf ganz neutralem Boden - oder besser unter ganz neutralem Boden - in der Schweiz versuchen Physiker, mit einer 27 Kilometer langen Ringbeschleunigeranlage herauszufinden, was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält." Weiter
Harald Lesch: Fusionsreaktor ITER
"In der Provence in Südfrankreich wollen Wissenschaftler beweisen, dass es uns Menschen gelingen kann, die Kraft der Sonne zu bändigen und für unsere Zwecke auszunutzen. Dafür entsteht ITER, der größte Ofen der Welt." Weiter
Harald Lesch: Phelix - Laser in Darmstadt
"Phelix, ein gewaltiger Laser, steht in Darmstadt, im GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung. Er produziert einen 30 Zentimeter dicken Laserstrahl, der Energiedichten erzeugt, wie sie sonst nur im Inneren von Sternen zu finden sind." Weiter
"In 2000, Gilliam set out to realize his long-cherished vision of a freely adapted version of Don Quixote, titled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, starring Johnny Depp as a time traveler from the 21st Century who meets up with Quixote,. Despite the complexity of the project, Gilliam was restricted to a bare-bones budget. During the first few days of filming, things began to go horribly awry. The situation only got worse from there, and like Orson Welles before him, Gilliam was unable to bring Don Quixote to the screen. He called it the “curse of Quixote.”
The unfolding disaster is documented by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe in Lost in La Mancha. The 89-minute film is narrated by Jeff Bridges. Woody Allen wryly described Lost in La Mancha as “an extremely entertaining and hilarious presentation of every film director’s worst nightmare.” Read on at www.openculture.com
"A collective of producers gathered by Damon Albarn recently visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to produce a new album for Oxfam. T-E-E-D (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs), Dan The Automator, Jneiro Jarel, Richard Russell, Actress, Marc Antoine, Alwest, Rodaidh McDonald and Kwes all made the trip with the plan - to make an album in 5 days." Read on at drcmusic.org
Philip Sherburne: "This is not dance music, at least not as conventionally rendered: there's no 4/4 kick, no handclap; it creeps instead of bouncing. But it still feels like techno, just sliced open and turned inside out; it's ambient with pulse, with teeth." Read on
"Science fiction portrays our Milky Way Galaxy as filled with habitable planets populated by advanced civilizations engaged in interstellar trade and conflict. Back in our real universe, Earth-like planets and alien life have proved elusive. Has science fiction led us astray? NASA has launched a space-borne telescope, Kepler, dedicated to discovering the first Earth-like worlds around other stars. The first results are startling and profound. How common are worlds that are suitable for life? " More at www.seti.org
"09/23/11 at the George Mason Awards ceremony we were treated to Mr. King reading a 10 minute excerpt from a new story he's working on called "Dr. Sleep" It's a story about what happened to little Danny Torrence from The Shining. "
bbc.co.uk: "In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide." Watch here
If you liked this documentary, have a look at Logicomix. There is a nice German review of Logicomix at nerdcore .
wdr5.de: "Über die Beschäftigung mit der Neurowissenschaft entdeckt der Dichter Raoul Schrott, wie der Mensch denkt und wie seine Wahrnehmung funktioniert und was ein Gedicht zu leisten vermag. So hat die Hirnforschung interessante Aussagen über das Wesen und Wirken der Gedichte zu bieten und umgekehrt kann die Poesie der Neurowissenschaft etwas beibringen. Und in diesem überraschenden Spannungsfeld bewegt sich der Dichter Raoul Schrott mit Leichtigkeit." Weiter
