Tom de Grunwald

Murcof & Francesco Tristano

Tom de Grunwald — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:47:58 +0000

When I heard that these two very talented musicians from somewhat different worlds http://tdg.im/do1mED“>would meet at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of London Jazz Festival, many months ago, I was excited to see how they would collaborate: I had known Murcof’s quite dark electronica for quite a while, but Francesco Tristano was a new find, a pianist with the rhythmic sensibilities of a latin or jazz player, but with the harmonic sensitivity of a Max Richter or a Phillip Glass.

I got tickets for three friends and when we met, the debate was over how cheesy the music would be. I said it wouldn’t, DC said it would. Needless to say, I won the bet :)

This isn’t going to be a long blog post. I think both are fantastic musicians and the potential for their work together goes deep. But the dynamics of the set they built was flawed and I feel the need to set down the experience as an excited audience member.

Sadly, the interplay of the pairs’ consummate rhythmic abilities only really started to play a part after two very lengthy (we’re talking 10-15 minutes each), suspenseful and atmospheric ‘build up’ pieces, spread chords voiced like Rachmaninov and the (now ubiquitous) zither like, plucked notes inside the piano over long, breathy synth pedals. One overture would have been fine – two was indulgent.

But after a piece that featured Murcof’s filter sweep flourishes in witty conversation with Tristano’s arpeggios started to hint at what was possible, in the finale, a quarter of an hour long, they at last stepped up to the mark. Tristano finally took a role structuring the rhythm, albeit around a simple two note bass line which didn’t allow for much harmonic extemporisation. And gradually, the music started to free up, Murcof’s piano samples from earlier in the piece taking up the reins, allowing space for more spontaneous play from the keyboard, whilst the electronics could also relax and contrast with themselves. The rhythmic counterpoint between the two was finally tense, exciting and satisfying as gradually the filters closed, only eventually giving way to intense applause and (unrequited) calls for an encore.

This collaboration, at its height actually one of the finest I’ve yet heard between an acoustic and an electronic musician, showed so much potential and finally, after much too long a wait, lived up to it. But I desperately want to hear more of these two fine talents taking risks and playing together boldly, and much, much less caution.

Sent from my iPhone

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Murcof & Francesco Tristano

Tom de Grunwald — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:33:08 +0000

When I heard that these two very talented musicians from somewhat different worlds would meet at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of London Jazz Festival, many months ago, I was excited to see how they would collaborate: I had known Murcof’s quite dark electronica for quite a while, but Francesco Tristano was a new find, a pianist with the rhythmic sensibilities of a latin or jazz player, but with the harmonic sensitivity of a Max Richter or a Phillip Glass. I got tickets for three friends and when we met, the debate was over how cheesy the music would be. I said it wouldn’t, DC said it would. Needless to say, I won the bet :)

This isn’t going to be a long blog post. I think both are fantastic musicians and the potential for their work together goes deep. But the dynamics of the set they built was flawed and I feel the need to set down the experience as an excited audience member. Sadly, the interplay of the pairs’ consummate rhythmic abilities only really started to play a part after two very lengthy (we’re talking 10-15 minutes each), suspenseful and atmospheric ‘build up’ pieces, spread chords voiced like Rachmaninov and the (now ubiquitous) zither like, plucked notes inside the piano over long, breathy synth pedals. One overture would have been fine – two was indulgent. But after a piece that featured Murcof’s filter sweep flourishes in witty conversation with Tristano’s arpeggios started to hint at what was possible, in the finale, a quarter of an hour long, they at last stepped up to the mark. Tristano finally took a role structuring the rhythm, albeit around a simple two note bass line which didn’t allow for much harmonic extemporisation. And gradually, the music started to free up, Murcof’s piano samples from earlier in the piece taking up the reins, allowing space for more spontaneous play from the keyboard, whilst the electronics could also relax and contrast with themselves. The rhythmic counterpoint between the two was finally tense, exciting and satisfying as gradually the filters closed, only eventually giving way to intense applause and (unrequited) calls for an encore. This collaboration, at its height actually one of the finest I’ve yet heard between an acoustic and an electronic musician, showed so much potential and finally, after much too long a wait, lived up to it. But I desperately want to hear more of these two fine talents taking risks and playing together boldly, and much, much less caution.

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TV + Hypertext

Tom de Grunwald — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:26:04 +0000

BBC Backstage have made a prototype of an automatic hypertext overlay for their news live feed. As a prototype of course it’s rather dry at the moment and obviously the user interface hasn’t been developed, but the mashup of subtitle data with relevant concepts and DBpedia structured Wikipedia data is a great idea. Take a look at the video:

Rich interfaces like this, mashing TV with the Internet, are going to become more and more commonplace over the next year or two with Google TV and Project Canvas both launching soon, and Yahoo Connected TV. The big question is cultural; how will our viewing and surfing habits evolve. Will our lean-back way of viewing TV mesh with the more proactive use of eg the web?

h/t Rob Shephard

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Ditchling Beacon

Tom de Grunwald — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:06:12 +0000

I took this video from the car last weekend on the way up and over Ditchling Beacon, to Hurstpierpoint for a walk and swim. It’s pretty frivolous I know, but I really like it, full of spring and colour and movement. Why not post it!

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Swap My Vote

Tom de Grunwald — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:06:21 +0000

swapmyvote.org.uk would allow people who feel their vote may be wasted to swap with someone in another constituency.The idea came this evening when a friend and I were discussing how she really wants to vote Lib Dem and I Green. She lives in Brighton, and I live in Richmond Park. So we agreed we could swap votes. That way we increase the chances of a first Green MP, and minimise the chances of Zac Goldsmith getting in. Simples.

I’m no web developer but I do have a sense of what is possible, and there is a lot of information available that would help build such a site. Asking users for their postcode, it could potentially use datasets from guardian.co.uk/openplatform and mysociety to allow voters to identify whether their vote ‘counts’ in their constituency, and which other constituency would benefit from a vote for the party they would wish to support.

Okay, so using the site could be something of a massive act of faith (that your vote ‘buddy’ would vote as claimed), but it could help progressive leaning voters acheive the parliament they desire. Call it ‘voter solidarity’!

It may seem illiberal but I don’t want to work to encourage the extreme right wing. Therefore I suggest the ground rules would be that you can only swap with other people who want to vote for progressive parties.

I’ve registered the domain above (swapmyvote.co.uk is currently occupied) and woud love to see us use the possibilities the web offers better to represent the people’s wishes.

Clearly time is short (I wish someone had thought of it a month ago – or maybe they did!), but if anyone would like to help build it, please do get in touch.

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Open Letter to Susan Kramer, Lib Dem Families Spokesperson

Tom de Grunwald — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:51:12 +0000

Dear Susan,

Thank you for your response to my previous correspondence. Whilst I can appreciate many of your points I would much appreciate a further response to a number of urgent points.

Firstly I would ask that you probe more deeply into the veracity of the report of the 17th March which you cite. The point has widely been made that the figures on which the report was based were highly speculative and biased and take no account of the benefits of New Media on the industries which the report describes.

Your researcher Erin kindly said that she would let me know if the bill were to come up during the wash up process, which it I heard from other sources that it did, today.

I have therefore been following this reading of the Bill in the House, and note that it seems you were not present this Tuesday to debate this ill-thought out, poorly debated and heavily lobbied bill. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I note from your current position within the Liberal Democrat Party and from your voting record that families are clearly important to you. Please could you let me know as a matter of urgency how you think that allowing a bill to pass that could criminalise and cut off Internet access to families sits with your party’s policy, and indeed with your personal sense of morality.

You write in your response to my previous letter that you hoped that controversial parts of the bill would be subject to maximum scrutiny and that it would be possible to change them before a final decision is made.

Therefore, lastly and most importantly, please can you reassure me that you and your colleagues in the Liberal Democrat Party will be there in force today to oppose the third passage of the bill.

I await your urgent response,

Yours sincerely,

Tom de Grunwald

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TV @Anywhere

Tom de Grunwald — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:28:22 +0000

Twitter has announced a new method of interaction, which they are calling @anywhere. It will allow us to tweet or follow a new user directly from a participating website – up till now, these have involved using either the API via a third-party application, or visiting the Twitter.com webpage.

@Anywhere will use a small amount of javascript to make tweeting possible without a page refresh. It sounds like it pretty much extends API access to the Web.

Initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.

When I started using Twitter, I loved that it was flat – you could follow anyone you found interesting and they could follow you – or not – if they felt the same way. Of course that started to change, notably when Suggested User Lists started shepherding new users towards the accounts of established celebrities (which, as has been pointed out elsewhere, destroyed follower count as a useful index like Google’s Pagerank).

Imagine being able to follow a journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page—and that’s just the beginning.

It sounds fun! But I’m particularly excited by how this will spice up TV viewing. Event Television viewing has been revolutionised over the last year or so by the public backchannel that is Twitter – hashtags have allowed strangers to debate, discuss (and perhaps mainly lark about with) live TV such as BBC Question Time (#bbcqt) or Britain’s Got Talent (#bgt).

Such behaviour (along with more sophisticated multiplatform conceptions) have led to a trend towards “2 screen“ viewing.

But with the BBC this week announcing its ID system will be compatible with OpenID and other distributed authentication systems (OpenID, Facebook Connect, OAuth); at least two channels to date simulcasting over the Web; and web-style ‘widgets’ coming to the box in the living room (from a variety of directions!), will people still need 2 Screens?

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The camera and the building; a love story

Tom de Grunwald — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:28:17 +0000

via vimeo.com

This beautiful film has for its protagonist the camera, and its muse, architecture. If that sounds pretentious, you might not like the film, which seems to have caused a stir for its use of technology, namely Vray and 3dsMax – but it’s the elegance and pace of the shots, the sense of love and wonder at the architecture which it depicts, and the wresting of some kind of narrative out of ‘inanimate’ buildings which set it apart. Music plays its part here, the elegiac quality of the soundtrack mediating between the time scales of humans and of buildings.

If the film has a weakness – only one person, the photographer, and one motto appear, which therefore act as something of a manifesto – it suggests that architecture is art for its visual and cinematic qualities, rather than the active use of the space which it defines. But this is paradigmatic to our age of iconic, signature buildings, and not therefore a problem with the film, but of the times. There are signs that this architectural paradigm is shifting in concert with the economy.

I await Alex Roman’s next films with anticipation.

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Sign it, blog it, link it, work it

Tom de Grunwald — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:49:31 +0000

The Digital Britain Unconference final, collated report is up and can be read, signed, linked to, blogged and otherwise enjoyed here.

If you approve of the report’s recommendations (collated from over a hundred people’s suggestions), please do consider signing (by leaving your name in the comments).

See previous post or the dbuc09 site for background!

Digital Britain Unconferences - Final report

Digital Britain Unconferences

Tom de Grunwald — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:54:16 +0000

Over the last couple of months I’ve had the pleasure of helping to create a dialogue around the UK government’s Digital Britain report. The story has been better told elsewhere, but essentially, during a meeting of some of the bigger and more established players in the UK media, Bill Thompson tweeted with the idea of having an unconference and quickly, Kathryn Corrick, Dan Hon and I (amongst others) concurred.

I suggested a simple tag to keep the discussion unified, set up a Twitter account and blog to co-ordinate information, and Kathryn, who has really driven the whole process, set up a Yahoo! Group to start getting events off the ground.

A few weeks later and we’ve seen twelve events in towns and cities around the country, including a virtual discussion of rural issues, a family unconference, hundreds of tweets tagged with #dbuc09 – a real public consultation about the future of Britain in a digital world. At one point during the Birmingham event, we were victims of our own success, when #dbuc09 started trending on Twitter and thus garnered unwanted attention.

It’s been great working with Kathryn, Bill and Alastair Duncan (who’s made an invaluable contribution to the editing stage of the process) amongst many, many others. It feels like a fascinating example of how collaboration around a common purpose can work using free web tools – something future government consultations could take from. I’ve been enormously impressed and heartened by the ideas and spirit shown by all who have participated, and encouraged that the good folk behind the report are listening. I look forward to reading the final report!

I took on the task of collating the reports from the London event, which have been published in this PDF. The idea was to embed a slideshow and audio on the blog, but as it wasn’t possible (for technical reasons), I thought I would post them here.

Digital Britain Unconference London 6 May 2009 (dbuc09) by microclimate