Something for Thursday

Posted on June 6, 2024 by ksedinger

This would have been last week’s selection. I heard this song on a YouTube video, and I found myself liking it a great deal. I honestly don’t know much at all about the artist. Sometimes that’s the best kind of discovery!

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The Discourse ™

Posted on June 5, 2024 by ksedinger

I’m not generally one to get moved about The Discourse, and how people can’t talk to one another anymore and all that stuff…but this clip from The Daily Show, in which John Stewart talks to a former Republican Congressman with whom he has little in common, is certainly a good model for the way The Discourse probably would go more frequently, if we lived in a healthy country.

 

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Tone Poem Tuesday

Posted on June 4, 2024 by ksedinger

Erich Wolfgang Korngold is an interesting case study in being born at the wrong time, but still making a good run of it.

Born May 29, 1897 in Austria, Korngold was an enormously gifted musician to the point of being a child prodigy; he was performing complex piano music and writing his own works before he was even ten years old. But his tastes as a composer kept him from embracing the actual trends in music; modernism and atonality were not for him. Korngold was forever at home in the late Romantic language of Mahler and Strauss, which meant that a lot of his music, while not rejected at the time, never really took hold while he was alive. In order to make ends meet, Korngold ended up writing music for movies, which at that time were moving beyond the silent era. In 1938 he traveled to Hollywood to write the score for the Errol Flynn adventure film The Adventures of Robin Hood, and while he was there, Germany annexed Austria and brought Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies along. Korngold was a Jew, so he stayed in America after he was done scoring that film. He never returned home, becoming an American citizen and living out the remainder of his life composing for film and then trying to re-establish himself as a composer for the operatic stage and the concert hall.

Korngold was prolific, but his music languished for many years, owing to what was seen as his rather dated style, and his reputation as a “movie composer” in a time when film music was not taken seriously much at all. It’s only in relatively recent years that Korngold’s work has seen a re-appraisal in the musical community at large, but he was always known in the film community. John Williams cited Korngold as an influence in the sound he adopted for his score to Star Wars, and listening to Korngold’s movie music certainly points the way to a lot of movie music that followed decades later when symphonic scoring returned to prominence.

Another interesting thing about Korngold was his willingness to repurpose material. He was one to revisit earlier works and mine them for ideas in newer ones, which makes for some interesting listening when you hear the ideas recurring. (Berlioz was another composer who had no compunctions about re-using his own catalog.) One good example of this is that very score to The Adventures of Robin Hood, for which Korngold won an Oscar. Here’s a suite from that score, and you can see here the degree to which Korngold’s music has risen in estimation: the orchestra is the Bavarian Radio Symphony, one of Europe’s finest ensembles, and the conductor is Sir Simon Rattle, one of the world’s finest conductors.

It must have been particularly rewarding for Korngold to win an Oscar for this score, not just on its own merits, but because Korngold reused material from an earlier tone poem he had written called Sursum corda. This piece doesn’t seem to have made much impression at all upon Korngold’s composing of it; it languished for nearly 20 years before Korngold lifted one of its themes for the Errol Flynn classic. Here is Surum corda, and listening to it now I can’t help thinking of what Korngold’s career might have been had he been born a couple decades earlier.

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“Made with AI”?

Posted on June 3, 2024 by ksedinger

An interesting controversy fired up on social media over the weekend. I’m not sure where it stands now, but apparently Instagram was…well, let me start with a photo of my own. I made this photo a few weeks ago while walking at the Buffalo Outer Harbor, and I posted this edit to Flickr:

It’s a simple composition, really: a woman walking away on the pedestrian path that goes along the water. There are streetlights to her left, and up ahead is the edifice of an abandoned grain elevator, with faded corporate logo and a more recent giant graffiti at the bottom (I can’t get beyond my feeling that the graffiti has the interrobang backwards–it should be ?!, not !?). I increased the saturation in a few specific colors, bringing out the green both for contrast and to heighten the places where weeds are coming up between the sidewalk slabs, and I dialed up the contrast a little, because I like the sun on the woman’s shoulders and also the slight hint of reddish-brown in her hair. Oh, and I cropped it down, because I wanted the distant background to be entirely the old grain elevator, and not any of the sky above it.

But that’s not all I did to edit this photo.

Here’s the original jpeg that came out of the camera (I now shoot in both RAW and jpeg outputs):

Do you see it? Or, more precisely, them?

Two trash cans, at lower left. I didn’t want them there. One was easy: I cropped the photo so it was gone completely. But the other? For that I used a tool called “Generative Fill” in Lightroom, which you can use to remove things you don’t want in your photo. After you use a “brush” in lightroom to paint over what needs to come out, an AI-driven engine analyzes the photo and substitutes in what it thinks the photo would look like if the selected thing wasn’t there. This isn’t always an ideal tool–weird artifacts can remain in the photo that make it clear something was done there–but if you’re removing simple stuff, it does surprisingly well. My edited photo, to my eye, looks like there was never a trash can at all in that spot.

What came up over the weekend was this: Apparently Lightroom actually saves something in a photo’s metadata that indicates that an AI-assisted edit was made when the new photo is generated based on the Lightroom edits, and when such a photo is uploaded to Instagram, the service affixes a “Made with AI” tag to the photo.

The reaction to this was, naturally, one of annoyance, because surely there’s a difference between using an AI engine to remove a single minor element from an otherwise “real” photo, and the kind of “Made with AI” imagery that we associate with the term–the weirdly plastic-looking photos that start to take on a creepy tone as we look to the details and notice things like that person seems to have three hands, or that lady has six fingers while this guy only has three, or wow, look how tight that person’s clothes are, it’s almost as if they’re painted on. (By the way, you know what AI still doesn’t get right at all? The buckles on bib overalls!)

I did post my photo to Instagram, but it is thus far not marked as “Made by AI”. I’m not sure if that’s because IG has rethought this policy at all, or if there’s something about the fact that I posted the photo via sharing from Flickr, so maybe the metadata didn’t go along for the ride. I did note my edit in the image description, though, because that does seem like the right thing to do. But maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, I’ll be following this issue with great interest.

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Sunday Stealing!!!

Posted on June 2, 2024 by ksedinger

I always check out Roger’s answers to these before I decide if I want to do the quiz too–sometimes the Sunday Stealing can be a bit heavy–but this week’s seems fine, so let’s do it!

1. If you like art, who is your favourite artist and why?

One of the developments of this point in my life that I did not see coming was my newfound love of museums and art galleries. I never disliked them, by any means, though I do recall having a limited attention span for such things when I was a kid. But now? I find myself almost obsessing over such places. Like, all I want to do is travel to other cities and see museums…and when we’re not traveling, I want to hang out in the museums here. I even bought a membership in the AKG Museum for The Wife and I last Christmas!

My favorite artist would probably be John Constable, whose landscape paintings probably play a big role in my approach (thus far) to landscape photography.

(credit)

I remember seeing several of his paintings reproduced in a high school English text, and I’ve loved his work ever since.

2. If you were able to learn any three skills or talents instantly and with success, what would they be?

Refrigeration repair (this would be exceedingly handy at work and in general), piano playing (I took lessons as a kid and I was not terrible, but I haven’t touched a piano since college), and maybe some kind of dancing–ballroom, maybe?

3. If you were to live in Ancient Times, where – in what country – would you want to live in?

Celtic Britain, I suppose. Though the “nasty, brutish, and short” nature of life isn’t much of a selling point.

4. What is something you’re embarrassed to admit to liking? Whether it be a guilty pleasure show, or unusual hobby, etc.

Sheesh, I have no idea! I mean, I’m a weird dude who collects bib overalls, wears poofy shirts that make me look like I just walked off the set of a pirate movie, and I think it’s fun to get hit with a pie once in a while. I collect Toby jugs and I have a lovely little collection of toy spaceships. I’m honestly not sure what’s left!

5. What is the worst job you’ve ever had?

Beer delivery. This was right after college. I rode around in trucks and helped deliver beer to stores and bars in the Southern Tier. Lots of heavy lifting, and some of those places were really hard to get into. Also, I wasn’t very good at it, and the manager guy decided to can me, but he didn’t have the guts to do it face to face, so he told me to keep calling every day to see if I was needed. This went on for two weeks before the sumbitch finally summoned up the intestinal fortitude to tell me I was done.

The company was called Allegany Beverage and his name was Hank something. If you know him, tell him I said he was a gutless weasel then and I stand by that. Harumph. (I turned out fine, obviously.)

6. What is something that you wanted to do as a child that you would still like to do now?

Conduct a symphony orchestra! I coulda been quite something in that arena! And instead, I’m watching Gustavo Dudamel live my life, the jerk. (Maestro Dudamel is incredibly gifted.)

7. What do you hate being judged for more than anything else?

Not smiling enough. Yes, this is a thing. There’s an expectation in a lot of walks of life where you’re supposed to be wearing a permagrin, and if you aren’t smiling at every moment, people assume you’re in a bad mood or, worse, you’re unfriendly and antisocial. This is utter nonsense. Anybody can walk around smiling all the time

8. What is your life’s mission?

To create something worth leaving behind. I’m not sure if I’ve got there yet.

9. If everyone walked around wearing warning labels, what would yours say?

“May contain adult-like substance.”

10. At what age did you first feel like you were an adult?

I have no idea. In fact, it may not have even happened yet. Instead I find myself thinking, “How can I be this old when on the inside I’m just a 12-year-old looking for the next big high?”

11. When did you not speak up, but wish you had?

I wish I’d spoken up more in school against the bullies who surrounded me. 

12. What is something that makes your skin crawl?

MAGA.

13. What was the last thing to give you butterflies in your stomach?

I’m getting that feeling a lot when I make videos of myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever warm up to the sound of my own speaking voice. (I am behind on videos because things have taken a few busy turns the last month. I’m getting back into it very soon, I promise! It’s on my list of goals for June.)

14. What’s your favorite type of media to work with? (Paint, clay, pens, etc.)

Photography! Always photography. One of the things that makes me most happy about this particular new journey I’m on is that I feel like I can finally do something meaningful in the visual arts. I was never good at drawing or painting as a kid, which was unpleasant because that was in the days of teachers refusing to admit that maybe a kid just wasn’t good at something, so I had a few art teachers in school do the whole “You can draw if you just try harder” bullshit, which I now know to be complete and utter nonsense.

15. What question do you hate answering?

I can’t think of one specifically, but I dislike political “gotcha” statements that are phrased as questions, but are clearly not intended to gather any information of interest to the person asking, if that makes sense. Like telling people I live in New York State, and being asked something like, “Huh, do you like all those taxes up there?” I find that annoying. Also non-political versions of that, like “So whaddaya do with all that snow?” when I tell people I live in Buffalo.

Oh wait, I can think of one, but nobody has asked it, or any of its related versions, in a long time. Maybe that’s because I’m old enough that it’s not a thing anymore, but I used to have to brace myself for this, after I told people that we have a daughter: “Just one? Why’d you stop there?” One time I waited a few seconds, said “We didn’t,” and…left it there.

OK, that got a little heady, didn’t it?

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A simple drink recipe, in photos

Posted on June 1, 2024 by ksedinger

I like making complex drinks and I like drinking complex drinks! But I also like a simple highball in which a bit of booze and a bit more fizzy something combine to make something delicious. If you like lemon, and if you like those Lemonhead candies, well, this is easy and delicious and refreshing.

In a glass full of ice, put two ounces of this:

Then, fill the glass to the rim (so, somewhere between 4 and 6oz, depending on how big your glass is) with this:

It doesn’t have to be that brand, but that’s my fizzy lemon component of choice. Any sparkling lemonade or lemon soda will do.

The result is this:

And it is good.

(Yes, you can add a twist of lemon peel or a slice for garnish, and maybe this tastes even better with a few dashes of lemon bitters, and a nice variation might be 2oz of Deep Eddy lime vodka, or…yeah, I’m off for the kitchen.)

 

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Friday Linkage

Posted on May 31, 2024 by ksedinger

It’s the end of the week, so here’s some linkage that I’ve been sitting on all week (or even longer):

::  Urban explorers of Buffalo. I read this article with great interest, as it combines a bunch of interests of mine: photographers, old buildings, and the sense of adventure in getting the shot. These are people who venture into abandoned buildings, sometimes skirting legality to do so, in order to chronicle the ongoing decay of many buildings in the region. (No, I haven’t done anything quite like this, but…I’m not sure I completely rule it out.)

::  The money is in all the wrong places. This is about the gigantic financial imbalances in creative fields, but that sentence that forms the headline–“The money is in all the wrong places”–really sums up a huge amount of what’s wrong with our economy today. The money is nowhere it needs to be, if we’re going to have more widespread success and general welfare.

The money produced by art has not disappeared. The issue is not that the people of the world value television less than they did in the 1990s. The reality is that the people with the most money have devised, at every turn, new and more bulletproof ways for them to make and keep more money, and for the people who make things to make less. This is the eternal story of labor and management; it just has hot people in it, in this case.

I’ve been waiting for decades for Americans to finally get angry enough about this to do something about it. And no matter how bad it gets, it seems that there is a permanent critical mass of Americans who will still believe that the rich earned every penny they got and nobody should ever do anything at all to force them to part with any of it. It’s a depressing reality.

::  On the “Man or Bear” debate. If you have any presence on social media at all, you’ve seen this whole “Man or Bear” thing cropping up, mainly several weeks ago. It seems pretty obvious to me that the whole thing was an analogy designed to hopefully jolt some men into seeing how wary women have to be in our presence, but boy, did a lot of men react powerfully against that suggestion. And so it goes. Anyway, this is a good article.

I first read about this debate on my phone while camping in a field in my tent. It captivated me in a way that internet debates rarely do. Slowly, I realized why: for me, “Man or Bear” is not hypothetical. I’m literally a woman who left mankind behind to live in nature with bears. This is my actual life. 

::  Have I recommended cartoonist Cassandra Calin yet? I don’t think so. She writes and draws comics drawn from the challenges of her own life as a self-employed young woman, and her work is utterly delightful. She also has a new graphic novel out now. My personal favorite installment of her regular strip thus far is about shopping for clothes. Why do I like this particular installment? Oh, no reason….

::  TrikeLife: the YouTube channel of a local woman and blogger, Val Dunne, who has adopted a tricycle as a way of getting around Buffalo and pursuing her interests while battling multiple sclerosis. Val’s a good egg!

 

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Something for Thursday

Posted on May 30, 2024 by ksedinger

I had a song picked out for today, but I’m going to save that one. Instead, this seems appropriate for a certain bit of news. This country ain’t done yet, folks!

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Pan-o-rama

Posted on May 29, 2024 by ksedinger

One of the things I’m enjoying about Lightroom (the photo editing software I started using earlier this year) is its ability to stitch together multiple photos in a single panorama shot. The AI it uses to do this is pretty sophisticated, and I’ve had some very pleasing results thus far. This is one, from this past weekend when I went down to the Outer Harbor again (yes, I was down there two weekends in a row). This is a grain elevator in the southern end of the Outer Harbor’s general recreation area. I love how this turned out.

Bigger version here.

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Tone Poem Tuesday

Posted on May 28, 2024 by ksedinger

I make an attempt every now and then, maybe once every year or two, to acquaint myself with the music of Alan Hovhaness, and I invariably come up short. I don’t really know why, but I’ve yet to find a work of his that really speaks to me on some deep level. His music is often described as naturalistic and mystical, but ultimately I don’t usually hear that; all I find in his work is long meandering passages that sound like melody but…aren’t, tempos that never change much, and long pages of pizzicato work in the low strings. I know that this is probably unfair, given how amazingly prolific he was…and that’s why I keep trying every now and then.

Anyway, I tried this piece and honestly, I didn’t get anywhere with it, aside from some lovely writing in the middle for the horn and the trumpet. I did like that passage a great deal. If anyone out there wants to set me straight on Hovhaness, I’m willing to listen!

Here is the Symphony No. 6, “Celestial Gate” (a single-movement work that bears no formal resemblance to the classical symphony) by Alan Hovhaness.

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