Author: MK

Total volume of music on my computer –

A relatively conservative 12.5 GB, 2214 songs, 7.1 days.

The last CDs I bought –

Ohhh CDs. I don’t like objects much anymore. The storage nightmare, the messiness of it all. Next question.

Song playing right now –

Jack Ruby, Camper Van Beethoven

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me –

tidy up tidy up, The Barcelona Pavilion (nothing motivates me to clean more than listening to this song. The Barcelona Pavilion are a very motivating band. Also good for working out, dancing like a fool, etc.)
Walking With Thee, Clinic (Thanks Shawn, for introducing me to Clinic!)
Thief, CAN (This song conjures memories of a particularly good trip to England.)
Easy Lee, Ricardo Villalobos (I always smile when DJs mix in a little Ricardo Villalobos. Thanks Corrina, for introducing me to Ricardo V.)
Frank Sinatra, Cake (A tune that I like to sing along with (apologies to my neighbours), that has one poetic narrative moment, and good use of trumpets. This song was also used in a fine episode of my favourite television show of all time, The Sopranos.)

Thanks Anne, for tossing the baton my way, though I’m not sure where to pass it to next…

Every Sunday morning, I like curling up with a coffee and the New York Times. I’ve decided I’d like to add to my Sunday tradition by posting an annotated link for you to check out – something that piqued my interest during the week.

For this first edition of MK’s Sunday Morning Links, I’d like to draw your attention to Canadian artist Garnet Hertz, whose work in cockroach-controlled robots has recently been Slashdotted! Check out the Slashdot thread here!

Pour yourself a coffee and enjoy!

I have been meaning to write about Caroline Martel’s film, The Phantom of the Operator, since I saw its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. Simply stated, the film exposes the legacy of the telephone operator through artfully-edited (and rarely seen) archival films.

This one-liner about what the film’s skeleton is reveals little about where the magic in the film lies. Magic is always a little hard to describe, but in this case it may have something to do with the expertly crafted combination of archival film, a poetic voiceover, and haunting original score telling the story of the telephone operator on the frontlines of a telecommunications boom. Though today, the operator may be seen by many to be a charming relic of the past, this film paints a portrait of the one tenacious speck of humanity amid the cables and wires, that played a pivotal role in the technological developments of the time. The operators, known as “voices with a smile”, made the experience with the vast and growing telecommunications system pleasant, comforting, a painless experience for the end user. They held the system together and made it work, while also providing a human touchstone.

I’m really excited and honoured to be working with the raw material of this remarkable film in a performance I’ll be doing on Thursday May 19th, with musicians Suzanne Binet-Audet and Karèya Audet. Our performance is called La Revange des Opératrices (The Revenge of the Operators). Suzanne is a leading exponent of the wonderful and unusual musical intrument, the Ondes Martenot, and Karèya will be providing live sound effects and other “sonic landscaping”. As Suzanne and Karèya improvise live, I’ll be remixing the visuals from the film. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to capture a little of the magic from the film that I can’t describe in words, but might be able to represent by playing with elements of the film itself. For more info on the show, check out the website for the festival that is hosting us, the HTMlles International Biennale of Cyberart.

The new Bibliothèque Nationale recently opened its doors in downtown Montréal. Check out some of the renderings of the building and its live webcam.

This long-awaited building is directly across the street from the brutal, brown-brick fortress that is UQAM’s Pavilion Judith-Jasmin. Flâneur-at-large Shawn Micallef had a great quotable on this visual pairing at the corner of Berri and de Maisonneuve, commenting that the light-filled new library looks like “a piece of Kleenex that UQAM threw away.”

This caused me to firstly, laugh, and secondly, think about other examples of architectural incongruity that I’ve seen, either in adjacent buildings or in adventurous extensions and additions to existing buildings. Rather than tear down staid old concrete bunkers, why not float a checkered slab on what looks like multicolored toothpicks over top of the existing building, like they did at the Ontario College of Art and Design? If the Bibliothèque Nationale looks like a flimsy Kleenex that UQAM honked in and discarded, is the OCAD extension a spider from Alice in Wonderland poised to devour the hapless grey bug beneath it?

On a smaller scale, gentification brings us these glorious clashes, as well. On a nearby stretch of Ontario Street, I often stroll past an upscale-looking restaurant complete with cloth napkins that has as its neighbours a needle exchange, a trashy dépanneur, and a pawn shop. Though my tone might be slightly derisive, I appreciate these strange urban groupings because it makes street life more interesting to observe, and also it seems analogous, when I reduce the scale even further, to the kinds of quirks that we each play host to. For example, I sometimes struggle to reconcile my ambition with my altruism, or apply a $30 lipstick and then put on a ratty hoodie. To quote another pal, my dear friend Slavica (though the hand gesture she does with this phrase really makes it and that’s unfortunately impossible to emulate here), I suppose it’s just fine to “mix it up”.