New Stereoscopic Book From Queen Guitarist Brian May — "A Village Lost And Found"

Pictured from L to R: Brian May, Darwin Foye, Elena Vidal

Brian May, guitarist of the glam rock band Queen, has been collecting stereoscopic photographs for over forty years. While on tour in cities all over the world, he would locate and purchase these vintage 3D photos, adding to his ever growing collection.

One collection that fascinated him, was that of 1850's photographer T. R. Williams, who was a successful stereo portraitist, and creator of still lifes and artistic views.

The subject of these particular photos were an idyllic village in England, but May did not know where they were taken. So he posted a photo of a church on his personal website, and within 36 hours, received numerous responses, all pointing to a quaint village of Hinton Waldrist in Oxfordshire.

Brian and his co-author/historian, Elena Vidal visited the village, and were able to locate every site that was photographed. Interestingly, the modern-day villagers were unaware of the historical photographs, thus the title of the book, A Village Lost And Found.

On July 27, 2010, I had the pleasure of seeing May's lecture about this book, and on 3D stereoscopy, which was not only educational, but quite fascinating! He projected a sampling of the collection of 150 year old images on a screen in 3D, and members of the audience wore passive 3D glasses to view them in all their realism and splendor.

Brian has an informative website detailing the creation of the book, as well as vintage and contemporary stereoscopic Queen images, viewable in 3D if you have a viewing device, one of which comes with his book. (In fact, he designed and patented his own viewing device which he calls the "Owl", due to its shape and all-seeing nature.)

Visit his stereoscopic website:

http://www.londonstereo.com

More on T.R. Williams:

http://www.londonstereo.com/trwilliams/biography.html

The Ley Lines of Time

Just as the earth allegedly has magnetic lines known as “ley lines,” is it possible that time also has ley lines, as if “arteries” of time?


What if the most significant and major events of the world (geophysical, religious, political, etc.) all occur down specific time lines and specific dates, and could not occur otherwise?


In other words, could it be possible that events occur only when they are possible, according to the laws of some unknown and undiscovered physics, and not by random chance, or purposeful cause and effect?


Is it possible that wormholes (shortcuts through space and time) are also a ley line construct in the universe?


For further reading, check out these topics:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes#Fecund_universes


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time

The State of The Music Industry

I came across a truly profound article in EM (Electronic Musician) on the state of the music industry.

In an article called "Avatar This," recording engineer/producer Nathaniel Kunkel really nailed it on the head in regards to his insights on the “resolution” of the motion picture industry, versus that of the record industry. I couldn’t have said it better.

The following article is quoted from EM (Electronic Musician):

http://emusician.com/artists_interviews/engineers_producers/nathaniel_kunkel_avatar_this/index.html

Producer/Engineer Nathaniel Kunkel
March 2010 Column in EM

Wow, could the music business be any more challenging right now? Everyone I talk to, and I mean everyone, has a new horror story. What’s going on? People have not stopped listening to music. Sony still has a building at 550 Madison. The sky is still up. Right?

Well, I have a hypothesis. And you don’t have to look much farther than the movie business to find it. Movie-makers increase resolution and improve viewer experience regularly. Whether it’s IMAX, 3D, or both, it’s constantly more and better. And guess what? They are making money hand over fist.

The music business is all about how many corners can be cut. Compress it more, don’t master it, use the fake drums—just get it done. All good ideas to save money, but often bad ideas from a quality standpoint.

So without oversimplifying this, the people who focus on resolution in entertainment are making record profits, and the people who aren’t are going out of business. Coincidence?

And vinyl is now right in the middle of Best Buy. It could be because is it large and has large artwork. It could be because it is cooler to hold onto and feels like a more tangible purchase. Maybe it makes music playback feel more special because, unlike an MP3, it will wear out and sound worse every time you play it. You better dig it when it’s playing because it will never be better than it is right now. Or maybe it is because it has more resolution than most of what people can get their hands on.

You know one thing you can’t do with vinyl? Take it with you. You need to sit down and decide to enjoy it. You don’t skip songs; that damages your new record. You listen to a side front to back. The art of sequencing matters. There is a direct correlation between how long the side is and how good it sounds. Vinyl is reverence. Reverence for the music as well as your time. When you decide to put on a record and listen to it, you have made a commitment. You have just given up the only thing you can’t get back: your time. Music is no longer your audio wallpaper. It is the focus of your moment. Maybe people hear more out of vinyl because it’s the only time they are really listening that closely.

I don’t know about you, but making a decision to sit in a room and enjoy a piece of art for 40 minutes sounds a lot more like going to a movie than jogging with an iPod does. Perhaps the best thing you could do if you were a successful artist would be to release your album only in a high-resolution format, digital or analog. People will buy and listen to it anyway; you’re already a star. All that you would be ensuring is that they will sit down and actually focus on what you have produced. They have to—they need to stop their day to set it up.

And for those of you who think that the people out there buying music don’t have the time, patience, or reverence for the art to make that kind of effort, I have a whole bunch of 3D-glasses-wearing, vinyl-record-playing, resolution-loving people I would like to introduce you to. They spend money on live concerts, they go see movies, and they have demanded the return of vinyl!

The people have spoken. If we treat our art with the reverence it deserves, the public will respect it and do the same because they expect from us exactly what we expect from them. Can you really blame them? 

---

Nathaniel Kunkel (studiowithoutwalls.com) is a Grammy- and Emmy Award–winning producer, engineer, and mixer who has worked with Sting, James Taylor, B.B. King, Insane Clown Posse, Lyle Lovett, I-Nine, and comedian Robin Williams.

3D Mandelbulb - Fractals in 3D Space

Typically, Mandelbrots are rendered and viewed in 2D space. This website is showing the latest fractals using 3-dimensional spherical coordinates, and rendered with the latest, faster computer technology:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html

For an animated video, take a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDd8R0xlkNA

"Blood Into Wine" Documentary About Maynard Keenan's (singer of Tool) Winery

The singer of one of my favorite bands, Maynard Keenan from Tool has a winery in Arizona, of all places. And it's becoming quite a success. A documentary about this winery and his private world is coming this February. This should be great!

http://www.bloodintowine.com/

Update: The film is coming to DVD in September 2010.

http://www.bloodintowine.com/store

Eight of the World’s Most Unusual Plants

These plants are really unusual!

Eight of the World’s Most Unusual Plants - DivineCaroline

Major Breakthrough in Holographic Storage

In in 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, and today's CDs and DVDs use virtually the same mechanical technology. CDs and DVDs use a laser to read pits and grooves on a polycarbonate material, while the phonograph of yesteryear used a stylus moving against a foil-wrapped grooved cylinder. Advancements in technology, such as shorter wavelength lasers with the ability to read smaller pits, have lead to increased data storage, such as that used in Blu-Ray devices.

To further meet the needs of the huge growth in data storage, GE scientists are abandoning this mechanical technology in favor of a new approach: using 3D volumetric holographic storage technology.

Newly developed polycarbonate materials can chemically change when bombarded with a specific type of laser, allowing data to be written to the disc. Another laser is used to read the chemical changes in the disc, and read the stored data. The main advantage of this approach is that the entire volume of the disc can be used to store data, and not just the surface, thus allowing more data storage. And the data retrieval speed is much faster.

For further reading:
http://emusician.com/futuretech/emusic_holostorage/index.html
http://www.ge.com/research/grc_2_3_1.html

For another variation on holographic technology, check out the website of InPhase Technologies:
http://www.inphase-technologies.com/

Click on image to see a larger view. (Image courtesy of InPhase Technologies.)