RussBass

SoloBassSteve: International Jazz Day! International Solo Bass Day!

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:40:33 +0100

SoloBassSteve: International Jazz Day! International Solo Bass Day!:

It’s a serendipitous discovery to find that International Jazz Day coincides with International Solo Bass Day.

Hurrah for jazz!

Hurrah for solo bass!

What a lovely exciting time to be making music. Here’s some you can listen to, and share with your friends and buy if you think that…

explore-blog: Legendary album designer Storm Thorgerson, whom...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:27:07 +0100

explore-blog:

Legendary album designer Storm Thorgerson, whom we lost at the age of 69, on what it was like to work with Pink Floyd and create some of history’s most iconic vinyl covers. Find his era-defining work in For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis.

explore-blog: A natural history of love

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:48:35 +0100

explore-blog:

A natural history of love

"1. Associative orientation: Imaginative, playful, have a wealth of ideas, ability to be committed,..."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:53:43 +0100

“

1. Associative orientation: Imaginative, playful, have a wealth of ideas, ability to be committed, sliding transitions between fact and fiction.

2. Need for originality: Resists rules and conventions. Have a rebellious attitude because of a need to do things no one else does.

3. Motivation: Have a need to perform, goal oriented, innovative attitude, stamina to tackle difficult issues.

4. Ambition: Have a need to be influential, attract attention and recognition.

5. Flexibility: Have the ability to see different aspects of issues and come up with optimal solutions.

6. Low emotional stability: Have a tendency to experience negative emotions, greater fluctuations in moods and emotional state, failing self-confidence.

7. Low sociability: Have a tendency not to be very considerate, are obstinate and find faults and flaws in ideas and people.

”

- Norwegian researchers find the 7 characteristics of highly creative people. Pair with John Cleese on 5 factors to make your life more creative and Ira Glass on the secret of success in creative work.

Particularly interesting and counter-intuitive is #6 – but then again, we do know that emotional excess is essential to creativity.
(via explore-blog)

Clients From Hell: I did some work for a televisual design company that wanted to print a...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:32:41 +0100

Clients From Hell: I did some work for a televisual design company that wanted to print a...:

clientsfromhell:

I did some work for a televisual design company that wanted to print a promotional brochure. I was tasked with the project because I come from a print background, and I was reporting to the head of design for the company. I came up with some designs with some images grabbed off the reel.

…

solobasssteve: Birmingham Bass Night! May 19th! Good times...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 19:55:33 +0100

solobasssteve:

Birmingham Bass Night! May 19th! Good times assured :)

I’ll be there…

kateoplis: “It might seem hard to believe, but we have about the same number of...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 23:02:24 +0000

kateoplis: “It might seem hard to believe, but we have about the same number of...:

kateoplis:

“It might seem hard to believe, but we have about the same number of hairs on our bodies as a chimpanzee, it’s just that our hairs are useless, so fine they are almost invisible. We aren’t sure quite why we lost our protective fur. It has been suggested that it may have been to help early humans…

Photo

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:17:56 +0000

jtotheizzoe: Bubbles Popping at 18,000 fps? Yeah, it’s as...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:21:25 +0000

jtotheizzoe:

Bubbles Popping at 18,000 fps? Yeah, it’s as awesome as you think. Check out this new vid from the Slo-Mo Guys to see some crazy fluid dynamics at work. The world’s a very cool place at time scales beyond our own perception. For some of the science behind why bubbles form, take a look at this post.

The Slo-Mo Guys do a cool experiment to see whether a dropped object passes through the bubble thanks to gravity faster than the bubble pops. What do you think would happen?

Photo

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:21:14 +0000

andrewfishman: Marina Abramović, “Rhythm 0,” 1974 Marina...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:16:15 +0000

andrewfishman:

Marina Abramović, “Rhythm 0,” 1974

Marina Abramović is best known for her performance pieces, in which she tries to explore what is possible for an artist to do in the name of art. Her best known piece was the recent “The Artist Is Present,” in which she sat motionless for 736.5 hours over the course of three months, inviting visitors to sit opposite her and make eye contact for as long as they wanted. So many people began spontaneously crying across from her that blogs and Facebook groups were set up for those people.

Her bravest piece, however, is my favorite. This piece was primarily a trust exercise, in which she told viewers she would not move for six hours no matter what they did to her. She placed 72 objects one could use in pleasing or destructive ways, ranging from flowers and a feather boa to a knife and a loaded pistol, on a table near her and invited the viewers to use them on her however they wanted.

Initially, Abramović said, viewers were peaceful and timid, but it escalated to violence quickly. “The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”

This piece revealed something terrible about humanity, similar to what Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, both of which also proved how readily people will harm one another under unusual circumstances.

This performance showed just how easy it is to dehumanize a person who doesn’t fight back, and is particularly powerful because it defies what we think we know about ourselves. I’m certain that no one reading this believes the people around him/her capable of doing such things to another human being, but this performance proves otherwise.