How to make interesting things
1. Make a list of things you find interesting
2. Crossbreed
In this case: Gerhard Richter x Dawn of the Dead =
This pairing makes a lot of sense to me. I'm surprised Richter hasn't done it himself.
Baby robot
Radiohead held an online contest to remix their song "Nude". James Houston, a student at Glasgow School of Arts, missed the deadline but aced the contest with this lovely video reinterpretation that's become so popular that Radiohead heard about it and linked to it on their site.
I like Radiohead, old computers and cleverness, so of course I love it. But it also makes me feel like weeping, which is odd. I think that Houston may have explained my reaction when he says:
I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.
I find that incredibly touching. As a person with autistic tendencies, I feel an enormous sympathy for babies, animals and machines. This is a song I wrote a few years ago, a lullaby for newborn robots:
Download baby_robot.mp3
(image: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/14/hacked-robot-babytoy.html)
Measure for measure
I've been meaning to mention the New York Times' songwriting blog for a few weeks. As someone interested in both the meaning of pop songs and how they mean, I find the writing here satisfying and enlightening in a way that very little published musical criticism is.
It's nice (but not necessary) that the authors (Andrew Bird, Darell Brown, Rosanne Cash and Suzanne Vega) are also well-known musicians. In fact, musicians' views of their own songs are often a distraction that keeps you from paying attention to what the song means to you.
But these musicians are very focused on the often stumbly process of song making and how even for the creator, the meaning of the song emerges from the process and the song itself. They address the sweet spot of music appreciation that sits between the technical and the emotional and try to show how a note hit a little flat or the acoustics of a room can illuminate a whole song.
Another example of this deeply in-between way of thinking about pop music is Tim Riley's book about every one of the Beatles' songs. I wonder if you could write a similar book about ads.
The rate card that rates you
Not many companies are as interesting as Google. From their basic technology to how they make money, they repeatedly make you think "Okay, so that means..." and a bunch of new implications come spilling out.
Today's NYT outlines the workings of Google's "ad quality" team. Because the creative and placement variables of Google ads are relatively few and are controlled by Google, they can experiment with them and directly measure the results. This helps them determine how to price ads which makes them more money.
Even more interesting, one of the variables they incorporate into their pricing and placement model is the quality of the consumer's experience after they click on the ad:
Over time, the company also looked beyond click-through rates to rank ads. Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads. Soon, the loading speed of a landing page will also be considered.
These factors contribute to an ad’s “quality score.” The higher that score, the less the advertiser has to bid to secure top billing. For example, an advertiser who offers to pay $1 per click to attract those searching for “vacation rentals in Colorado” may receive more prominent placement than another who bids $1.50 for the same query but has a lower quality score. An advertiser with a very low quality score may have to bid so much for placement as to make it uneconomical.
Quality scores work as an incentive to advertisers to improve their ads, which benefits users and, in turn, benefits Google.
Yikes! Better service (and can better products be far behind?) leading to lower ad rates? Some advertisers are confused and angry ("many advertisers complain that the company was, in essence, deciding who can and cannot advertise on its system") but Google seems to believe that the overall health/value of their ad system is increased when consumers believe that Google ads represent relevant and high-quality suggestions.
Most media discriminate among advertisers in some way. You're not going to see a Hooters ad in Vanity Fair anytime soon. But I've never heard of a media company digging so deeply into the post-ad consumer experience and using it to directly affect rates. I can feel the possible implications radiating outwards...
Most e-mailed lists
I've been meaning to look into whether there were any consistent criteria for "most e-mailed" articles. Lots of media sites must have large datasets by now. I'd like to see an analysis of them.
I did find this article from Slate in which some thinking is slapped on the question. It's focused on only one story and the tone is thuddingly cynical (which is saying something coming from me), but it's interesting.
Interesting speaker list
I.A. is due less than a month from now and his speaker list is filling out nicely. Here are some of the people we expect and sort of what we expect them to say/do:
Alexandru Rosu on the Romanian Peasants Museum (I'm a big fan of the Museum. I'd live there if I could.)
Anne Charbonneau on an as yet unspecified interesting subject
Chidi Onwuka on urban nomads
Daniel Bonn on the physics of quicksand
Devon Reid on love
Esme Vos on building municipal wireless networks
Geert Wissink on cognitive psychology and social software
Jeff Ubois on personal digital archives
Jennifer Benavidez on salsa and The Seven Deadly Sins of the Dance Floor (with actual dancing! (which in retrospect, should have been the conference tagline))
Massimo Benvegnù on the enduring legacy of Russ Meyer
Nina Siegal on something involving Rembrandt, Golden Age Holland, autopsies and the Anatomical Theater (if she could just get zombies in there somehow...)
Otto Berchem on a kidnapping in Memphis (He's putting together an art piece based on a choir singing an ode to a girl who was kidnapped 25 years ago and hidden in the church where the choir...well, you just have to hear it.)
Otto Kokke will describe his system of the world (I didn't know other people had them too.)
Paul Hughes on an as yet unspecified interesting subject
We're expecting confirmation from someone who herds bacteria and a boutique beer brewer with samples for the audience. We'll keep them apart.
Music friendship
A friend of mine sent me a link to a music school in Myanmar where students and teachers, many of whom lost their own homes, are now coordinating and carrying out cyclone relief projects. Gitameit Music Center (gita=music, meit=friendship) is both a school for local musicians and a focus for international music exchange, and their connections to Western musicians have helped them get the word out about what they're doing and how important it is since many international efforts are being blocked at the border.
Listening to the stories of their students and teachers got me to donate when general reporting on the overall devastation had not. That's not so surprising. Personal stories are generally more powerful than broad description. More surprising, at least to me, was how credible and impactful I found the fact that they aren't experts, just people who were trying to learn a part, lost in some difficult passage, when they were reoriented by the weather.
Interesting Amsterdam
Most of you are probably familiar with INTERESTING, the anti-conference conference as debuted by Russell and Emily in London and Sydney last year. We figure it's time to give it a go here in lovely Amsterdam.
The thing will take place on June 14th at De Balie, from 10 to 6. Tickets are available from Eventbrite for 20 euros. Same minimal rules as always: presentations of 3 or 20 minutes on something interesting. (If you'd like a bit more of a steer, you can watch the videos from London and Sydney on their respective sites.)
We don't know exactly who will be speaking yet, but so far we've lined up the world's leading expert on quicksand (who also happens to be my neighbor). If you're interested in joining him on stage (at a safe distance) or suggesting someone else to speak, you can write to me here or at speakers@interestingamsterdam.com.
And, I'm very happy to say, you can also write to co-organizer André Bouwman (andre@60layersofcake.com) a delightful copywriter/designer/entrepreneur who is Dutch but plays real (i.e. American) football.
There are 175 seats available, so order early, order often. See you here.
Everybody Talk About
...pop music, but not everyone agree. And while there are plenty of sources for song facts (interviews, production details, ratings, criticism), facts aren't what's really interesting about pop music. Even what the artist says is just another fact. What's interesting is the meaning of the song to you. You may be the only person who thinks that "Hit Me Baby One More Time" is actually about Jesus (or maybe that's me), but that's what makes pop music so emotional and fascinating. The lack of a single, incontrovertible meaning is what makes it interesting.
Our favorite songs release a flood of addictive brain chemicals, but it can be difficult to identify the exact trigger. On paper, the lyrics are often pretty vague given how meaningful they feel when the song is playing. The meaning seems to waft up from a soup of musical and lyrical elements--that chord change, middle eight, drum pattern, intake of breath--combined with our own, often idiosyncratic, knowledge and experience. We may obsess about what strings Jimi used or dissect the symbolism of the English hedgerow, but those are more symptoms of our devotion than explanations. It's that complex, cloudy, personal recipe that we really want to condense into language and share when we're talking about our favorite songs.
I love pop* music. I love talking about it and listening to other people talk about it and what it means to them. Those conversations are almost always more interesting than published music criticism where the opinions have be justified and dressed up as facts. I'd rather just hear people talk about what their favorite songs mean to them. So I made a site for people to do that and I hope that you will.
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*I mean "pop" in the broadest possible sense to include pretty much anything not written by Mozart.
Irony Will Eat Itself
Philippe sent this link to a viral video from Qualcomm. ("Viral" only in the sense that the makers apparently want it to become viral.) It's a fake ad for a wireless handset that's implanted in your hand. Get it? (Okay, the name is funny.)
What's strange is that this site links to, and is meant to publicize, a Qualcomm campaign called "Wireless Life" which is also about non-existent stuff from the future. But for some reason, we're supposed to take this stuff more seriously. Seriously? After making fun of futuristic tech-puffery vaporware, they lead you into their own futuristic tech-puffery vaporware.
I think that in the age of Colbert, people are so soaked in irony they've forgotten what irony is besides a way to show that you don't take yourself too seriously and that you "get it" (whatever "it" is.)
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