The Obstinate Wife Learns to Obey and Other Tales

I was drifting along on the web the other day when I ran across the Aarne-Thompson system for classifying folktales. Pretty interesting. It catalogues some 2500 plot types from European and Near-Eastern sources. If this isn’t a concept album from the Decemberists waiting to happen, I don’t know what is.

Laptop is the New Guitar

I saw the Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra (MiLO) is playing at Discovery World with Present Music. A laptop orchestra? I’ve seen laptops on stage at quite a few shows in the last 5 years; part theremin, part keyboard, part turntable, part computer, part microsoft clipart gallery. It’s a bonafide instrument with a pretty amazing pedigree. Cut-and-paste (literally) with magnetic tape has evolved into a world of ones and zeros with a fairly low barrier to entry.

1. Laptop
2. Microphone
3. Sound editor
4. Speaker
5. Profit!

Musical training? Minimal. Programming background? Not required. Bedroom and broken heart? Essential, as always, to budding musicians.

• Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk)
• PD (real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing)
• Ardour (open-source mixing program)
• Share – a global community of ‘portable performers’

Paper Boat Gallery on Life Support

With the recent economic troubles neighborhoods are fracturing. The Paper Boat Gallery is under threat of closing; without it can Milwaukee’s alt-crafting scene survive? As local shops close their doors the communities (ie. tribes) that rely on them need to find another north star. Maybe transitioning from a “real” space to a virtual space would help: definitely less overhead. But it’s also a lot less immediate. After all, arts and crafts are meant to be experienced in person, not viewed in thumbnail form on your iphone.

So hurry down to Bayview and visit them, spend some of your tax return on local handmade art. It might be too late next month.

• Paper Boat blog

RedLine Milwaukee

RedLine Milwaukee, a new “urban art incubator” dedicated to community revitalization through the arts, will be opening its doors in July. They’ve recently been given a building just north of Downtown and will use the space for mentoring youth, artists-in-residence, a gallery space, a printing shop, educational programming, and much more.

• RedLine Denver
• RedLine article @ OnMilwaukee.com

SxSW 2009

Once again I’m not going to SXSW, but I can still “go there” in my heart by checking out the bands that will be playing. They’re arranged by genre, name, but not location (although that’s in there). Check out this song from Madison’s Dead Luke. I’ll post others that I enjoy here as I look through the list. Feel free to add links below.