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Genesis P-Orridge

Last month, industrial performance artist and provocateur Genesis P-Orridge performed her final concert at London venue Heaven. It wasn’t just a farewell to her audience, but also a means for Genesis P-Orridge to bid farewell to herself. Recently she told the New York Times that the course of her chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia meant that she had “less optimistically, a year, maybe six months. And then I’m on the downward slope to death”. As with the Fall’s Mark E Smith in January this year, it’s difficult to imagine the UK music underground without this constant fixture. The death was confirmed by Genesis's daughters, Genesse and Caresse, the musician and artist, who had been battling leukaemia for two-and-a-half years, was 70. “It is with very heavy hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved father, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge,” Caresse and Genesse P-Orridge said in a statement shared online. “S/he will be laid to rest h/er other half, Jaqueline “Lady Jaye” Brey...

The Theatre Of Cruelty & Of The Absurd

The Theatre of Cruelty (French: Théâtre de la Cruauté, also French: Théâtre cruel) is a form of theatre generally associated with Antonin Artaud . Artaud, who was briefly a member of the surrealist movement, outlined his theories in The Theatre and its Double. The Theatre of Cruelty can be seen as a break from traditional Western theatre and a means by which artists assault the senses of the audience. Encyclopædia Britannica describes the Theatre of Cruelty as "a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself". It goes on to say that Manifeste du théâtre de la cruauté ( 1932; Manifesto of the Theatre of Cruelty ) and Le Théâtre et son double (1938; The Theatre and Its Double) both called for "communion between actor and audience in a magic exorcism; gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting combine to form a language, superior to words, that can be used to subvert thought and logic and to shock the specta...

FM Synthesis

FM synthesis is short for frequency modulation synthesis . Simply put, FM synthesis uses one signal called, the “modulator” to modulate the pitch of another signal, the “carrier”, that’s in the same or a similar audio range. This creates brand new frequency information in the resulting sound, changing the timbre without the use of filters. FM synthesis can create both harmonic and inharmonic sounds. To synthesize harmonic sounds, the modulating signal must have a harmonic relationship to the original carrier signal. As the amount of frequency modulation increases, the sound grows progressively complex. It was discovered in the 1967 experiments of John Chowning at Stanford University. At first, Chowning was using complex waveforms to modulate the pitch of simple sine waves. This resulted in supersonic signals at frequencies over a million Hertz. [FISEA 1988] Workshop: John Chowning, Zack Settel & Ernst Bonis – FM-Synthesis/Psycho-acoustics. Yamaha...