#working philosophy

[feminineinvestor]

Working harder & hustling doesn't make you more worthy, just more tired 🥱

[michaelgogins]

Guidance for Computer Musicians

Focus on what you love doing, and do it with the minimum of means.

This is something I have struggled with for decades. Today I went to the "Sound" event at Luck Dragon in Delhi, New York. Brian Crabtree spoke at length about his approach to running a small business supporting the arts (he makes the Monome controller, the Norns computer, and a few other things), and this phrase came to my mind.

Of course I have been pruning back my projects and my software stack now for several years. What initially totally fascinated me and what I loved was just taking fractals from Martin Gardner's Mathematical Recreations column in The Scientific American and trying to get music out of them. Most of these attempts were a page, at most a few pages, of code, BASIC or Fortran.

Brian identified many problems in the general world of software that I had encountered in my own work. These include bloat, semi-competence, too many cooks in the kitchen constantly re-inventing all the wheels, focus on money, and so on. His response is to focus on small, standardized, self-manufactured computers dedicated to his general approach to music. He pointed out that this simple platform make it easier to create a community.

My response is different, to focus on Csound in the Web browser as the platform, which also is standardized, has facilities for music, and is versionless and runs on all platforms.

Brian is much more interested than I am in fostering a collective, a community of people speaking from the same level, although of course in reality he is the wellspring.

I am much more interested in making the kind of music that I want to hear.

Or perhaps Brian just has more social skills than I do.

What I take away from these thoughts is that the computer is a double-edged sword. It is the engine of our current form of hyper-capitalism. But to keep that capitalist system running, it must nevertheless be based on inexpensive, easily programmed, general-purpose computers, operating systems, and compilers. Which can very easily be turned to other purposes. That will always be the case, even in a world of conformity, materialism, and surveillance.

If you do what you love, but with the minimum of means, you will not be spending time and money on tools you don't really need. You will not be following the fads of the programming world. You may not even have a boss. And even if you don't have much money, you will still be able to do what you love.

[philipdembinski-blog]

"Certainly while I'm working, I want them to be as useless as possible." - Gary Winogrand talking about how he visions his photographs to eventually be used as. From an interview with Barbara Diamonstein, 1981

http://www.kylefordphotography.com/Words-on-Photography