Webcam to show Central Library refurb live

From: Manchester Evening News

Book-lovers will soon be given an insight into the transformation of Manchester’s Central Libra­ry under plans to fit a webcam inside the building’s famous dome.

The live link-up will give a behind the scenes glimpse of the multi-million pound renovation work going on inside the landmark city centre building.

The site has been stripped of some one million books and closed to the public during a three-year building project. But testing has started on a camera that could be fitted inside the dome of the Reading Room – the library’s most famous feature – to allow visitors to enjoy a bird’s eye view of what is going on inside.

It is expected that images from the camera would be streamed on to the council’s website.

A town hall spokesman said it was an idea that was being explored by officers but was still in the early stages.

The city’s huge collection of books were sent into underground storage in the Cheshire salt mines last year to allow workmen to start on site. The salt mines are thought to offer the best atmosphere in which to preserve the manuscripts.

The redevelopment will see the 60m diameter Shakespeare Hall on the ground floor, currently closed to the public beyond the front entrance, opened as a ‘centre of excellence for archive storage’ and the book storage ‘stacks’ replaced with exhibition space, a café, research and computer space and an amphitheatre-style performance area for readings.

Webcam viewers will also see the floor of the domed Reading Room removed while work takes place, with an exact replica rebuilt afterwards.

The refurbishment of Vincent Harris’s circular building, completed in 1934, is part of the wider modernisation of the Town Hall complex and St Peter’s Square. Facilities will be brought up to date and the buildings’ listed features restored to their former glory.

As the M.E.N reported last month, the city’s famous Rates Hall will be among the architectural treasures opened to the public again following the work.

The stunning 200ft-long hall, which runs the length of the town hall extension and was historically where residents went to pay their taxes, will become a ‘one-stop shop’ for town hall services.

Digital back-up disk cover

"Mesmerising"

Again, some very nice feedback from Central Station after those lovely (and largely Glasgow-based) people showcased some of the Sshhh work again.

More 3D renders

I'm thinking of incorporating these images within the print product.

Central Station creative social network

A friend suggested that I join the Central Station creative social network up in Glasgow. I'd already checked this site out earlier as they had a 'sound' month with lots of people working largely within the visual arts reponding to auditory influences. Anyway, I joined and got some feedback on a few bits of work that I uploaded. Yesterday I got a nice email to say that they wanted to put one of the images on the homepage. So there it is: bottom left under the 'Bulletin' text. I like those 13 sided polygons too, by the way.

3D Max image

Just been playing around in 3D Max to see how some of these internal images might be made for a virtual environment.

3D Studio Max animation

Above is some geometry being plain mental in 3d Max. The textures on the objects are from the image on the earlier post. I'm currently looking at ways to use the morphing tool to give another aspect to the sort of ominous shapes that I'm placing in the British Library as visualizations of noise.

Sonar by Renaud Hallée

Sonar from Renaud Hallée on Vimeo.

3D Max renders

I found the above images on a pen drive from the Virtual Worlds class before Easter. They're snapshots of the 3D Max project showing the beginnings of the staircases seen at the British Library. I've wondered whether the outlines become more interesting when rotated. Additionally I've expanded on the idea for these staircases so that the geometry becomes less basic and will be building on this idea when we return to class.

Layout for Virtual Worlds Research

I'm in the middle of putting together this research and laying out what will be a concertina book.

Hopefully.

Only I've decided to try and see if I could avoid any joins by using lining paper so that the extra long printed item is on one folded sheet. I am slightly worried as this could mean that one little mistake means starting all the print from the beginning while I'm also not sure if my printer is going to be alarmed by a seemingly never ending piece of paper. Anyway the above image is of some of the first pages. The photo treatments are pretty much the same throughout. They're a bit Financial Times or Football Pink.

I've also made a few sketches of what this 3D rendering will be when incorporating the shapes generated from the noise on the previous video. Those shapes were from the Windows Media Player visualization 'Amoeba'. The plan is to have each landing on the staircase emulating one of these forms rather than being a smooth semicircle. If this works then it should also provide some interesting silhouettes when rotating the 3D max geometry and will also culminate in a new shape - for a concentration of noise - when assessed from an aerial view. That's the idea at least.

Printed bookcloth

I'm currently working on my research work/sketchbook for the Virtual Worlds module.

The task I've set myself is trying to recreate the staircases of the British Library but I'm currently tring to work in some of the "sound shapes" or visualizations that I've got together from the recordings. The idea is that the architecture becomes a metaphor for the sound. (This isn't a particularly radical idea given that the noise is very much linked to its environment and is ultimately determined within a spatial context.) I'm then hoping that I can export the 3Dmax outputs to also use in the print product while also perhaps using some of the geometry as augmented reality elements. I don't know how much of this is feasible right now but I think it's more realistic time-wise if I continue to incorporate the same ideas/research into two different modules. Maybe that's a cop-put. I don't know. But thinking about the work in a three dimensional sense has given me a different perspective.

Anyway I'm also trying to put this research together as an A5-ish concertina book so that I can get to grips with the book making equipment prior to tackling the main module hand-in. I've just used an inkjet printer on the bookcloth for a cover and really like the effect. (The font is Akzidenz Grotesk.)

Another 2'03" Visualization

I'm currently cleaning up all the library audio tracks so that I can see if I can get some cymatic representations of the sound. While doing that, I thought I'd just note another couple of waveforms that were generated as part of the process.

David Toop website

I was reading up on David Toop given how his writing, curating and recording pushes into a number of experimental sound-related areas and noted the above on his website (http://www.davidtoop.com/). It's a flash animation where cubes shift from one side of the browser to the other. The user is encouraged to grab a cube and drag it to the speaker. Some are whizzing past while others are slower. And each plays a different sound: from what sounds like UFOs taking off through to jazz-edged interludes.

It's documented here simply as the record of something that is a bit of fun - a little add-on. Yet it's also indicative of how often we encounter one thing that's readable via one sense as an indicator of something that's more usually understood through a different sensory ability. For example, those TV adverts where someone places a new air freshener and suddenly we have a depiction of clean and curvy vapours emanating from the product. I suppose that's what I'm trying to do here: create a visual metaphor for this 'essence' of the British Library [an essence that has already been reduced to just its sonic manifestation].

Obsolete technology: noise as music

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Two closely related projects above. The first being Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' assembled from dot matrix printers and other electronic crap from yesteryear. For me, it's incredibly melancholic. As are Radiohead, of course, who have been processed in much the same way for the second project.

I'm referencing these for a couple of reasons. The first is that it relates to an earlier suggestion that the library noise could be reconfigured into a less haphazard form. It could become rhythmic and arranged (if not quite music). But the aesthetics of the projects are also interesting to me. I've spoken with Dave in the past about obsolete technology as we both felt that the history of hardware hasn't been documented properly due to the haste to constantly upgrade. Okay, people might snigger or indulge in some retro fetishism for an old Atari or Sinclair, but then there has been a mountain of other electronic machinery integral to a lot of industries that - despite probably having the combined memory of one current mobile phone - actually tells us a lot about how things used to be produced. And maybe by acknowledging that development we would be less inclined to take for granted the ease of current digital production.

2'03"

I tried to upload a MP3 of track one to have it play here via a flash player. However it's not working correctly and has been uploaded as a Youtube video instead.

Downloading British Library audio

Following a trip to Ratchford to pick up some book making equipment, I've downloaded the audio recorded at the British Library. Next I'm going to import the wav files into Acid and edit them down so that they become the final tracks. I've also decided that the tracks won't have titles but be identified by their running time. This is a reference to John Cage's silent composition known as 4'33" - although my recordings are far from silent. Some are pretty chaotic actually.

Stadsbiblioteket in Malmo

Another day, another country and yet another library. This one was just a short train journey from Copenhagen in Malmo, Sweden. Again, it was a calming space despite [because of?] its cathedral-like proportions.

One especially nice aspect of the architecture was the small study booths almost assembled like book cases along one side where people worked in relative seclusion whilst stacked up - three units high. Another clever addition was the checking in system which takes the books on a conveyor belt to be put back on display. To get there they travel under the floor with the publications visibly moving through the building under a glass panel.

We also got the wrong train on the way back. We mixed up 'Helsingor' and 'Helsingborg' and, instead of heading back to Denmark, we got to see some very grey Swedish countryside.

Basic Sound Effector from Adam Brandon

Basic Sound Effector from Adam Brandon on Vimeo.

The software used to create this was something called Cinema 4D.

Chris Cunningham

I'm currently working on something else where I may get to interview director Chris Cunningham. Who is one of my idols and a truly modern visionary. Ahead of that, I'm revisiting the Directors Label DVD that collected together some of his work back in 2003 and its booklet contains some words from him about trying to provide visuals for music.

On his video debut making Autechre's 'Second Bad Vilbel':

"...I was obsessed with the idea of making things move in time with music. I was trying to build this chunk of non-specific industrial machinery that would come apart in time to the music. So I built this model in my back garden and got all these pieces of machinery and stuff and ended up filming them. Then I tried to make a video out of the footage. I remember the band being really disappointed and me realising that the bottom line is... how do you turn a visually abstract idea into a piece of film. Even now I think that most of the stuff that I think up whilst listening to music is impossible to achieve..."

While Cunningham sees this project as something of a failure, it was the first in a series of works that married sound and vision - albeit while developing a relationship that is uniquely Chris Cunningham. How some of these ideas were triggered by a particular record is really interesting [in the case of Aphex Twin's 'Windowlicker', as one example, he felt that the track itself verged on the pornographic while he also wanted to create something that subverted the imagery that we are used to seeing in rap videos].

Anyway, this presents a good enough reason to embed some of his work here for future reference. The last, his own 'Rubber Johnny' film project, is a pretty disturbing masterpiece.


Autechre - 'Second Bad Vilbel'


Bjork - 'All is Full of Love'


Aphex Twin - 'Windowlicker'


Aphex Twin - 'Come To Daddy'


Portishead - 'Only You'


The Horrors - 'Sheena is a Parasite'


Chris Cunningham - 'Rubber Johnny' [music by Aphex Twin]

By the way, this isn't the first time I've posted something Aphex Twin-related. Previously I added his spectrogram. Interestingly, he also claims to suffer from synaesthesia which is very much related to the report part of this study.

Tenori-On

tenori-on from M I C H E L on Vimeo.

The last video reminded me to post something on the Tenori-On. Probably most visible via Little Boots' performances, this sequencer is an instrument that also provides a visualization of the music as it plays. I've seen it used a few times (including as part of Little Boots' stage show) and it's hypnotic.