Gift Of Peace Remix 2023

Five years ago, my friend, John, and I went into a recording studio to record a holiday song that we wrote – A Gift Of Peace (For Christmas) — and each year, he and I try to do different remix versions of it, just to keep the song fresh and alive for us.

This year, I used some music software to convert the song into music manuscript (which I then printed out and packaged as a gift to my friend, John). Here, I turned the manuscript into a video, with the instrumental part of the song as backing track.

Peace (not war),
Kevin

PS — the song is still in the music streaming ecosystems:

Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/artist/the-lu…

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/5eNEvH…   / a-gift-of-peace-for-christmas-single  

Amazon Music: https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Peace-Chr…

Tidal: https://tidal.com/browse/album/94652490

DS106: Remix Monday (Week 3)

I’m doing a five-week, every-Monday (unless I space out and forget to get it done) remix of a piece of art from the earlier days of DS106. (Read more about what I am up to here). This is week three.

For this week’s remix, I took the text of the image about remix, and used a Black Out Poem tool off Glitch, to find a poem inside the text. The I went into LunaPic and did some artistic layering behind the found poem.

DS106 RemixMondays week3

Peace (and remix),
Kevin

DS106: Remix Monday (Week 2)

I’m doing a five-week, every-Monday (unless I space out and forget) remix of a piece of art from the earlier days of DS106. (Read more about what I am up to here).

For this week’s remix, I took the text from the original image as a visual image, then ran it through a series of art filters, and then composed some music to go with it, and finally pulled it all together into a video collage that I hope focuses on the message of the writing (which is about remix and making art).

Peace (and remix),
Kevin

Graphic Non-fiction: Hidden Systems

Hidden Systems by Dan Nott

Dan Nott’s graphic book — Hidden Systems (Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind The Systems We Use Every Day) — is a visual exploration of what the subtitle says it will do — go deep into the workings of three main systems that are part of our modern lives: the Internet, the electrical grid and water networks.

In each section, Nott shows how well-informed he is with his research as well as how skilled he is as a visual artist and storyteller. The reader is quickly immersed in systems thinking, and architectural and engineering design, but Nott never goes so far into the weeds of those worlds that the average reader gets lost. Nott is an able and reliable guide, and the visuals here provide angles of understanding that text alone might not.

Nott brings us into the mostly invisible networks of wires and pipes that form the core of society (caveat: modern American society), where so much of how things function for us depends on extensive networks. These systems bring benefits but also have fundamental weaknesses and historical impacts on the environment and people, too.

Nott shows the historical beginnings behind the visi0ning of the Internet and electrical and water systems, and how some thinking created opportunities while other thinking created vulnerabilities. In some cases, the development of these systems happened by chance or without a larger vision or design, leading to problems in the grids.

We often just see the surface of our surroundings, but by understanding these systems more deeply, we can form our own questions about their past and future. The answers to these questions can help us not only to fix these systems, but also re-imagine them — creating a world that’s more in balance with the Earth. – from Hidden Systems, by Dan Nott, pages 238-9

I found that, after reading Hidden Systems, that I found myself seeing the landscape of power grids and water systems and the Internet in more nuanced ways, noticing the physical connections in my own community, the places where these fundamental services flow and connect, and that’s what good books do, right? They make us notice the world, in a different way.

(I write this on my Internet-connected laptop, at a table with a light over my head, and cup of coffee brewed with tap water by my side — all elements of the networks that Nott examines in book)

https://cdn-amz.woka.io/images/I/71F4U7TjPZL.jpg

This book would be a good addition to any middle school or high school library.

Peace (and Systems),
Kevin