mondo linko 2
I hadn't intended to do another blogpost so soon, but I had insomnia last night. Rather than rattle around in my bed bemoaning insomnia on a night when no one else I know seemed to be online, I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally lay down some belated conference catch-ups, and some related links.
I took loads of notes at November's Thrilling Wonder Stories II but never got around to typing them up. Fortunately, @rossignol's report is pretty much what I would have said (although I don't agree with him about all of the speakers) | a TWS2 report from @markasaurus | interview with the TWS2 curators, Geoff Manaugh and Liam Young | interview with Matt Webb of @berglondon | video archive of TWS2: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 | original Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine covers on CoverBrowser | retrofuture.com | Dissecting The Mystery: the Death of the Retrofuture
Less thrilling wonder, more quietly mundane, was #boring2010 in December, where I didn't take any notes at all. Luckily, Lucy Peel did, and posted a list of all the speakers' websites and presentations. | (The only thing she's not mentioned was my 30mins slideshow of photos of coal holes that was onscreen while people came in and found their seats. But that's because nobody knew it was there, due to the lights being too bright to see the screen and the music too quiet to hear over people greeting each other. Oops.) | more #boring2010 links: Irish Times | WSJ | @oye_billy | @siansparkles | @joemoransblog | A Less Boring Version of 4′ 33″ by @martylog and friends [via @mykreeve]
coal holes on Londonology | 200 manholes per mile | how to lift manhole covers safely | beautiful Japanese manhole covers | misplaced manhole covers shows sudden, surprising beauty in accidental juxtapositions
Sound Diaries [via @iamjamesward] | submit your own vending machine sound diary here, to be included in this year's #boring2011 | related: @oye_billy on vending machines
More found sounds from: @mapsadaisical, the Sound(s) of Islay | London sound survey | Inhabit Sounds, an "urban soundscape project". I love this bit: "A road that was once thriving with the sound of manufacturing is presently occupied by Ghanian worshipers - whose religious congregations [...] fill the wide street with sounds of song and music. The result of the buildings change of use actually results in a road [...] where there was and still is a bold and vivid soundscape that envelops the passer-by." [found via a google search for "coal holes". Everything connects...]
And at the moment I'm sitting here listening to pretty birdsong being drowned out by emergency vehicle sirens (probably for the hospital but there's a police station nearby too), and wondering how a word that originally signified something irrestistably alluring ever came to be applied to such a harsh and ugly noise. Language is weird.
More mondo linkage collected at the mondo linko tag.