The isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight but hurt not

[imomus]

I love radio that uses sound evocatively. For instance, this excellent Radio 3 Sunday Feature about the artist Donald Judd, or the programmes made by Arte Radio. Inspired by examples like these, I've decided to do an audio blog today. It's basically all the little lofi sound files I've been capturing with my digital camera since coming to Japan in mid-July, dropped into iTunes randomly then cross-faded. It gives a rather evocative sound picture of the archipelago, I think. I've concentrated on street cries, children's songs, the sounds of nature in summer, and all the little electronic melodies that float in the air in Japanese cities, accompanying activities as banal as collecting rubbish or crossing the road. The isle is full of noises...

Japan Sound Collage, Summer 2004 (24.72 MB mp3 file, 21.35 minutes, 160 kbps, mono)

Comments

[mariocanario.livejournal.com]

hello sir.
i'm faced with the first big like, moral dilemma of my, em, career, and i'd like to know what you think, since it concerns stuff that's been talked about in this journal.
This tuesday we're playing a big big event for the first time, vjing for 2manydjs and lcd soundsystems. it's a great opportunity.
but
the event is sponsored by tobacco brand
tobacco brand wants us to put some animations with their logo from time to time.
which sucks.
refusal would mean our all important relationship with club promoters go sour etc etc.
dilemma made more poignant because one of the members of our team is in the hospital due to some tobacco related tonsils infection.
money-minded partner says we do it without question.
i say we do it but subtly making tobacco brand appear uncool somehow.(any ideas?)
friend says we're going to have bad karma for a while if we do that and i believe it.
any comments, past experiences, advice, nick, anyone?i know it's not such a big deal, we're just the little fingers of a big machinery that's not going to stop because of our refusal to be part of it, but it still sucks big time

[auto-appendix.livejournal.com]

That's a tough one. Can't you take the money and use it to finance some anti-cigarette activities? I like the idea of the corporate world funding its own undoing. Does this kind of naff sponsorship by tobacco and drink's firms really work? I guess it must.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Something like this happened to me when I arrived in Moscow only to find that my show was sponsored by Chesterfield, and the room was filled with illuminated Chesterfield ads. I say play the gig, but make anti-smoking comments whenever possible in your other public utterances. Some will accuse you of hypocrisy, but you can tell them it's a matter of nuance.

[mariocanario.livejournal.com]

as i expected, we just unconsciously forgot about the tobacco clips because they didn't fit into the set and nobody noticed their absence, what with the shows being good and everything, but the question is still there and doesn't look like it's going to go away easily. there's that Diogenes story, in which he's eating lentils outside in athenes, lentils being the cheapest meal at the time, and his former schoolmate Do'ntrememberhisnamedes, who is now a succesful politician tells him "oh diogenes diogenes, if you were a bit more submissive and were nice to the emperor you wouldn't have to eat lentils" and diogenes answers
"well if you ate lentils you wouldn't have to be submissive and be nice to the emperor"

[mariocanario.livejournal.com]

i talked to my partners about my concerns. They dissed them as bourgeois and neo-hippie and made the good point that in order to do constructive stuff you need money and if you don't have it the only way to get it is to sell out in one way or the other.
the money we'll get will barely cover our debts with phone companies and film developing studios, but that's still a good point.
Fortunately, the club's promoters don't like the idea of polluting the screens with tobacco imagery either so they've told us to keep it subtle and restrain from using it as much as possible. The dvd of clips they've given us are very very cheesy and seeing it in its entirety would make anyone hate the brand forever, so i wonder if the opposite aproach wouldn't be more appropiate!

[auto-appendix.livejournal.com]

What, you mean make the images so upfront that it's almost idiotic? That's a nice idea.

Isn't that justification of 'selling out' the very definition of bourgeois thinking, though?