There’s a piece in the Guardian in which DJ and film-maker Don Letts dispenses a few observations about culture and society.
There’s one line in it that some friends of mine on Twitter (professional musicians and DJs, as it happens) have seized upon and retweeted as a bit of a ‘hell yeah!’ to the bumper sticker soundbite that Letts has come up with:
“The downside of affordable technology is mediocrity.”
An art project using 30 cassette tapes
As you may know, instead of making a New Year’s Resolution, I’m doing twelve different things for thirty days each in 2010.
My first 30 days, which started just a couple of days ago on January 2nd, is a 30 day detox.
My second 30 days will be quite different.
From the 1st of February for 30 days, I will make one C90 compilation cassette per day. The compilations will conceptually bring together two places: Britain, my adopted country – and New Zealand, my country of origin.
The idea is to create sister cities of sound – at least in the minds of the recipients of those tapes.
I have selected 30 cities and towns from each country, and have paired them up. Each tape will have a British town on one side, and a New Zealand town on the other.
I'm the Director of MTF Labs, a Senior Researcher at the Industry Commons Foundation, advisor to ArtEO and founder of New Music Strategies.
I'm an author of books about technology, culture, music and radio. I'm also an award-winning broadcaster and filmmaker, a public speaker and lecturer, record producer and festival director. I am closely following developments in emerging technologies and the cultures and ethics surrounding them, and my projects typically focus on issues of justice, inclusion, and sustainability.
Most of my work involves surrounding myself with incredibly smart and talented people who would have no other reason to ever be in the same room as each other. That's when amazing things happen.
I tend to talk a lot about music (often jazz-adjacent and particularly on vinyl, but also playlists and mixtapes). I'm enthusiastic about food and cooking, the intersection of art and science, new technologies, vintage technologies, education, social progress, silence, innovation, narrative, data commons, culture, sound art and the spoken word. This blog will continue to reflect those diverse and shifting enthusiasms. I may also digress.
I'm from Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand, I have Scottish ancestry, I've spent a decade in the south of Birmingham UK, and another in a forest in the north of Sweden.
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Read more about me here.
