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February 27, 2006
Finding Myself on Pete Townshend's Blog
Like many bloggers, I try to keep track on what others are saying about my blog, so I subscribe to a couple of RSS feeds from Technorati.com that track references to my name and my URL. Usually the RSS feeds send me links to various blogs related to the digital divide, video blogging, education technology, citizen journalism and the like, but yesterday, I received a notification that caught me off-guard.
One of my musical heroes had mentioned me on their blog.
To be more specific, Pete Townshend of The Who. Along with being the creative force behind one of the greatest bands of all time, Townshend is an avid writer, experimenting with online creative writing on his blog, The Boy Who Heard Music. Over the last six months, Townshend published a novella, one chapter at a time. When one of the chapters was posted, bloggers from all over the Internet would post comments and critiques of the work, which Townshend would review and take into account as he posted future chapters. The result is a 23-chapter story that evolved due to direct interaction between Townshend and the blogosphere.
So why did Pete Townshend mention me on his blog? In the book's epilogue, he offers up a homeric list of all the bloggers who submitted input at one point or another. That list includes me - and around 500 other bloggers. So it's not like Townshend dedicated the work to me personally or anything like that. Instead, he's paying tribute to all the bloggers who offered their support to the telling of the story. Townshend also notes in a "provocation" he posted that these bloggers will all be invited to participate in his next online project - an interactive music composition tool called The METHOD. A partnership between Townshend, programmer Dave Snowdon and composer Lawrence Ball, The METHOD will perform musical works generated by a computer based on interactions with a real person, referred to by Townshend as a "sitter." Initially the website will feature works generated by The METHOD through interactions with Lawrence Ball and others, but Townshend plans to invite bloggers to "sit" with The METHOD and generate music of their own. At least that's the way I understand it from his description on his blog. From what I've heard of Lawrence Ball's work, his music is reminsicent of Erik Satie and Arvo Part. Adding Pete Townshend to the mix, along with a community of 500 bloggers, will hopefully lead to some exciting, unusual results.
Personally, I can't wait for The METHOD to go public. Nearly 15 years ago, I got to interview French composer Pierre Boulez, who was one of the early experimentalists in computer composition. I've been fascinated with the concept ever since, and am very excited just pondering the opportunity of getting to try it myself some day.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at February 27, 2006 4:59 PM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
