What androids really dream about

11/6/2012

Hugh O'Donnell writes:
'Gravitational Arch of Io', by Themes from Vaporspace is (of course) about space, and a single from the self-titled CD: it is a single track lasting exactly 60 minutes. I’m sure that it is often mis-titled as ‘10’ instead of Io and relates to Jupiter’s volcanic moon. Space is still is a genre that I continue explore, both in non-fiction and fiction terms as a Secondary School Teacher.

Gary Numan’s 'Metal' should have been the second single after 'Cars'. From Numan's third album, it is pure electro and sampled by Afrika Bambatta, whose ‘Planet Rock’ is often cited as the first 'hip hop' song, fusing funk with the ‘Trans Europe Express’, from Germany’s Kraftwerk. Philip K Dick-influenced lyrics, pioneering fusion of punk/electro in the beginning...

Shugod's E-learning Playlist by Elektronicheslernenmuzik on Mixcloud

Kraftwerk's 'Tour De France'. Since acquiring a mountain bike in 2011, three nights a week I can be found plugged into such tunes, thinking about the previous teaching day, or using the pastoral surroundings to think anew; often I am listening to ‘spoken word’, lectures on astronomy (which help my interest in interdisciplinary learning) or technology podcasts. You can almost feel the chords - taste the keyboards: a somewhat synaesthetic experience from what may be a surprising choice from such a back-catalogue; I first heard 'Model' and it still fills me close to tears, the juxtaposition of human frailty against cold, uncaring machine melody. I remember watching the needle touch down upon the 'Man Machine' album. They provide a blueprint for many modern artists.

M.A.R.R.S. 'Pump up the Volume': For me this marks a turning point. Such as Punk cleared the detritus that was Prog, ballad, and you-had-to-own-a-mansion-and-drive-around-in-a-Bentley-Rock-And-Roll-Lifestyle. This ENDED the banality of The Eighties: Goodbye Mr McKenzie, Numan flailing between Top 30 and 40. Just like Sigue Sigue Sputnik shortly before, this uses samples from a variety of media, but it includes ‘cuts’ from the emerging Hip Hop and Rap – there’s even an Indian section. This was - and still is for me – the song that marked a change. Resist the current - seek the new.

John Lydon’s 'No Fun' (Peel Session featuring The Orb (The House Generation's 'Floyd'): We salute you, caustic, sneering, irreverent, antagonist, obstinate! Challenge! Use the energy of anger to change - create anew! Transcend hierarchies! I admire the Punk Phoenix rising from the ashes that was social, political and musical Britain 1976, paving the way for the 'ordinary' musician, but also providing a vehicle for Numan, the Ska and 2-Tone movement; ‘blends’ like The Police, The Jam - Reggae and Mod-influenced, respectively. Yes, 'No Fun' is a clarion call to ME as an educator that every child - every learner is a fresh new mind that will seed the future. Rage against the bland - change, abhor inertia and laziness - innovate or stagnate. Arise, Sir John!

D Kay & Rawfull – ‘Directions’: Born from Electronica and the jazz and funk upon which Rap and Hip-Hop were nurtured and allowed to fly the nest, this is - for me - the music that suits any endeavour that aims at pushing boundaries: Drum and Bass - aka Jungle. There's often a sadness that underpins such tracks (especially this one) and I think that this is a reminder of mankind's lot, against which many barriers - physical, emotion and intellectually - we as a genus are trying to forever break. When I listen to this music I feel positive; I feel positive for mankind, I relish the blood-pumping reality of our part in this immense 'grand plan'. I am positive. This music evinces our achievements, our desires to integrate cultures and races, to push technology to the limits - to use it for good.

Aphex Twin, ‘Tha’ (track 2 from 'Selected Ambient Works 85-92'): This was our 'Floyd'; the anti-thesis to the emerging dance and techno which was fast augmenting and replacing the Acid House ... We played it originally at 45rpm, but when I popped the tape into the E-Reg Ford Escort … well, somewhat slower. Beautiful, haunting atmosphere, soundscapes and eerie backgrounds that seem to stretch far into Richard D James' imagination: a pioneer at the time; creator of music that … unnerves through dissonance.

‘Call Me’, Blondie (Moroder 7” instrumental mix): I still remember watching Blondie's 'Heart of Glass' on Top of The Pops, and I seem to remember Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love'. Just as the Nexus-6s grasp their photographs that represent their memories, these tracks remind a once 7-year-old about his past and how far he has progressed. 'Beat the Clock' by Sparks was another masterpiece from Giorgio Moroder... This track returns to minimalist beginnings, the guitar licks wrapping around the un-relenting synth. …

But we must return to Themes from Vaporspace, which – to me – creates the image of both Pioneer and Voyager probes silently slipping out of our solar system, never to return; mankind’s only creations to have ventured so far; a culmination of the evolution from fire, tools and language – the result of innate learning.

And the image uploaded with my mix? This is where my young mind ran free, tasted the world, and began…

Hugh O'Donnell is a high school teacher of English and graduate of the MSc in E-Learning

7 Comments

Michael Sean Gallagher link

13/6/2012 05:27:18 pm

This is an inspiring playlist, Hugh, not only for what is in it (which is very significant) but also what it represents. Challenging routine, expanding space, equating all of this to learning. Persistent, that is the word I would use to describe this playlist. You mentioned the unrelenting synths, and I think this playlist demonstrates that unrelenting aspect of learning. Perpetually reinventing itself. And reinventing the learner along with it. The music reflects that to me.

Dissonance, pioneering, resist the current, seek the new, rage against the bland, abhor inertia. This is more than a playlist, Hugh; it is a mantra! It is a call to the arms of creative destruction, the cause of knowledge production.

It seems that this music wouldn't let one get comfortable, to settle into a space. I think it is a wonderful, energetic counterpoint to what I put up there in my playlist, which was all about 'backgrounding' (as I believe Clara coined). This is foregrounding to the nth degree. In your face and right up front, but still augmentative. I can feel the energy coming out of these tracks and it inspires me. Well done, Hugh!

James Lamb

14/6/2012 08:26:40 am

Hello Hugh, I'm enjoying your playlist. I've just reached the John Lydon track and am interested to know how this influences or inspires your 'learning space'. Thinking back to Clara's comment on the previous thread about using the Run Lola Run soundtrack to inspire her course design, do you seek out albums for particular activities or when using particular online learning spaces? And if so, where does punk, ska and 2-tone fit into this?

Hugh O'Donnell link

16/6/2012 11:59:32 am

What a privilege it is to have such erudite and inspiring alumni!

Yes, Punk, Ska, 2-Tone may seem far removed from their weird electro cousins and great grandsons ... but I think that the latter derivations took the vacuum/nihilism created by the 'big bang', and offered augmentation, produced hybrids of music from blacks and whites at a time when the NF (and many others) were rejecting rich cultural, multi-faceted artifcts that are ingrained in 'British-ness'. Like learning, there's the 'unintended', the accidental that comes from curiosity, exploration...

Stalker Humanoid - with 'Humanoid' - was left out (unintentionally) and marked an important mark in 'pure techo' prior to their reforming as ambient pioneers, 'Future Sound of London'. Also, check out the lovely 'Snowman Mix' of Humanoid.

Incidentally, I just received 'MachineMusic', double DVD from Numan. Still the benchmark RE punk-electro-SF!

16/6/2012 03:35:50 pm

In trying to compile my own soundtrack for this project I've been thinking about whether particular styles of music (or artists, or albums) could represent different digital spaces. I've been thinking that the perfect soundtrack to Second Life would be an Ennio Morricone score from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. The panoramic spaces, the blowing wind, a sense of tension or uncertainty, towns that have become depopulated since the original prospectors moved on (or out altogether).

In my head I'm listening to 'Man with a Harmonica' from Once Upon A Time in the West. But reading your comments here Hugh, it strikes me that 'Ghost Town' by The Specials could fit Second Life for all the same reasons. Maybe it's because that song too was concerned with decay and depopulation and had the same sense of menace to be found in Ennio Morricone's work (and Leone's films and - for me- in Second Life).

Next time I step out in Second Life, I think my avatar will be wearing sta press and a Harrington jacket.

Jeremy Knox

20/6/2012 12:46:42 pm

I'm really enjoying the playlist Hugh, great work, and the liner notes are an education in themselves. Fantastic thread too that has got me thinking about resistance in relation to learning. So often learning seems to be framed as some kind of totality – 'no matter what we are doing, we are always learning' – so the neuroscientists tell us, but that seems to prevent the possibility of resistance. Surely there should be space for people to resist learning? This playlist seems to work with such opposition, manifesting lines of flight away from the striated and the colonised. Many of the tracks seem to embody a sense of hybridity, breaking from the establishment to mesh and mingle with new sounds, shaping new formations from which resistance can again be sought. This seems to speak of a learning, not as an arrival or totality, but as a process – one of persistent colonisation and resistance.

I think there is something really interesting about the way music genres form, and are classified as such – which is perhaps a bit divergent from the soundtrack-to-learn-by theme, but interesting all the same. The way that musical forms (and particular affordances of their specific instruments and technologies) influence and effect one another, hybridise and determine new and unintended associations, seems to be a fruitful way to think about educational processes...I think I'll have another listen to the playlist! Thanks Hugh!

Hugh link

21/6/2012 01:09:03 am

Too kind, chaps!

I'm even thinking about compiling a B-Sides accompianment because I have been so inspired by this project...

21/6/2012 07:38:48 pm

Why go for a B-sides when you can wait a few years and repackage it as a Legacy Edition, Hugh?

Actually, I think legacy editions are a great invention. Basically, I'm too lazy to dig my Saint Etienne CD singles out of storage, so I love that they're conveniently being repackaged alongside some reflection in the liner notes about the significance of the original album that I didn't appreciate at the time.

What androids really dream about

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