Barack Obama
Articles about Barack Obama:
Tara Rodgers (Analog Tara) synthesizes music from images.
This MP3 is an Aerial View of Inauguration, in Sound:
An occasional song:
Aerial view of the National Mall, Washington DC on Inauguration Day, with RGB color data from each pixel converted to sound and noise.
Image is resized to 160×30 pixels; each line plays back left to right in stereo, from top to bottom in the photo.
via disquiet
We generally avoid politics at Synthtopia, but Time Magazine’s Joe Klein has penned an interesting take on Obama’s February 24 speech to Congress that’s relevant to synthesis.
In the article, Klein call’s Obama’s speech “A Tonal Masterpiece“, and compares the qualities of recent presidents as synthesizers:
The modern presidency is a vast electronic synthesizer, capable of exhilarating musical effects or rank cacophony. The President needs to be able to throw his voice in a variety of ways — now sober, now soaring, now educating, now soothing.
George W. Bush’s presidency was straitjacketed by his inability to command any style but clenched orotundity. The two great television-era communicators in the office were yin and yang: Bill Clinton was a master of the conversational, not so good at set-piece speeches; Ronald Reagan just the opposite.
Barack Obama has now demonstrated an ability to synthesize those two. On the day before his budget speech, the President was positively Clintonesque, interacting easily with a gang of high-powered political and business leaders at his entitlement summit, alternately ribbing Eric Cantor, the House Republican, about GOP intransigence, then wonking out on defense procurement policy with Senators Susan Collins and John McCain.
If the entitlement summit was a conversational concerto, the budget speech was a full-blown symphony featuring a percussive series of simple declarative sentences that conveyed a sense of command, especially in the emotional heart of the speech, the section on banking reform.
While Obama did do a great job with his speech (at least, as a speaker), Klein’s direct comparison of Obama to an electronic synthesizer is a little bizarre.
Other writers have compared Obama to a synthesizer, but not in such explicitly musical terms.
Disregarding politics and focusing on Obama’s oratory, do you think it’s valid to compare Obama to a synthesizer?
This is a few days old, but still interesting:
timexile does a live remix/mashup/improv using the BBC World Service live web stream of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech.
In support of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, The Crystal Method has released a new remix of their dance anthem Now Is The Time.
The Vote ‘08 Remix features samples from Obama’s DNC acceptance speech, and is available as a free download from the band’s website. An email address is required to download the free track.
“Like 38 million other Americans, we were transfixed listening to Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. It reminded us of the creative process we went through all those years ago, listening to samples of inspiring old civil rights speeches and creating the original ‘Now Is Time,’” said Crystal Method’s Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland in a statement.
“We don’t often revisit old songs but we’ve been spending so much time looking forward as we work on our new album it seemed appropriate to take a minute to look back at the beginning. Plus, right now no American could be hurt by hearing another inspiring message.”
Barack Obama Is A Synthesizer
Over at Salon, Camille Paglia writes that Barack Obama is a synthesizer:
As an Obama supporter, I of course see things quite differently. Whatever his tactical assertions in the primary trenches, Obama seems to have an open and flexible mind. He is a conciliator and synthesizer, ready to give due respect to opposing views — a grace desperately needed in paralyzed Washington. When the camera comes close — as it did last week when CNN’s terrific Candy Crowley tenaciously grilled him about Hillary Clinton’s prospects for the vice-presidency — his deliberative thought process is plainly visible. What a deft performance under high-stakes pressure: Obama was firm, authoritative and methodical without ever losing his warmth and geniality. The guy is smart as a whip. And his administration will be as good as its appointments. As for Michelle Obama, she is formidable, representing a bold, stylish feminism more authentically contemporary than the old, bellyaching, blame-the-males style of Hillary’s omnipresent cheerleader, Gloria Steinem.
Paglia joins the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan in calling Obama a synthesizer.
And while you still can’t play Lucky Man on Barack Obama, John McCain wants to sell you golf gear.
