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Celerity

Celerity's Journal
Celerity's Journal
October 7, 2021

Invisible Studio installs waterside bee house at Somerset hotel

https://www.dezeen.com/2021/10/05/beezantium-invisible-studio-bee-house-the-newt-in-somerset/



Invisible Studio has unveiled the Beezantium, a lakeside apiary for honey bees in the grounds of The Newt hotel in Somerset. With a hive built into its walls, the Beezantium is designed to house a bee colony, but also serve as an exhibition centre for hotel guests and visitors. Invisible Studio founder Piers Taylor designed the building as "a folly in the landscape", referencing the whimsical pavilions that have been created in English formal gardens for centuries. The design features various sculptural flourishes, including a curving roof clad in copper shingles and punctured by oval-shaped windows.





Other details are designed to suit the building's practical function, for instance, the walls are clad in large panels of unseasoned oak that offer natural holes for the bees to enter through. A system of copper pipes has also been built into the building's structure, to make it easier for bees to fly in and out. "The Beezantium has been designed to provide a sensory, otherworldly experience," said Taylor. "It appears jewel-like, quirky and playful, almost like a folly with a glowing copper roof. But instead of being only about pleasure, the Beezantium is a purposeful building designed to house bees in observation hives in the external walls."





The apiary was designed in collaboration with beekeeper Paula Carnell and includes habitats for wild bees, solitary bees and other species. "There are numerous smaller habitats in the apiary provided for wild bees and solitary bees and the hives that were relocated into the apiary were wild swarms that already existed locally but needed to be moved as in various cases trees they were in had fallen," explained Taylor. "Also, we designed the cladding specifically to encourage the creation of habitats for other species!" The Newt in Somerset is located at Hadspen House, a former country house with an 18-hectare estate in rural Somerset.





The site chosen for the Beezantium was previously used as a rubbish tip. But Taylor and the hotel owners, Karen Roos and Koos Bekker, felt that a waterside location would suit the building well. "Lakes feature prominently in the tradition of follies," said Taylor. "Also we wanted the surprise of entering a building that looks small from a distance, but is much larger when you enter," he continued. "Then there's a surprise at the end, when you've moved through the exhibition, and the landscape is presented through a bay window."





Invisible Studio worked with Dutch design agency Kossmanndejong on the interior and exhibition design. With the apiary in the walls, there was plenty of space in the centre of the room for an interactive showcase featuring hexagonal education panels and a large seating pod. The yellow tones of the exhibition complement the walls, which are lined in slats of polished honey oak. The space is naturally lit, thanks a skylight overhead and the large bay window.







October 7, 2021

Michael Burns Pres. Blue Haze ‎- Into Nothing (Hamel's Last Time For 9 Vox Mix) 💙



RIP Bill Hamel (January 17, 1973 – June 29, 2018)

Label:
Saw Recordings – SAW34
Format:
Vinyl, 12"
Country:
US
Released:
7 May 2004
Genre:
Electronic
Style:
Progressive House



October 7, 2021

Gui Boratto - Beautiful Life 🧡



Empalme Lobos, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Label:
Kompakt – KOM 152
Format:
2 x Vinyl, 12", Album
Country:
Germany
Released:
Feb 2007
Genre:
Electronic
Style:
Tech House, Minimal







October 7, 2021

What Happened When Facebook Became Boomerbook

Leaked documents reveal that a company that was once rebellious and optimistic is now bloated, regretful, and uncool.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-midlife-crisis-boomerbook/620307/



Sometimes it’s hard to remember that Facebook is only 17 years old: If it were a person, it could drive but not drink. If Facebook were a person, it would also be fabulously wealthy, incredibly successful, and exhaustingly argumentative. And it probably wouldn’t use Facebook. The disclosures in The Wall Street Journal’sFacebook Files,” leaked by a whistleblower named Frances Haugen, are incendiary. But one of them probably troubles the company’s executives more than yesterday’s service outage, the proliferation of fake news, or even suggestions that Facebook stoked the Capitol riot and violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. According to the company’s own research, young people think Facebook is uncool. In a statement that will chill the heart of anyone who remembers cassette tapes and the original version of Baywatch, one 11-year-old boy told the company’s researchers: “Facebook is for old people—old as in 40.” The statistics bear out that assessment. Five million U.S. teenagers log in to Facebook every day, compared with 22 million for Instagram, according to the materials leaked to The Journal.

Most teens I know regard Facebook as the place where their parents go to argue about politics and their grandparents post vacation pictures. And which self-respecting member of Generation Z wants to hang out in an old folks’ home? So it’s goodbye to Boomerbook, and hello to TikTok or Instagram instead. (There is some consolation in this for the company because Instagram, like the messaging platform WhatsApp, is also owned by Facebook.) Facebook’s gray shift should change how we talk about the company’s effect on society, and about social media more generally. This isn’t a young person’s problem. Yes, teenagers are particularly susceptible to peer pressure and the social contagions of suicide and self-harm. The “Facebook Files” included an internal study into how Instagram makes teenage girls feel about their body image (not good), while TikTok and YouTube appear to be driving sociogenic illness—what was once called mass hysteria—among the same demographic. But social-media companies are no longer new, and their users are no longer early adopters. Too much focus on impressionable youngsters obscures research such as the 2019 study of Facebook that found that people older than 65 were the most likely to share links to sites that regularly published false stories. (Around the 2016 presidential election, 11 percent of over-65ers shared links to fake news, but only 3 percent of those ages 18 to 29 did so.) Whatever social media is doing, it’s doing it to all of us.

In my own experience, young people who have never known a world without social media are more attuned to its downsides. They might have lived through a sexting scandal at school, or seen a video of bullying passed around by their peers on WhatsApp, and many correctly regard rage-tweeting as a risk equivalent to volunteering for land-mine clearance. One of Facebook’s own researchers found that older children counsel younger ones not to post content they might regret. The Journal quoted the researcher suggesting further studies “to understand if this influence over preteen sharing holds at scale. If it is common that teens are discouraging preteens from sharing, there are obvious implications for creation and the ecosystem both in the near and longer-term as preteens are the next generation coming onto the platform.” Facebook is just not built for teenage lives. Mark Zuckerberg might have created its predecessor site to help horny Harvard students rate the hotness of people in nearby dormitories, but Facebook has now become a way to keep in touch with everyone we have left behind in life: the former flatmates, the ex-colleagues, the couples who have disappeared from parties since they had a baby. Facebook is partly about keeping up with people you used to know. You don’t have so many of those people when you’re 15.

The company is well aware of this gray shift and its potential consequences. The creepiest parts of the “Facebook Files” are the documents detailing the company’s attempts to create alternative products for ever-younger users. American law forbids the collection of consumer data on under-13s, so social-media companies cannot encourage or actively tolerate tweens using their adult platforms. That’s why Instagram discussed developing Instagram Kids—a platform for 10-to-12-year-olds—because, as Instagram head Adam Mosseri reasoned, “the reality is that kids are already online.” That venture has now been paused following a backlash. But why stop at 10-year-olds? The “Facebook Files” also include an internal report from 2019 titled “Exploring Playdates as a Growth Lever,” focused on an app called Messenger Kids, for 6-to-12-year-olds, that has strong parental controls. The report tried to discover whether children were likely to promote Messenger Kids to one another while on playdates, and found that 68 percent of children did not, because their parents “view the app as a way for kids to communicate with others when they’re not together.” You can almost hear the irritation: Why do these brats keep using their flapping human face-holes? Don’t they know there’s a real market opportunity here?

snip
October 7, 2021

Woman, 18, Shot by School Officer Removed From Life Support

An 18-year-old woman shot by a Long Beach school safety officer who fired at a moving car has died after being removed from life support.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2021-10-06/woman-18-shot-by-school-officer-removed-from-life-support

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — An 18-year-old woman shot by a Long Beach school safety officer who fired at a moving car has died after being removed from life support, her family announced Wednesday. Manuela “Mona" Rodriguez died Tuesday and her heart, liver, lungs and two kidneys were donated to five people for transplants, a family statement said.

Rodriguez, the mother of a 5-month-old son, was shot in the back of the head on Sept. 27 in a parking lot near Millikan High School in Long Beach. She was sitting in the passenger seat of a car that was driving away after Rodriguez had gotten into a fight with a 15-year-old girl, police have said. Rodriguez was believed to have started the dispute and her partner, Rafeul Chowdhury, 20, and his 16-year-old brother may have been involved, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Video posted online appeared to show the Long Beach Unified School District safety officer firing at least two shots as the car moved off next to him. At least one bullet pierced a window. School safety officers aren't permitted to fire at a moving vehicle or at fleeing suspects, according to a use-of-force policy from Long Beach Unified School District’s school safety office. Firearms may be discharged only when reasonably necessary and justified under the circumstances, such as self-defense and the protection of others, the policy states.

The officer has been placed on administrative leave while the shooting is investigated by police and the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Rodriguez's family said she wasn't armed and posed no danger to the safety officer. The family wants the officer to be prosecuted for murder. “This school safety officer decided he was going to be the judge, jury and the executioner,” a brother, Omar Rodriguez, said at a news conference Tuesday.

snip

https://twitter.com/sixxisdesigns/status/1443619378197565449
October 6, 2021

Newcastle takeover: Saudi Arabian-backed deal is close

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/58821131

A Saudi Arabian takeover of Newcastle United is close to being agreed. Approval from the Premier League could possibly come in the next 24 hours after the consortium proved the Saudi state would not have control of the club. Instead the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is set to provide 80% of funds for the £300m deal, will be seen as separate to the state and therefore allow the takeover to pass the Premier League owners' and directors' test. It was believed that a resolution came after Saudi Arabia settled an alleged piracy dispute with Qatar-based broadcaster beIN Sports, which own rights to show Premier League matches in the Middle East. But sources have told BBC Sport that an agreement between the Premier League and the consortium was found prior to the news emerging on Wednesday, with the two parties being set for arbitration on 3 January.

The Saudi Arabian state has been accused of human rights abuses, but with the majority owner PIF deemed a separate entity that, and any piracy issues, are no longer an impediment to the takeover in the Premier League's view. The news will delight the fanbase after a Newcastle United Supporters' Trust survey on Tuesday showed that 93% of its members were in favour of the takeover. Many fans want current owner Mike Ashley to leave the club after a 14-year reign, which they believe has been plagued by a lack of investment and ambition. The Premier League and Newcastle have declined to comment. Whatever the reason for the resolution between the consortium, fronted by financier Amanda Staveley, and the Premier League, it is set to end an 18-month saga.

A deal had been agreed in April 2020 between Newcastle and the buyers, which also includes Staveley's PCP Capital Partners and the Reuben brothers, but they walked away four months later when the Premier League offered arbitration to settle a disagreement on who would control the club. That would decide whether PIF was separate to the Saudi state and therefore if it would pass the league's owners' and directors' test, which measures the suitability of owners at a club. It has been unclear if alleged piracy or alleged human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia were the central issue, but they have been rendered immaterial now that PIF is regarded as a different entity. That is despite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also being chair of PIF and being accused of ordering the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the Kingdom's leader denies. The breakthrough in the takeover coincides with news that came earlier on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia will cease showing Premier League and other football matches illegally via beoutQ and lift its four-and-a-half year ban on showing beIN Sports.

The Qatari broadcaster is currently in the middle of a £400m deal to show Premier League games in the Middle East and North Africa region over three years and the issue became subject of a World Trade Organisation report in June 2020, which said Saudi Arabia helped break international piracy laws. Premier League chief executive Richard Masters also said in a letter in August 2020 that intellectual property rights were "critically important to the league's commercial interests". BeIN Sports' link to the takeover was also raised in Newcastle's Competition Appeal Tribunal last week where it was alleged by lawyers that it and other Premier League clubs had "improperly influenced" the league into blocking the takeover based on its deal to show matches. The claims came from Daniel Jowell QC, who was acting on behalf of St James Holdings, which wholly own shares for Newcastle and is also owned by club boss Mike Ashley. A decision on that hearing is yet to be announced and could become redundant if the takeover is approved.

snip
October 6, 2021

We Call It Skweee - Full Documentary

vimeo.com/78212231

Here comes the full version of We Call It Skweee!!!
-A film about music, people and scandinavia
by Iacopo Patierno and David Giese

"It's basic elements, like love, dancing,
and sine-waves."
-Eero Johannes

In early 2008, the Italian filmmaker Iacopo Patierno arrived in Stockholm to assist Erik
Gandini on his film "Videocracy". While in Sweden he discovered the quirky scandinavian
electro style Skweee and befriended some of its practitioners.

Patierno became fascinated with the music as well as the
determination and individuality of the artists involved. Camera in hand, he decided to
follow some of the central Skweee artists for a year, starting in the functionalist Stockholm
suburbs, traversing the Baltic to Helsinki, and eventually tripping down to Barcelona's
legendary Sonar festival, where eight Swedish and Finnish artists were invited to
represent the scene.

"The film is a foreigner's view on a sub-culture
that in many ways mirrors what my understanding is
of what it means to be Scandinavian",
says Patierno.

Participating artists: Randy Barracuda, Eero Johannes, Daniel Savio, Joxaren,
Pavan, Mesak, Rigas den Andre, S.L.A and others.

If you read the description so far we'd like to thank you very much, David will sing you a personal song and Iacopo will cook you a lasagna

Fuck Trump





https://web.archive.org/web/20111007162522/http://skweee.com/he-called-it-skweee

Our first post of 2009, which genre founder Pavan has boldly predicted will be The Year of the Skweee, is fittingly an interview with the man who coined the name “skweee”. Sweden’s Kool DJ Dust a.k.a. Daniel Savio was the first skweee DJ and its second producer. Like many of the style’s pioneers he had already carved a musical niche for himself when in 2006 he was captured by the vision of Pavan to chart a new direction and sound.

Skweeelicious: Let’s begin with your pre-skweee days. What sorts of music were you producing and DJing?

Daniel Savio: I have been DJing since the mid-nineties and buying records since my early childhood. It all goes back to my love for hip hop music and culture. Graffiti was my main thing but I also had some attempts to rap and dance (crazy fake breaking). So hip hop I would say is my main influence and when I started DJing it was all about hip hop. But early on I was curious about the old school breaks/originals/samples so from that I got into funk, soul, disco, rock and of course the early electro stuff like Kraftwerk and Arthur Baker, Paul Hardcastle, etc, etc.

On the production tip I bought an ASR10 on my 18th birthday and started sampling loops and stuff. I’ve always been heavy into crate digging. I had a Fostex 4-track and recorded some raps. Later on me and my friend Mighty Thor (Drumcode etc) who was very much into house and techno started to DJ together at a local joint. I discovered that much of his house stuff was based on old rhythms and grooves from the disco stuff I had, and he opened my eyes to “contemporary dance music” which I understood in a deeper meaning was an extension of hip hop music. So with the understanding that house and techno was in fact hip hop, me and Mighty Thor started making music together. We did a white label 12 inch in ’99 and later went on to form the trio Hundarna Fran Soder releasing two albums (one of which received a Grammy in 2004) and some EP’s and 12?s until 2006.

S: I’ve heard a couple of your pre-skweee productions and it seems the seeds of skweee were there. It was kind of neo-soul, downtempo, hip-hopish.

D: Thank you! Skweee comes natural for me, ha ha. Most of the stuff I have produced outside Hundarna Fran Soder has been sample-based beats stuff.

S: Is it true you coined the term skweee? How did it come about?

D: Yes, I came up with the name and to some extent also the definition. Pavan, who always had a somewhat quirky style that was hard to pin down, started the whole thing when he did the first Flogsta 45. He didn´t have a name for it or a definition. I feel that he himself didn’t realize how unique his style really was and I felt that he had something really big going for himself. We had a dialogue about it and started to debate whether it was a new style and what to call it.

I had just gotten a new synthesizer, the Roland Alpha Juno1 and fell in love with it. My idea was to make a couple of tracks using nothing but the Juno for drums and everything. I came up with the name, (I originally spelled it squee) while trying to squeeze the juice out of my Juno till the last drop. That was my first 7 inch for Flogsta Danshall and the first tracks I did using the skweee formula – “Bubble Bump” and “Yu Love Bibimbab” at 106 bpm.

Pavan wanted to call it “prim” (primitive), but Randy Barracuda recognized that my name was stronger. So there was skweee. After that me and Pavan went to Helsinki to play at a party and hang out with Randy and Mesak and a bunch of other funky Finns.

S: There is a DJ Dust mix kicking around the internet called Skweee Mix 1. Obviously it’s from the early days of skweee when there were only a few producers and really only a handful of tracks. When was it done and what is the story on that?

D: I don’t remember exactly when I recorded it but it was for a Swedish magazine. They didn’t understand anything and sort of dissed the whole thing which is why I don’t mention those non-believers.

S: Is there a story behind your anthem “We Call It Skweee”?

D: I had been making skweee for a while and everything was sort of on and popping and bubbling, like it still feels, and Harmönia was compiling their second 12 inch release. So I decided to make a track dedicated to this “brand new funky sound… we call skweee”. And since I baptized the funk I thought it would be up to me to hold the sermon too.



S: Skweee is still a relatively small scene but in a couple of years it went from zero to several showcases at international festivals. How has it been for you being part of the evolution of a new style of music?

D: It’s been great but unfortunately I hadn’t had a chance to enjoy some of it cause I didn’t have any way of performing live until quite recently. And also I feel I have been a bit slept on for some reason. In 2009 there wont be any time for sleeping though, it will be all about skweeeing and since my album will be out, hopefully I wont be forgotten.

S: Tell us about the Daniel Savio LP. How many tracks will it be? What format? All skweee or a mix of styles?

D: Oh, yes! Its called “Dirty Bomb” and its a 10 song all skweee album (the world’s first) on vinyl. So its a dream come true for me. It will be out in early 2009, February/March. I have been working on it for a couple of years.

S: Have you DJ’d skweee to audiences unfamiliar with the music? What has been the reaction?

D: Every single weekend. Reactions differ, generally people who are into electronic stuff really like it, but what makes me most happy is when people who are into R&B and commercial rap go crazy on the dancefloor to some fresh skweee. Because that gives me confidence that skweee will blow up for real, since most people who are into “MTV-music” are really ignorant most of the time and don’t have much knowledge about deep electronic music or real hip hop. So when they appreciate it that really makes me happy.

S: Skweee seems to have many sub-styles from funky dancefloor to crazy dissonant noise. You’ve produced several skweee sub-styles yourself – from middle-eastern flavors to funky vocals to “emo skweee”.

D: I think it’s all good. Now there is a bunch of real skweee stuff out so it makes it easier to make mixes and play records which is great. And the sub-styles make it diverse and more interesting.

S: There’s a lot of skweee-like music being made under various names – downtempo tracks with funky irregular rhythms. Do you think skweee is part of a larger movement that will perhaps come together?

D: Hopefully yes.

S: Pavan has predicted that skweee will blow up in 2009. What do you think?

D: Couldn’t agree with him more, Pavan is a man of few words and he doesn’t talk shit.

S: Let’s talk about gear a bit. On the production side what are you using in the studio and live?

D: My home studio consists of: Roland Alpha Juno1, ASR10, Korg Poly 800, MPC1000, Yamaha CS1. And cracked Cubase on a crappy PC. When I play live I use the MPC1000 and Juno1 and when I get the feeling also a microphone.

S: How about DJ-wise – tables, CDJ’s or software?

D: I play mainly vinyl but sometimes I use CD’s if it aint out on vinyl.

S: Finally, what are your plans for 2009 and beyond?

D: I will try to DJ and perform live as much as I possibly can. I really cant wait for “Dirty Bomb” to drop, I am super pleased with it and I hope the skweee heads will like it too. I have already started to record my second album and it will be ready mid 2009, the plan is to have one out every year. Also be on the lookout for me and Pavan’s Vakttornet project, we will record some more stuff and also do some live stuff. So 2009 will be hectic, Skweee-alistic and funky fresh!

Profile Information

Gender: Female
Hometown: London
Home country: US/UK/Sweden
Current location: Stockholm, Sweden
Member since: Sun Jul 1, 2018, 07:25 PM
Number of posts: 43,257

About Celerity

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