All the phonemes

In the past year I have spent a LOT of time cutting up pre-recorded text to make new words for projects such as "Chaliff Lifestory" and "Room-Record" and going back to obscure video projects I did years ago.

Because I will have to do this kind of activity again to create "Anomalies" (audio clues for the B L A C K C L O U D project), I was thinking about how I could record all the phonemes in English in one fell swoop.

Phonemes are the basic SOUNDS of the language. This is different from the letters of the alphabet (everyone knows about the quick brown fox).

I started looking for a sentence (or paragraph) that used all the phonemes from English. I've seen it called a "panphonic" sentence. I found a lot of false leads, but here is the only true attempt I've been able to locate.

The pleasure of Shawn’s company
Is what I most enjoy.
He put a tack on Ms. Yancey’s chair
When she called him a horrible boy.
At the end of the month he was flinging two kittens
Across the width of the room.
I count on his schemes to show me a way now
Of getting away from my gloom.

Wonderful Maxwell's Silver Hammer feeling!

Thanks to Literal-Minded, a neat-looking linguistics blog. Check it out to read the interesting backstory on this... Involves Philip K. Dick, yo!

Of course, I've read in Linguistics books and learned from experience editing that consonants can't be separated from the vowels that follow them, and there are lots of other issues such as guttural stops, gliding vowels, etc. S o this sentence would have to be rapidly expanded to account for all these things. However, Literal-Minded gets mad points (and a reader) for acknowledging this in an intelligent way. There is no conclusion on these things, but I'm happy someone else is thinking about them...

I wonder if a true panphonic sentence has been developed by companies that develop automated voices for phonebots? Perhaps they have an approach that is a tad more practical and less fun but, whatever, I want to be able to use it myself!

Tis a bummer these things are proprietary. I wish this information was out there - it would allow me to be more productive and entertain(ing/ed).

Jam Cast

Did my spit not grow up to be watermelon?

I'm digging failure now, but it's not now. I'm terribly tired of imagining without a router. A whirling one, a whirling one.

I'm alright but I want to listen to music so bad. I wonder what kind of timeline we're on?

Gimmicks and Stunts.

I know there is a way! Shredding it and throwing it up in the air? Cutting the edges off sloppily? Maybe I can drag it around a crazy screen free from the desktop leaving eternal blink echoes all round?

The universe has a shape you know. A funnel on top of a tree on top of a globe with water shooting yellow snaking hungry sunshine wavelet meshwork patterns all over the background. But that's not it, not it. Need a new one, image it and it's untrue. Maybe we imagine a donut and we're in it. This part is my kingdom, that red sprinkle behind the yellow one? That's my castle. No no, sadly no.

I hear music, but it's oh so far away and like a mechanical bellows. Not something you can hold onto at all at all.

I've been thinking production, but really the fascination in in translucency. Or nudity. Or hungry metal-mouthed monsters.

The big bang is one thing in a Y. There are countless other things that fit that fuzzy set. An infinity wouldn't never fit on your harddrive.

The brain is not digital, nor can it be simplified and simulated as digital. The first mechanical mind will be made by Moog or Korg; it's a damn fine day for a race. There are such things as clouds and impossible paradoxes, there are still unknown forces at work.

How do you reach out? How do you leave a record? If you take the path of forgetting to remember that there are hard things out there, then you can really manipulate the system with your fantasies, but it is immoral. If the universe was shaped destructively you would be barren, but shapeless you'd bloom. But what's the freakin' point of flowers in a dark loop, right?

Oh - so maybe if I use words and mechanically substitute the wrong ones and keep it secret from myself. Never tell me. Then would I be morally culpable? What if the mechanics were in my brain, in between my thought and action? Is there a border there or is it two tribes with strong centers? Or no centers? These things aren't written on paper!

Hollowness reminds us of secrets by metaphor.

Metaphors are difficult to reverse-engineer in detailed contemplation - our current "up down warm cold in out" simplifications don't count as productive chases - only rigid terrible thought.

The new academic does not allow themselves to be tortured by rigid edges, but instead sinks into the ocean of all the possible attention fields. "In and out" is a basic yeah, but you need go through the tree by the branches, not the roots.

Sort by likes, isolate, modify, multiply. Remember to leave the edges fuzzy.

What does it mean to be lazy? Sympathy for rocks and sticks is one definition - letting loose - so deeply sucked into the tiny stark details of the real that the center gets fuzzy. The opposite of this state is not fuzzy but pixelly, a staged shot from a step back and a heart attack. This is what is called strength of self, purpose, hard-edged abstraction. Where does the cruelty emerge? Where is it torn away?

Cloudy cloud, how do you live in the air? I can see invisible dangers with my prototype omniscient eye - they are pixelly. If I had my way I'd eat candy all day, but I don't have time for you Cloudy, go away. I'm trying to be a modern person, go away.

Baby Blue!

This is AWESOME! I thought that H-dogg, U would especially dig this.



I guess I had this idea that his voice was just naturally high - like he was some thin-lunged freak of nature. I was going to say that I was disappointed, but seeing his studio - whoa!

Jammies 01

Talks too much...


blackcloud.org

Black Cloud

Hello people!

I have finished the bear's share of my work for the semester and I plan to be posting here more often!

I am very excited to share something truly extraordinary with you!

We live in a culture that is completely saturated with "believe" media that is designed by the state to make your mind soft and easy to manipulate (I'm talking about all those shows that claim that "investigate" aliens, ghosts, and psy powers). Because of this, it is difficult to talk about truly mind-bending yet scientifically-verifiable phenomena. One risks looking like a yutz...

In the Bay Area over the past several months or so, several witnesses have reported seeing something in the sky that they could not explain. Recently the number of sightings has increased dramatically! Apparently the atmospheric phenomenon looks like a dark cloud of smoke, which in itself is not unusual, but this smoke seems to move with a sense of purpose from place to place, not drift along with the wind... Now, this isn't "X-files"- I don't want to say that I have any idea what is going on here, but neither can I discount the stories shared by so many - all the details that have emerged have been eerily consistent...

To this end, I have been working with the Berkeley BID lab, who are designing sensor-boxes to track this phenomena, which the popular media has dubbed the "Black Cloud." I want to tell you all about it, but there are SO MANY details that I think you should just head over to www.blackcloud.org and read for yourselves! Honestly, this is worth your time!

As for my involvement, I should probably be discrete about it, and so should you.

Sooner!