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Findings: Movement and music

Canadian music professor Bob Pritchard has a tech fix for what ails live electronic music: it’s not sufficiently alive. His solution is to fuse technology with dance, in an “laptop orchestra” composed of musicians, dancers, composers, programmers and hardware specialists, drawn from both Arts and Science and Engineering at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Pritchard and 17 students in the university music school’s Laptop Orchestra use body movements to prompt synthetic instruments to make sounds, effectively turning moving humans into musical instruments. “They strap motion sensors to their bodies and instruments, play wearable iPhone instruments, swing Nintendo Wiis

Iran’s President on a High Wire

International affairs analyst Jonathan Manthorpe writes in today’s column that Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani is performing a dangerous high wire act. An excerpt: As talks resume in Vienna today for a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, it is increasingly apparent that only political and social reform will deliver the ultimate guarantee that Tehran does not build atomic weapons. And that outcome depends almost entirely on the skills of Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani. He undoubtedly has reformist instincts and has the support of many Iranians who want to see a lifting of the political and social repression orchestrated by

Climate change: the Pointy End of Hope

The effects of human-caused climate change are already evident on all continents and waters, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its latest report March 31. The report is, undeniably, grim: agriculture, human health, water and land-based ecosystems, water supplies, and some livelihoods are already affected. There is much we don’t know, it said. Surprises are in store, it warned. Some analysts forecast wars, famine and massive destruction. But the report also held out hope: there are opportunities to take action — challenging opportunities.  Canadian environmental activist Tzeporah Berman is an expert on facing such challenges, with experience gleaned

In the far north, the future is here

The biggest world news has concerned the release of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warning that climate change is already experienced worldwide. But what instead drew the attention of Natural Security columnist Chris Wood was a research paper that has received little attention. It’s focused on the Mackenzie River delta in the Canadian Arctic, a “vast, lake-studded river delta that is the northern nursery for millions of migratory birds and the primary source of biological nutrients to the Beaufort Sea.” Notes Wood:  forecasters have warned of catastrophe should the Mackenzie warm, as has been predicted,

McNiven on the New World of Book Publishing

Jim McNiven, author and academic — and now book marketer — reflects on how publishing has changed since he first began writing academic books. An excerpt: Mimi’s is a restaurant chain in the southwestern United States that my wife, Jane, and I like for lunch. It has a good soup and sandwich combo within a kind of French décor. Last week we went there for a bit of a celebration, of my signing of an agreement to publish a book, The Yankee Road.  The reason for mentioning the lunch is to mark my experience with book publishing — and how

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