When Digital cameras first featured a ‘video mode’ button no one really took it seriously.  By common consent a Digital Camera was only ever going to be a poor imitation of a proper video camera.  Things have moved on though, and the creative possibilities derived from having more control of your lense – something intrinsic to DSLRs – are only now being realised.  It’s exciting because it’s now possible to carry one machine that will take amazing photos and video.  For those of us looking to travel light to far flung corners of the world and record what we find, it’s nothing short of a revolution.   Maybe one day I’ll be able to afford one!

Here’s a video by the camp4collective shooting with Canon’s 7D…

“As It Happens” from camp4 collective on Vimeo.

So this is an opportunity to share great things.  As an musical instrument maker that’s attempting to break new ground I can stand back and applaud people doing similar things in other fields.  With that in mind I’m posting this recent mix recorded by Magnetic Man (skream, Artwork and Benga) for BBC radio.  Challenging? For sure.  Creative? Definitely. Fantastic? I’d say so.  You might need some big speakers though!  >> listen

One of several books I finished reading recently is Scott Belsky’s ‘Making Ideas Happen’.  It introduces some ideas at odds with conventional thinking on turning your ideas into reality.  Highly recommended reading for Creatives.

It is all underpinned by the way in which technology now allows individuals to communicate to each other en-mass, not just one or two at a time like a telephone conversation, or like a dozen people at a meeting for example.  The result is that people organise themselves into massive communities with considerable power, enough to undermine the gargantuan corporate companies that have assimilated tremendous power in recent decades.   Thank god is all I can say!  - if you’ve ever seen the Pixar film Wal-E then you can probably see where all that was heading!

There are examples of how the power base is shifting already: In the record industry peer to peer sharing transformed the industry, recorded companies like Sony, Time Warner and EMI were brought to their knees because millions of people decided to work together, and in the process the power shifted from the corporate, to the listener and the musician.  Wikipedia has revolutionised publishing, and Opensource software projects like Linux or Wordpress (this website is a Wordpress website hosted on Linux servers) are both taking lumps out of the corporate giants like Microsoft and Apple.  And this is really just the start of it…

Until now I’ve kept the design ‘under my hat’ so-to-speak – this is certainly the ‘traditional’ way of approaching innovation – show somebody your ideas and they will steal them!  But watching the effect that several big companies with this approach are having, and the recent emergence of collaborative working methods like open source, has caused me to think that there’s a huge amount to be gained from throwing the gates open, documenting our progress, and inviting feedback – so we can harness the expertise of the music community to make the best possible musical instrument we can.  It’s an approach which will stand in complete contrast to the ‘romantic’ vision of a instrument maker, shut away, tirelessly working to perfect their ‘masterpiece’.

In addition to myself, designer Brian Loudon (http://loud1design.co.uk) will be collaborating on the project and it’ll be introduced in more detail and documented on the mk blog.  It offers the opportunity for anyone to get involved with the design and testing of a next generation musical instrument.  I for one am excited by what we might come up with.

Dougald comments: ‘this is one of the most inspiring ski photos I’ve ever seen‘, and I tend to agree.   I can’t imagine the heavyweight  ski championships are like the heavyweight boxing championships in terms of recognition and rewards.  I mention this because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about motivations.  It seems that it’s one thing to push yourself when you know you will get a lot of recognition from it – say for example an Olympic medal – but it’s another entirely when any recognition will be negligible.

To me it seems these stories are almost more interesting, inspiring and admirable.  Some people need to battle through their entire lives just to survive.

” In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina have collaborated to create an animated short film using the original interview recording as the soundtrack. A spellbinding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit and timeless message, I Met the Walrus was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short and won the 2009 Emmy for ‘New Approaches’ (making it the first film to win an Emmy on behalf of the internet). ”

I don’t think it’ll take you long to realise why his work is worthy of mention, but for me, what comes through is his personality.  I get the impression he is never trying to impose himself on the situation, and therefore the result is something which both un-contrived and beautifully effortless.   In this day and age it’s great to see such strong content that relies so little little on digital manipulation.  Check out Jimmy’s  website and blog.