The Bunge

I was walking to the nearby coffee shop when I heard a strange yet familiar sound coming from the third floor church window along the way. A few years ago I took a world music class that had a section on the old timey tradition of Shape Note singing and I had a feeling that what they were singing. I went up stairs and this video is what I found. Here’s a five minute taste of Shape Note singing with an explanation of how it works and its history.

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Shape Note recently gained some popularity after the movie Cold Mountain had a scene were a congregation was singing out the songs of the “Sacred Harp.” My world music teacher and her husband were the muscial directors in the movie and even had some of their songs featured on the Cold Mountain Soundtrack along side Jack White (of the White Stripes), Riley Baugus and Tim O’Brien. The movie’s soundtrack was nominated for 2 Golden Globes, 3 Oscars, and 3 Grammies.

This street interview discusses panhandling and street entertainment and legality behind it. Plus, there’s some singing for your enjoyment. I went out with a camera to do consumer insight interviews for an intern project, but took a tangent talking with Eric about singing in the street.

Here are three applications that allow you to search visually news, status updates, videos, pictures etc. in cool new ways.

PicLens lets you search for photos and videos in 3-D and in full screen. This web browser add-on makes it way easier to search for things with out paging through a website and its also makes it much more fun. Its like apple’s coverflow to another dimension. Once you download the add-on a blue box in the upper right corner will light up when a page is viewable with PicLens.

Digg labs web applications organize all the news items on Digg visually. With Digg Stack, the stories are bar graphs that get taller given the amount of Diggs, so you can watch stories grow. Digg Swarm creates circles around stories that get bigger as they are dugg. All of these applications can be accessed online or used as a screensaver.

Twittervision and Flickrvision allow you to see what people are seeing and saying in real time around the world. Using google maps or a 3-D map this program shows you exactly where tweets and photos are coming from. It can get addicting. You can view it on a browser or download the screensaver. They also have a local version that only shows what is going on in your specific area. There is no way I know of to see only my friends on the map and have multiple tweets or photos up at a time. I imagine these programs will get cooler and developed as GPS is becoming more common in cell phones.

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Here’s a beautiful video of Bon Iver playing in an apartment in Paris. There’s one HD camera and I love the uncut intimacy it captures. I’ve been listening to Emma, Forever Ago, his most recent release nonstop. The album was recorded in a cabin in Eau Claire, WI during the “spring thaw” hence the name Bon (H)iver meaning good winter in french. It has a recording style and sound unlike anything I’ve heard before. Check it.