Creative Technology Consultants

Here’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. Well, it’s inter­est­ing to me, and maybe some­one who knows about Queu­ing The­o­ry can help me solve it.

Imag­ine you cre­ate a radio sta­tion playlist by select­ing a num­ber of albums (that meet a par­tic­u­lar theme, say) and give you the total run­ning time you want, and then you ran­dom­ize the order of all the tracks on all the albums. A Rule set­ting in your play­out sys­tem does­n’t let it play the same artist more fre­quent­ly than once an hour (ie the “Min­i­mum Artist Sep­a­ra­tion” is 60 min­utes). If the sys­tem’s about to play a track that would break that rule, it moves it down the playlist until it does­n’t break the rule, recog­nis­ing future appear­ances of the same artist (or it removes it an puts it back in the pool). If it can’t move the artist far enough away, it gives up and tell you that it can’t do it.

Is there a for­mu­la that will let you know for a giv­en total run­ning time of playlist (giv­en an aver­age num­ber of tracks on an album, of aver­age run­ning time, and assum­ing each album is by one artist to keep it sim­ple) how many dif­fer­ent artists you will need to give you a high prob­a­bil­i­ty of the Rule nev­er failing?

That’s the ques­tion: here’s the background.

If you decide to run a suit­ably licensed Inter­net Radio sta­tion, some­thing you run into fair­ly quick­ly is a set of claus­es in the Dig­i­tal Mil­len­ni­um Copy­right Act (DMCA), which define how often you can play pieces of music by the same artist and from the same album. In addi­tion to appear­ing in the DMCA, and thus in the terms of the licens­ing arrange­ment with Sound Exchange in the USA, you’ll find sim­i­lar claus­es in the Phono­graph­ic Per­for­mance Lim­it­ed (PPL) Web­cast­ing licence in the UK.

Here’s how Live365 puts the require­ment in their rules for broad­cast­ers:

In any three-hour period:

• you should not inten­tion­al­ly pro­gram more than three songs (and not more than two songs in a row) from the same recording; 
• you should not inten­tion­al­ly pro­gram more than four songs (and not more than three songs in a row) from the same record­ing artist or anthology/box set.

As far as I know, there are no play­out sys­tems out there that actu­al­ly allow you to put these rules in and then makes sure you don’t break them. What we need is a set of check boxes:

Album sep­a­ra­tion: Max­i­mum X songs from same album per Y hours. Max in a row: Z
Artist sep­a­ra­tion: Max­i­mum A songs from same artist per B hours. Max in a row: C

Nobody cur­rent­ly does this. Why not? Any licensed inter­net sta­tion needs to fol­low rules of this type. Cur­rent­ly SAM Broad­cast­er comes clos­est, with the Playlist Rules dia­log shown at the top of the page.

It’s more com­mon to have some­thing more sim­ple. MegaSeg is a very nice Mac­in­tosh-based play­out sys­tem – the one I use – and get­ting bet­ter all the time, but apart from its lack of offi­cial FLAC sup­port (in com­mon with SAM – but luck­i­ly with Megaseg there’s a workaround in the form of the Xiph Quick­time plu­g­ins), one of its few cur­rent fail­ings (due to be addressed in the next release) is that the only set­ting that you can use to help meet the DMCA require­ments is “Artist Sep­a­ra­tion”. So you can define the min­i­mum length of time between plays of the same artist, and that’s it. Set­ting this val­ue to 60 min­utes will stop you break­ing the sec­ond DMCA require­ment, at least, although it’s a lit­tle crude: you have to rely on the fact that most albums are by one artist and man­u­al­ly select mate­r­i­al accord­ing­ly to meet the album rep­e­ti­tion rule.

Once you start try­ing to build playlists that don’t play an artist more than once an hour, you quick­ly dis­cov­er that you need more artists than you thought. Hope­ful­ly it’s pos­si­ble to build a for­mu­la to help you know how many artists you need, and about how many tracks by each.

Any ideas?

Today, March 24 2010, is Ada Lovelace Day, the day when we cel­e­brate women in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and their achieve­ments – typ­i­cal­ly by blog­ging about them. You can find out more about Ada Lovelace Day at the Find­ing Ada web site, but here’s the basic gist:

Ada Lovelace Day was first cel­e­brat­ed in 2009, when over 2,000 peo­ple blogged about women in tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence and the event receive wide media cov­er­age. This year the hope is to get 3,072 peo­ple to do the same. Ada Lovelace Day is organ­ised by Suw Char­man-Ander­son, who writes:

“Augus­ta Ada King, Count­ess of Lovelace was born on 10th Decem­ber 1815, the only child of Lord Byron and his wife, Annabel­la. Born Augus­ta Ada Byron, but now known sim­ply as Ada Lovelace, she wrote the world’s first com­put­er pro­grammes for the Ana­lyt­i­cal Engine, a gen­er­al-pur­pose machine that Charles Bab­bage had invented.”

And there’s plen­ty more where that came from.

The mar­vel­lous logo shown above was cre­at­ed by Syd­ney Pad­ua and Lorin O’Brien and appears on the for­mer’s won­der­ful 2D Gog­gles com­ic web site.

Delia Der­byshire

I’ve been inter­est­ed in elec­tron­ic music for decades, and I sup­pose one of my great­est influ­ences was the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, sad­ly dis­band­ed in March 1998 dur­ing the era of the BBC “inter­nal mar­ket” under Direc­tor-Gen­er­al John Birt, when depart­ments had to oper­ate at a prof­it or close. This result­ed in absur­di­ties like it becom­ing cheap­er to nip down the street from Broad­cast­ing House to HMV in Oxford Street to buy a CD con­tain­ing a piece of music to use in a pro­gramme rather than obtain­ing the track via the BBC Record Library.

Delia Der­byshire (1937–2001) was born in Coven­try, my home town, and com­plet­ed a degree in math­e­mat­ics and music at Gir­ton Col­lege Cam­bridge. In 1959, she famous­ly applied to Dec­ca to work at their record­ing stu­dios in Broad­hurst Gar­dens, West Hamp­stead and was turned down, being told that they did­n’t employ women.

After a stint with the UN in Gene­va and with music pub­lish­er Boosey and Hawkes she joined the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop in 1962, which, in those days before syn­the­sis­ers and sam­plers, was main­ly exper­i­ment­ing with musique con­crète tech­niques, involv­ing record­ing sounds from ordi­nary objects like rulers and lamp­shades and play­ing them back at dif­fer­ent speeds back­wards and for­wards, edit­ing them togeth­er into pieces of music. Below you can see Delia describ­ing her work in this respect.

Most elec­tron­ic music of the time was fair­ly abstract, but as the job of the Work­shop was to pro­vide inci­den­tal and theme music for BBC tele­vi­sion and radio pro­duc­tions, their out­put tend­ed to be a lot more melod­ic and acces­si­ble. Der­byshire is prob­a­bly best known today for her real­i­sa­tion – which amount­ed to co-com­po­si­tion – of Ron Grain­er’s theme for the Dr Who tele­vi­sion series which launched in 1963. How­ev­er one could argue that some of her oth­er work was more sig­nif­i­cant in artis­tic terms, such as her music for Bar­ry Bermange’s work on the BBC Third Pro­gramme. Over­all she pro­vid­ed themes and inci­den­tal music for over 200 radio and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes in the eleven years she worked at the BBC.

She also worked on oth­er projects out­side the Work­shop, includ­ing co-found­ing the Kalei­dophon stu­dio with David Vorhaus and fel­low Work­shop mem­ber Bri­an Hodg­son. The best-known work by this group (known as White Noise) – their first – was the sem­i­nal pop­u­lar elec­tron­ic music album An Elec­tric Storm (1968) released on Island Records. The trio also record­ed mate­r­i­al for the Stan­dard Music pro­duc­tion music library, Delia com­pos­ing under the pen-name “Li De la Russe”.

Hav­ing been away from the music scene for many years, her inter­est was rekin­dled in the late 1990s and she was work­ing on a new album when she passed away as a result of renal fail­ure while recov­er­ing from breast cancer.

You can read a fuller account of Delia Der­byshire’s life and work in this Wikipedia article.

Recent­ly Mark Ayres, BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop Archivist, has been going through the col­lec­tion of her mate­r­i­al held at Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty. BBC Radio 4’s Archive On 4 series is pre­sent­ing a pro­gramme on this work, Sculp­tress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Der­byshire, which goes out on Sat­ur­day 27 March 2010 at 20:00 GMT.

Here’s a bril­liant slide pre­sen­ta­tion post­ed on Slideshare by Mar­ta Kagan, who’s the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Boston office of Espres­so, an inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing agency based in Toron­to and Boston.

I don’t think this pre­sen­ta­tion has all the answers (none of us do, I’d sug­gest), but there are some excel­lent obser­va­tions, start­ing points and, above all, prac­ti­cal strate­gies. I made the fol­low­ing com­ment on the Slideshare page:

Excel­lent. While I might be con­cerned about the pow­er the Live Nation/Ticketmaster com­bo could have over the live envi­ron­ment, I have no doubt that the fun­da­men­tal thrust of your pre­sen­ta­tion is correct.

The chal­lenge for the major­i­ty of musi­cians work­ing today has to be ‘How do I make any mon­ey from music?’ In a world that echoes the days of the devel­op­ment of the print­ing press, where the scribes are already los­ing their jobs but nobody’s quite sure how this new print-based world will pan out, we need all the ideas we can get. We’re build­ing the new world as it hap­pens and there’s a lot to try.

For years the music indus­try has opposed new tech­nol­o­gy: its ques­tion has been ‘How can we stop peo­ple doing this?’ when it should have been, and should be, ‘How do we make mon­ey from this by giv­ing our cus­tomers what they want?’

You’ve pro­vid­ed, if not the answers to that ques­tion, at least a way towards them. Thank you!

The Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my Bill now being rushed through the UK Par­lia­ment is, in my view, a dis­as­ter area of lack of under­stand­ing of the issues.

Ordi­nary peo­ple risk dis­con­nec­tion from the Inter­net — accu­rate­ly described recent­ly as “the fourth util­i­ty”, as vital as gas or elec­tric­i­ty to mod­ern life — with­out due process; sites could be blocked for legit­i­mate users because of alleged infring­ing con­tent. These are just some of the like­ly effects of the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my Bill now being rushed through Par­lia­ment in advance of the elec­tion. And Swedish research indi­cates that mea­sures of this type do noth­ing to reduce piracy.

Pirates will imme­di­ate­ly use prox­ies and oth­er anonymis­ing meth­ods to con­tin­ue what they’re doing: only ordi­nary peo­ple will be affect­ed. It’s quite like­ly that WiFi access points like those in hotels, libraries and cof­fee shops will close down because their own­ers will not want to be held respon­si­ble for any alleged infringement.

This bill will not solve any prob­lems for the indus­try — in fact it’ll cre­ate them. Sup­pose you send a rough mix to a col­lab­o­ra­tor using a file trans­fer sys­tem like YouSendIt. It’s a music file, so pack­et snif­fers your ISP will be oblig­ed to oper­ate will, while invad­ing your pri­va­cy at the same time, encour­age the assump­tion that it’s an infringe­ment. And you may not be able to access YouSendIt in the first place because UK access has been blocked as a result of some­one else’s alleged infringements.

Sup­pose you run an inter­net radio sta­tion. In the UK that requires two licens­es, one from PRS (typ­i­cal­ly the Lim­it­ed Online Exploita­tion Licence or LOEL), and the oth­er a Web­cast­ing licence from PPL. Part of what you pay for the PPL licence is a dub­bing fee that allows you to copy com­mer­cial record­ings to a com­mon library. You might do that in “the cloud” so your DJs — who may be across the coun­try or across the world — can playlist from it, using a ser­vice like Drop­Box. How will the author­i­ties know that your music files are there legal­ly? Do you seri­ous­ly think they’ll check with PPL? Of course not. It’ll be seen as an infringe­ment, and your inter­net access could be blocked first, and ques­tions asked after­wards. You’re off the air and bang goes your busi­ness. Or you may have already lost access to your library because some­one thinks some­one else has post­ed infring­ing mate­r­i­al to the same site.

Worst of all, the bill is being rushed through Par­lia­ment with­out the debate need­ed to get prop­er­ly to grips with the issues.

The bill as it stands will threat­en the growth of a co-cre­ative dig­i­tal economy.

The indus­try bad­ly needs to review its posi­tion. We’ve known since the Warn­ers Home Tap­ing sur­vey in the ear­ly 1980s that the peo­ple who buy music are the peo­ple who share music.  In my view a busi­ness strat­e­gy that makes your cus­tomer the ene­my is not a good one.

The pop­u­la­tion at large believes that a lot of the fig­ures for ille­gal file trans­fer are con­jured out of thin air — a recent report claimed that a quar­ter of a mil­lion UK jobs in cre­ative indus­tries would be lost as a result of pira­cy where in fact there are only 130,000 at present. This does not look good.

The indus­try has a his­to­ry of tak­ing the wrong posi­tion on new tech­nol­o­gy. Gramo­phone records would kill off sheet music sales and live per­for­mance. Air­play would stop peo­ple buy­ing records (how wrong can you be?). And so on. The indus­try atti­tude to new tech­nol­o­gy seems to be “How do we stop it?” We should instead be ask­ing “How do we use this tech­nol­o­gy to make mon­ey and serve our customers?”

The indus­try is chang­ing. More and more record­ings are being made by indi­vid­u­als in small stu­dios col­lab­o­rat­ing across the world via the Inter­net. Sales are increas­ing­ly in the “Long Tail” and not in the form of smash hits from the majors. Instead of the vast major­i­ty of sales being made through a small num­ber of dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels con­trolled by half-a-dozen big record com­pa­nies, they’re increas­ing­ly being made via indi­vid­ual artists sell­ing from their web sites and at gigs; small online record com­pa­nies like Magnatune.com; and so on. It’s impos­si­ble to count all those tiny micro-out­lets, and they are not even record­ed as sales in many cas­es — mak­ing report­ed sales small­er, which is labelled the result of pira­cy when it’s in fact an inabil­i­ty to count — yet this is exact­ly where an increas­ing pro­por­tion of sales are com­ing from. I’ve seen some research from a few years ago even sug­gest­ed that there was actu­al­ly a con­tin­u­al year-on-year rise of around 7% in music sales and not a fall at all. And indeed the lat­est offi­cial fig­ures from PRS for Music (of which I’m a mem­ber, inci­den­tal­ly) show that legal down­loads are more than mak­ing up for the loss of pack­aged media sales — and bear in mind that these num­bers may increas­ing­ly ignore the vast major­i­ty of those Long Tail outlets.

I don’t have all the answers to what we should be doing as an indus­try. It’s a time of change as fun­da­men­tal as the intro­duc­tion of the print­ing press. The scribes are out of a job — but the print­ers will do well once they get their act togeth­er. Right now we’re in between the old world and the new, and every­thing is in flux — we don’t know quite what is going to happen.

What I am sure of, how­ev­er, is that mak­ing our cus­tomers the ene­my is not the way to go. We have to find answers that use the new tech­nol­o­gy to advance our busi­ness and serve our cus­tomers, and not pre­tend that we can force the old ways to return, because if we do, we will all lose.

The Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my Bill in its cur­rent form actu­al­ly stran­gles the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my — some­thing we need to help pull us out of reces­sion — rather than sup­port­ing it. It stems from old-age think­ing and lack of under­stand­ing of the tech­nol­o­gy and its oppor­tu­ni­ties. It should not be allowed to be rushed through Par­lia­ment. Instead it needs an enlight­ened re-write that acknowl­edges what is real­ly going on in the world and how we can make it work for us.

If you agree with me, please write to your MP and join in the oth­er pop­u­lar oppo­si­tion now tak­ing place.

The British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion is in my view the best broad­cast­er in the world, and today it’s under attack from com­mer­cial rivals and politi­cians (pri­mar­i­ly in the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty) backed by those same rivals (notably mem­bers of the Mur­doch fam­i­ly). The BBC, in response, is propos­ing its own cut­backs in ser­vices. It’s the thin end of the wedge.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the cur­rent Direc­tor Gen­er­al, Mark Thomp­son, who got the job in the wake of the Gilli­gan débâ­cle, and his col­leagues at the top of the Cor­po­ra­tion, have his­tor­i­cal­ly seemed to lack a back­bone as far as stand­ing up to crit­ics of the Cor­po­ra­tion is con­cerned. Instead of fight­ing back, in fact, the BBC and the BBC Trust seem to be tak­ing the view that when threat­ened, you should throw in the tow­el and do what the oppo­si­tion demands, how­ev­er con­tra­dic­to­ry, ill-advised or short-sight­ed. The like­ly result, it seems to me, is the emas­cu­la­tion of the Cor­po­ra­tion and the degrad­ing of a mag­nif­i­cent insti­tu­tion, the envy of the world.

In addi­tion, offer­ing to make cuts is the thin end of the wedge. Just as the skim­ming off of the licence fee to fund dig­i­tal switchover pro­vid­ed a prece­dent for skim­ming for oth­er pur­pos­es, so a deci­sion to make vol­un­tary (or invol­un­tary) cuts pro­vides a prece­dent for more cuts. We already know the Tories want to dis­mem­ber the BBC, and this is just start­ing their dirty work for them.

The Mur­doch fam­i­ly, con­scious that the world of news­pa­pers is chang­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly, want to try and halt the tide of change rather than going with it and see­ing what new inno­va­tions they can come up with. It’s rather like the record com­pa­nies try­ing to hold back change by mak­ing their cus­tomer the ene­my. Both will fail. How­ev­er, the Mur­dochs may cause exten­sive col­lat­er­al dam­age before they realise this, and nowhere is this of more con­cern to me than in the case of the BBC.

Thus it is that today the BBC Trust has pub­lished a Strat­e­gy Review for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. It rec­om­mends clos­ing BBC Radio 6 Music and the BBC Asian Net­work, reduc­ing the con­tent of the BBC Web Site — one of the most pop­u­lar in the world — by 25%, and oth­er mea­sures. You can find the actu­al review itself here. You can also read the com­men­tary of the BBC Chair­man, Michael Lyons, on the review.

We licence pay­ers have the abil­i­ty to com­ment on the pro­pos­als, and I rec­om­mend that you do so. This can be done via an online sur­vey which asks a series of ques­tions based on the proposals.

If you are con­cerned as I am about the pro­pos­als, I also urge you to sign the peti­tion at avaaz.org. Peti­tions have swayed the BBC in the past. There is also a peti­tion at 38 Degrees.

I thought I would include here my answers to the ques­tions posed in the Online Con­sul­ta­tion ques­tion­naire. I hope you find them of inter­est. I’ve also writ­ten some addi­tion­al com­ments on the sit­u­a­tion in the Trans­d­if­fu­sion Medi­a­Blog.

BBC Strat­e­gy Review: My Response

The BBC’s strate­gic principles

Do you think these are the right principles?

The only thing I am con­cerned about is “Doing few­er things”. Why do few­er things? In par­tic­u­lar the web site is a mar­vel­lous resource and worth every pen­ny. The BBC should be doing unique things that nobody else can be both­ered to do, and the web site is one such. Radio 6 Music is another.

The BBC needs to offer qual­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty, and the web site, Radio 6 Music and the Asian Net­work deliv­er these.

Should the BBC have any oth­er strate­gic principles?

The fun­da­men­tal Rei­thi­an prin­ci­ples of “Inform, Edu­cate and Enter­tain” still work well in today’s envi­ron­ment. The BBC has a duty to deliv­er these to the pub­lic that pays for it. That means adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies and new deliv­ery meth­ods, and giv­ing them the fund­ing they need to do the job well.

The BBC is in a lose/lose sit­u­a­tion in that if it pro­duces pop­u­lar pro­gram­ming, com­mer­cial rivals will moan that it sti­fles com­pe­ti­tion. If it pro­duces high-qual­i­ty and orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming that attracts rel­a­tive­ly few view­ers and lis­ten­ers, peo­ple will say it’s wast­ing money.

Thus the BBC needs to unequiv­o­cal­ly com­mit itself to qual­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty and make it clear that by mak­ing the pro­grammes the com­mer­cial com­peti­tors will not make, it is bound to lose view­ers and lis­ten­ers, and that this is an inevitable con­se­quence of such a strat­e­gy. Thus crit­i­cism of the size of view­ing and lis­ten­ing audi­ences must be ruled as irrel­e­vant and this must be made per­fect­ly clear.

Pro­posed prin­ci­ple: Putting Qual­i­ty First

Which BBC out­put do you think could be high­er quality?

There are broad areas where a chan­nel or sta­tion could offer “high­er qual­i­ty”, but pri­mar­i­ly by drop­ping pro­gram­ming of a low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor nature. One could argue that gen­er­al enter­tain­ment pro­gram­ming with very expen­sive celebri­ties, for exam­ple, or real­i­ty shows (were the BBC to con­sid­er doing them in the future), can be left to the com­mer­cial sta­tions. That does­n’t mean that the out­put of the BBC in these areas is not of “high qual­i­ty”, but that the types of pro­gram­ming them­selves are not orig­i­nal or of high quality.

Offer­ing you some­thing special

Which areas should the BBC make more dis­tinc­tive from oth­er broad­cast­ers and media?

Celebri­ty chat shows and real­i­ty TV are not dis­tinc­tive. Any­one can do them.

Fac­tu­al pro­gram­ming is a par­tic­u­lar area where the BBC already is dis­tinc­tive, and this can be improved by tak­ing advan­tage of the fact, for exam­ple, that there are no com­mer­cial breaks, and thus no per­ceived need for inces­sant recaps. The audi­ence can be treat­ed as intel­li­gent and giv­en a well-paced sto­ry, with­out hav­ing to be remind­ed of past points all the time or tak­ing three steps for­ward and two back on each subtopic.

The BBC Web site and its range of ser­vices is dis­tinc­tive and unlike any oth­er offer­ing, with its broad spec­trum of news, com­ment, infor­ma­tion and blogs. This needs to be devel­oped fur­ther and take full advan­tage of new technology.

Sta­tions like Radio 6 music, Radio 3 and Radio 4 offer dis­tinc­tive pro­gram­ming and music that can­not be heard else­where. Radio 3 is noth­ing like Clas­sic FM, for exam­ple. There should be more spe­cial­ist pro­gram­ming not less.

In gen­er­al, the BBC is not being dis­tinc­tive when it pro­duces pro­gram­ming sim­i­lar to that found on com­mer­cial sta­tions and chan­nels. The BBC’s strengths include fac­tu­al and doc­u­men­tary pro­gram­ming, high qual­i­ty mod­ern and peri­od dra­ma, link­ing into new tech­nol­o­gy such as the web site and iPlay­er, and music radio that escapes from the mainstream.

The Five Edi­to­r­i­al Priorities

Do these pri­or­i­ties fit with your expec­ta­tions of BBC TV, radio and online services? 

Yes, they do.

Pro­posed prin­ci­ple: Doing few­er things and doing them better

We wel­come your views on these areas.

Clos­ing Radio 6 Music and the Asian Net­work are in direct con­flict with the goal of “Offer­ing some­thing spe­cial”. While one might argue that ulti­mate­ly there should be no need for an “Asian Net­work” as a sep­a­rate enti­ty, we are not there yet.

How­ev­er in par­tic­u­lar when con­sid­er­ing Radio 6 Music, this kind of ser­vice — a ser­vice that a com­mer­cial broad­cast­er would not con­sid­er offer­ing — is exact­ly the kind of thing the BBC should be doing and clos­ing it runs con­trary to pre­vi­ous­ly-stat­ed criteria.

In addi­tion, radio is cheap — you could close BBC 3 and save a dozen spe­cial­ist radio stations.

The BBC Web site is also fine as it is. I enjoy the breadth and depth of cov­er­age, which is unmatched by oth­er oper­a­tors, not because the com­pe­ti­tion is sti­fled but because the com­pe­ti­tion sim­ply can­not be both­ered to do it this well.

I do not regard lim­it­ing the scope of the BBC web site as being in line with prin­ci­ples of excel­lence, orig­i­nal­i­ty or pub­lic ser­vice. We pay for the BBC and we have a right to the best pos­si­ble ser­vice from it.

Arguably, nobody could do a web site bet­ter — it is one of the most pop­u­lar in the entire world. Restrict­ing its scope comes across as a knee-jerk response to crit­i­cism and not in line with stat­ed strate­gic goals.

I would like to see BBC local radio remain local­ly gen­er­at­ed as far as pos­si­ble. There are plen­ty of peo­ple who would vol­un­teer to pro­duce and present local­ly-based pro­gram­ming out­side dri­ve time giv­en access to BBC resources, for example.

I do not have par­tic­u­lar views on oth­er areas men­tioned in this section.

Pro­posed prin­ci­ple: Guar­an­tee­ing access to BBC services

If you have par­tic­u­lar views on how you expect BBC ser­vices to be avail­able to you, please let us know.

I do not have any par­tic­u­lar views on this sec­tion at present.

The BBC archive

Please tell us if you have views on this area.

The BBC is the great­est broad­cast­er in the world and it has a his­to­ry of pro­gram­ming stretch­ing back to the 1920s. In the past dread­ful sac­ri­fices have been made in the name of cost-effec­tive­ness that have result­ed in price­less cov­er­age of inter­na­tion­al events, unique dra­ma and oth­er pro­gram­ming being irre­triev­ably lost. Much of BBC cov­er­age of the Apol­lo XI mis­sion was taped over for example.

Main­tain­ing a com­pre­hen­sive BBC Archive is vital going for­ward and the mis­takes of the past, result­ing in irre­triev­able loss of our cul­tur­al her­itage, must not be repeat­ed in the future. We need to save the unique pro­gram­ming and out­put for our­selves and for future generations.

In addi­tion to being archived, pro­gram­ming should be avail­able to the pub­lic online and/or via viewing/listening envi­ron­ments like those offered by the BFI.

Pro­posed prin­ci­ple: Mak­ing the licence fee work harder

If you are con­cerned about the BBC’s val­ue for mon­ey, please tell us why.

I have no spe­cif­ic views on this beyond sug­gest­ing that as far as salaries, expens­es and sim­i­lar areas of expen­di­ture are con­cerned, I expect the Cor­po­ra­tion always to be aware of cost and to nego­ti­ate the best pos­si­ble deal. I expect con­tracts and expens­es, for exam­ple, to be at lev­els gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as stan­dard in the industry.

Pro­posed prin­ci­ple: Set­ting new bound­aries for the BBC

Do you think that the BBC should lim­it its activ­i­ties in these areas?

No.

Just because your com­mer­cial com­peti­tors say you should or should­n’t be doing some­thing does­n’t mean that you should lis­ten to them or that they are talk­ing sense.

Clos­ing 6 Music reduces the out­put of unique orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming and runs counter to oth­er strate­gic goals. It also saves only a tiny bit of mon­ey in real terms.

Reduc­ing pur­chas­es of over­seas dra­mas is not a valid deci­sion if you are intent on offer­ing audi­ences the best. There are some areas of dra­ma where no UK pro­duc­tion can match the qual­i­ty of pro­gram­ming made over­seas, notably in the USA. Deny­ing BBC view­ers high qual­i­ty con­tent sim­ply because it was­n’t made here is absurd.

Equal­ly, there are areas where the BBC is sec­ond to none, and I am sure the Cor­po­ra­tion does its best to sell these shows over­seas and thus facil­i­tate addi­tion­al ser­vices with­out requir­ing an increase in the licence fee.

Reduc­ing the scope of the BBC web­site makes no sense at all in terms of qual­i­ty of ser­vice cri­te­ria. The web site as it stands offers a unique ser­vice that is unpar­al­leled, not because com­pe­ti­tion is sti­fled but because nobody can be both­ered to try. It is a unique ser­vice, just like, say, the Guardian’s online offer­ings. In dif­fer­ent ways, I am hap­py to pay for both.

The BBC sets the stan­dards here and in many oth­er areas. Because the BBC had an orig­i­nal, bril­liant idea does­n’t mean to say that they have to give it up because the com­mer­cial boys did­n’t think of it them­selves or see how they could make mon­ey from it.

I see no rea­son why the BBC should restrict or reduce its local offer­ings. Nobody else is going to do it, what­ev­er they say. There is lit­tle or no mon­ey to be made there but there is a ser­vice that can be pro­vid­ed. Pub­lic ser­vice is part of the BBC’s remit. I do not have views on oth­er pro­pos­als in this section.

Should any oth­er areas be on this list?

I would seri­ous­ly con­sid­er whether BBC 3 meets cri­te­ria for qual­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty. The few orig­i­nal pro­grammes would be entire­ly appro­pri­ate on BBC 2 or per­haps BBC 4 for example.

My fun­da­men­tal view is that there are no areas of ser­vice that the BBC pro­vides that I am not hap­py to pay for. How­ev­er if you are intent on mak­ing cuts, then clos­ing BBC3 would save quite a num­ber of radio stations.

This web­site is ded­i­cat­ed to Brigit.
We hon­our Her and What She Sig­ni­fies, The Heal­ing of Our World

Last night, on the 31st Jan­u­ary, the Eve of Brigit’s Day, I moved into action, re-invig­o­rat­ing a very ancient tra­di­tion of hon­or­ing the ancient ‘Celtic’ fire God­dess Brig­it: Her name may be spelt var­i­ous­ly, espe­cial­ly as regards the use of ‘d’ or ”t’ (Brigid/Brigit), which are very close­ly linked. She is also endear­ing­ly known as Bride and Bridey–thus Brides’ Well or Brideswell–the name of my husband’s and my web­site: www.brideswell.com–signifying MUCH! The God­dess of Heal­ing, Poet­ry and Birthing, is very well-con­nect­ed (smile!)–as the many wells, espe­cial­ly in Ire­land, contest.

In years gone by, my pal Kathy Jones (of Glas­ton­bury UK God­dess Con­fer­ence fame) and I, amongst oth­ers, revived the tra­di­tion of cre­at­ing Bridey Dolls, birthing a year­ly Bridey, appre­ci­at­ed through the year and beyond. So I too birthed a Bridey last night, attached my spe­cial Cal­i­for­nia wand (nor­mal­ly it should be of some tree or bush that starts with a ‘b’), and swad­dled her in an ornate Moroc­can trav­el­ling pouch left by my old Wise Crone Café pal, Mar­garet Kim­ber. I stood at the door and knocked thrice, and each time my savvy god­dess-wise hus­band (whose sur­name is that of the Great God­dess of the Track­ways, Elen) cor­rect­ly called out “Enter Bridey!” She entered our home offi­cial­ly and lives with us now, bring­ing Her Bless­ings. Tonight She will eat with us–’poundies’ (pota­toes), eggs and lots of but­ter and cream–as milk and but­ter are espe­cial­ly asso­ci­at­ed with her. Her bless­ings on our house will be many, as She is a benev­o­lent, heal­ing Pres­ence to a house­hold who hon­ours Her.

And for the first time I cre­at­ed a Brig­it ‘brat‘ (wait for it!): I placed a piece of unwashed cloth,  a white (milk-colour) hand­made shawl brought back from the recent 9th World Wilder­ness Con­gress in the Yucatan, out in our gar­den, as it is said that Brig­it will come by and turn it into a mag­ic cloth.  The full moon had risen (in Leo, my sun sign!), flood­ing the gar­den with clear and sil­very enchant­ment; I placed the shawl on a pro­lif­ic rose­mary bush (asso­ci­at­ed with The Fem­i­nine, as Sage is with The Mas­cu­line). This morn­ing, cov­ered with dew and a dust­ing of sil­very frost, I brought it it. It is now a heal­ing blan­ket to be car­ried Where Need Be.

Brigit’s Time–Imbolc–heralds the com­ing of spring, when wee lambs start to appear in the hills and dales of this Mag­i­cal Island of Britain, when ewes’ milk pours forth,  a by-prod­uct of which can be a love­ly cheese!

My hus­band and I often vis­it our favourite local ‘holy well’ in yes, Holy­well (near St Ives, Cam­bridgeshire). From being an over­grown bram­ble infest­ed site some years ago, it’s been restored and cared for (THE GREAT RETURNING has its own nat­ur­al momen­tum). Once there were many such such ‘holy wells’–too many have been sealed up or for­got­ten. They marked heal­ing springs, where in old­en times peo­ple would tie bits of cloth and oth­er items on branch­es of trees and bush­es near­by, as an indi­ca­tion of prayer for some heal­ing neces­si­ty. There are still a few of these in Scot­land and Corn­wall. Most such wells and springs would have had some linked asso­ci­a­tion with Brig­it or a form of Brig­it, often trans­posed onto some Chris­t­ian saint­ly fig­ure (males or female). Thus the ‘pagan’ Brig­it became St Brig­it, and Long May She Live in what­ev­er form She choos­es to take through these dif­fi­cult times, when we sore­ly need Her Heal­ing Touch.

Hail Brig­it!

There are many cel­e­bra­tions in hon­our of Brigit…as The GREAT  RETURNING gets under­way. As well as in Glas­ton­bury (where the God­dess Tra­di­tion is alive and well!), back in my ‘home town’ of Lon­don, Ontario (Cana­da), The Cir­cle up at Bres­cia Col­lege (at my old Alma Mater, Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario) is spon­sor­ing a Brigid (Brighid) Fes­ti­val from 19–21 Feb­ru­ary: “Enter­ing the Matrix…Being Betwixt and Between”, fea­tur­ing the Irish schol­ar Mary Con­dren: “It will be a week­end of rit­u­al, learn­ing, com­mu­ni­ty, art, move­ment, work­shops and explo­ration as we reclaim the ancient female wis­dom tra­di­tions of Old Europe through the fig­ure of Brighid: http://www.brescia.uwo.ca/thecircle/brigit.htm;  Con­tact: The Cir­cle circle@uwo.ca “. My good god­dess-pal Penn Kemp, with whom I have facil­i­tat­ed a Great Return­ing work­shop last autumn in Lon­don, is also one of the work­shop facilitators.

Join us at the Find­horn Com­mu­ni­ty in NE Scot­land for Paths to Inner Guid­ance, 5–11 June, 2010

Pre­sent­ed by Leona with Rhi­an­non Hanf­man: Faced with a vari­ety of envi­ron­men­tal, social and eco­nom­ic crises in the world and our indi­vid­ual lives—all demand­ing dif­fi­cult per­son­al choices—how can we find ways to walk the good talk and cre­ate pos­i­tive change?  This week offers par­tic­i­pants an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with their innate inner wis­dom: ‘the still small voice within’.

Guid­ance comes in many forms; in this work­shop we look at what form works best for us. We will explore the sequence of express­ing grat­i­tude, find­ing the right ques­tions, using intu­itive tools such as med­i­ta­tion and/or prayer, learn­ing to be open and receiv­ing answers—and then act­ing upon them.  Such tried and true dis­ci­plines encour­age us to live more authen­ti­cal­ly and cre­ative­ly. Learn­ing to receive and fol­low true guid­ance cre­ates a use­ful path­way by which to nego­ti­ate life’s complexities.

News Flash! The week includes a full one day ver­sion of the renowned ‘Trans­for­ma­tion Game’. Rhi­an­non is a cur­rent Game Guide, whilst Leona was a keen Game Guide years back when The Game was first born and bred amongst Com­mu­ni­ty members.

The Pass­ing of a Grand Woman
Flo­rence Boyd-Gra­ham: Dec 22, 1913 — Nov 24, 2009

Flo­rence was born in Toron­to into the era of the First World War, lived through The Great Depres­sion, and with her hus­band, Lt Cdr William A. Gra­ham (RCN, RN, RCNR) and four (soon five) chil­dren, sur­vived the Sec­ond World War in Hal­i­fax, Nova Scotia.

The fam­i­ly moved back to Toron­to, did anoth­er NS stint fol­lowed by over 50 years based in Oakridge Acres, Lon­don. Los­ing her moth­er Nell at age 15 impact­ed her great­ly: she ded­i­cat­ed her­self to moth­er­ing, fol­lowed by first class grand and great-grand-mothering.

Hav­ing seen her chil­dren through the var­i­ous lev­els of high­er edu­ca­tion, she returned to Uni­ver­si­ty (the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario) her­self in her late 70s, grad­u­at­ing with a BA/Hons BA (but did an equiv­a­lent of an MA) in Phi­los­o­phy. Dur­ing these years, she worked in Vet­er­ans Affairs, was a mem­ber of the Unit­ed Church, the Uni­tar­i­an Fel­low­ship (a ded­i­cat­ed choir mem­ber in both), and the Albert Schweitzer Soci­ety, fol­lowed by the Rag­ing Grannies (add ‘Rev­el­ing,’ she always said) who sing protest songs for good causes.

On the envi­ron­men­tal front, in 1962 she brought home Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, got involved in ‘Pol­lu­tion Probe’ and The Coop Store. An active mem­ber of CFUW and the Oakridge Ratepay­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, she nev­er ceased doing pub­lic service.

She trav­elled wide­ly to vis­it her chil­dren far and wide, and became a fond sup­port­er of The Find­horn Com­mu­ni­ty in NE Scot­land (where she vis­it­ed eight times).

Her favourite gath­er­ings were her local week­ly ‘cof­fee group’ with dear friends Pat Dins­more and the late Eve­lyn March, her month­ly book club with David Smith and friends—and of course good-spir­it­ed bridge parties!

Flo­rence was, in essence, a grass­roots philoso­pher who spoke her mind, whose search for ‘truth’ was unstint­ing. Her inter­ests were both wide-rang­ing and breath­tak­ing. Our fam­i­ly home, ‘540’, was vir­tu­al­ly an Open House for over 50 years, fea­tur­ing notable par­ties, work­shops and late night ses­sions. She brought the World into the Cana­di­an sub­urbs and turned her back­yard into a wood­land wildlife haven. She rep­re­sent­ed the best Cana­da can boast of: A Grand Woman—not a ‘lady’, she said, that smacked too much of ‘the aristocratic’.

Our world is less with­out her phys­i­cal pres­ence, but indeed, she walks tall amongst us in the best of Cana­di­an life, what made us Cana­da from 1913–2009, and through her sur­viv­ing chil­dren, Robert, Joan, Leona and Ralph—her dar­ling youngest son Ian passed away in 2005—and final­ly through her grand-chil­dren Lau­ra, John, Bruce, Nathalie, Kim-Ellen, Lila, Alex, Lara and Dan­ny; and her great-grand­chil­dren Gabriel­la, Gar­rett, Sean, Geordy and Charlton.

Fly high and free ‘Sophia’-Florence, as you trav­el the heights with Socrates and Plato—and of course, the Great Sappho.

A memo­r­i­al ser­vice was held at Mt Pleas­ant Chapel on Fri­day Decem­ber 4 from 1–2pm (see pro­gramme below).

Memo­r­i­al pro­gramme — click for PDF

Main pho­to cour­tesy of the Lon­don Free Press

On Sun­day last I had the almost unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to attend a per­for­mance of George Antheil’s Bal­let mécanique at the West Road Con­cert Hall in Cam­bridge, part of the Cam­bridge Music Fes­ti­val. The con­cert also marked the 100th anniver­sary year of the pub­li­ca­tion of the Futur­ist Man­i­festo.

My atten­tion was drawn to the event by my friend Paul Lehrman, whom I knew orig­i­nal­ly as a bril­liant jour­nal­ist who used to write for me when I was Edi­tor of Stu­dio Sound back in the 1980s. Since then we’ve done a bunch of stuff togeth­er includ­ing music for KPM Music Library and much more.

Today, Paul is a music pro­fes­sor based at a uni­ver­si­ty in the Boston area, and he has made quite a name for him­self for his real­i­sa­tion of a ver­sion of Antheil’s work which calls (at least in its full ver­sion) for a per­cus­sion orches­tra of three xylo­phones, four bass drums and a tam-tam (gong); two live pianists; sev­en or so elec­tric bells; a siren; three aero­plane pro­pellers; and 16 syn­chro­nized play­er pianos. As you can imag­ine, it’s a flam­boy­ant, con­tro­ver­sial, down­right noisy piece of avant-garde music.

This large-scale ver­sion of the piece, com­posed around 1923, was nev­er per­formed in Antheil’s life­time, appar­ent­ly because the friend of Antheil’s who told him you could sync up 16 play­er pianos was wrong: the tech­nol­o­gy of the time did not allow it. Paul Lehrman, how­ev­er, was com­mis­sioned by music pub­lish­ers G. Schirmer to realise the work for the 16 play­er pianos called for in the orig­i­nal man­u­script, using mod­ern dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in the form of dig­i­tal play­er pianos, MIDI, and sam­ples for the air­craft propellers.

This he did, and the first per­for­mance took place at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts, Low­ell, exact­ly ten years ago (on 18 Novem­ber, 1999). Since then it’s been per­formed on numer­ous occa­sions around the world. You can read more about it, and about Antheil, at Paul’s site which you can find here at antheil.org.

Cam­bridge: rat­tles, pianos, Pianola and elec­tric bells

This was not the ver­sion per­formed at West Road on Sun­day, how­ev­er. That was a some­what more restrained ver­sion per­formed on this occa­sion on a sin­gle Pianola plus two live pianists, three xylo­phones, drums and per­cus­sion, rat­tles (per­form­ing the pro­peller parts), two elec­tric door­bells and a hard-cranked siren. Musi­cal­ly, it was a ver­sion first per­formed in 1927 (and not very often there­after). Paul asked me if I could go along and inter­view Paul Jack­son, the con­duc­tor, expe­ri­ence the per­for­mance and find the answers to some ques­tions about this par­tic­u­lar version.

This sound­ed as if it could be enor­mous fun (which indeed it was) so I duly turned up for the event, Music hard and beau­ti­ful as a dia­mond, part of the 2009 Cam­bridge Music Fes­ti­val, con­sist­ing of three works per­formed by Rex Law­son on Pianola, Julio d’E­scriván on iPhone, the Anglia Sin­fo­nia, Anglia Voic­es and MEME, con­duct­ed by Paul Jackson.

Pianola mech­a­nism with roll

The con­cert itself was pre­ced­ed by a 45-minute pre­sen­ta­tion by Law­son and d’E­scriván about the Pianola and the iPhone as an instru­ment respec­tive­ly (d’E­scriván’s piece start­ed the evening). I was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in Law­son’s expo­si­tion on the Pianola.

The Pianola is quite dif­fer­ent from the Repro­duc­ing Piano and is not even tru­ly the stuff of “play­er pianos” in saloons in cow­boy movies, though they all use a “piano roll” to pro­vide the notes. In the case of the Repro­duc­ing Piano, the roll con­tains not only the notes but all the tem­po, expres­sion and oth­er aspects of an actu­al per­for­mance. Thus the big sell­ing point of these sys­tems, there­fore, was to get famous per­form­ers and com­posers to per­form their works, which could then be flaw­less­ly repro­duced at home.

Actu­a­tors in posi­tion over the Stein­way keyboard

The Pianola, on the oth­er hand, began life as a “cab­i­net play­er” – a box on cas­tors that you wheel up to a con­ven­tion­al piano (a Stein­way grand in the case of the Sun­day per­for­mance) and lock into place so that its felt-cov­ered actu­a­tors can press the keys. It’s pow­ered by ped­als, which dri­ve the roll and also force air through the holes in the roll to sound the notes. By chang­ing the pres­sure on the ped­als (eg by stamp­ing on them) you can also change the loud­ness of the notes – in oth­er words, give the per­for­mance dynam­ics – that can be applied to dif­fer­ent parts of the range. There’s also a tem­po slid­er – and even tech­nol­o­gy that picks out the top line automatically.

This is all rather impor­tant, because the piano roll for a Pianola con­tains only the notes – the play­er deter­mines the tem­po and expres­sion (in a solo per­for­mance, for exam­ple, includ­ing visu­al cues print­ed or writ­ten on the roll). Thus a Pianola per­for­mance actu­al­ly is a per­for­mance, and not a play­back. Yes, the notes are pro­vid­ed, but the expres­sion is man­u­al­ly applied.

Pianola rolls were not cre­at­ed by play­ing the instru­ment and record­ing what the per­former did, as in the case of the Repro­duc­ing Piano. Instead, they were cre­at­ed sim­ply from the score. Imag­ine a MIDI sequence cre­at­ed in step-time with no veloc­i­ty infor­ma­tion and you get the idea.

Most peo­ple could­n’t be both­ered to learn the sub­tle nuances of Pianola per­for­mance, how­ev­er, and sim­ply ped­alled away, giv­ing the instru­ments a rather life­less, mechan­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion which was entire­ly unde­served. Ulti­mate­ly, mech­a­nisms were built into (usu­al­ly upright) pianos – and hence the play­er pianos in the bars depict­ed in the cow­boy movies aforementioned.

The drum sec­tion and Paul Jack­son, Conductor

Rex Law­son, who per­formed the Pianola part in Sun­day’s con­cert, is a lead­ing expert on the instru­ment, and his pre­sen­ta­tion dis­posed of quite a few myths, espe­cial­ly when it came to the per­for­mance of Bal­let mécanique. The fact that the play­er con­trols the tem­po means that the Pianola can actu­al­ly fol­low a con­duc­tor in the con­ven­tion­al way – the Pianola does not have to set the tem­po and have every oth­er play­er sync to it. In Paul Lehrman’s per­for­mances, in con­trast, the MIDI replay sys­tem that dri­ves the play­er pianos also gen­er­ates a click track that every­one follows.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the fact that you can con­trol the dynam­ics of the Pianola means that the instru­ment does not sim­ply bash out all the notes at full blast. As a result, pri­mar­i­ly, of these two fac­tors, Bal­let mécanique takes on a whole new degree of light and shade. Yes, it’s still a cacoph­o­ny of 20s avant-garde exu­ber­ance, but it takes on a good deal of addi­tion­al subtlety.

Law­son feels that the piece is designed to be played on these Edwar­dian instru­ments rather than mod­ern dig­i­tal sys­tems, and that you need to actu­al­ly per­form the Pianola part – as he puts it, you need to “sweat”. How­ev­er, he is inter­est­ed in get­ting some fel­low Pianola-own­ing friends togeth­er to per­form the work on four Pianolas syn­chro­nised as far as tem­po is concerned.

Law­son thinks the idea of 16 play­er pianos was Antheil show­ing off, that it was prob­a­bly orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for four live pianists, and that the big prob­lem with per­form­ing it at the time was that there were not near­ly enough play­ers in Paris who knew the sub­tleties of the Pianola and how to use its tem­po and expres­sion capa­bil­i­ties. In his planned 4‑Pianola per­for­mance, he would set the tem­po at his Pianola and the oth­ers would fol­low the tem­po he set by using step­per motors to sync them to his unit. Which sounds like a great idea, though there might be issues due to stretch­ing or slip­page of the rolls: it might need sprock­et­ed piano rolls, which did actu­al­ly exist.

The box­es for the three pianola rolls

The Sun­day per­for­mance of the sin­gle-Pianola ver­sion used three piano rolls, and to allow chang­ing them the per­for­mance was split into three movements.

The per­for­mance, for me, shed new light on a fas­ci­nat­ing com­po­si­tion from the 1920s. A rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion from Paul Lehrman’s, it sug­gests inter­est­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for a Lawson/Lehrman collaboration.

• The pro­gramme also includ­ed Grand Pianola Music by John Adams (no Pianolas involved), and Julio d’Escriván’s inge­nious and expres­sive Ayayay! Con­cer­to for iPhone, Pianola and orchestra.

In this video, lead­ing British folk musi­cians Coope Boyes & Simp­son pro­vide the music in their unique and mov­ing acapel­la style with the song “Only Remem­bered”, as we view aspects of the unique exhi­bi­tion by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford’s First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in the immer­sive 3D vir­tu­al world of Sec­ond Life.

The exhi­bi­tion sim­u­lates aspects of life in the trench­es on the West­ern Front dur­ing the 1914–1918 war and presents work by the “War Poets” of the period.

As vis­i­tors explore the sim­u­la­tion, they can lis­ten to the voic­es of vet­er­ans recount­ing their expe­ri­ences of the war, view orig­i­nal film footage and pho­tographs from the time, and learn about life on the West­ern Front, encoun­ter­ing some of the most pow­er­ful poet­ry in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture by see­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts, turn­ing the pages of the poets’ war diaries and let­ters, and lis­ten­ing to readings.

The video is tak­en from the 10 Novem­ber 2009 episode of the TV series Design­ing Worlds, a week­ly live show cov­er­ing design and design­ers in vir­tu­al worlds, pro­duced by Prim Per­fect mag­a­zine and Treet.TV.

“Only Remem­bered” (Bonar/Sankey/Tams Voice Pub­lish­ing) is used by per­mis­sion and is tak­en from the album Pri­vate Peace­ful The Con­cert (No Mas­ters NMCD24) by Coope Boyes & Simpson.

For more infor­ma­tion, read this arti­cle on The First World War Poet­ry Dig­i­tal Archive in Sec­ond Life.