Michelle and I headed out to hitherto terra incognitaFlushing, Queens today in search of some authentic Taiwanese and Chinese food. Armed with a printout of a New York Times what-to-eat-map, we walked over from the last stop on the 7 train to the Flushing Mall.
Above: Michelle and Mouse.
When we walked into the Flushing Mall, it looked strangely deserted (and a little run down), but we followed our noses and finally found out that all the action was in the food court.
Above: We shared some Taiwanese favorites: oyster omelette (蚵仔煎) and steamed rice cake in a bowl with pork, mushrooms and shrimp (碗粿). I had to go off the veggie wagon when dealing with the food from the homeland!
Below: A bowl of handmade beef noodle soup (手拉牛肉麵). The noodles were thick and chewy and the beef extremely tender. The broth was a little different from the typical Taiwanese-style beef noodle soup broth, which tends to be darker because it contains soy sauce and sometimes tomatoes. This broth was light-gray and fragrant. It reminded me of Vietnamese pho soup.
We also shared a scallion pancake (蔥油餅) and a cup of soy milk (not pictured). The scallion pancake was amazingly crisp and light, but the soy milk had a strange off taste that happens when one burns the soybean pulp while making the soy milk.
I couldn’t help snapping this photo of the “Bland Houses” sign. Funny, creepy, and definitely spot on. Despite the savory food, Flushing was indeed very bland architecturally.
After president-elect Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech on election night, I headed over to Union Square to take part in the celebrations. Here is some audio of the festivities.
For my ICM final project, which I am calling Text2Drum, I seek to explore the rhythmic qualities of language. Text2Drum will read text from a file, and convert each letter of the text to a drum/percussion that I will assign to correspond to each letter of the alphabet. Spaces and punctuation marks will be interpreted as a musical rest, that is to say a period of silence. The program will also display the text on screen while playing back the drum samples. In using Text2Drum to generate percussion patterns, I aim to translate text into a new musical language and seek to reclaim the rhythmic nature of language found in oral communication that is lost in written language.
I also hope to make a second version of Text2Drum which will be interactive, which will have an interface that will allow a user to type in text that Text2Drum will then convert into a rhythmic pattern.
A set of headphones rigged with an accelerometer that detects the motion of the user’s head and converts that motion data into MIDI data via an Arduino microprocessor. The MIDI then triggers percussion sounds in a software synth on the computer, which feeds the audio signal back to the user wearing the headphones.
