We do not live in a universe where there’s a lavish TV series about Fairchild Semiconductor. But we should and I want to do my utmost to make that universe this one.
When I first learned the Fairchild story, it was so dramatic, so singular that I had to dive more deeply. Having spent hours researching various magazine articles, journals and physics papers way over my head, I became ever more obsessed by Fairchild. I was fascinated by the company and the long shadow its Fairchildren, like AMD and Intel, cast over our lives today.
I would love my album to inspire a real TV series that explored the personalities and the science of those times. Ideally, it would be a co-production between, say, Netflix and the BBC. There would be a one-hour dramatic show, telling the story and then a follow-up one-hour behind-the-science episode. I want people to know the fascinating history behind the last great industrial revolution, without which today’s inter-connected, interdependent world would be impossible.
There were four transistors on the first ever monolithic IC Fairchild invented in 1960.
There are sixteen thousand million transistors on Apple’s M1 chip in 2022.
I love Tekkonkinkreet, it’s one of my fave ever films, not just fave animes. So, I generated these with Midjourney to help remind me of that awesome world.
I wish I could visit it. Maybe in the future, when some Midjourney descendent can render real-time 3D VR?
If you look up Silent Disco on Wikipedia, you get this:
In May 2002 artist Meg Duguid hosted Dance with me… a silent dance party at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago where she created an outdoor club installation complete with velvet ropes and glow rope in which a DJ spun a transmission to wireless headsets that audience members put on and danced to.[4][5][6] Duguid threw a second dance party at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago the following year, entitled Dueling DJs where two DJS simultaneously spun two separate musical transmissions various wireless headsets that audience members put on and danced to. This performance was repeated the following year (2004) at the Chicago Cultural Center.[7]
The term “silent disco” has been in existence since at least 2005 with Bonnaroo Music Festival advertising such an event that year with DJ’s Motion Potion, Quickie Mart and DJ medi4 and headphones provided by KOSS.[8] In recent years Silent Events has presented Bonaroo’s Silent Disco.[9]
In the Netherlands, the traveling arts and culture festival De Parade already featured a “stille disco” [silent disco] earlier, for example in 2003.[10] Dutch DJs Nico Okkerse and Michael Minton have been described as “the pioneers … in the legend of silent disco” because they started “stille disco” events in 2002.[11] Okkerse claims his company 433fm.com “created Silent Disco in 2002”[12] and its site does have photos from such events going back to at least 2003.[13]
So, yaay, that was five years after when I invented it, depending which one you believe.
But then…
A silent concert (or headphones concert) is a live music performance where the audience, in the same venue as the performing artist, listens to the music through headphones.[20] The idea originated in 1997 when Erik Minkkinen,[21][22] an electronic artist[23][24] from Paris, streamed a live concert from his closet over the internet to three listeners in Japan.[25] The concept led to a decentralized organization known as le placard (“the Cupboard”),[26] which allowed anybody to establish a streaming or listening room.[25]
The first headphone concert taking place in front of a live audience took place March 17, 1999, at Trees in Dallas, Texas. The American psychedelic band The Flaming Lips used an FM signal generator at the venue and handed out mini FM radio receivers and headphones to each member of the audience. A normal speaker system was also used so the sound could also be felt. This continued on their “International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue” tour with mixed results, with technical problems including dead batteries and intoxicated audience members having trouble tuning to the correct frequency.[27]
So, depending on when in ’97 Minkkinen did his proto-Twitch stream, maybe I’m a co-inventor. But Flaming Lips, March???
Highly suspicious…
UPDATE!!! Just got this email in:
Hi Jyoti,Erik Minkkinen here. Fell on your post about silent disco. Yes those wikipedia articles are quite erroneous, never bothered to try to fix them, actually I don’t claim to be the inventor of anything.
The fact is , true , the idea came up in 1997 , but the actual first festival which happened in Paris in sept 1998 was a non stop 72 hour event , and became a yearly festival for many years. here are links to the archives http://placard5.dokidoki.fr/p4123.htm
The first one was not streamed , it is only starting from the second one in Vienna that we opened to distant concerts. The festival is still ongoing http://leplacard.org , not as much activity as there used to be, have been concentrating more on micro fm and radio works with http://p-node.org
Hope this helps
Take care
Erik
Isn’t that cool? Please check out Erik’s sites, there’s some lovely, creative stuff there!
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