1.
All Is Full of Love
–
All Is Full of Love is a song by Icelandic musician Björk, taken from her third studio album Homogenic. Written by herself, the lyrics are inspired by the presence of love in the advent of spring, the more popular version of the track, the original mix solely produced by Björk, was used in the accompanying music video, but did not appear on the album. The version used for the record is a remix by Howie B and has a minimalist approach, the video version features a combination of electronic beats and string instruments. A remix by the German IDM duo Funkstörung was released as a single in the summer of 1998, All Is Full of Love subsequently received a full single release in 7 June 1999 to coincide with the premiere of its music video. While some music critics declared that the song was one of the highlights on Homogenic, in the United States, it became a dance hit. The song and its video were released two years after the release of the album for artistic merit rather than promotional purposes. All Is Full of Love was included as the track on compilation album Greatest Hits. Some regard All Is Full of Love as the first DVD single release, the songs visual garnered acclaim from critics and is commonly regarded as one of the best music videos of all time and a milestone in computer animation. The subject of analysis and scrutiny, it was on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and has been included in various art exhibitions. Björk has performed All Is Full of Love in five of her tours and it is one of the singers most idiosyncratic songs, and has been covered by various artists. All Is Full of Love, the track of Homogenic, was the albums last song to be written. Produced by Björk, the version of the song was replaced at the last minute by Howie Bs version. It was inspired by the spring while producing the album in Málaga, after living in the mountains among other people for six months, Björk felt lonely, but a morning walk in April inspired her to write the track. She had a winter and then she realized it was spring after she could hear the birds singing. She wrote and recorded the song in half a day, in keeping with Homogenics theme as a tribute to Björks native Iceland, the track was inspired by Icelandic mythology, such as the Ragnarök. The previous track, Pluto, stands for death and destruction, Björk also called it a song about believing in love and expressed that love isnt just about two persons. Even if youre not getting love from Person A, it doesnt mean theres not love there, however, she also described it as taking the piss, considering it the most sugary song ever. As the song opposes the rest of Homogenics macho aesthethic, Björk has said it could have included on Vespertine
2.
Los Angeles Metro Rail
–
Metro Rail is an urban rail system serving Los Angeles County, California. It consists of six lines, including two rapid transit lines and four light rail lines serving 93 stations. It connects with the Metro Liner bus rapid transit system and also with the Metrolink commuter rail system. Metro Rail, which had a daily weekday ridership of 362,135 as of July 2016, is owned and operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It has been extended significantly since that time and several further extensions are either in the works or being considered. In Los Angeles Metro terminology, common with most other metro systems, Metro Rail lines are named after colors, and these colors are used to distinguish the lines on Metros maps. Metro also uses colors for its Metro Liner services, some Metro Rail lines have no colors assigned to them yet. There is currently a proposal to all metro rail and BRT lines with letters. This proposal would be implemented after completion of the Regional Connector project, assigning letters in the order that the lines were, or will be. Six Metro Rail lines operate in Los Angeles County, The Red and Purple lines follow a fully underground route, the Blue, Expo and Gold Line routes run in a mix of environments, including at-grade street running, at-grade ROW, elevated, and underground. Future system expansions are expected to use shared light-rail rights-of-way, stations include at least two ticket machines, wayfinding displays, electronic displays, and bench seating. Surface stations are designed with shade canopies, many suburban stations also have free or reserved parking available and some have bike storage available. After many years lacking them, locking fare gates have been phased in at all underground stations, most stations are unstaffed during regular hours. Call boxes are available at most stations to allow employees at the Metro Rail Operations Control Center to assist passengers with concerns, all street-level light rail stations feature platforms with segregation from nearby roads and sidewalks. All heavy rail stations have a mezzanine, the mezzanine is often decorated with artwork while the platform level typically has a simple. The large majority of rail stations are either at ground level or elevated. All heavy rail stations are located underground, each station features unique artwork reflecting local culture and/or the function of transit in society. Subway stations and tunnels are designed to resist earthquakes of up to magnitude 7.5, wi-Fi and cellular phone service will be installed in stations and tunnels along the Metro Rail system as a $800,000 project
3.
Alexander McQueen
–
Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE was a British fashion designer and couturier. He is known for having worked as designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards, McQueen committed suicide in 2010 at the age of forty. Born on 17 March 1969 in Lewisham, London, to Scottish taxi driver Ronald and social science teacher Joyce and he reportedly grew up in a council flat, but, in fact, the McQueens moved to a terraced house in Stratford in his first year. He attended Carpenters Road Primary School, started making dresses for his three sisters at an age, and announced his intention to become a fashion designer. While serving his apprenticeship, McQueen attended the Rosetta Art Centre led by Yvonne Humble, the skills he learned as an apprentice on Savile Row helped earn him a reputation in the fashion world as an expert in creating an impeccably tailored look. While on Savile Row, McQueens clients included Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Charles, at the age of 20, he spent a period of time working for Koji Tatsuno before travelling to Milan, Italy and working for Romeo Gigli. McQueen returned to London and applied to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and it was during this period that McQueen relocated to Hoxton, which housed other new designers, including Hussein Chalayan and Pauric Sweeney. He promptly asked her to him for his third collection, The Birds at Kings Cross. Katy England continued to work with McQueen thereafter, greatly influencing his work – his second opinion, McQueen designed the wardrobe for David Bowies tours in 1996-1997, as well as the Union Jack coat worn by Bowie on the cover of his 1997 album Earthling. Icelandic singer Björk sought McQueens work for the cover of her album Homogenic in 1997, McQueen also directed the music video for her song Alarm Call from the same album and later contributed the iconic topless dress to her video for Pagan Poetry. McQueen also collaborated with dancer Sylvie Guillem, director Robert Lepage and choreographer Russell Maliphant, designing wardrobe for theater show Eonnagata, McQueens early runway collections developed his reputation for controversy and shock tactics, with trousers aptly named bumsters and a collection titled Highland Rape. In 2004, journalist Caroline Evans also wrote of McQueens theatrical staging of cruelty, in 032c magazine, referring to his dark, McQueens bumsters spawned a trend in low rise jeans, on their debut they attracted many comments and debate. Michael Oliveira-Salac, the director of Blow PR and a friend of McQueens said, McQueen also became known for using skulls in his designs. A scarf bearing the motif became a celebrity must-have and was copied around the world, McQueen has been credited with bringing drama and extravagance to the catwalk. He used new technology and innovation to add a different twist to his shows, the silhouettes that he created have been credited for adding a sense of fantasy and rebellion to fashion. McQueen became one of the first designers to use Indian models in London, the president of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, caused a stir when he appointed McQueen head designer at Givenchy in 1996, succeeding John Galliano. Upon arrival at Givenchy, McQueen insulted the founder by calling him irrelevant and his first couture collection with Givenchy was unsuccessful, with even McQueen telling Vogue in October 1997 that the collection was crap
4.
Beck
–
Beck Hansen, known mononymously as Beck, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and multi-instrumentalist. He is mostly known for his composition, as well as a palette of sonic genres. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style. Today, he musically encompasses folk, funk, soul, hip hop, alternative rock, country and he has released 12 studio albums, as well as several non-album singles and a book of sheet music. Born in Los Angeles in 1970, Beck grew towards hip-hop and folk in his teens and began to perform locally at coffeehouses and he moved to New York City in 1989 and became involved in the citys small fiery anti-folk movement. Returning to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, he cut his breakthrough single Loser, which became a hit in 1994, and released his first major album, Mellow Gold. Odelay, released in 1996, produced hit singles, topped critic polls and he released the psychedelic Mutations in 1998, and the funk-infused Midnite Vultures in 1999. The soft-acoustic Sea Change in 2002 showcased a more serious Beck and he is reportedly working on a thirteenth studio album, with the singles Dreams and Wow having already been released. Two of Becks most popular and acclaimed recordings are Odelay and Sea Change, the four-time platinum artist has collaborated with several artists and has made several contributions to soundtracks. Beck is married to actress Marissa Ribisi, and is an active Scientologist, Beck was born in Los Angeles, to David Campbell, a Canadian-born musician, and Bibbe Hansen, a visual artist and former Warhol superstar. Bibbes mother was half Jewish, while Bibbes father, Al Hansen, was partly of Norwegian descent, Beck has said that he was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and that he considers himself Jewish. Becks mother grew up amid New Yorks Andy Warhol Factory art scene of the 1960s, but moved to California at age 17 and his father is a Canadian-born arranger, composer and conductor who worked on hundreds of albums and numerous films. Beck began life in a house near downtown Los Angeles. As a child, he lived in a neighborhood just off Hollywood Boulevard. By the time we left there, they were ripping out miles of houses en masse and building low-rent, giant apartment blocks, the lower-class family struggled financially, moving to Hoover and Ninth Street, a neighborhood populated primarily by Koreans and Salvadorian refugees. He was sent for a time to live with his grandparents in Kansas. Since his paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, Beck grew up influenced by church music, Beck also spent time in Europe with his maternal grandfather, Al Hansen, a visual collage artist and a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck obtained his first guitar at 16 and became a street musician, during his teens, Beck discovered the music of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore and X, but remained uninterested in most music outside folk until many years into his career
5.
YouTube
–
YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day. This increased to three billion in May 2011, and four billion in January 2012, in February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day
6.
Record producer
–
A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performers music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has many roles during the recording process, the roles of a producer vary. The producer may perform these roles himself, or help select the engineer, the producer may also pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record companies budget. A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording. Producers also often take on an entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules, contracts. In the 2010s, the industry has two kinds of producers with different roles, executive producer and music producer. Executive producers oversee project finances while music producers oversee the process of recording songs or albums. In most cases the producer is also a competent arranger, composer. The producer will also liaise with the engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation actually is music director. The music producers job is to create, shape, and mold a piece of music, at the beginning of record industry, producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1950s and 1960s due to technological developments, the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously, all of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio and the performance had to be recorded. As well, for a song that used 20 instruments, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. Examples include the rock sound effects of the 1960s, e. g. playing back the sound of recorded instruments backwards or clanging the tape to produce unique sound effects. These new instruments were electric or electronic, and thus they used instrument amplifiers, new technologies like multitracking changed the goal of recording, A producer could blend together multiple takes and edit together different sections to create the desired sound. For example, in jazz fusion Bandleader-composer Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, producers like Phil Spector and George Martin were soon creating recordings that were, in practical terms, almost impossible to realise in live performance. Producers became creative figures in the studio, other examples of such engineers includes Joe Meek, Teo Macero, Brian Wilson, and Biddu
7.
Isobel (song)
–
Isobel is a song by Icelandic musician Björk from her 1995 studio album, Post. The story of Isobel has been explored in Human Behaviour and Bachelorette, the track was released as the second single for the album as two different CD releases in August 1995. Most commentators were enticed by Isobel, which they declared one of the highlights of the Post album, the single peaked at number eighteen on the Finnish Singles Charts, twenty-three on the UK Singles Charts and forty-seven on the New Zealand Singles Chart. The song was included in the compilation album Greatest Hits, whose tracks were selected by fans through a survey, the accompanying music video of Isobel was directed by frequent collaborator Michel Gondry and represents the story the lyrics convey. The surreal video resembles a film and garnered acclaim from critics. Björk has performed Isobel on various shows and in five of her tours. Isobel had an origin among the most complicated in the contained in Post. The songs lyrics were written in collaboration with Icelandic poet Sjón, Sjón would become a frequent collaborator throughout Björks career. Björk came with the melody for Isobel during a Christmas visit to her native Iceland, Deodato explained his work, In some of the songs I followed her secondary vocal lines, there was very little harmony and very few chords. I was doing that on Isobel too, where I wrote a natural C in a line that was in B minor. Much later on I learned that Björk is the type of singer who will sing the A sharp in A minor, the lyrics were the final addition to the song. The original idea for the dates back to late 1994. Interpreting the incident as a kind of omen, she tried to create a story and she recalls, Id been fighting like a lunatic, and going completely bonkers. I knew that if I waited for three months, threw away the book, preferably burning it, then Id wake up one morning with the lyric, but I badly wanted this song on the album. I didn’t know what to do, thus she decided to contact Sjón, explaining the story of the title character to him. The song forms a trilogy with Human Behaviour of Debut and Bachelorette of Homogenic, Björk explained, In Human Behaviour, shes a little girl. In Isobel, she moves to the big city and big lights, in Bachelorette she takes over and trees grow over the city. Their respective music videos, directed by Michel Gondry, represent this story, in a 2008 interview with Stereogum, she also included Oceania of Medúlla and Wanderlust of Volta in this narrative cycle
8.
Alarm signal
–
In the field of animal communication, an alarm signal is an antipredator adaptation referring to various signals emitted by social animals in response to danger. Many primates and birds have elaborate alarm calls for warning conspecifics of approaching predators, for example, the characteristic alarm call of the blackbird is a familiar sound in many gardens. Other animals, like fish and insects, may use other non-auditory signals, an animal who signals an alarm is called an alarmer. Different calls may be used for predators on the ground or from the air, often, the animals can tell which member of the group is making the call, so that they can disregard those of little reliability. Evidently, alarm signals promote survival by allowing the receivers of the alarm to escape from the source of peril, when an animal calls attention to itself by signalling, it may be more likely to be eaten by a predator than if it had kept quiet. This intuition has been verified by data on ground squirrel predation rates. However, there is some evidence that alarm calls can increase individual fitness as well. Alarm calls are often high-frequency sounds because these sounds are harder to localize and this cost/benefit tradeoff of alarm calling behaviour has sparked many interest debates among evolutionary biologists seeking to explain the occurrence of such apparently self-sacrificing behaviour. If alarm-calling is truly an example of altruism, then our understanding of natural selection becomes more complicated than simply survival of the fittest gene, other researchers, generally those who support the selfish gene theory, question the authenticity of this altruistic behaviour. For instance, it has observed that vervets sometimes emit calls in the presence of a predator. Studies show that these vervets may call more often when they are surrounded by their own offspring, another theory suggests that alarm signals function to attract further predators, which fight over the prey organism, giving it a better chance of escape. Others still suggest they are a deterrent to predators, communicating the animals alertness to the predator, one such case is the eastern swamphen, which gives conspicuous visual tail flicks. Vervet monkeys are the example of both animal alarm calls and of semantic capacity in non-human animals. They have three distinct calls for leopards, snakes, and eagles, and research shows that each call elicits different responses, campbells mona monkeys also generate alarm calls, but in a different way than vervet monkeys. It has been suggested that this is a homology to human morphology, similarly, the cotton-top tamarin is able to use a limited vocal range of alarm calls to distinguish between aerial and land predators. Both the Campbell monkey and the cotton-top tamarin have demonstrated abilities similar to vervet monkeys ability to distinguish likely direction of predation and that these three species use vocalizations to warn others of danger has been called by some proof of proto-language in primates. However, there is evidence that this behavior does not refer to the predators themselves but to threat. Another species that exhibits alarm calls is the Barbary macaque, Barbary macaque mothers are able to recognize their own offsprings calls and behave accordingly
