The other night we were having socially-distanced drinks with friends-and-fellow-NYC-transplants Rachel and Josh, engaged in a lively debate about the merits and pitfalls of genre labeling. Josh shared that he had extensively studied the history of musical improvisation from 1300 to today. This fact alone is worthy of a follow-up post, but suffice it toContinue reading “A love letter to my wife on our 15th anniversary, masquerading as a blog post about culture.”
Category Archives: The Process
How does one map an influence?
As we begin to map influences, a whole bunch of questions arise about how the map should work. How best to represent the context of the relationship? Was the influence in the form of a direct reference, a sound, a mood, or something more ineffable? The genre whiteboard was a good warm-up exercise, but theContinue reading “How does one map an influence?”
A Bigger Whiteboard
As mentioned in the Reboot post, it quickly became clear that our efforts to map the history of culture, starting with music, could not be sufficiently represented in two-dimensional physical space, nor would a whiteboard allow us to leverage the wisdom of the community to make additions, fill blind spots, and treat this as aContinue reading “A Bigger Whiteboard”
Reboot Reboot
It had been stirring in my mind at a low simmer since my previous startup, Renew, announced that it was closing its doors in January 2020. We had six severance-fueled weeks to figure out what we were going to do with our lives, and with that bit of breathing room I thought to myself: “IContinue reading “Reboot Reboot”
Everything is a Remix
“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then itContinue reading “Everything is a Remix”
A Thin Line Between Love and Hate
The recent kerfuffle between Robin Thicke and Marvin Gaye’s estate raises an interesting issue for this project. It reminds us that the role of influence, and particularly the degree of influence that one work has on another, can be serious business. The licensing of a Song of The Summer like Blurred Lines can net theContinue reading “A Thin Line Between Love and Hate”
Premises Addendum
When we started a week ago we assumed there would be about a post a week, tackling a new work of culture or an artist each time. We’d research it, work through their influences and who they influenced, publish it, and move on to the next artist. Of course we knew there would be ongoingContinue reading “Premises Addendum”
Future topic guide – Vol. 1
Always fun to see what Google thinks you are going to search for. We just typed “what influenced” and autofill kicked in from there. We guess the public is telling us what we should cover with the blog: Also should note that we did this same search this morning and Elvis Presley was the firstContinue reading “Future topic guide – Vol. 1”
About The Project
2020 addendum: We wrote the manifesto for Influenced.It over seven years ago. Looking back on it now, the references are a little out of date, and I need an editor, but the premise still holds. When we wrote this, society was six years into adapting itself to the iPhone. Now seven years later, the convergenceContinue reading “About The Project”