J. Martin

April 4, 2021

It Must Be the Weather

Unsurprisingly, things look every bit as bleak in terms of prevention and vaccination in Germany as experts have predicted—where by “experts” I of course mean actual experts, not shady rent-a-scientists like you-know-who. It’s pretty weird to experience a major crisis in a country that’s comprehensively underorganized and overregulated at the same time.

One of the things where Germany comes across as equally decisive and effective is combating far-right extremism. On some aspects of that, with games and gaming platforms in mind, I wrote a few words on the politics of combating extremism in Germany at my secret level just drafts.

On the visual front, I uploaded two albums with images from Geneva on Flickr. But the real news last week, very exciting, came from the Paris Louvre, who just put about a half-million works online. They also curated some parts of their brand-new online collection into albums that you can browse at your convenience.

Then, and this is both educational and enjoyable, Linus Akesson recreated the sound of a church organ on a C64 after realizing that organ sounds, without church acoustics, are similar to 8-bit sound, and that it should also work the other way round—by running 8-bit sound through a reverb machine and make it sound like a church organ. Pretty nifty, including his keyboard’s accordion layout! There’s more on his website, including his C64-performance of Bach’s chorale prelude »Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ«, BWV 639, that you can listen to and download.

Finally, I want to make recommendations for experiential and experimental indie games that are short, highly accessible, and cost next to nothing—or nothing at all—a regular feature in this newsletter. My recommendation this week would be Bird of Passage/旅烏 by Space Backyard: Travel through Tokyo at night, have conversations with cab drivers, and find out who you are. It’s about 30 minutes playing time, and it has a beautiful ending.

If you celebrate Easter, happy Easter! if not, happy holidays!
J.