Hi my name is Ulrik Hogrebe. This is a random collection of stuff that occupies my mind at any given moment. Probably something to do with design, art, music and pop culture. For examples of my work, go here.

Since I am not Djing as much since the move to London, I suppose this comes out of just straight missing playing some music.

Not a typical set from my hand – usually my sets are more in the… erh… eclectic punk/post-punk vein (music journalism and their fondness for genre hyperbole has forever ruined trying to describe your preferred music genres) with some industrial, (freak) folk, US Hardcore and no-wave mixed in for the lulz. Instead this is a more chilled out thing for me – a manson-esque smattering of gloomy psych, experimental folk and post-industrial. The kind of set you always want to play, but rarely find a venue who is willing to let you. (Not that I blame them – this isn’t exactly dance friendly.

Sleeve notes/tracklist as follows:

1. Current 93 – All the pretty little horses
Oddly beautiful, extremely creepy, this track sounds like a lullaby at the Adams family house.

2. Warpaint – Billie Holiday
A play on Mary Well’s My Guy, this is just haunting beauty – and incidentally the only track from this century on this tape. (Kinda – see the Walkmen track)

3. Chris & Cosey – Send the Magic Down
Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti from industrial legends Throbbing Gristle feature Alistair Crowley chanting on the intro to this sparse masterpiece. Also closely affiliated with Current 93 through Genesis P.Oridge

4. Cat Powers – Werewolf
Michael Hurley cover, possibly Dave Grohl on drums

5. Einsturzende Neubauten – Blume
Blixa Bargeld is and will always be a huge hero of mine. Also a long time member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the Birthday Party before that. Nick Cave’s “muse” Anita Lane on lyrics next to Blixa himself.

6. Bobby Beausoleil and The Freedom Orchestra – Lucifer Rising Soundtrack, Part III
Affiliate of the Manson family and currently jailed for the murder of Gary Hinman, Bobby wrote the soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising while imprisoned. One of the most amazing and overlooked pieces of music ever made.

7. Comin Back to Me
Jefferson Airplane’s Comin Back to Me is heartrending beautiful stoner anthem – reportedly written and recorded in one night after smoking some really groovy weed… erh… or whatever the term was back then

8. Leonard Cohen – Who by Fire
No real reason here – it just seemed to fit

9. The Walkmen – Fly into the Mystery
Cover of Jonothan Richman and the Modern Lovers track – recorded later than 2000 – the original was recorded in 1978… I think…

10. Bonnie Dobson – Winters Going
Don’t know much about her apart from that she was a big thing in the 60s and had some of her stuff covered by the Grateful Dead… brilliant song, suppose that’s enough.

11. Charles Manson – Look at Your Game Girl
Yes, that’s the Charlie Manson, killer of the American Dream, cult leader, cult murderer and weirdly accomplished country/folk singer. This is from Lie: The Love and Terror Cult recorded from prison somewhere between 1967 and 1969.

The idea of a Digital Public Space is a sound one. Maybe even a grand and honorable one. Yet the road to this promised wellspring of renaissance-like illumination and democracy runs straight through a virtual minefield of conflicting ideologies and vested interests. Oddly enough this is not necessarily a bad thing.

The Background – why I am writing this
The Guardian did a little podcast about the Digital Public Space (DPS) – which is a kind of public sector internet, linking data and assets from libraries, public institutions, archives, museums etc. At the moment, there is a small yet very dedicated team of people working on it at the BBC as part of the Beebs plan to unleash (and yes, anything of this magnitude and volume deserves a bit of hyperbole) it’s archives and make them publicly available.  I had the pleasure of running a workshop with the team – doing a preliminary fleshing out of some of the aspects of the DPS that don’t pertain to the data architecture and models describes by Bill Thompson in the podcast. If you look at the helpful diagram by Bill up top, I’ll be dealing primarily with things related to the big square in the middle and the vaguely alien-looking canisters with tentacles at the top. You don’t have to listen to the podcast to read the below, but it is a useful backdrop to the things I’ll be bringing up in this (lengthy) post.

I’ll try not to bore you with all the details of the work I did on this and instead give you a general overview of some of the aspects of the idea of a Digital Public Space that I find interesting on a personal level. Usual disclaimer is worth reinstating here – these are my thoughts and opinions, not the BBC’s.

It should be noted that  I am talking about the Digital Public Space both as a webspace that presumably contains lots of data and assets and allows for users of some sort to interact with said stuff – and as an abstract ideological space – and will be using the two meanings interchangeably. Because the truth is, it is probably both but nobody really knows for sure – although some have started the (very commendable) work of fleshing it out.

So enough disclaimers and yaddi-yaddi-ing. Lets get to the point(s).

So the idea of a kind of open data digital public space in whatever that form may take – whether it be the BBC releasing their archive or a municipality releasing APIs full of demographic data or both and more  -  into a Digital Public Space is an interesting one for several different reasons. The following is 2 reasons why the Digital Public Space should/must work, at least 3 or 4 why it probably wont and finally why this is actually, quite possibly, a Good thing. (Continues after the jump since this really is a wall of text!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Nice little film on Playtype – the physical font shop that my old chums and former employees e-Types created – by design aficionados and lifestyle-connoisseurs Monocle.

One of the last projects I worked on before leaving for the BBC – and really glad for e-Types that their work is getting the exposure it deserves.

Watch it here (Monocle have a rather… erh… quaint attitude to the web sometimes, so no embed.). you can suffer the grainy screen-shot above instead.