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Ronaliza's SEO Boost 2024 ⇩ Essence Of Search Traffic Boosting
Every Photo, Video Editor should know producing high-quality content, identify the right keywords, optimizing your meta tags, building backlinks to your website, and similar SEO terms to understand high quality content, high quality keywords, optimizing On-Site SEO, optimizing Off-Site SEO, and other SEO terms in search traffic boosting.
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Her Second Step: High Quality Keywords ⇩ From Her 48 Years Journey,
Just imagine Google search that you used before, and what ways to find a result from it. Keywords in SEO refer to the words or phrases that users enter into search engines to find information, products, or services related to their query. They are important component of any successful SEO strategy as search engines use them to determine which websites to display in their search results. To learn high quality keywords, you must master the process of identifying relevant keywords for a website, based on search volume, competition, and relevancy. Once identified, these keywords can be used with high quality content, plus optimizing On-Site SEO, optimizing Off-Site SEO strategically. Proper keyword utilization can help to improve a website's rankings, increase organic traffic, and drive more leads to the site.
From Dec, 2020 ⇩ Examine: Optimizing On-Site SEO,
After having high quality content with high quality keywords, you can try optimizing On-Site SEO. It involves optimizing the content of a webpage to make it more relevant and informative to your crowd, as well as to the search engine crawlers. Factors like optimization of header tags and meta descriptions, proper URL structures, and the use of image alt tags all serve to improve the relevance and structure of a page for search traffic boosting. Photo, Video Editor of Philippines seeks to work on optimizing On-Site SEO, although it is easy and bored.
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Lastly, we focus on optimizing Off-Site SEO that plays a significant role in boosting a website's online authority, credibility, and trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines, as it indicates that other websites and online communities view the site's content to be valuable and relevant. Effective optimizing Off-Site SEO practices can help a website to generate higher-quality referral traffic as well as help to establish its brand as an industry leader, ultimately leading to improved search rankings and increased organic traffic. Please keep noted that Ronaliza said, Alexa Master Community is glorious and important for a learner, in this matter.


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Images courtesy: U.S. Air Force
U.S. Air Force Col. Robert Valin was an airline pilot on Sept. 11, 2001. He once lived in Khobar Towers, the Saudi housing complex that was bombed by terrorists on June 25, 1996. His family also lived in Newtown, Conn., just around the corner from Sandy Hook Elementary School.
"The ties to these tragedies have always kind of been there," Col. Valin told The Unknown Soldiers.
On Apr. 15, the Massachusetts airman was watching live coverage of the Boston Marathon from Afghanistan, eight and a half hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
"I had actually watched a little bit of the marathon on TV for 20 to 30 minutes before the (attack) happened," Valin said. "The following morning, I learned more about what had happened."
Valin, who grew up in Lexington and Belmont, Mass., and plans to eventually retire in Charlestown, experienced an "ugly feeling" while seeing his beloved city under siege from thousands of miles away. But he was also filled with appreciation.
"There's the pride in Boston, Bostonians and the people of New England," he said.
Valin has been serving his country in uniform since the Reagan administration. With nearly 6,500 flying hours in F-16 and A-10 fighter jets and commercial planes, he's navigated the skies under almost every circumstance. But ever since arriving in Afghanistan, the brave men and women under his command have consistently inspired him.
"Some folks come out here and kind of expect that all the leaders will be very inspiring kinds of people and the vast majority are just that," the Colonel said. "But the opposite also happens ... the leaders are themselves inspired by the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines doing the job."
After two months in the war zone, Valin marveled at the heroism he's already witnessed.
"There's nothing more inspiring than seeing everything from an airman going outside the wire to someone manning a tower to a surgeon sewing up horrible wounds to a maintenance technician miraculously fixing an airplane that didn't look fixable," he said. "As you see more and more of these things around you, you're swamped with inspiration."
As director of staff for the Air Force's 455th Expeditionary Wing, Valin and his fellow airmen have wide-ranging, far-reaching responsibilities that tangibly impact the war and its ultimate outcome.
"We have airmen responsible for not only defending the airspace here at (our base) ... they actually get out into Afghanistan and frankly the whole area around (the base) to meet the people and get to know the local and national police and the Afghan army," Valin said.
While the Colonel admitted it's tough on everyone to be apart from their loved ones, he and his fellow service members are embracing the opportunity to make history.
"Having the chance to serve is very gratifying," he said.
As horrifying images from the Boston bombings filled television and computer screens on his base, Valin and his colleagues, especially those from New England, watched intensely as an unprecedented manhunt for two suspected terrorists unfolded before the world's eyes.
"We used to live very close to the Watertown line," Valin said of the town engulfed by police as they hunted the younger suspect. "The wing commander and I were actually walking down that exact same street a couple years ago on our way to a Red Sox game."
Like his fellow Bostonians, Valin felt a sense of relief and enormous gratitude to Boston's police, firefighters and first responders as news of the younger suspect's capture spread through his Afghanistan base.
"I lived in Khobar Towers. I was at the top of the World Trade Center with my son a month before 9/11. I was flying 757s for United Airlines at the time of the attacks," he said. "From that, I've seen and learned to see the resilience of people."
As he works to prevent further terrorist attacks and to improve the lives of Afghans, Col. Robert Valin wears his Boston Red Sox gear with patriotism and pride. While grieving for the families affected by the attacks on his city, his faith in Boston's ability to overcome tragedy is unflinching.
"I also know the people," he said. "And they're strong people."
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Forward feature Terri Glanger from FOOD & DRINK PHOTOGRAPHY & MOTION
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PALERMO, Italy ‒ INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble has said that global efforts against transnational organized crime can learn from the effective international police cooperation and national resolve which underpin Italy's on-going struggle against the mafia.
Speaking at the Third Experts Meeting (11-13 June) of the Digest of Organized Crime Cases project, Mr Noble said the initiative provided an important 'toolbox' which assisted countries in implementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, signed in Palermo in 2000, by providing them with key best practices in investigative and prosecutorial techniques, as well as in law enforcement cooperation.
At the meeting attended by Italian Senate President Renato Schifani, Italian Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, President of the Regional Assembly of Sicily Francesco Cascio, Prefect Antonio Manganelli, Chief of the Italian Police and Director General of Public Security of Italy, Director John Sandage of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and members of the Experts' Group, Mr Noble paid tribute to judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, as well as to the eight Italian police officers and Giovanni Falcone's wife, Francesca Morvillo, who were killed in Palermo bombings 20 years ago at the hands of the Cosa Nostra.
With tens of thousands of individuals holding public mandates ‒ ministers, members of parliament, police officers and judges ‒ but also journalists, writers, professors and countless ordinary citizens having found the courage to stand up against the Mafia, Mr Noble said: "By demonstrating that its institutions and people are standing as one in facing the Mafia, Italy is setting an example for the world against organized crime."
Mr Noble recalled how Felicia Impastato dedicated her life to successfully bringing her son's murderers to justice, as well as President Napolitano's visit to Sicily this year to celebrate a State funeral for Placido Rizzotto, a trade union leader who was assassinated in 1948 by the Cosa Nostra but whose body was only recently identified.
The Head of INTERPOL said that besides institutions and individuals, international law enforcement and judicial cooperation was equally crucial in successfully combatting organized crime, and that this is precisely what INTERPOL strives to accomplish within the international law enforcement community.
Prefect Manganelli stressed the importance of cooperation between INTERPOL's 190 member countries and said Italy's cooperation with INTERPOL had been 'especially close' in the aftermath of the Italian judges' assassinations.
"Today's fight against organized crime means not just arresting criminals but also seizing their assets, and in this area INTERPOL's global network has offered strong support to Italy. In 2011 alone, Italy confiscated properties, money and other assets belonging to the mafia worth some 9 billion Euros. In this respect Italy will be proud to see the Digest become an invaluable resource to the law enforcement community worldwide," added Prefect Manganelli.
Mr Noble cited how recently, INTERPOL had contributed to the arrest of one of Italy's most wanted criminals, Vito Roberto Palazzolo, who had been sentenced in Palermo to nine years in prison for external collusion with the Mafia. Palazzolo, who was the subject of an INTERPOL internationally-wanted persons Red Notice, was arrested in Bangkok on 30 March by Thai authorities with the support of INTERPOL's Fugitive Investigation Support unit and Italy's State Police.
"I commend Prefect Manganelli for the leadership and dedication he has shown over the years in working with INTERPOL and countless other law enforcement bodies worldwide to fight transnational organized crime. Italy and the international law enforcement community are lucky to have such a talented and committed professional," said the Head of INTERPOL.
The Digest of Organized Crime Cases project was launched in 2010 on the tenth anniversary of the Palermo Convention, under the leadership of Italy, of Colombia – whose determination against armed guerilla groups Mr Noble praised at the meeting – and of the UNODC, with the support of INTERPOL.


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Acclaimed American director, Robert Wilson, presents The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic in a new interpretation of the artist's life and work.
Marina Abramović (b. 1946) is known for her ambitious performances. The self-proclaimed "godmother of performance art" has been active since the early 1970s, and this year she will celebrate her 65th birthday. Her body of work is intimidating and sits within a tradition of art that includes such seminal figures as Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and Bruce Nauman (b. 1941). Along with Beuys and Nauman, Abramović's practice has been fundamental in shaping a public understanding of performance art and elevating the status of this often under-appreciated art form to that of any other fine art. Although parallels are often drawn between performance art and performing arts, Abramović insists that the two are not comparable. There is much to distinguish the two, particularly when performance art is contrasted with the more traditional forms of theatre; however, as the boundaries and definitions of theatrical performance adapt and alter, it could be argued that there is room for change.
National Theatre Wales' collaboration with Welsh performance artist Marc Rees (b. 1966) on For Mountain, Sand and Sea in June 2010 demonstrates the ways in which theatre and performance art merge and Battersea Arts Centre's recent One-on-One Festival suggests yet another way of experiencing theatre. Manchester International Festival (MIF) is also promoting innovation, and has this year commissioned Robert Wilson to create a performance about Marina Abramović's astounding life. Although The Life and Death of Marina Abramović will not contain any actual works of performance art, it will explore the artist's career and Abramović will perform, albeit in the role of actress. Wilson is perhaps best known for his work with Philip Glass on his opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) and is a visionary director who routinely stretches the limits of possibility within the theatre.
The production is presented in conjunction with Teatro Real, Madrid, and is the latest installment in a collection of theatrical pieces based around Abramović's life. Since 1988, Abramović has handed artistic control of her life story over to a variety of directors to manipulate as they desire and every five or six years a production of her life is staged. The Life and Death of Marina Abramović will be the largest and all of the performers involved are significant in their own right.
The acclaimed US actor, Willem Dafoe (b. 1955), will perform alongside Abramović, narrating and playing a range of different characters including Abramović's longtime partner Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen, b. 1943). Abramović's separation from Ulay was the event that inspired her to begin staging her life as theatre. For 12 years, the couple worked in absolute proximity to one another, forming a single entity and abandoning their unique and individual identities in pursuit of artistic understanding. Some of Abramović's most seminal works were created in partnership with Ulay and include Breathing In, Breathing Out (1977), a piece that explores one person's absorption of another and the connection between the performers. In the work, Ulay and Abramović locked mouths and breathed together, exchanging air until both fell unconscious.
In 1988, Abramović and Ulay separated, both as collaborators and as life partners, and their parting was marked by their final performance, The Great Wall Walk (1988). Both performers started at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and over the process of 90 days walked its length until they met in the middle, where their relationship reached its agonising conclusion. Abramović speaks about the impact of this experience: "It was so incredibly painful, both emotionally and physically, that I spent a lot of time contemplating how to rid myself of this pain. I decided that to stage my life as theatre would be a great way to distance myself from it and liberate myself."
Distance and time are key motifs in Abramović's performance art, but the decision to stage her life theatrically allows the artist a greater distance than a piece of performance art might: not only are the audience more removed but she becomes simply a performer in her own life, rehearsed and staged under someone else's direction. Abramović is happy for the director to take complete artistic control: "They can re-stage it and edit it as much as they like; sometimes it's a chronological story and sometimes it's not. It's up to them." For The Life and Death of Marina Abramović she handed all her writings, texts and other life materials over to Robert Wilson and awarded him free rein.
Robert Wilson's production will explore aspects of Abramović's life and career, from her Serbian upbringing to her pivotal work as a performance artist. The performance will begin with a vision of Marina Abramović's funeral and progress through life to the rising of the soul. Abramović will perform in the production, but in a very different capacity to the way in which she usually works. She explains: "This is the only performance in which I surrender authority. In my work I'm in total command." Indeed, many of Abramović's most notable works operate around the exploitation of control including Rhythm 5 (1974) and Rhythm 0 (1974).
Both of these performances experimented with limits: the latter pushed the boundaries between audience and performer, with the audience encouraged to take an active role in manipulating the passive performer with a selection of objects ranging from a rose to a gun. In Rhythm 5 (1974), the control lay not with the audience, but with Abramović herself. The performance involved Abramović jumping into a burning star, and at one point Abramović famously lost consciousness from the lack of oxygen in the centre of the star and had to be extricated from the performance.
This experience highlighted the role that consciousness plays in control: if the artist is not present they cannot be in control of the performance, an idea Abramović experimented with in later performances. Rhythm 2 (1974) explored the idea of incorporating unconsciousness into her artwork, utilising prescription drugs to alter her stage of consciousness – one to immobilise the body and one to immobilise the mind. This interest in control and freedom extends throughout Abramović's work.
Despite her assertions that Wilson has complete control, it's easy to wonder whether, in offering her life as a theatrical performance, Abramović is still playing ringleader. After all, isn't it another experiment in the possibilities inherent in trust and submission? It carries echoes of Rhythm 0 (1974) except that in this scenario Abramović hands the objects to another artist not the audience, and the passive performer that is being manipulated is as much the idea and the history of Marina Abramović, as it is the performer herself.
The questions the performance raises about authority and self-subjugation on the part of Marina Abramović are intriguing, but they are certainly not the only thing fascinating about this production. Regardless of whether you see The Life and Death of Marina Abramović as another in a series of experiments in the artist's work or as something that sits outside her oeuvre, it's set to be a magnificent show. Wilson is known for his avant-garde pieces and The Life and Death of Marina Abramović follows in this tradition, featuring music from Antony Hegarty (b. 1971) of Mercury Prize-winning Antony and the Johnsons.
Working with Antony has long been a dream of Abramović's: "When I first met Antony he was on stage singing. When I heard his voice I stood up in the middle of the theatre and asked: 'Who is this?' He's an angel." Antony has created nine new songs for the production and his lyricism, in combination with Wilson's interest in movement and experience collaborating with Glass, suggests that The Life and Death of Marina Abramović is likely to push the boundaries of opera, incorporating theatre, art and music in new and interesting ways, showing performance art's leading lady in a brand new light.
The Life and Death of Marina Abramović ran from 9 – 16 July 2011 at MIF continued to Madrid. www.mif.co.uk.
Bryony Byrne


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'The Walking Dead' Spinoff: Robert Kirkman Reveals New Setting Details
While AMC's 'The Walking Dead' companion series spinoff admittedly felt much more warranted than 'Breaking Bad''s 'Better Call Saul,' we still have relatively little idea what to expect from the 2015 spawning of the monster horror hit. And while details will be clamped shut tighter than a walker's jaw, series creator Robert Kirkman offered up a few new tidbits of 'The Walking Dead''s inevitable spinoff.
We had our own ideas how best to differentiate a new series from the comic-centric stories that have influenced 'The Walking Dead' thus far, and it seems some similar notions occurred to Kirkman. Speaking to IGN, the series creator expressed his excitement over crafting an original tale within the 'Walking Dead' world, one with a decidedly different setting than the Georgia wilderness we've seen the past 3 seasons.
It's a really different location with completely different people, so we are going to see an entirely different corner of the Walking Dead world. It definitely won't be set in Georgia, I can at least say that. It's important to us that this show exists on its own. The spinoff has to be a show worthy of existing, or else we've all sold out.
So that's something we're all working hard towards doing, and I think we can pull it off. I think that the ideal situation is, when you're watching the spinoff, you're like, "Wow, this is a really awesome show." The whole other show doesn't need to exist for this show to be cool and stand on its own.
While we await the latest news from 'The Walking Dead' season 4, the next run of the AMC horror-drama will introduce 'The Wire' star Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. as comic character Bob Stookey, 'Twilight' vet Christian Serratos as Rosita Espinosa, Alanna Masterson as a new mystery character, and upgrade actors Chad Coleman, Sonequa Martin-Green and Emily Kinney to series regulars. The returning David Morrissey's villainous Governor has been upgraded to series regular, though beyond this season his involvement seems unlikely.
We'll have 'The Walking Dead' season 4 premiere "30 Days Without An Accident" as well as the New York Comic-Con panel to keep the blood flowing this weekend, but in the meantime, what say you? Are you excited to hear that 'The Walking Dead' spinoff will definitively take place in a new setting, even if it limits crossover potential?
Check out the latest sneak peek from the premiere below, and give us your 'Walking Dead' spinoff wishlist in the comments!


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The Meccano Society of Scotland
Scone 2007
This year our main show was at the Scottish Vintage Tractor And Engine Club's "Farming Yesteryear" Show at Scone Palace
Our Annual Competition was held here this year
The results of our Annual Competition
FIRST PRIZE - Cliff Railway - Ken McDonald
SECOND PRIZE - Remote Controlled Crane - Ed Rebecca
THIRD PRIZE - Shay Locomotive - Joe Etheridge
JIM FINLAYSON TROPHY - Bobby Middlemass won the Jim Finlayson Trophy
This was for his fine models of Beam Engines
This trophy is awarded annually by the previous year's winner and usually marks some special quality of meccano building or Meccano attribute.
Pictures from Scone 2007
High resolution versions of the photos are also available for download if desired.
Click here to see higher resolution photo
Tip - You may find it better to view the pictures in 'full screen' mode - For most browsers F11 will toggle this on and off.
© 2024 Meccano Society of Scotland


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Have you seen the one where you're supposed to post a legal notice to your Facebook profile to ensure the social networking titan can't use anything you've written without your permission?
No, doing so won't accomplish anything legally speaking, and yes, it's a hoax — an old one that already made the rounds earlier this year according to urban legend tracker Snopes.com.
I scraped a copy of the message off my own Facebook News Feed this afternoon (one of my friends had posted it), and other TIME editors confirmed seeing it in their feeds this morning. Here it is, in full:
In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, graphics, comics, paintings, photos, and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For any and all commercial use of the above my written consent is required in every instance.
(Those reading this may copy and paste this text on their Facebook walls. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I hereby notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents, and/or any staff under Facebook's direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punishable by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).
Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, then you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be allowing tacitly the use of elements such as your photos, as well as the information contained in your profile status updates
The idea seems to be that by posting this, you can somehow override the privacy strictures you agreed to when you signed up for Facebook. Let's be clear: You can't. It's that simple. Posting such messages, whatever you've read about your rights and the power of self-declared legalese, will simply clutter up your timeline and annoy your friends. If you have a problem with Facebook's privacy policies, you can either stick it out and lobby for Facebook to amend its terms, or you can quit Facebook.
Part of the appeal behind this particular version of the hoax lies, I suspect, in its citation of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), Section 1-308, which supposedly confers certain legal privileges if you drop it somewhere in the vicinity of your signature. In short, it doesn't, and it certainly doesn't protect you on Facebook. The only thing that'll protect you on Facebook is you, in other words — taking care not to post anything you'd rather stay private.
Perhaps "hoax" is too strong a word. Sometimes these things are just viral mistakes — someone taking a well-intentioned misunderstanding and driving it viral (though that's often also a definition for "conspiracy theories"). People pick it up thinking they're immunizing themselves with, as Snopes puts it, a "legal talisman." No such thing exists. The person who devised this particular message may have been going for viral clutter, or they may simply have been misinformed.
Update: Facebook's weighed in on what it refers to as a "Copyright Meme" spreading on its site, and you'll be happy to know the company's making it clear that you — not Facebook — own your content, period.
There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.


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In many industries, prototyping is an effective way of modeling a system to test it and gather feedback from engineers, other designers, stakeholders and, most importantly, end users.
Practitioners in the UX field are familiar with prototyping when designing physical devices, web, and mobile applications. UX designers can use Flash, HTML, or other robust programming languages to build prototypes that closely resemble the final product, allowing test participants to interact with the prototype more realistically to generate valuable feedback for designers.
Unfortunately, these types of prototypes aren't generally used early in a product's lifecycle because they can be difficult and slow to produce. UX designers trying to build these prototypes may need the help of software engineers or developers in the team. Besides taking considerable time and effort to create, implementing any changes on these type of prototypes can also be time-consuming.
Low-Fidelity Prototyping
To produce prototypes that are low cost, fast and easy to recreate, designers can turn to low-fidelity prototyping techniques such as paper prototyping. This technique involves creating rough drawings or sketches of interfaces that can be used as models of a design in usability tests. Paper prototyping is practical and useful because it allows for input by end users in early stages of the design cycle. The feedback gathered in these usability tests in turn informs design iterations before a design goes into full production.
But unlike high-fidelity prototypes, paper prototypes lack the context of the physical device the product will ultimately be deployed to. For example, a paper prototype of a website can only be experienced on the piece of paper that it was created on, whereas an HTML/CSS-based prototype can be experienced in a web browser. Paper prototypes also depend on a facilitator to act "as the computer," changing different states of the UI in response to a participant's actions.
The lack of physical context of paper prototypes is particularly problematic when designing mobile experiences. Because mobile applications are inside mobile devices, they can be experienced in many possible positions and contexts. Showing prototypes in an unusual setting (such as a flat piece of paper on a table) doesn't give users a full and accurate experience of the design. Simple paper prototypes can test a product's UI and content, but leave much of the broader product experience untested.
If we could replicate more of the mobile user experience using low-fidelity prototypes, we could get more of the feedback that would otherwise be more difficult and take longer to obtain. This can be done using a mixed-fidelity prototyping technique called paper-in-screen prototyping.
What is Paper-in-Screen Prototyping?
The idea behind this technique is simple: place the paper prototype of the mobile application inside the mobile device. This is achieved by adapting images of low-fidelity (paper) prototypes to display on a mobile device's screen. This allows users to get closer to experiencing aspects of the mobile user experience that are absent with paper UI sketches alone.
This prototyping technique is practical since it leverages prototypes that are likely to have been previously made for testing. If a designer has sketched a number of paper prototypes to conduct a usability test or a heuristic evaluation, these can be easily turned into paper-in-screen prototypes.
These mixed-fidelity prototypes share some important characteristics with paper prototyping. They are still relatively easy to create and discard. They also look "sketchy" and "unfinished," which allows participants to provide feedback they otherwise might not have shared for fear of criticizing a design that appears to have many hours of work behind it.
Paper-in-screen prototyping and regular paper prototyping both have a similar place in the overall lifecycle of the design of an application. They both allow for quick production testing and iterative design.
How to Create a Paper-in-Screen Prototype
The following are the keys steps to produce a paper-in-screen prototype, taking the design of an iPhone application as an example:
Testing a Design Using Paper-in-Screen Prototypes
It is important to establish linear scenarios before conducting a test using paper-in-screen prototypes because the prototypes aren't fully interactive. Test participants should go through a series of pre-defined scenarios during in the same way they would with paper prototypes.
It is evident that paper-in-screen prototypes are not as realistic as high-fidelity prototypes, but they have the important advantage over low-fidelity prototypes in that users can hold the prototype in their hands in the same way they would hold the product in their hands.
Besides bringing a paper prototype to a more adept context of use, this makes it more practical for practitioners to carry all the scenarios and their corresponding prototypes in one place: the mobile device itself.
Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective Levels of Design
The value of testing a design prototype extends beyond just evaluating UI elements and interactions; behavioral and emotional feedback are also valuable insights that prototypes draw out of test users. Although a paper prototype can allow a user to experience the way an application might look, it doesn't generate the immediate emotional impact that the product ultimately will. These are things that matter at the visceral level of design, one of the three levels of design (along with behavioral and reflective) that Don Norman explains in his book, Emotional Design. Failing to account for the visceral level of design results in failing to anticipate the real mobile user experience because it dismisses the level of affect, or emotional response, that a prototype could elicit in the participant in a particular context.
Paper-in-screen prototyping also accounts in part for Norman's behavioral level of design, which should be of main interest to UX professional as it deals directly with interaction and usability. With this prototyping technique, practitioners can easily get closer to contextually relevant behaviors of participants interacting with a low-fidelity prototype that would otherwise not be possible. For example, a paper-in-screen prototype of a mobile application can easily allow a UX designer to see where a participant is placing a finger on the screen, which sections may be getting overlooked, and even how the mobile device is being held.
Paper-in-Screen and UX Practitioners
The benefits of paper-in-screen are clear from a test participant's perspective. To find out whether UX professionals would find paper-in-screen valuable, this technique was tested with ten UX professionals as part of the study behind my master's thesis project at Indiana University. The goals were to discover whether this prototyping technique is able to effectively replicate the mobile user experience, and whether UX professionals would be willing to adopt it.
The participants were asked to create design paper prototypes for two scenarios involving a fake iPhone application. For this, they used a pre-made template (shown to the right). After examining the scenarios with the paper prototypes, the participants were introduced to the paper-in-screen technique and shown how to make one step-by-step. Finally, they were able to test their own paper-in-screen prototypes inside an iPhone with the study's facilitator.
The majority of the UX professionals in the study found paper-in-screen prototyping to be engaging and suitable for early design stages. Some wished it could be even more interactive like higher-fidelity prototypes. However, the most interesting finding was that paper-in-screen was regarded as providing better user feedback compared to paper prototyping, despite being more difficult to achieve.
The perception of better feedback was based on how paper prototypes can't approximate the mobile user experience as well as paper-in-screen prototypes can. The perception of such better feedback being more difficult to achieve with paper-in-screen prototypes came from the fact that they can't be annotated or written on in the way paper prototypes can.
As a result, paper-in-screen prototyping falls somewhere between low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping in terms of the tradeoff between the richness of the test experience and the rapidity with which prototypes can be created.
Paper-in-screen prototyping also allowed for the discovery of some essential elements than can help simulate the mobile user experience: contextual interaction experience, a better sense of realism, a focus on visceral and behavioral levels of design, the prototype-digitizing speed, and overall interactivity are all key benefits of this mid-fidelity approach.
Paper-in-screen doesn't come without its drawbacks. This technique requires test participants to follow a predetermined scenario, which leads to a strictly linear experience that inhibits any spontaneous actions. If paper prototypes could be easily scanned into image files with clickable "hot spots" that could be rendered by a mobile browser (displaying the image in full screen), the usefulness of paper-in-screen prototypes would be improved.
Clearly, this prototyping technique could be improved in order to get more realistic feedback from lower-fidelity prototypes. It is important, however, to make sure any modifications of this technique don't result in making mixed-fidelity prototypes more difficult to create than necessary, or as time consuming to create as full-fledged high-fidelity prototypes.
This technique aims to bridge the gap between low- and high-fidelity prototyping in providing a contextually relevant user experience early during the test of a design idea. From one UX designer to another, I hope you find this technique useful by including in your personal and professional design process.
I would like to formally thank Dr. Davide Bolchini and Dr. Anthony Faiola at IUPUI's School of Informatics for their contribution and assistance on developing this concept.


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This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Composer John Zorn doesn't give many interviews, but we're happy to say he's our guest today. Zorn turned 60 yesterday. His birthday is being celebrated with an ongoing festival of concerts in Europe and the Americas, including a day-long celebration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art September 28th.
Writing about Zorn in the Wall Street Journal, Larry Blumenfeld said: Zorn, once tagged as a bad boy of the downtown scene, must now be considered among contemporary music's most prolific and wide-ranging achievers. His oeuvre has embraced with equal passion jazz improvisations, noise rock, chamber music and orchestral works.
Zorn is also important for releasing recordings of experimental music by other musicians on his record label Tzadik. Tzadik is a Hebrew word for a righteous man or spiritual leader. The label also has a series of recordings called "Great Jewish Music." We'll talk a little later about how Zorn got absorbed in Jewish culture.
Zorn's compositions have been recorded by many groups, including his own, but even with his own groups, he sometimes doesn't play the saxophone, he just conducts. That's the case on his latest album "Dreamachines." From that album, this is his composition "The Conqueror Worm."
GROSS: John Zorn, welcome to FRESH AIR. Happy birthday, happy 60th. (Chuckling)
JOHN ZORN: Thank you.
GROSS: So we just hear "The Conqueror Worm," and I'm wondering is that inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem? Is it inspired by another composition that exists of the same name? Is it inspired by the movie, the English movie, the "Witchfinder General" and the English - the American version of the movie was called "The Conqueror Worm"? Or is none of the above? (Laughing)
ZORN: Well, that's an all of the above and none of the above. I guess the title came from the Vincent Price movie you were talking about, which I love so much. Somehow in my imagination it connected up with Brion Gysin, and the CD "Dreamachines" is all, somehow revolves around the work of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
So I wrote this very complicated piece. We went into the studio and as you know, on the record, there's a variety of different kinds of music that this band performs, and they're amazing musicians, some of the pieces more difficult than others. But "The Conqueror Worm" ended up being a piece that was just so difficult to play, we couldn't really get it in the studio satisfactorily enough.
So I put it aside. We recorded the rest of the music, and the CD was a little bit short. It was like 30-some-odd minutes, 38 or something. I needed one more piece. So I actually said, hey, guys, I'm just going to, you know, go into the studio and write a new piece, so take like a 10-minute break.
GROSS: Wow.
ZORN: And I wrote that piece in - like in the studio. (Laughing) In like five or 10 minutes. It just popped right out. And we recorded it. We did a couple of takes, and it was nailed. And it is one of the best pieces on the record. I think it's really slamming. It really gives everybody a chance to stretch out. And that happens sometimes, that kind of magic.
GROSS: And it's kind of film noir-ish, and I know you like film noir a lot.
ZORN: Yes I do, yes I do. Well, it has a mood, a nice mood.
GROSS: So there's a lot of celebrations that have been going on of your music for the past few months and that are going to continue because it's your 60th birthday. What does turning 60 mean to you?
ZORN: There are no more doubts.
GROSS: What does that mean?
GROSS: When do I get to say that? How old do I have to be?
ZORN: It means that little guy, that little guy that sits on my shoulder, you know, the guy in the red suit with the pitchfork and the pointed ears and the tail, that little guy that's on your shoulder that once in a while used to whisper in your ear, you know, "you could be really wrong about this," that guy's not around anymore. I brushed him off.
Everything is very clear: what I need to do, why I'm on the planet, the best way to accomplish it, what is a distraction, what helps me focus. Everything is really there. And I feel like - people have always said I'm very prolific, and I work very hard, I work all the time, I'm not really interested in vacations or getting away from my work. But I've gotten more and more prolific.
It's - at this point it's like turning on a tap, or it's like plugging into an energy source and staying plugged in. I used to think that composition was a matter of problem-solving, where you set yourself a certain number of problems, you have a certain set of limitations, there are parameters that you deal with, and then you solve those problems, and a piece comes out of it.
Now there are no more solutions because there are no more problems. I just turn the tap, and the music comes pouring out.
GROSS: OK, so you got rid of that devil with a pitchfork on your shoulder. But let me propose that there are some times - and you say that's why you have no more doubts. Let me propose that sometimes there's an angel on one shoulder saying are you sure this is the best you can do? Are you sure it's the right thing to do? Are you sure it's the ethical thing to do? Do you have an angel on your shoulder that creates or ever created doubt?
ZORN: Well, I wouldn't call that creature - I don't know if you'd call that creature an angel. I might call that creature my parents.
ZORN: Or like a policeman. One thing that I do ask myself when I'm in the creative process is does the world need this? And maybe that's along the lines of what you're thinking about. And I ask myself all the time.
GROSS: I'm just thinking about - I'm just thinking about doubt, that doubt sometimes comes from - not from a negative place but from a positive place, that sometimes you can't - you don't know what right is, or there are several things that are right. It's hard to make one's way in this world and know what the right thing to do is.
ZORN: I think that's true for, you know, the first part of your life. But I think - you're talking about the age of 60, for me what the age of 60 is? No, I don't have those doubts anymore. I know why I'm here. I know what I need to do. I know what's - I don't know whether right and wrong, you know, has so much of a play into it.
I create work, and I devote myself to the creative process, and I try to, you know, stay pure in that process and be worthy of the messages that I receive. You can't sit down and write 300 compositions in a three-month period and think that you're doing it all by yourself. Obviously, there's something going on here. And whether you want to call it channeling or being connected to a creative force or knowing your history and knowing where you belong, that's, you know, maybe a personal thing. Maybe I believe all of the above. But I, you know, I don't think I have doubts anymore of that kind.
GROSS: You obviously have a gift. And some people - some people, when they have a gift, they define it as something that's God-given and is coming directly from God, and it makes them more religious or more spiritual. And other people think of it as something that they have and ascribe some totally different reason to it. Do you ever wonder, like, what is this gift and why do you have it?
ZORN: I feel like there are messages. I feel like there are angels. I feel that there is a legacy and an energy. And I feel that it's possible to tap into that. I just don't believe in ego that much. I don't think it's just me. I mean, you can even just talk about community.
I could not do this music without these musicians. It's about people. Music is about people for me. It's not about sounds. It's about people; it's about putting people into challenging situations. And for me, challenges are opportunities.
GROSS: Now you've used, you know, words like being in touch with angels and that something's happening beyond your ego that it's like you're channeling...
ZORN: Well, you know, you need to believe in something that's bigger than yourself. I think that's what everybody wants to believe in that. And I think artists - I have art. I have music. I have the history, this legacy behind me that I can look up to. This is what I believe in. If you want to call it God or spirituality, that's all up to you. Basically I believe in something that's bigger than myself, and that gives my life meaning.
GROSS: And that thing is art, as opposed to organized religion.
ZORN: Yes.
GROSS: Nevertheless, you've done a lot of music that relates to being Jewish. You have a series of albums called "Radical Jewish Culture." You have - your record label is called Tzadik, which means a righteous person. So what does being Jewish actually mean to you, and does that connect at all to this sense of something larger that you feel you're tapping into when you make music?
ZORN: Well no, I'm not a practicing kabbalist. I'm not a spiritual master. I'm not a rabbi. I don't - but it's part of who I am. I spent a lot of time in Japan, 10 years living there half the year, you know, every year. I had an apartment there, and I went back and forth. And after a while I kind of hit a cultural wall. I learned the language. I learned a lot about the music. I had a lot of musical colleagues, a lot of friends.
It was a great time, a time of learning. But at a certain point, and I think by - I did this maybe from like '84 to '94, something like that. At some point I began to say, well, who am I, what am I doing? Everybody comes to this point in their life when they get to be 40 or so. You turn around and look at your roots. You try to find a home. You want to know where you belong.
And being Jewish became something that was important to me. It had not been important to me up to that time. But I turned around and looked at the culture, at my friends, who - many of whom were Jewish, and that was something to think about. It raised a lot of questions.
And what it did that's relevant to this discussion is it created a body of work. It inspired me to create a body of work.
GROSS: And I think the part of your body of work, because your body of work is vast, but the part of it that you're talking about now connects with Jewish music and Jewish culture. What is the Jewish music that you were actually exposed to when you were young, and what's the Jewish music that you investigated when you became more deeply interested in it?
ZORN: Well my parents were not outwardly Jewish. They came out of a generation where being a Jew was not only a disadvantage, it was actually a death sentence. And they escaped all of that, and we celebrated Christmas. We didn't have Jewish music in the house.
GROSS: Did they grow up in America?
ZORN: My mother was born in the Bronx. My father was born in the old country and moved to Astoria, Queens, when he was about six years old. And they had very full, beautiful lives. My mother was a professor of education. My father was with Patton in the Third Army, and he was wounded in Metz by a sniper and came back to New York and married my mother. And it was the American dream, in a way.
GROSS: Did they lose family in the Holocaust?
ZORN: Yeah, yeah, there were such problems. But I think they found it difficult to understand why I wanted to reconnect with being Jewish. My father literally said to me, hey, man, I gave you a way out of this, because I went to a Protestant church when I was growing up, and that was a little confusing.
GROSS: Why did they do that?
ZORN: Well, they were trying to help me. They were trying to save me from what they thought was a disadvantage. And, you know, I never really gave it a second thought. I - you know, when you're a kid, you do what you do. But as I got older, and I, you know, grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, had Jewish friends all my life; as I started making music and started, you know, thinking about it in my conscious brain, I began to realize, wow, a lot of these cats are Jews.
Why is that? Why am I - why am I more comfortable with this? Why - am I more comfortable with this? What is going on here? And in asking those questions, a bunch of friends got together - Anthony Coleman, Marc Ribot, Frank London, and we began to talk about it.
And my method is not just to talk but to do. So it ended up with me organizing a series of concerts, which I called "Radical Jewish Culture." And it was a kind of a nice feeling of coming together, of a community.
GROSS: Did you grow up - I don't think you went to synagogue very much, if at all.
ZORN: Never, never, never went to shul.
GROSS: OK, bar mitzvahs, where you heard a lot of...
ZORN: Didn't have a bar mitzvah.
GROSS: No bar mitzvah for you. What about friends?
ZORN: I didn't go to any bar mitzvahs until my friends started having kids, and they had bar mitzvahs. I mean, I really was separate from that whole organization. And what I connected with was something that was more spiritual and something that was more cultural.
GROSS: My guest is composer John Zorn. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: Your music is very unconventional, but when you were growing up, Jewish in a Jewish neighborhood, but your parents sent you to a Protestant church and wanted to give you a way out of Judaism, did you wish at that time to be more conventional and to be more like your friends who were Jewish and didn't - weren't going to church?
ZORN: I was always an outsider, proud of being an outsider. I always reveled in the outsiders. I'm not sure why that is. I was born in '53, and I think one of the first movie experiences I had was going to see "Ben-Hur." It came out in '59. And back then, you know, movie theaters were big, beautiful wonderlands, you know.
GROSS: Yeah.
ZORN: And made even more huge by the fact that I was so small. I was only, you know, a couple feet high, this little six-year-old. And my parents took me to see "Ben-Hur." And on the way home, long movie, I was in my parents' Pontiac, and I would always sit in the backseat and play around with little toys and stuff, you know, in the backseat.
And I was really tired, and I fell asleep. And when I woke up, I was alone. I was alone in the car. The car had been parked on the street. The doors were locked, the windows were rolled up. I'm sure everybody out there is, like, shocked, but maybe that wasn't such an unusual thing. Maybe they just didn't want to wake me up. I don't know what it was.
But I was alone, and I kind of - I was six - got out of the car, locked the door, closed it, wandered over to my parents' house, buzzed the buzzer, and my mother came to the door. I'll never forget the look on her face. It was not one of shock or humiliation or feeling guilty. She thought it was the funniest thing she ever saw in her life. She started laughing.
And she called my father. She said Henry, Henry, come and look at this. I said: Did you forget something in the car? Oh, she was just - that was just the funniest thing she ever heard. And I remember thinking: I'm going to have to take care of myself for the rest of my life. I can't trust these people. (Laughing)
GROSS: Wow, you think they - like they forgot about you, that they left you in the car by mistake?
ZORN: I don't know. They might have forgotten. They might have started arguing. They argued a lot. I mean, there were a lot of things going on back then, you know. It's not for me to make a value judgment, but all I can do is say for myself what it did was it created a feeling of independence, a feeling of inner strength. It didn't crush me.
It made me feel like, I just have to do this on my own. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to have to do it on my own. And I feel like I re-parented myself with art and music. That was a place that was always beautiful, always gave back to me, that made me feel like I had worth.
GROSS: You also created your own sense of family and community.
ZORN: And eventually that's also what I did is that...
GROSS: Through your art, yeah.
ZORN: Musicians that would believe in what I did, they became my family, and they still are.
GROSS: Well, that story about being locked in a car alone happens after you go to see "Ben-Hur." And there's that really famous chariot race scene where, like, a wheel comes off of one of the chariots, right?
ZORN: Yeah.
GROSS: And like when you're a kid, seeing something like that on a big screen could be, like, absolutely gripping and also terrifying. Did that affect your experience of being alone in the car?
ZORN: I don't think so. I don't feel a connection. I mean, I can tell you that I watch "Ben-Hur" a lot.
ZORN: I mean, sometimes I have it on repeat play. I was watching it just last night. You know, when I write music, I don't like to write in silence. I like to have something going on behind me. I don't really watch "Ben-Hur," it's on in the other room, and I'm sitting in my work room, and I can hear it. And it kind of makes me feel like I'm not alone.
I'm in the house. There's someone there. There's - you know, it's very familiar. I've seen the movie hundreds of times, literally hundreds, not 100, like 200, 300 times.
ZORN: Sometimes it's like on, it just plays five, six times a day. It's just going, going, going. And I get into different phases with different movies, but that was certainly one of them. And maybe it's a movie that, you know, I saw back when I was a kid that somehow made me feel comfortable.
I was the kind of kid that was in the basement in front of the TV till late at night watching movies. That somehow gave me comfort. My mother also had a story where when I would cry, she'd put me in front of the TV, even if there was just a test pattern going, and it would quiet me down.
GROSS: I don't remember the score from "Ben-Hur." Is it good?
ZORN: It's brilliant, Miklos Rozsa, brilliant. Amazing music.
GROSS: Oh, I should go back and listen to that.
ZORN: Oh fabulous music.
GROSS: Composer John Zorn will be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: I want to play a track from your band Masada. You have different bands, and this band is named after the people in the Jewish fortress during the Roman Empire era who kill themselves rather than be taken prisoners by the Romans. And it's a live recording with you conducting and producing, and this is like from, I think 2003. And the track I want - the composition of yours I want to play is called "Malkut." Am I pronouncing that correctly?
ZORN: Yeah. That's good enough.
GROSS: And I want to tell you one of the things I really like about this. And you could tell me if what I'm hearing is anything close to what you're doing. (Chuckling)
ZORN: Nah.
GROSS: So it's kind of going back and forth between - parts of it are going back and forth between a Yiddish-sounding melody and "Fur Elise," the Beethoven composition that so many people know because when they took piano lessons as a child, as I did, you're taught to play it. Is that happening in your mind there?
ZORN: Yeah. Absolutely that's happening. But...
GROSS: And you're...
ZORN: What it means is that...
GROSS: Yeah. Go ahead.
ZORN: ...you know, whatever you think it means is what it means.
GROSS: Well, what I'm hearing is like...
ZORN: I don't have any deep agenda here.
GROSS: ...that you're finding this kind of musical connection between Beethoven and a style of Jewish music.
ZORN: You could put it that way, or it could be something entirely other. This was, you could say, musical etude - a way of just putting disparate elements, elements of music that maybe don't belong together in some way and trying to find a way to make them work. These compositions from the first book of Masada were written in '93, '94, '95, '96, at the beginning of my kind of Jewish awakening, and it was written at a time when composition was problem solving for me. It was a matter of really setting myself different musical issues and problems and trying to solve them.
GROSS: OK. So is the John Zorn composition "Malkut" from around 2003.
ZORN: Yeah. I think this was performed at my 50th birthday concert at Tonic.
GROSS: Oh, god, really?
ZORN: Yeah.
GROSS: Great. And...
ZORN: I believe so. Yeah.
GROSS: And now we're in the middle of all the John Zorn 60th birthday celebrations.
ZORN: The 60th.
GROSS: So here we go. And we're going to hear Mark Feldman, violin; Erik Friedlander, cello; Greg Cohen, bass; with John Zorn conducting.
MASADA STRING TRIO: (Instrumental)
GROSS: That was the John Zorn group Masada, and the composition was called "Malkut." And it's John Zorn's 60th birthday. There are celebrations through New York, and really the world of people performing his compositions.
You were born in 1953, so you were like the tail end of the first generation that grew up with rock 'n' roll. And the adult generation was saying rock 'n' roll is a passing phase, you're going to outgrow it. Did people basically say the same to you about the avant-garde when you started listening to and performing avant-garde music? Like, you're going to outgrow this and just like, turn to, like, more conventional music, and was there any truth to that?
ZORN: Well, I can certainly see where some parents may have said that to their children, but no one ever said anything like that to me about any kind of music. Music was always in my house, in my parents' house. They listened to all kinds of music. It's true they didn't listen to rock, and I would bring in a variety of different things - whether it was The Doors. I was really into The Doors because of the organ and I was really interested in organ music through Bach and through "The Phantom of the Opera." I brought in some rock things and they didn't like it, but they didn't say I was going to outgrow it. I don't think they looked that far into the future, to be honest. They listened to country and western. They listened to fado. They listened to world music. They listened to classical. I brought sound, movie soundtracks into the house. And I pulled out my father's old 78s. He had old 78s of Louis Armstrong, of Dizzy Gillespie, of the Mills Brothers. Music was obviously important to him. But I was never hit with any kind of value judgments about different kinds of music.
I think - another thing I should say is growing up in New York - and in particular going to the U.N. School, which is, I went to the United Nations School from kindergarten all the way through high school. I had the same 25 friends in the same class the whole time.
GROSS: Wow.
ZORN: And these are kids that came from Nigeria, from Japan, from France, from Germany, from Holland, from India, from Pakistan. I had friends from all over the world.
GROSS: Did you study classical music when you were young?
ZORN: Yeah. Yeah. I studied with Leonardo Balada, who was the music teacher at the U.N. School. He's a very great composer who lives in Barcelona. We're still in touch. I had been already improvising on the piano because my grandmother and my aunt had pianos in their houses. And I had been improvising on the guitar. I played flute, I played clarinet, I played bass, I played guitar, blah, blah, blah. But I think, yeah, I studied classical and also was turned on to jazz. I listened to rock, I listened to soul. I mean, growing up in the '60s in New York, you listened to everything. Salsa was exploding. I mean...
GROSS: How did you feel about the studying technique part of learning music...
ZORN: Studying?
GROSS: ...practicing, practicing, practicing?
ZORN: Well, you know, I mean, discipline is a very important thing. And, you know, I wanted to play the bass and my parents said, you know, you don't want to play the bass, that's in the background. You want to play the guitar, that's in the front, you know. So, you know, I want to play the bass. No, no, no, we'll get you a guitar. They got me a little guitar. Then they had a teacher come by who was very strict and very disciplined and had me spend all my time playing scales. And he wanted me to play the chromatic scale, four octaves, from the lowest note to the highest note of the guitar and back down in eight seconds. And I worked on that a lot but I couldn't get it any lower than 12. And he said until you can get it at eight seconds, you know, I won't let you play a Beatles tune or anything like that. You have to do this.
GROSS: Geez.
ZORN: So I told him to go get stuffed and I started doing my own thing. And discipline is important as long as you're having a good time. What I always did was I did what I enjoyed, and I think that's why I don't have any grey hairs. I'm 60 but I look like I'm 40. And I have a very beautiful life with great friends and I look forward to waking up every day. Every day is a vacation but every day is a workday. I don't want to take vacations because music is my life and if I escape from music, that's the same thing as death. So a vacation is death to me. Sitting on the beach for a week is my idea of hell. That would kill me.
GROSS: Why is that your idea of hell?
ZORN: Well, I mean I want to make music.
GROSS: You could make music on the beach.
ZORN: I couldn't make music on the beach. You know, I make music in my home, and I'll tell you what my home is. My home is not just an apartment. I've been living in the same place for 38 years. My home is a device...
GROSS: (Laughing)
ZORN: ...a device for enabling creativity. A device for cutting out everything that - the chaos outside that people think is reality, that's chaos. My home is a way of insulating myself and stripping all that away so I can get into what reality is for me, which is creativity.
GROSS: So describe your home.
ZORN: Yeah. My home is a device.
GROSS: Describe it, though. What's in it that makes it a device?
ZORN: Books. Records. Art.
GROSS: Instruments? What do you have?
ZORN: I have a saxophone. But I don't, you know, pick it up unless I've got to take it to a gig. It's sitting in the corner and I don't go near it. But I have a little, a workroom that's very small, maybe it's eight feet square, something like that, seven feet square, and it's wall-to-wall books and CDs, records. And there's a small little children's that desk I've had since I was a kid. It's a Stickley original, beautiful Gustav Stickley. All my furniture is Stickley that I got from my grandparents. I have a little rocking chair that I've sat in since I was like, you know, eight years old, and I sit in the same chair at the same desk, and that's where I write music.
GROSS: Wait a minute. So you're on a child's rocking chair and a child's desk when you're composing?
ZORN: Yeah.
GROSS: That is odd, you have to agree.
ZORN: It's - no judgments, Terry. No judgments.
GROSS: OK. Sorry.
GROSS: But, it's just, are they child-sized...
ZORN: Well I said children's...
GROSS: ...or did you just have them as a child?
ZORN: Well, I mean I don't know what you're thinking when I say children's desk. The desk is probably about three feet, you know, high. And the chair, the little rocker is maybe, you know, a foot and a half, two feet, you know. But I sit cross-legged on the rocker. I don't really have much other furniture. I sleep on the floor on a futon.
GROSS: You sleep on - oh, wow.
ZORN: Yeah. And I remember when Fred Kaplan, who wrote for The New Yorker, came into my house. He wrote a big piece in The New Yorker and I was very upset at what he wrote. I mean, I think he meant well and everybody thought it was an interesting piece. And he, when I challenged him, what he would say, hey, I made you into an interesting character, you know? I said, you know, well, basically what he was responding to is, hey, what is this nut? He has no furniture. You know, it's like, hey, his clothes are in a little cardboard box in the corner. Like, well, you know, you can say yes, that's unusual, but it's not unusual for me. This is how I live because I have my priorities straight. You could put it this way; it's like if I dressed in a monk's habit, maybe you would understand it a little bit better?
GROSS: Is that how you feel, like an ascetic who has renounced many things because - except for, in your case, music?
ZORN: Well, anything that gets in the way of creativity gets cut out. You know, I live a very, very serious existence. And if - anything that gets in the way of making music is cut out. And...
GROSS: Does that include people?
ZORN: ...that means friends...
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
ZORN: Absolutely, it means people. I'll tell you something about people. People are great. But there's people who you get together with and you talk and you go away feeling energized, you feel inspired. And then there's people who you talk with and you go away feeling horrible, feeling drained, feeling like you're incapable of doing anything. Those people are psychic vampires and I now stay away from them.
GROSS: Right.
ZORN: Again, this is being 60; everything is very clear. I have no doubts. I know what gets in the way and I know what encourages me to do more work. I used to read reviews and I would like, I would be unable to write a note of music for months at a time because some guy I don't even know who doesn't know me didn't like my work. Now I can look at it and say, well, you didn't like it? There are many people who do.
GROSS: You've had a kind of famously combative relationship with critics over the years. Was that why, because it got to you so much?
ZORN: Because I'm very susceptible to criticism, I'm very sensitive and, you know, my parents used to say, John, you're oversensitive. And, you know, you know what I can say to them now or what I said back then, I am just the right amount of sensitivity I need to be me. And if you don't like it, take a walk.
ZORN: So yeah, I mean I have had a very combative relationship with critics because I'm very impatient with people that don't give my work the respect I feel it deserves.
GROSS: My guest is composer John Zorn. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: I want to ask you about jingles, because since you like kind of such a wide range of music and it's all on kind of equal footing for you - do you know what I mean? - that it all matters, I know you've done a lot of work in Japan and some of that work is really different from what we've heard here. I'm wondering if you've ever written jingles and I'm also wondering if there's any jingles, like TV jingles or whatever, that really stuck in your mind over the years that you really love.
ZORN: Well, yeah. One of the interesting things about jingles is the amount of time you have to deal with. Sometimes they're just 15-second spots and you need to really encapsulate something that captures someone's attention and imagination in that short amount of time. But you have to really focus and get something done. You have to say something.
It's not easy to say something in 15 or 20 seconds. It's easy to make sound for that amount of time, but to create a piece of music that has an integrity - a beginning, middle, and end - that says something, that has an impact on the listener in that amount of time, is very difficult. And I have a very great appreciation for people who write jingles.
It's a true art. And if you listen to what I call my file-card pieces - "Spillane," "Elegy," "Mount Analogue," "Kristallnacht" - a lot of those pieces - and "Godard" - a lot of those pieces exist in small soundbites. At the time in the '80s people used to use the word postmodern and this, that, and the other. What's really going on is short moments of music that really make an impact, that are ordered in a very, very specific way, sequenced in just such a way that the energy continues, the momentum continues, and you just follow from the beginning to the end for 15, 20, 30, sometimes 50 minutes of these short segments that are of varying lengths but each one exists on its own and it says something unique on its own. So the idea of jingles to me is kind of like Webern.
GROSS: Great.
ZORN: It's a way of really encapsulating an incredible amount of information in a short amount of time.
GROSS: Name one of your pieces that you think really does that and we'll play it.
ZORN: You could take "Speed Freaks" by Naked City, where I think there's something like 30 or 40 different styles of music in less than a minute. Each one is one bar long.
GROSS: Oh, wow. Great. (Laughing)
ZORN: And then again - that was like a - an exercise, almost like a musical etude, the way Chopin wrote etudes, where you'd set yourself a musical parameter and then you'd try to make music with it. There was an ad - you asked if I had some favorite ads.
GROSS: Yes. Yes, yes.
ZORN: There were some ads in the '60s or maybe it was in the '70s that were - for these compilation records that were all the hit songs from the '60s or the '70s and there would be a guy talking on top of it. It would say, you know, there's this song by the Rolling Stones and by the Beatles and by the Who. And in the background you would have, like, literally one second of each song going by.
I always thought that was just the most amazing thing I ever heard as it jumped from one band to the other, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And in that one second was encapsulated that band's entire output. You'd just hear this one bar and you'd go, wow, the Beatles and everything they did. Led Zeppelin, everything they did. But also their life - everything was there, encapsulated in that one little soundbite.
And that kind of alchemical process of boiling things down to their essence is something that I think is involved in jingle writing.
GROSS: John Zorn, it's really been great to talk with you. Happy 60th. Thank you for your music.
ZORN: Thanks, Terry.
GROSS: Let's hear "Speed Freaks" from your band, Naked City.
GROSS: Wow. John Zorn turned 60 yesterday. His latest album on his record label, Tzadik, is called "Dreamachines." You'll find a link to the remaining events in the ongoing celebration "Zorn@60" on our website, freshair.npr.org.
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text:
Adult Female
Name: F - Hallow Capricorn
Species: Hallow Capricorn
Birthday: Thursday, March 28, 2024
Owner: Aitherios
Mother: F - Ibex
Father: M - Koi Fish
Element: Neutral
Capricorns are not usually found at Lake Lakira, but you are making your way there today to play with some hatchlings. Newborns are left here, because until their horns harden and grow, they can't defend themselves against some of the more dangerous sea creatures. When older, they will accompany their parents foraging or be left behind at home. For now, they'll eat the tufts of grass around the lake, what their parents bring back, or some of the treats you've brought for them. As you near the edge of the lake, a few capricorn hatchlings spot you and make their way over. Extracting a couple carrots from your satchel, you sit down and feed them, smiling at their enthusiasm. While you watch the little ones eat their treats, you absentmindedly scratch their heads, paying special attention to where their horns are coming in. Right now, there are bright colored nubs, but they are quickly growing. Soon these hatchlings will be able to join their parents foraging.
Long ago it was believed that for every animal on land, there was a similar one in the seas and oceans. While this notion is no longer a widespread belief, the oceans do yield creatures much like those found on land. A capricorn can seem like an ibex at first glance, but a second look assures you there are several obvious differences. A strong tail takes the place of hind legs, and these animals appear in many colors, much like hippocampi. Although capricorns can breathe above water for a few hours, they usually remain beneath the waves, surfacing only occasionally to feed. They do not travel in packs, but mate for life and are found in pairs and raise their young to adulthood. Their eggs are very well hidden and extremely difficult to obtain. Capricorns live far at the bottom of oceans, where they reside among the peaks of watery mountains. Their curved horns are all the protection they need against beasts foolish enough to challenge them.
Sprite art: GlassWalker | Description: Damien | Side art: GlassWalker