As of today, I am officially a licentiate of technology. In case you’re wondering what that is, it’s a university degree in the Finnish system that sits between a master’s and a doctorate and, along with a fistful of euros, gets me a cup of coffee.

A pediatric patient ready for a night of not quite non-invasive monitoring.

In order to be granted this, the most auspicious of all accolades, I had to jump through a number of hoops, the main one being a licentiate thesis. A good friend of mine, who wrote one before tackling his doctoral thesis, was, and probably still is, of the opinion that “a licentiate thesis is just like a subpar master’s thesis”.

You don’t have to take his word for it though — nor mine. You can download my licentiate thesis, titled “Monitoring sleep quality with non-invasive sensors“, and see for yourself.

While doing research for said thesis, I ran across a veritable cornucopia of delightful factoids. For instance, did you know that the (male) armadillo only has erections during deep sleep? (Most animals have them during REM sleep. The armadillo paper, by the way, has a particularly excellent title.) Or, that even though owls cannot move their eyes — they have to move their whole head when they want to look at something — they still have a REM (Rapid Eye Movements) sleep phase? Before this discovery, one of the hypotheses concerning REM sleep was that the eye movements cause the typical brain wave patterns; now we know it’s the other way round.

Pleasant dreams.

Tim Bowness’s lavish praise of Scott Walker’s Bish Bosch was intriguing enough for me to give said album a go, and what a trip it is. I must confess right at the outset to not being too familiar with Mr. Walker’s earlier output, which in this case is probably not such a bad thing. Bish Bosch is a bizarre oratorio, an amalgam of musique concréte and Walker’s almost operatic voice, which hovers above a background of strange noises juxtaposed with orchestral and electric instrumentation. Hummable pop with catchy refrains this is not; don’t expect the DJ down the pub to give any of these tracks (not sure whether the epithet “song” applies here) a spin any time soon.

I am reminded of Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock, a dark ambient album which at the time was just about as far removed from the groups earlier, 80s synth pop output as you can possibly imagine. (There is a continuum, but it’s not readily apparent.) Another one is Peter Hammill’s opera The Fall of the House of Usher, which evokes a similarly oppressive mood, has likewise lots of recitative passages and, in general, is — as one would expect of a work based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe — a horror story set to music, although in this case the story is somewhat more obscure. I can imagine Bish Bosch working far better on top of visuals from The Shining than the infamous Dark Side of the Moon/The Wizard of Oz mashup.

Bish Bosch is one of those idiosyncratic magna opera where the wonder lies in not that it works so well, but that it works at all. Far be it from me to suggest any similarities between dancing bears and Scott Walker, though.

Once upon a time, before the invention of the wheel, I applied for a job at IRCAM in Paris. I was told in the phone interview they were down to two candidates. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be, which in turn meant I never got business cards with the coolest office address in the entire universe: 1, place Igor Stravinsky, 75004 Paris.

This May my dear friend, Belgian composer extraordinaire Daniel Schell, myself, and our esteemed colleague Thomas Pintelon (who also happens to be Daniel’s son-in-law) will be presenting our work on “the optimal connection of chords”, which features heavily in Daniel’s compositional work, at IRCAM. The date is 24th May, the time is 2.30pm, and the address is as stated above. If you’re in the neighbourhood, do drop by, it’s free entry, and if you mention this blog post I will shout you a beer afterwards. There’s a short blurb in French on IRCAM’s pages.

If you are in Espoo on 29th April, I will be giving a talk titled “Monitoring sleep quality with non-invasive sensors“, which is also the title of my recently completed licentiate thesis. The time is 1.15pm, the location is Tietotekniikan talo (Computer Science building, hall T2) at the Aalto University campus in Otaniemi, it’s likewise free entry, and the beer offer stands for this occasion as well. Welcome.

Thus spake Seth Godin:

Everything doesn’t depend on what happens in the next ninety seconds. Ever.

Sure does when you’re about to jump off a plane at 14,000 feet.

The Finnish National Opera used to be housed in a lovely old 19th Century building on Bulevardi (The Boulevard). Sadly, that building was deemed too small (which it probably was) for the ever-growing insatiable hunger for opera that Finns are known for throughout the civilized world. Famous architects were called to the rescue, and a multi-gazillion Finnmark budget (this was in the Dark Ages before the Euro) was handed to them to ensure that a worthy monument would be erected on Mannerheimintie, the main thoroughfare in Helsinki. As is the wont of mad professors and self-appointed auteurs the world over, the architects set their creative minds free and came up with what can only be described as an overgrown outhouse, fittingly dressed in plain white ceramic tiles. Well, at least they should be cheaper to replace than the Italian marble tiles of Finlandia Hall.

None of this, of course, has much bearing on what goes on inside the building. A while ago, I took the opportunity to attend two operas within a week of each other: La Traviata, and Thaïs.

Here’s the synopsis for La Traviata: girl makes a living selling her virtue and likes to party a lot, boy falls in love with her, boy’s father does not approve, boy renounces her but is immediately overcome with regret as it dawns on him that he loves her, boy goes back to girl who all of a sudden is dying, girl dies, curtains down.

Compare this with the synopsis for Thaïs: girl makes a living selling her virtue and likes to party a lot, boy wants to get a merit badge by spoiling all the fun, boy gets his way but is immediately overcome with regret as it dawns on him that he loves her, boy goes back to girl who all of a sudden is dying, girl dies, curtains down.

Of note, the girl is definitely not a fat lady in either (or, more accurately, a fat lady was not cast as the lead in either of these productions), so the old adage “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings” does not apply. I have not seen any Wagner operas, but I believe they are the source of this observation. In both of these, though, it is definitely over when the lady of the night sings.