Visit RacerSessions.com and TableAndChairsMusic.com for more information about the new improvised music scene based in Seattle, WA. “Eleven”, Andrew Olmstead Performed 8/7/11 at Cafe Racer, Seattle The musicians: Andrew Olmstead – keys Garrett Sand – guitar Andrew Swanson – voice Thomas Campbell – percussion Sylvia Gozdek and Jason Pier – recorded voice Special thanks to Soyoung Shin for assisting with video curation at Racer. This piece is meant to highlight the ridiculously vast amount of knowledge and technology that the human race has amassed. To put the rate at which technology grows in perspective, consider the cell phone. The Bell Labs engineers who invented the first cell phone were born in a time when telegraph lines across the Pacific were just starting to be used. Now my phone is clocked 500 times faster than my first computer. Most remarkably of all, I just looked those facts up on my phone in ten minutes. Thanks to the internet, we now have immediate access to early telegraph patents and spec sheets for the Pentium II. Perhaps that’s a bit random, but I can’t believe how quickly our knowledge is disseminated. Five minutes later, I’ve also learned how to model flight dynamics on MIT OpenCourseWare, just in case there was room here for a travel example. But this music is not meant to glorify our knowledge, only to display it. As great as all that information is, 98% of my enjoyment of life comes from exercise, food, nature, sound/music, hanging with friends… We don’t need to be told how to enjoy these things.

racer sessions at Sea-Tac light rail station for Hollow Earth Radio event