Alex Barnett

Personal PAGE of HOME

Explore my bookmarks
or old scrap book

Examining the secrets of nature

Moving Visions, a cyber documentary and public projection focusing on freedom in post-9/11 Arlington, VA, directed by Liz Canner (Sept 2003) (clips).
Symphony of a City, a public video documentary/art piece on issues of community building and the affordable housing crisis in Boston, projected onto City Hall and streamed online (April/May 2001), directed by Liz Canner and John Ewing. Check out the permanent online clips.
I was technical director for both these projects; they involved among other things portable miniature head-mounted camera units, audio and battery systems.
Short-term forecasting for wind power generation. Application of Bayesian neural networks to learning the map ('downscaling') from weather models to local wind and output power (talk, 10MB PDF, U. of Toronto, Sept 2001). Consulting for Michael Brower of TrueWind Solutions.
Electronics/physics projects and demos: Fun physics in your own home, and now fun applied math projects, random ideas. Have also volunteered at AMRF fixing up medical gear for donation to hospitals around the developing world (here shown defibrillating a watermelon).
Creating Careers in Physics was a forum series for graduate students that I ran for a year. Read a pertinent career question I received: the truth hurts!

Jazz piano. Old trio with Patrick Purdon (vocals; brain imaging) and John Capello (bass; high-tech startup), bebop, swing, and latin standards. Also with Gretchen (Elise) Iversen, and Minor Groove (with Alan Tenney; in its previous funkier incarnation was The Barnett Quartet).
Los Madereros. Local salsa band I started in 1998, did 2 years of semesterly latin dance nights (poster by yours truly). Based at Mather House, Harvard. The name can mean either the Mather people or those who work with wood (congas, clave...).
My favourite place to hear latin jazz is Wally's Cafe on a Thursday night. Where else to you get to hear Berklee professors do Monk tunes as salsa or mindblowing montunos in 7/4 ?
My sheet music transcriptions & compositions ... jazz, salsa, tango, funk.
Classical piano. I love accompanying, sight-reading, and playing chamber music.
I was `composer-in-residence' for The Anti-Ad Agency, a collective of local word- and media-smiths who create public service announcements with an environmental or anti-corporate message.
Penchant for old electric keyboard gear. Hammond-organ rebuilding project (a "chop").