What is Alison up to lately?
Updated March 3, 2024
Very at Home
I’m currently living in the wonderful small city of Keene, New Hampshire, where I’ve been since 2019. For the first time in my life, I have no desire to move. I have two amazing little dogs, Peanut and Pepper, who deserve their own children’s book someday.
New Consulting Digs
Greg and I are putting our music-obsessed brains to work again with a new business called PatternSonix. We’re consulting with companies who are working on music/sound-based (mostly) AI projects, and helping them make the end product better. It’s great to be stretching my music theory/cognition muscles again, and super fun to be back in the machine learning/AI space, which has…ahem…REALLY changed over the last ten years. 🙂
In the Studio
I’m very much focused on music-making again, after long hiatus from age 30ish-40ish. (It’s complicated.) I’ve released quite a bit of music over the last few years. My personal highlights are IX under the Blix Byrd moniker, and most recently, Misalignment, an album I’m very proud of having made w/ Greg as Doctor Body.
On Stage
I’m slowly ramping up to being ready to do live performances any time. Last year, I performed as Blix Byrd in my town. You can watch a couple of tracks on YouTube. I’m currently working on an ambient/noise show that I’ll be playing in Chicago at the end of March 2024, and am also starting to prepare the new Doctor Body material for live performance.
Personal Computing
A longish-term project at the moment is to exclusively use technology that makes my life and mind a better place. For me, that means detaching myself from the corporate internet as much as possible. So — no centralized/corporate social media, as little Google as I can manage, and self-hosting everything I can. I’m perpetually tinkering with where my data flows, and am enjoying my little technotopia, even though the user interfaces usually aren’t the best.
Good Times
I’ve enjoyed a few solo trips lately, both to far-flung destinations like Scotland, and local ones like New York. I have a great set of friends here in Keene, and am active on the board of a great local arts organization called Arts Alive.