aisyalam

My mom writes in a recent email, “you all must be in a constant state of sensory overload,” and she is certainly right about that. I arrived back in Cyberjaya from Langkawi last night after an intense week of meetings with various Malaysian public figures and organizations, and even more discussions with eight other Fulbright scholars and others who were part of the program. Plenty of sights, sounds, and tasteful tastes absorbed, in high-level (in terms of brain power) company. I thought it would be back to life as usual here, working at my desk all day (prepping for lectures later in the week, working on the eBook, etc.), but that was fairly naïve as this is never the case in Malaysia. I did take care of some expected business in the morning, and did work on lectures, but after lunch (where Amy, Alea, and I dined with students from Yemen, Pakistan, and Iran) once again—thanks to my dear colleague Sau Bin—found myself in extraordinary international company. Philip Dean, Dean of the Media Lab at University of Art and Design Helsinki [http://mlab.uiah.fi] was visiting campus, so I sat with him for a bit and learned of some interesting narrative studies that are happening in Finland: interactive television and text-messaging projects. Philip was accompanied by a local artist, Joseph Foo, who is the creative director of the trinity group, a multi-disciplinary brand identity consultancy in Kuala Lumpur. I was glad to meet these folks, and to be quite distracted from the lecture due to a lengthy conversation with Sau Bin in my office; he is helping get a truly balanced perspective on culture here, and the role art plays in it. Plus, he’s a great artist in his own right—his work is now on display at the Havana biennial. I’ll finish the lecture tomorrow! Otherwise, a surprise email from Jason Nelson, who wanted to let me know about his most recent work, “Pandemic Rooms” [http://www.secrettechnology.com/pandemic/], which I will be showing in the lecture. I particularly like the drag and drop audio sections, but again Jason has produced an extraordinary, multi-faceted electronic work. He says he’s glad I’m out here spreading news about our field to the world; to that I can only say that I’m near ecstatic that so many superb works are being made across the planet.

In Langkawi I was staying in a “50,000,000 year old rainforest,” which meant that nature was on high. I was able to make several excellent field recordings of insects, birds, and who knows what else, which I will send up to Bangkok for Mr. Curkendall to play with in preparation for our gig there next month. Also posted more than 200 images to the flickr site today, so if anyone’s wondering what this all looks like, that’s the place to go (www.flickr.com/photos/the_funks).