Thursday, May 25, 2006
The work went smoothly today, maybe too smoothly. With some effort, I made drafts of pieces for Melaka and Penang but when I got home and started reading one of them to Amy she told me—before I’d even read a full page—that it sounded like a tourist brochure (and she was right). I thought I’d removed most of that type of language but when I looked at it more closely and after some objective feedback such was not the case. Easy enough to fix, but her spontaneous review made me realized that I’ve got to go back and intensify and craft further. This will happen! (In fact, in the time between I wrote this posting and posted it, I went back, made a humdinger of a poem from the text she was criticizing earlier, and she loved it). Nonetheless, it feels great to have a completely new set of works (even if they aren’t quite all the way there yet). Now I need to organize the images and get the sound files together.
Speaking of which, I also made a couple of sound files from our days in Penang before encountering a strange problem and then making what might be an unfortunate mistake. The first two files, made from one minidisk, were made as usual. Then, using a new disc, I was able to hear the sounds through the computer (some good sounds too: 100s of birds and a jungle) but they weren’t registering on the audio software. So I started messing around with a couple of buttons on the minidisk recorder and managed to somehow delete three of the tracks. Actually I don’t think I erased them, I just made it impossible to access them—I’m pretty sure that once something is on an MD the information is there. Well, it could be that they’re gone, and I learned the lesson that I need to slide the protect switch on the disc itself if I value the sounds I’ve captured. Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way!
Tomorrow will be an “off” day of sorts, as we are going to KL to check out a gallery space where we’ll be exhibiting in July, then I’ll be at the Malaysian American Council on Educational Exchange giving a presentation with other Fulbright Scholars who are here. There’s also an event tomorrow night, featuring Paris-based artists discussing their work, which I’ll try to check out. Certainly it’ll be a long, stimulating, day.
No travel plans for a while, so will be here working on the various preparations, and hope to get the eBook to the “printer” next week. Lots of activities to do: sessions in the audio lab, getting materials ready for the various performances, working on the database. About nine weeks left on this Malaysian journey, and just getting going in some ways!
Speaking of which, I also made a couple of sound files from our days in Penang before encountering a strange problem and then making what might be an unfortunate mistake. The first two files, made from one minidisk, were made as usual. Then, using a new disc, I was able to hear the sounds through the computer (some good sounds too: 100s of birds and a jungle) but they weren’t registering on the audio software. So I started messing around with a couple of buttons on the minidisk recorder and managed to somehow delete three of the tracks. Actually I don’t think I erased them, I just made it impossible to access them—I’m pretty sure that once something is on an MD the information is there. Well, it could be that they’re gone, and I learned the lesson that I need to slide the protect switch on the disc itself if I value the sounds I’ve captured. Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way!
Tomorrow will be an “off” day of sorts, as we are going to KL to check out a gallery space where we’ll be exhibiting in July, then I’ll be at the Malaysian American Council on Educational Exchange giving a presentation with other Fulbright Scholars who are here. There’s also an event tomorrow night, featuring Paris-based artists discussing their work, which I’ll try to check out. Certainly it’ll be a long, stimulating, day.
No travel plans for a while, so will be here working on the various preparations, and hope to get the eBook to the “printer” next week. Lots of activities to do: sessions in the audio lab, getting materials ready for the various performances, working on the database. About nine weeks left on this Malaysian journey, and just getting going in some ways!
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 7:01 AM 
