Friday, June 02, 2006
An abbreviated day at the office, but finished the photo essay on the office doors and had an interesting cultural poetics experience while (p)reviewing the Malaysia poems for the upcoming performance. While reading them aloud, I realized that a few of them would probably sound ridiculous (or at least totally mundane) to a local audience, whereas to a western (or unfamiliar) audience they’d have a completely different effect. For instance, there’s a descriptive poem about Chinese New Year, but everyone here would already know everything in it, so there’d be no news transmitted, even if an outsider’s reflections, if wise enough, might be interesting. About five pieces were accordingly weeded out, although I will return to them at some point to see if some parts might be salvaged. I’d never really encountered anything like such a predicament before, and take the occasion to be a good development meaning my authorial scope and awareness is somehow expanding on a global level.
In the afternoon, Amy and I dropped off the cd-rom master and graphics at Vertical Direct, the manufacturer, which is right near Stella’s school. For some reason I’m not feeling great relief about sending the project off, but maybe that’ll come when it is actually produced, or when errors *aren’t* found? The location of the company, and timing of the completion of the project was a nice coincidence as we were going to Stella’s campus (about 20-25 minutes away) anyhow to see her 1st grade class do a skit about workers and community, which involved the lot of them doing a rousing rendition of “Penny Lane.” Then we did some errands, got haircuts (it never ceases to be hot in Malaysia & rough having long hair), and most luxuriously had a Thai massage (hurt so good).
Tomorrow will be a fairly easygoing day. I’ll be getting up and out early to make some recordings with Stella in my empty MMU office building (school’s out on break), and in the evening will be in KL for an art event at which at least one of my recordings is being used in an art installation. On Sunday we’ll be spending the day with Sau Bin and Pat at SB’s hometown Seremban, about an hour south of here. Then back to the digital grindstone on Monday…
In the afternoon, Amy and I dropped off the cd-rom master and graphics at Vertical Direct, the manufacturer, which is right near Stella’s school. For some reason I’m not feeling great relief about sending the project off, but maybe that’ll come when it is actually produced, or when errors *aren’t* found? The location of the company, and timing of the completion of the project was a nice coincidence as we were going to Stella’s campus (about 20-25 minutes away) anyhow to see her 1st grade class do a skit about workers and community, which involved the lot of them doing a rousing rendition of “Penny Lane.” Then we did some errands, got haircuts (it never ceases to be hot in Malaysia & rough having long hair), and most luxuriously had a Thai massage (hurt so good).
Tomorrow will be a fairly easygoing day. I’ll be getting up and out early to make some recordings with Stella in my empty MMU office building (school’s out on break), and in the evening will be in KL for an art event at which at least one of my recordings is being used in an art installation. On Sunday we’ll be spending the day with Sau Bin and Pat at SB’s hometown Seremban, about an hour south of here. Then back to the digital grindstone on Monday…
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 7:01 AM 
