Thursday, July 20, 2006
Glad to have a regular-type work day—one of the last 3 or 4 I will have here—but spent more than half of it viewing works by my NJIT students, doing my best to keep up with them.
When I finally got to focus on my own work I worked on the set for Saturday night’s performance (which may also come in handy at IIUM on Tuesday). I began by selecting some non-Malaysia poems (though some of the material was created while living here), and then figuring out what Malaysia pieces would work best in a non-MMU, incomplete context (i.e., this weekend I will have about 1/4 the time I had in last month’s performance). It was a fun constructive exercise. I wanted to build new contexts for some of the sounds and texts, so decided to use one of my old MOO texts (from ZenMOO) with the new rin gong piece, removed the vocal track from the Spam Flash pieces on the eBook, and will show the durian piece before launching into a few of the “13 States” poems. I’ll read a half dozen of them in full, and set the acrostic section of the KL poem to the tune of a Malaysian song that everyone knows (“Rasa Sayang”). I’ll read the “Cyberjaya” poem from end to beginning with a soundtrack (recorded in Cyberjaya) that is also recorded (engineered) in reverse (I don’t know why I thought if reading it this way, but it sounds good). I tried making a multitrack recording of “Negaraku” (the national anthem) using the half dozen free versions of it I found on the WWW, but it only sounded good with the two MIDI tracks included and the software I’m using (Cool Edit Pro) wouldn’t let me mix it down that way (although oddly it allows me to listen to it in full). I have been noodling around on some native instruments that I plan to improvise on during the set, which has also been fun—I don’t even know the names of any of them—and will perhaps be running the non-resonating ones through a delay; this part will be very improv. As far as imagery goes, for most of the afternoon I thought I’d skip out on the picture component altogether but walking back home realized that wasn’t the best idea so tomorrow I’ll pick out perhaps 160 images or so to set up on a loop for this section. I’m planning to wear white and to do some of the gig shrouded in a sheet, so the pictures can be projected onto my body instead of a wall. Baraka’s character in “Bullworth” is always saying “don’t be no ghost” but for some reason such a Halloween-esque costume appeals to me at the moment.
When I finally got to focus on my own work I worked on the set for Saturday night’s performance (which may also come in handy at IIUM on Tuesday). I began by selecting some non-Malaysia poems (though some of the material was created while living here), and then figuring out what Malaysia pieces would work best in a non-MMU, incomplete context (i.e., this weekend I will have about 1/4 the time I had in last month’s performance). It was a fun constructive exercise. I wanted to build new contexts for some of the sounds and texts, so decided to use one of my old MOO texts (from ZenMOO) with the new rin gong piece, removed the vocal track from the Spam Flash pieces on the eBook, and will show the durian piece before launching into a few of the “13 States” poems. I’ll read a half dozen of them in full, and set the acrostic section of the KL poem to the tune of a Malaysian song that everyone knows (“Rasa Sayang”). I’ll read the “Cyberjaya” poem from end to beginning with a soundtrack (recorded in Cyberjaya) that is also recorded (engineered) in reverse (I don’t know why I thought if reading it this way, but it sounds good). I tried making a multitrack recording of “Negaraku” (the national anthem) using the half dozen free versions of it I found on the WWW, but it only sounded good with the two MIDI tracks included and the software I’m using (Cool Edit Pro) wouldn’t let me mix it down that way (although oddly it allows me to listen to it in full). I have been noodling around on some native instruments that I plan to improvise on during the set, which has also been fun—I don’t even know the names of any of them—and will perhaps be running the non-resonating ones through a delay; this part will be very improv. As far as imagery goes, for most of the afternoon I thought I’d skip out on the picture component altogether but walking back home realized that wasn’t the best idea so tomorrow I’ll pick out perhaps 160 images or so to set up on a loop for this section. I’m planning to wear white and to do some of the gig shrouded in a sheet, so the pictures can be projected onto my body instead of a wall. Baraka’s character in “Bullworth” is always saying “don’t be no ghost” but for some reason such a Halloween-esque costume appeals to me at the moment.
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 7:44 AM 
