August 1, 2017

8.30 am: The inbox was getting perilously near the ’10 unread’ emails mark. I culled. There was a backlog of postgraduate admin to clear, in between discussions with decorators on the domestic front. Following a glance at a forthcoming conference call on digital technologies — this may be appropriate for a paper on the steelworks project (if that goes ahead) — I returned to the text of my own conference call. To my alarm, I discovered that yesterday’s efforts, for whatever reason, hadn’t saved. Duff things happen, from time to time. Thus, a rewrite from memory was required. Maybe the second attempt would be better. For I’d surely forget was hadn’t been memorable. And a good idea, like the postman, ‘always rings twice’. So nothing worthwhile will be lost.

By 11.00 am I was back in the groove. 12.15 pm: Off to the Crimson Rhino for a salady lunchtime catch-up with Dr Chamberlain. It was good to trade ideas, think wide of the mark, and generally indulge our passions for sonic stuff. 1.30 pm: At the School of Art:

A necessary tutorial cancellation followed by temperamental departmental telephonics scuppered the afternoon’s first two appointments. However, there was enough in my pigeon hole to keep me out of mischief until I inclined in the direction of the Old College, mid afternoon.

The Pier has had a make over. It looked vaguely like an insufficiently rendered digital image of itself:

I assume that its present Spartan appearance is temporary, and some form garish, vulgar, but eminently loveable flashing signage will eventually be set-up on the façade.

There were two MA fine art tutorials to engage before the end of the afternoon. Curiously, both students had, quite independently of one another, evolved in the same direction, although using very different technical means. Whether working towards their first or second exhibition, the challenge was the same: to break out of the orbit of their earlier best efforts and head towards the stars. The aspiration is daring, the implementation, risky, but the outcome, if successful, will bring them satisfaction of the highest order. (Nothing ventured, nothing gained’, as they say.) ‘Meanwhile’ … Alysia’s productive mess:

6.30 pm: Practise session. 7.30 pm: An evening on the conference call material. This moved too slowly for comfort. The task was hard. To write a call, the convenor needs to stand as far away as possible from the theme under discussion, in order to present the broadest overview of the whole and its potential parts. To do that, one must comprehend the whole even before the parts have been conceived.

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