8.15 am: The owners of the ‘Scourby Bible’ have revalidated permission to use their recordings in my forthcoming project. They’ve gone the second-mile too, and offered support in several other ways. What a good example to all copyright holders. 9.00 am: At the School, the first Visiting Day was booted up. Our Ambassadors moved about the concourse like chess pieces on a board, awaiting the arrival of applicants:
One has always to consider the applicant apart from their place of education. Some come from well-heeled, well-resourced schools with passionate teachers. A few others struggle against the odds. It’s the applicant’s attitude, determination, and sense of self, along with their capacity to learn and work very hard, that’s of pre-eminent importance. They can’t be held responsible, and are certainly not penalised, for their background and upbringing. We assess them on the basis of their own merits entirely.
Many volunteer their impressions of the School: ‘Everyone is so friendly; they can’t do enough you’, one applicant remarked. But, clearly, they weren’t extended the same welcome and generosity at some other university art departments that they’d visited. It’s strange how, often, mature applicants are far more adventurous with their work than the younger ones. Perhaps age brings with it a greater measure of confidence and abandon.
By 3.30 pm, the ‘day’ was over. School life quickly returned to normal. The remainder of my afternoon was absorbed with postgraduate admin.
6.30 pm: Practise session 1: an investigation of my new programmable EQ effector. 7.30 pm: Studiology. I’ve now got a toe in the water. At the beginning of each project, there’s always a period of considered playfulness. Tonight, I attached one effector to another and observed the outcome, pondered the potential, and refused to be beguiled by the sound (however, striking it was) until it yielded a meaningful significance in relation to the input (Matthew, Chapters 1 to 15, in this case). I was interested in interpretative or illuminating sonifications only. This was the first discipline:
