8.30 am. I reviewed my inbox before a time of reflection. 9.00 am. I responded to my review and arranged postgraduate tutorial times. 9.45 am. The process of modulating from one research project to another, with every intent of coming to rest on one, continues. My resolve is to dedicate a part of every day this week to each in order:

11.20 pm. I received a phone call from the Paul Mellon Centre with answers to queries that I’d forwarded regarding their Digital Projects Grants initiative. The funding opportunity is new and, as such, open to being shaped by whatever applications are received this year. (This information could not have been discerned from their website. It pays to talk to someone in charge.) Consequently, I’ll be making my pitch for a project which will examine sonic interpretations of, and responses to, industrial Welsh landscape images from 1750s to 1950s. Something like that. 11.40 pm. On with establishing definitional boundaries for the conference concept. As I suspected, several of the projects within the cluster naturally collapse into one another once the serious work begins. For example, the unlisted adjunct series ‘Noise PROJECTions’ will become the overarching title of a conference series, of which ‘Sound Spirit Memory Place’ will be the first. The book project could, then, be a product of this conference, and also include related parts of the earlier ‘The Noises of Art‘. Moreover, the grant, residencies, and sound/landscape projects would, in turn, constitute my own contribution to, and articulation of, the themes of the new conference. This scheme of things appears economic, cohesive, rational, and doable.

1.30 pm. Off to the department for an afternoon of MA Fine Art tutorials covering, variously, photography, audiography, drawing, and something which may be undefining itself from the condition of painting. Judith’s temporary studio:

Tali’s temporary painting:

Some principles and observations:

• Woe betide any artist to whom misfortune never visits. It brings in its wake opportunities, potentialities, and ideas that might not otherwise present themselves.
• An accident may be fortuitous; acting upon it is always deliberate.
• Don’t look so far down the road that you fail to see the hallowed ground beneath your feet.
• Our virtues will be our undoing.
• You’ll need to weigh the anchor from the seabed of tradition if you’ve any hope of getting underway.
• Learn to play, learn from play, learn by play.

7.30 pm. I caught up on admin and with emails, most of which (I’m convinced) would not have arrived had I sat in front of my computer all afternoon. 8.30 pm. The broken 78-rpm that I’d purchased on Saturday has suffered a further, minor mishap. I mishandled one of the three pieces and it broke into several more. (Shellac records are so human: fragile, prone to fracture, and in need of delicate handling.) Tutored by YouTube expertise, I super-glued the parts back together again. Try doing this to a CD:

What good will this misfortune yield?