March 29, 2018

Either: The answer is in the silence. Or: The silence is the answer.

8.00 am: A communion. My last day of work before the Easter weekend. 8.45 am: Even past students generate admin: references, letters of support and encouragement, and so forth.

9.15 am: In order to implement the Habakkuk verse (‘Write up the vision … ‘) I’ve revived the concept of the ‘Pencrophone’, which I’d first deployed in 2008 . In essence, it’s a drawing tool with a contact microphone ungainly attached. The arrangement turns the pencil, in this case, into a non-pitch specific musical instrument. I’ll be recording the sound of writing using this and, in addition, a hydroponic-microphone placed under the support on which the writing surface is placed, and a conventional stereo microphone above the surface. These will capture three either separable or combinable source signals for the mix:

9.40 pm: Off to the School to pick up a digital recorder and PowerPoint remote control in readiness for my 10.30 am stint at the annual postgraduate writing school, held at IBERS on campus. The Institute has a very pleasant cafeteria. A good place, nicely situated, at which to collect one’s thoughts. A punctuated landscape:

My class comprised students from IBERS, Creative Writing, History, Geography, and Television & Film Studies. I enjoy the challenge of the mix:

The session was on ‘Presenting a Conference Paper’. I’ve held forth on the topic more times than I care to remember. Once my switch is turned on … I let rip. It’s a class that I tend to perform rather more than deliver. The students engaged well. New perspectives emerge on every occasion. We ought to offer a session on the use of social media to promote personal research, too. I’m conscious that the next generation of scholars will need to be working across far more diverse platforms of promotion and dissemination than does my own.

12.00 pm: Business done, I descended into the town to attend a farewell lunch for Helen, one of our part-time secretaries. She’ll be greatly missed. (The cheery heart of the School.):

We have too few occasions when we can meet together as staff and, on this one, more than staff – respected friends. Bonhomie among colleagues is a blessing to be treasured. It’s rare. There’re many art departments that are tearing themselves apart both politically and by virtue of the assertion of conflicting egos and visions.

2.00 pm: Back at homebase, I caught up on email, and topped and tailed the podcast of the morning’s class in readiness for upload to the student database. Although, today, I’ve had to gut the recording to remove the section when I exited the classroom, while the students were working independently, to have a pee. (I’d forgotten to switch-off the recorder.) The inclusion would have either ruined or made my career, I’m sure.

3.00 pm: Keeping up the pace, I returned to the studio to review yesterday’s work, re-shelve equipment, and attempt something new. Playtime. Free-fall. No plan. Do it!:

7.30 pm: The results, while interesting, weren’t appropriate to the suite of blind narratives. However, it may have a place in the other themes. One can only open up possibilities sometimes. Nothing is ever wasted. For the remainder of evening, I finalised updating the IOS on all my computers and solved several prevailing routing/monitoring problems.

Previous Post
March 28, 2018
Next Post
April 2, 2018