headspaces and to do.

it seems like there are different phases I go through in regards to my work:

1. Just got an opportunity of some kind, performance, etc. that I have to start coming up with ideas for. This is probably the least stessful time, as I like coming up with ideas, esp. for something that already has an outlet, etc. that I don't have to do an excessive amount of administration / promotion for by myself. I think about random stuff a lot.

2. In the middle of developing a work that already has a performance date, etc. Also, not that stressful unless I convince myself that I'm behind on things. I am relatively focused, and able to keep up some with other part of my life, such as sleeping, paying bills, social life / obligations, being productive at the dayjob.

3. Right before a performance. Unless my shit is really together and I actually believe this (yes, this has happened a few times), this can get somewhat stressful. Depending on the project, I could start to code nonstop, I can't sleep, I lose the ability to concentrate on dayjob stuff, bills, what bills? paperwork, what? I probably can't see my bedroom's floor... I am easily startled, easily distracted, easily alarmed, find it hard to think abstractly. I start to spend lots of money on extra parts and cables, etc. I may or may not need...

4. Post-performance. No matter how well something went, I get kinda depressed afterwards for a few weeks unless I already have something immediately lined up that requires attention. I miss that feeling of purpose and structure... I may start to take dance classes compulsively, cook large meals, read an inordinate amount of genre urban fantasy, etc. Or instead of depression, I have become very social (for me).

5. Applying for a shitload of things, booking a tour (or just a few shows, one show whatever... Anxiety, depression, ennui! Oh, how can I make it seem like I fit what they want? Should I do this? Should I do that? Can I actually find enough performers for this one? Is this really a good place to present this or that? Hi, procrastination., awesome to see you again. Feel a little blah (or a lot) until I get something. Argh, blah.

6. Producing something on my own. Ack, stress! This requires that I utilize skills which require lots of effort for me: promotion, managing / scheduling other people, getting out a zilion things on time, writing a lot of emails, trying to be early to things, trying to be organized / organizing others. This trumps most situations in stress, except for if I spend an excessive amount of time not actually working on a project which is sorta like the stress of being unemployed I guess. (at first it can be a relief but then it grows horrible gradually)

Guess which stage I'm in! (4&5) So, the amount I've done on those to-do items is pretty damn pitiful. Eek. I did buy some robot parts but I forgot to buy the RF receiver. Oh well. I actually haven't applied for that many things yet, but I spent most of the time finding opps, looking at deadlines, and etc. I did finish an app to SEAMUS coz its in Miami this year. Usually, its in the middle of freaking nowhere and I'm like... I'm not paying money to be in this coz this conference is already on my C.V. and I don't want to go to Indiana to listen to tape music. But Miami could be fun. Anyways, lots of stuff lately, fall is riddled with deadlines. I also scoured the internet for new places to play that might be friendly to a bizarre-ish line-up (flamenco piece, video piece, origami piece) but I failed. Maybe The Tank will take this one... since my hunt for places turned up a bit dry... I mean, partly I'm just not sure how to sell the show... which maybe I should just try and do all those pieces separately but blah blah blah... why not all at once? It would be about 45ish min of playing time ( 15min + 17min + 10min(?? ) ), which is a lot for moi, but that still leaves a lot of room to schedule other artists with me I think and I want my flamenco and origami pieces PERFORMED in real-time, yoz.

cabaret robots!!! and to do.

So, I got that feeling. That feeling like I wanted to write a cabaret show again. Here's the deal:
1) Make fragile robots that I put together ON-STAGE (with a lab coat)... I mean, it will mostly be together, I will do trivial things... screw it in, etc.
2) They will be percussive robots! A bicycle wheel instrument... a percussive walking robot thingy, etc.
3) Tango dancing between my moving robots!!! (I take off the lab coat and throw on a feather boa! yay!)
4) Also, will perform: Balancing Act II, 2 covers (one in a foreign language... def.), "oh lovely!", possibly "days that bleed", possibly Piazzolla's "libertango" (!!!!), probably have the old standards working and rotate them in and out: "balancing act", "study in losing control", "things that breathe", "Stefan", etc.

BUT!
I must:
1) start recording "In Transit"... tomorrow!
2) finish "in which these implications appear to present difficulties" (did work on tonight)
3) finish "Origami II"
4) book a show for early December! (flamenco (violin/bass), Origami II, I'll huff & puff)
5) think about grad school apps (ick poo!)

Stuff to get for robots, YAYA!
1) bicycle wheel
2) Arduino Main Board
3) Servo
4) RF Link 2400bps Receiver - 315MHz
5) Basic Breadboard

post-show

So, everything went fine. "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down" came off mostly as I had envisioned it. The tech worked. ETC.

I am editing the documentation of it in iMovie as I type. Well, I'm importing the video to edit v. soon.

I also have updated to OS X 10.6, apparently without a hitch. Phew.

I also, randomly, mostly finished the piano part to "in which these implications appear to present difficulties" and so I think I will try to finish the Supercollider part this week or next weekend.... we shall see. Plus, I'll probably sit around editing the actual score for 2-3 weeks before I think its done. It sounds a bit... hmm, dunno, in need of editing to me still, so I'll prob. be working out the rough edges for a while. I was a bit careless with the counterpoint, so I'll be focusing on that. Hopefully, the SC part will be pretty cut and dry.

THEN, then... then I need to:
1) finish scoring the origami piece
2) start "in transit", mainly traveling on the subway with recording device
3) book a show. yip yip yip.

crash and burn. 4 more days.

4 more days until the performance. ack! and there is stuff that STILL isn't working.

Basically, although my computer has 2 firewire cables it is totally not cool with having 2 firewire devices plugged in at the same time.

Also, the wiimote pairing has been so horrible that I've written so that I am just controlling the fx changes with one wiimote. Pairing two has been nightmarez.

AND we still need to deal with lighting issues, yo.

OMFG.

Other than that, it was okay. OTHER THAN THAT.

**pulls hair out**

I'm now trying to see if I can get my PC laptop to recognize my new handycam... and then THEN get my macbook to send osc to it... then I could at least test the concept although I think my PC laptop might be too slow... but proof of concept would be nice, if possible.

Am now backing up my harddrive in case I have to go to 10.6 before performace but that will be... backup plan C or something.

The end, gah.

coffeeshoppin' before tango

How many times do I have to re-write my bio? The answer is "more than I'd like to" but I suppose its my own damn fault. I just finished my bio and program notes for "I'll huff and puff and blow your house down!" and now am heading into application land. Unfortunately, the type and length of bio for this is different. I am experiencing writing about myself exhaustion. Blah.

First rehearsal with the videoist is on Thursday. I'm trying to work out the possible tech kinks beforehand. I realize that this would be much more effective if I had a video camera. I've been meaning to buy one. So I just did, last night. But alas, it will arrive after the first rehearsal.

The site at eamusic is finally back up, only a few days after I stopped waiting and switched my url to somethingfurry. I can finally start booking... which I should do, so I have something lined up (to be performed) for after this. Although, I should work on my subway piece and that won't be performed, per se.

Also, I need to finish my origami piece.

flexibility, wiimote, exhaustion

Today I have:

1. Gone to an awesome tango class on boleos taught by Eduardo Goytia.

2. Finally restored website... still waiting on an Dartmouth eamusic grad student to acknowledge my emails so everything is on somethingfurry instead of there & my courtney-brown.net url points to the somethingfurry server.

3. I touched my toes! Haha! To put this in context I've been working on my flexibility this past week by stretching intensely 1-2 times per day with my main first goal being able to bend over and touch my toes. I did last night, too, for the first time but I was worried it was a fluke... guess not!

4. I got my generic wiimote to work with processing. This is a bit iffy so far, but I did replicate it twice. It is a lot more iffy than I would ideally like. I might switch over to the darwiinremote instead and just have it send osc to my program. This would require more programming but I'm guessing it would be more stable... so I'm only going to do it once everything else is done.

5. Sent another email out to a video artist, and got some interest... we'll see!

6. Oh yah, I went to my dayjob for 6 hrs.

This is an amazing amount of work / things done since I know I didn't fall asleep last night until after 5am and I got up before 9am. Damn I'm exhausted.

Tomorrow:
To go to the modern dance class or not to go?
Get on that cobra bandwagon
More stretching.
***NOTATION***
maybe more coding, if my notation is ok. integrate wii into video program & test out the 2 diff. performers
email to pplz Iz needz to
get ballet shoes for a Thurs. night class?
practice my video piece!!

post-Paris progress report

Well, I didn't do all those things in Paris that I said I wanted to do. To be fair, that was kind of an unrealistic list for a vacation. I did finish all the music notation for the breathing parts of my video piece, which is good. I have now optimized the bubble/magnification code, added blur, and reconstruct to my program. The only effect that I definitely need to implement that I haven't is darkening, but that will probably be subsumed by my deciding to implement a fluid simulation thing.

Then, I will need to concentrate on questions of control and UI. Right now everything is added by pressing keys but I will probably instead have the 2 performers have wiimotes to control effects.

Today I am going to start emailing video artists to see if someone is able to perform as the video camera / eye for my piece. Why I dragged my heels on this step... I don't know. I hate asking people to do things...

The other thing I need to do sometime this week or the next is get my website back up again. It has been down for far too long. I've emailed the person at eamusic who is supposed to be doing that but he seems to be an INSANE slacker when it comes to responding to me. I'm gonna give it 2-3 days or so, then I will email again bc I need my site back up. I'm also gonna put all my shiz (or at least the stuff I can) on somethingfurry & then point my url there for the time being. Like it kinda hurts me, having my website point to something that doesn't exist.

I basically have to have a freaking website before I can really start booking things.

Anyways, after I finish my video shiz, I will finish up my origami piece. It is mostly done, in a lot of ways. But I need to notate the folders' parts and also I want to record a demo... with just me, I can do: voice, guitar, mandolin, accordion, xylophone, toy piano... which is 6 instruments & I could double up on a few if I felt like that was too sparse.

ETA: oh, also, I've decided to take ballet classes... which is, in a sense, unexpected since I am not a big ballet fan, but I felt like I wanted a basic grounding in dance technique and I happen to work below a very good ballet school. I would probably prefer modern dance, but that is less convenient and harder to find beginning/basic classes in it.

I'm not sure exactly what I hope to gain from this artistically. I guess I feel like my work continues to explore the existential aspects of embodiment... which I feel is an essential part of being a musician, yes... but I feel like dance would make me aware of my body in different ways... and therefore it has caused me to think in different ways... which is what I suppose I am searching out.

Also, I suppose I am hoping that ballet technique will help me in tango dancing, esp. in terms of balance. I also hope to get a lot more flexibility, and so forth. I decided that something like yoga would be a good addition to my life, but I didn't really like yoga the way I like dancing, and I feel like dancing addresses more issues all at once.

Also, I am going to sign up and take a workshop with Pablo Veron! Wee! (he is a famous tango dancer)