Today's Muse: Of Whoredom and Falconry

A couple of posts back I mentioned a concept phone by BenQ Siemens. Now, with Apple set to release the iPhone in June, it's very difficult not to gush.

Exceedingly difficult.

So, I'll just point you to the Wired, which sums up what I'm thinking quite nicely.



So.

First week into the new school year, and already the work begins to pile.

Glee and pie.

There's so much to look forward to this year. The new classes this semester - and the lecturers in charge of them - intrigue me. I'm especially excited by Art, Culture and Society - it promises to be less of a note-taking class and more along the lines of an ongoing debate session. The lecturer in charge of that also seems to be able to stand her ground - I don't see last year's fiasco repeating itself.

So many opportunities for stage work and not enough time. Chances to crew for a variety of shows, and getting paid doesn't hurt either - but. All around the same time period. Bluppt.

Young Company sorted. Woo!



Performance Practice.

I did a monologue from Paula Vogel's And Baby Makes Seven with classmate Fazri's assistance. I didn't beat the hell out of a toilet bowl beforehand, but I did pace. And pace. And pace.

I had a bit of a scare beforehand, though. There had been a mix-up with the timetables, and while everyone else filed into 309 at 1:30pm, the foundation students muddied about, thinking it was at 2pm. Being late for Performance Prac is unthinkable, to say the very least. Being yelled at from across storeys to hurry is just plain scary.

In the rush I forgot to fill the mugs with something, so poor Fazri had to mine sipping, and I ended up flinging imaginary coffee everywhere. But I went through with it, and ended up wanting more; wishing I had prolonged my bit on stage.

The comments from the lecturers pointed out some things I had been aware of: Vocal technique (diction floundering, volume, modulation). Something though, caught at me: "The lack of a richly imaginative life". To underscore the speech, the relationships. And it's true. It's this inability to slip into the world of the play, the outlook, that's been nagging at me all of last semester. I'm aware of the performance, how to position myself, where to direct my voice, etc.

But, there was the upside. They liked how it had been kept simple. The sincerity. Good ear for rhythm. "Nice voice." That last one had me go "Eh?" Ach.

So, it went well, I think. I want to go up again; do something completely different. Maybe Lardo Weeping or summat.


I really don't know what I'll do for my BA. I am really more inclined toward the Theatre Arts research course. But Joyce pointed out - "You really seem more of a hands-on person. Will TA really be ideal?"

And I don't know. Hands-on, perhaps. In Hungry there are two different style of directing happening - The motivation/character-driven style approach, and the more lets-try-it-and-see-what-happens-if-we-do-this-without-words kind of method. I tend to favour the latter, while the others find somewhere in between. I'm not interested in working on kitchen-sink drama, as much as I enjoy watching a good piece. I want to work on absurdities, shows that push the envelope - especially design-wise. For example, instead of thinking through the logistics of a character's desires, I'm more interested in whether it would be a stronger visual cue to have her in an actual jar, or wrapping her up like a cocoon to show her being a fetus.

And that is a weakness, to some extent. I haven't much interest in building a character from emotional truth, to tell the truth. I prefer to work from the outside-in. Experimenting with movement, posture to define a character. Does this lead to shallow interpretations? I don't know. I don't know, but that is how I prefer working. In rehearsals, to coax performances, I keep suggesting different ways of doing a scene, like doing it in silence. Improvising. I find it difficult to be told what and why a character should do this and that. Tell me to try it leaping like monkey - Yes. Tell me to jump around because I'm agitated and I need to reinforce my presence and that I feel this because I'm threatened by... Not quite. Sorry. My brain won't compute it.

Physical theatre fascinates me. It is something I'd like to pursue, at one point or another.

Emotional truth eludes me. Wayang interests me. How liddat?

Today's Muse: Lessac, Violins, Violas, and Cellos

Almost done with computer surgery-jitsu. Switched from the IBM to a smaller version of the Acer Da had. Excellent. The best bit is that this one actually has a usable battery. No more sneaky unplugging vending machines when the library and M are both full.

I'm actually digging the Windows Media Player 11. Music, videos, photos all under one umbrella browser. Still fiddling with it. Beats fiddling with the feeds, which seem to have been knocked about during the transfer. I give up on feeds.

You know what I want? A single personal page where I can have the feeds in journal-like entries, with windows into my internet what-not - Comicspace, Flickr, Wists - a calender(Like Google's version), and the Blogger dashboard or something. And maybe be able to split up the feeds into cats - like, maybe a "blog" dedicated to feeds from design sites, and another to comic bits and bobs.

A desktop internet homebase. With a drag-and-drop feature. Mm-mm.


I have a slot for Performance Prac(like open-mic. You perform in front of the faculty, and get feedback from the lecturers and such.) this week. Feeling pretty good.

Funny and worrying: The class was asked how many wanted to audition in February for Acting and Musical Theatre. Quite a number, no surprise. Then the class was asked how many had already prepared audition pieces.

Hardly any hands went up.

Funny, and worrying.

Today's Muse:
Now this, this is cool. Another step closer to the future. This concept phone - is phone really what one would call it? It's a phone, yes, but it's also a camera, game platform, PDA... Any of these things with just a touch. And check the "floating" interface - a better use of it than the floating text gag with the present models. One small step...

Of course, when I look at this, I remember the phone trait in Transmetropolitan -

"Grows an antenna over your skeleton. Runs off your own metabolism... Interface: Menu over your left eye, imaginary keypad right eye/right hand."

I hope I live long enough to see it.

I've always wanted to be able to take pictures with my eye. You know, blink and voila! Photo snapped, of whatever you were looking at. No more fiddling with cameras; which never quite seems to capture the scene the way you want it anyway. I remember trying to describe it for a "Your Invention!" primary school project thing - I remember been told to be more "creative".

But isn't necessity the mother of invention? Or desire the mother of necessity, if you want to go down that road. The point is, I wanted a camera I could manipulate easily, without trembling hands ruining the shot or lighting making everything look either too naked or too shadowed... I wanted to save pictures of the things I saw, with my own eye.

When you're working on a story, or a picture, or whatnot - Haven't you wished that what you were putting down on paper was what you had in your head? It's perfect in your mind. It's just the way you want it. But, somehow, along the way of transferring that thought from your brain and along your arm (Or foot, whatever) and onto paper, something gets lost. What's on that piece of paper isn't quite what was in your mind's eye. You can work on it until it's the closest approximation possible to what's in your head, but it will never be it. Sooner or later you have to teach yourself to be satisfied with this approximation.

The solution, my eleven year-old headmeats decided, was a device whereby one might bypass the writing and the endless scrawling, and immediately produce the finished work. In my head this glorious machine was a lot like your head plugged to a computer screen, upon which you could view your work and refine it as you saw fit, and then printed on the mother of all printers. (This was 1999, mind you. Eleven year-old headmeats are easily influenced. And gladly too, I might add.)

Of course, with such a machine, people would have to learn to isolate thoughts; instead of jumping from subject to subject like a monkey. To focus.

Neat.

Just one thing.

Stuff in your head is perfect, beacause of the vagueries. You know what you're trying to say, and the concept in your mind is linked to a dozen other sensations or thought processes. When you attempt to translate that onto paper, you don't have that instant connection, that... background story. You have to find a way to make the stuff on paper communicate what's in your head, without the benefit of all the links... And I'm going in circles.

Back to the first point: Science is neat.

The whole phone trait and eye-camera thing: Modifying one's body. Changing it into the image of perfection. That's what it is, isn't it? Plastic surgery, gender-reassignment procedures, lasik. The option to refine? improve? the human body. I know some people are disgusted by the idea of the phone trait - in the same way some are squicked by the idea of using a pig's heart in a transplant? Something foreign inside the "natural" body.

If it comes to pass, it will be accepted by some, rejected by others. Naturally. I keep thinking about the digital watch implanted underneath the skin, the numbers glowing through the skin, for some reason. I also keep thinking about how Roald Dahl kept his hipbone on his writing desk after the doctors replaced it with a metal one. I'd like a hipbone on my desk.