August 25, 2006
Great Day
Today was the opening of the Faculty Art Exhibition, and I was in charge of the band! I booked Water Between Continents, Brian Reedy and Nick Rudd’s band - I thought they would be perfect for this type of event and they were. People stood and stared at them and loved them. They’re just a guitarist and a drummer (”just”) but they are fantastic and very intense and fun to watch. They play repeated riffs over and over again. And I used to play with them. I wish I still did. I wanted to jump in and play bass so badly today.
The only weird thing was that I had forgotten that they don’t like to play so quietly. Nick is a guitarist, and the one rule about guitarists is that they won’t play quietly. But he did and it was a perfect volume for people. From now on when I book bands though I am going to make sure I watch out for the Loud Guitar Factor.
The Director of the Museum seems to want me to play - and finally Rick seems to have slightly hinted that for the MFA show… maybe Salaryman could play.
Just figuring out the logistics of this coming show, however, is a nightmare. Gram has to be babysat that night, and also during all our 6 practices that we will have. Although his favorite band is Salaryman… maybe we could get away with giving him a keyboard and he can practice with us. For 6 hours. Or not.
I spent literally all day updating the kiosk in front of the CANVAS - this is the thing that controls what applications will show on it. And I got one of the faculty members, Christiane Martens work up on CANVAS and she was SO happy! It has taken her literally a YEAR of plugging away at me and others at the Beckman but she got this sculpture that she made that’s in Japan INTO my VR Cave (the CANVAS; http://www.canvas.uiuc.edu.) She actually had blueprints for the sculpture and gave it to a guy named Alex at the Beckman and he recreated it in VRML and I was able to use a VRMLviewer that runs in the CANVAS and it WORKED.
So I think I’m so happy because today I feel like I was actually DOING my job. The scariest parts of my job are the Finding Of New Art. Right now I need to do more research and also more delegating. There are people on campus who know New Art. I can ask them to help.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts — Bertrand Russell