rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

A New Beginning

I saw what will become my office today for the first time! It is nice; empty and with a navy blue wall, but still very nice. The best part was that my office is in the area with all the other professors! After so many years of … well, it’s all past now.

It’s hard to believe where I have found myself, where I have landed. I’m still kind of in a state of shock and I’m looking around to find out where the camera is, half the time. I’m in a job where pretty much everything I do and think about and care about pertains to my job! I get to teach things I know and love, and when I research, I can teach that stuff too! And best of all, when I perform, which is pretty much the thing I love to do best, that will help me in my career! It is the best thing in the world!!

Still working on syllabi. The Music Business syllabus is proving to be tons of fun to work on; I so obviously do know that material, and it is so easy to find people from my past to help guide these future students! Everyone I have asked so far has said agreed to be interviewed, either live or virtually, on iChat or phone; Bob Weston from Chicago Mastering Service/Shellac, Matt Talbott from Hum/Centaur/Great Western Record Recorders, a former President of Reprise Records, a former Warner Bros. attorney, our drummer who has a degree in Music Business and interned at RCA and BMG, etc…. the list goes on! Next I’ll probably call Mr. Steve Albini and see if we can do a tour of Electrical Audio up in Chicago. Then I’ll have to worry about getting 21 kids up to Chicago and back again….
My only other worry is most of these people are from the Rock and Roll school, not too many are jazz or classical, but I think it’s all applicable, no matter what. Many of the ‘former’ music industry people now have such a great perspective on the industry too, having been through it all. Hopefully The Kidz will appreciate this type of thing.
The other syllabus is for my “Architecture of Participation” class, which is going to be about Web 2.0, but I’m having a hard time narrowing myself down to it because I have so many favorite assignments I’ve given in the past and want to continue giving them. I need to just let go of that. I know that as a new professor I’ll try to fit way too much stuff in my syllabus. I do hope I don’t go wrong in the other direction though, and not teach enough…. nah.. I just have a feeling that it’s going to work out fine! It’s CRAZY!!! I keep having to stop myself from jumping up and down! I’m so excited!!

The Archetypes of Not Understanding Art and Technology

I’m working on a possible theory / writing now, but I’m missing the vocabulary for it. The problem is that there are people who understand technology and code, and there are people who understand art. And there are so few people who understand both. The only people I personally know (so far) are me, Rick Valentin, Richard Powers, and maybe Karrie Karahalios who comprehend all this stuff. There has to be more people though.

Let me enumerate the artist/technologist archetypes.

Type A: This person makes a printout of a mathematical equation, assigns some colors, placements, sounds to its range, (or, maybe they even make it a hologram) and then gets all excited about the pretty picture it makes - or the picture that it makes that looks like a body part - and then decides that this is art. It’s Pretty! Of Course it’s Art! (Yes, I know that there are some math equations that are just so squishy and nice and maybe even jump-of-faithy that they should be considered art, but it’s very hard to explain those ones to an artist, and there’s really no reason to print them out, either. They would work better as conceptual art.

Type O: This person has a rudimentary understanding of the term database, or code, and uses it in very bad metaphors, thinking that they can explain the connection between technology (or at least computer code) and art. The only person I know who did this well was Richard Powers but it took him 696 pages (although he threw in music as well.) and he transcended the little bridge you draw between code and art by creating a whole narrative around it.

Those are complete opposite sides of the spectrum.

Type F: This person understands art very well, and wants to make art that uses technology but doesn’t understand the technology, so they employ others to create it. There are variations on the scale of Fμ as to how they credit (and whether they listen to) their collaborators. Some of these people are terribly mean to technologists, or anyone they think knows more about computer programming than them.

Type H: This person understands technology very well and thinks that since they go to museums and really like the art there, that they should direct art projects.

I’m going to bed. And yes, I do have PMS.

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I’m on my first week of No Work and No Holiday and No Vacation: and it’s great! I’m actually starting to work on syllabi now for teaching my classes this August - Arts Technology 388 and Music Business.

I have day 1 of Arts 388 planned now - the class is going to be about Participatory Networked Whatevers (web2.0 and all the other buzzwords) but I want to make sure they will get to do Fun Stuff Like Creating Things and not just talk about theory all the time. Day 1 is probably really Week 1 & 2; since I’m a new perfessor I will probably try to pack way too many things into the class. But anyway Day 1 is the following presented:

If the class is about communication, we need to talk about Graphics first. How to make things readable, understandable, how to clearly present information and data. So I can give nice examples from, say, Edward Tufte; the graphing of the London cholera epidemic, and the screwed up data presentation of the shuttle disaster - and the performance of Richard Feynman at the subsequent hearings (with the O-ring and the glass of ice water)… I have some artwork that works parallel to the cholera map; Candy Jernigan’s “Found Dope” which is a beautifully laid out presentation of all the dope paraphenalia she found in the city around her apartment building. There’s a great parallel between the London cholera epidemic, where just plotting the names along a temporal path according to death would be completely useless (which is what would have logically followed from a bunch of death notices) but the opposite case of Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial which works wonderfully because it is names plotted along a temporal path…. and I will end up with the Clock of the Long Now.

There is no way that will all fit into the first class. I also want to talk a lot more about graphics and color choices. That can be for the second day I guess. Then an assignment, but it has to be one that will be awesome and fun and impossible to mess up, just like the best teacher in the world (Doyle Moore)’s assignments used to be.

Yes, I’m totally excited and also scared. But I’m going to plunge ahead and “Go In Like Gangbusters” which is what the Dean of Fine and Applied Arts at UIUC told me to do.

I have scheduled The Music Business Class for Wednesday and Thursday days… this is SO fun, to just sit and work on what to teach people ALL DAY!!! I cannot believe how lucky I am!! (I know I’ll be jaded later, but for right now, WOW! actually I don’t think I’ll be jaded ever, because this is EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO! So there!)

So the freaky thing about the Music Bus class so far is that I’m second-guessing myself. So many people have recommended Donald Passman’s All You Need To Know About The Music Business - I finally picked it up - and… it starts out by saying ‘If you want to get anywhere / signed to a major, you need a good lawyer and a manager.’ Which is absolutely the opposite of what I would have told everyone. I just blew $30 on a book! But the thing is, that’s the other way of doing this I guess. It’s lucky that I know both ways! I can just tell everyone about all that. So maybe this book is the one to get. I have taken out about 15 other music business books from the music library here at UIUC and others from Champaign library… I don’t think I’ve ever done this much research about anything in my life. or cared as much.

Rick’s dad has had his operation and they have taken his tumor out. This stuff is probably really private and I shouldn’t be writing about it. He looked pretty good the last time I saw him, sitting up in the hospital. He is recovering now but now is the time to think about what to do in the future. And that’s for a different blog.

We had a long, long, long vacation with my family; all the sisters (my 2 youngers) were together and we had a wonderful and intense time together. It is so amazing that we are so different, but we all love each other so much and have a closeness and bond that we’ll never allow to break. It’s very interesting to figure out how to deal with our kids; we all have such different ways of raising our children! I will go into that in the future.

Why exactly am I still awake? I get so greedy. At night, greed takes over, whether I’m moronically staring at shopping webpages, or trying to squeeze another day’s worth of research out of a night. I’m so greedy.

I wonder what it is like to know what is going to kill you. I’ve been reading about pancreatic cancer. You’re not supposed to eat animal fat. It’s bad for you. I wonder if I should give up eating ice-cream.

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You’re going through life, enjoying retirement (by going back to the office periodically) and then boom, you feel a bit ill, go to the doctor, and find out there’s a tumor on your pancreas.

Boom. Rick’s dad is sick and is going into the hospital. Life is all waiting. Summer is blooming all around us, my sister from London is in town for a month, my family is together for the first time in years, Rick’s first Chicago art opening is this weekend, and the band is starting to practice again. Lots of excitement and joy.
But life is all waiting. We’ll know something in a couple of days. But what will we know? What do we know?

I try to live life like every day is my last (I think). It’s hard when you get these “life lesson” emails and you already do what you’re supposed to be doing. What happens when you’ve got the correct mindset and then the bad thing happens? I guess there is still pain, but maybe it’s in a better context?

I wish there was something I could do to help. I don’t even know what subjects to talk about. Rick’s family is so much different than my family. When my dad was sick, I didn’t have that removedness. I feel completely unable to help now. Plus, I think I kinda know I’m not good at sick people and hospital situations.
I guess no matter what happens there is always pain. I guess at these times it’s important to focus on the joy too.

These are very intense times.

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Yesterday was my last day at UIUC. It was very, very strange. Most of the people whom I probably would have cried hugging goodbye left before I had to hug them goodbye and cry. Anyway I left my Chris Schneberger Viewmaster Series Art there so I need to pick that up at some point.

It feels very, very weird to not have any responsibilities right now, so I decided to find a couple of other ones. I rode my bike to get The Toddler to daycare this morning. I thought a bit about what a slacker mom I am to put him in daycare instead of having him here in the house with me.. for a couple of minutes, and then I smiled. I don’t have that guilt. Gram’s with a bunch of his friends with teachers who are teaching him 3-year old things, and he’s got his music class at school today, which he loves. There was always a twinge of guilt for me, dropping him off there instead of doing what my mom did and raising me at home. But I know life is better for all of us this way. I’m not geared for daycare of a 3-year old. At his school he’ll smear shaving cream all over himself, play with sand made with coffee-grounds and corn starch in a giant blue tub, play at the Water Table… I don’t have those things here. I also don’t have 10 other 3 year olds for him to be with.

I will soon buy a membership to our local food co-op, even if it’s scary and hard to get there. You worry you’ll do something wrong, like wear a leather belt or park in the wrong spot or wear too many diamonds or something like that. Then you look at the produce and wonder, does it look like crap because it’s healthier for me and isn’t painted store-chemical red, or does it look like crap because it’s actually rotten?

But I’m shopping there for eggs because they are from Arthur, IL, and mostly, because I don’t have to keep buying more egg cartons and throwing them away. If I have to throw away another egg carton, I’m going to buy a chicken. The egg cartons and the frigging peanut butter jars are making me crazy. The co-op has a giant tub of peanut butter that you can bring your own jar for, and use. At least there are two packagings that I don’t have to have anymore.

I think this is enough. Time to go drive my car to the workout place and run on a machine.

Then we’ll get in line for the Iphone. Fashionably late, but not too fashionably late of course.

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2 days of work left. I have only quit one other job in my whole life, the job at Frasca, programming flight simulators. The day Rick and I left there, we stayed extra late, burning EPROMs to make sure everything would work perfectly when we were gone. The boss stayed to watch us to make sure we didn’t steal anything, but we were completely driven to make sure we left everything working perfectly. I remember that felt so good. Then afterwards we left and went on tour. For 10 years.

So now I’m quitting another good-paying job for MUSIC! I hope my parents know how proud I am of myself! (although let’s face it, this is a much better job that I’m going to. It’s not like I’m runnin oft on tour again.)

I had lunch with The Famous Author, and he helped me with my syllabus - you kids are so lucky next semester - and I got to find out what the next book is about! But I’m not going to blog about it. I’m just so excited - I can’t wait to read it! I wish I was on the Shorter List, there are some people on that list who actually get the books BEFORE they come out. Could you believe how amazing THAT would be?

My friend Frances Kuo researches the effects of environment on people. She has sent me a paper about what happens to kids who don’t get to exist in nature. It is wonderful. I know so many beautiful, wise, intelligent, generous, caring people. It is hard to go to bed sometimes, just wondering what everyone is up to.

I am reading the cult of the amateur, how today’s internet is killing our culture, by andrew keen. Even the typesetting on the front of the book makes me angry; it’s all lowercase. Is he trying to show that he’s an amateur too?

The book is about how us amateurs, us Time’s Persons Of The Year, yes, us monkeys not typing out Shakespeare, are going to destroy America (I suppose like the Gays are going to destroy the Institution of Marriage) - American culture (??) - by self-publishing using Web 2.0 technologies. Yes, it’s a perfect textbook for my class.

He makes a lot of good points (over and over) but it seems very reactionary, and almost kinda..uh… amateurish? I’m waiting for the punchline at the end where he says, “Aha! Gotcha! I’m an amateur, too!” But it hasn’t happened yet.

He is saying that wikipedia is not written by the Learned. and he’s right, but I think that there is a wonderful use for wikipedia and another use for The Books Of The Learned. Obviously people need to be taught what they can believe, but that’s no different than non-Web2.0 technologies now, is it? Watch television and tell me what you should believe? The commercials? The news?

Anyway in my research I signed onto Facebook and started filling out my profile. I was taught how to “hang out” on mySpace by a friend Erin, at the museum. I definitely need to know these things if I’m going to teach this class.

Rick has cut out a template for the iPhone and has been carrying it around with him, holding it in his hand. We’re looking for reasons to buy this thing. When I got back from teaching Tae Kwon Do tonight, he had discovered that the iPhone that is coming out in a couple of days is smaller than previously specified; we’d thought they’d gotten someone with bigger hands to do the newer commercials, but no, it IS smaller. It looks like they’re going to make it affordable to people like me and Rick. So now all I have to do is deal with the fact that I might end up with a 1.0 first generation something. I still have my Newton. Gag.

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One of my favorite teachers from my entire academic career, Bruce Reznick, (Combinatorics, math 313) sent me this absolutely wonderful guide for new TAs. I loved reading it because it is obviously his guidelines for teaching; I remember the days in his class and how well he ran it and how great learning in the class made me feel, and now reading his instructions is like getting to see what’s behind the curtain.
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~reznick/ciu.html

I’m busy at work researching what I will teach next semester for my New Media class. I’ve never done this much research into New Media in my entire life! I’m beyond excited about the class. Right now I think it will be about Web 2.0 concepts, and I will call it something like Web 2.0: Question Authority.

I even have the first quote (I always have some sort of quote on opening day) - Here it is from Lipstick Traces:

“I must speak to a boy named Elvis Presley,: said the headmistress of a London comprehensive academy in 1956, “because he has carved his name on every desk in the school.” - p 41, Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus

This is a prime example of the audience (literally, in this case!) becoming a tool for propogating information.

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I’ll just get on with it, without the “oh, gosh, it’s been so long, etc.”

Sometime last semester, some kind folks at ISU (Illinois State University) began to email me and alert me to the fact that there was a faculty position open there, in the Music School; Music Business Teacher / New Media Instructor. I said, gosh, no thanks, I’m very entrenched in the workings of Krannert Art Museum (KAM). I was still waiting for the search for my position at KAM to come through. It took SO long.

Then someone else emailed me about the ISU position. Then another person. Then I finally thought to myself, well, I probably could use some practice interviewing, so I don’t blow the one prospect (my current position) that I have. So I applied. And did a terrible phone interview.

Then I had my interview at UIUC, which I was supposed to ace. I left it feeling not too great, either. The position is re-titled, “Art, Design, and Technology Curator.” Which I am not.

Then ISU asked me back, for the in-person interview, and asked me to prepare a presentation about my own art, and also, a second semester Music Business syllabus. I was about to thank them for their consideration but there’s no way I was going to let this get any further, when I found my feet moving underneath me and my body propelled to the Music Library here at UIUC. I couldn’t stop myself. OK: check this: on my way out of the museum, I ran into Richard Powers, who was sitting, waiting for some sort of special poetry reading by some guy that only fancy-dancy people like he were invited to, and he motioned me to come sit down next to him, and I said, “No Thanks, I am going to find a music book at the library.”

That should have told me everything, and it did. I gave up getting to sit next to Rick Powers, my all-time hero, just to run to the library to find music books.

So I began creating my presentation about my art, and about the music business, and it was a presentation about everything that I am, everything I believe in, my musical background: my 20 years of playing music and being a part of the music business - my having read music before text - it was all being wasted. All that knowledge and all the passion that I have ever had on the stage, I have had sitting in a drawer somewhere where I had to hide it because who the hell cares about my music at the museum? It’s not part of my art.

And now it is. I presented in front of a class. I showed them the Chopin Etude that stumps me. I told them about payola. I told them about my Tickets To The Sunset art piece, my thesis project about selling tickets to the sunset on Ticketmaster. (If that is not Art and The Music Business, I do not know what is.) I told them about my dad selling fakebooks in the 1940s with his dad. I told them how I’m the first generation of Marshacks who made a living playing music. I told them everything I believed and everything I loved.

And they offered me a position, in the Music School. Can you believe it? It is probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. And the faculty there are so nice, so sweet, so supportive of each other. I’ve never been at a place like that! My friend who is experienced in these matters said to me, “Rose, I have heard of places like that, where people are nice to each other and support each other. I think that might be one of those places.”

I was sitting in my favorite place in Sarasota, Florida, actually, when all this happened; I had interviewed for both jobs and then went away to a family vacation in Florida, sitting amidst beautiful palm trees in the sun and beach, waiting for my answers.

My current / former job at UIUC also offered me a position, first, actually, but they had also found a wonderful replacement for me. So they created two positions, one for this other guy, and one for me, which was flattering in a way, but the ISU position is a faculty position. I get to TEACH. I GET TO TEACH.

So I’m unbelievably excited about all this, and I will begin to write more now. I just didn’t know how to even start this, and it’s been weird anticipating meeting my new replacement, but he’s totally cool and we have very similar thoughts about computing and art, which is really awesome. I actually love hanging out with him; he seemed nervous the first day but I tried to make sure he was happy and not scared. I hope he loves UIUC as much as I did. It’s going to be a fun place for him, I think. He’s really a great guy. I still get sad a bit hanging out with him sometimes, but now more because I won’t get to hang out more with what I’ve been trying to build for the past year or two.

So, quickly, new developments for the band? We have a show in Millenium Park in August (12th) and a possible other show in Chicago at a really exciting location, if it happens. I’ll confirm when it is confirmed.

I have been running on a treadmill and doing other such things at a gym and they are killing my body. It’s a bit thinner, but it hurts and I cannot kick as high as I would like now. I finally went back to Tae Kwon Do and didn’t get too much yelled at, so that’s good. Working out at the gym was amazing because there was no one standing over me yelling at me that my arm was in the wrong place. That was kind of cool.

And I’m knitting with Hemp-6 now, which was slightly forced upon me, but I actually really like it now. It’s a bit rough to knit with, and I’m making a tank-top with it which is going to be a very rough tank-top, but whatever, it’s a really nice green color. We’ll see.

Wow, is that everything? And I’m getting to have a teaching from HH Dalai Lama in Bloomington IN in October. And that should be pretty fun.

That’s all for now.

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I have interviewed and interviewed and am in the waiting stage now. Over the past two days I have been in Bloomington, IL, at ISU where I met some incredibly wonderful people and their incredibly wonderful students. It is very neat to go give a talk at another school to people who don’t know you, and doubly neat to be able to give one about music.

I realize that music has been missing in my life for the past 3 years. In fact not missing, but popping up all over the place because I’ve been supressing it.

In fact someone sent me something rather beautiful: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/wtc/i04.html. I’ve made a little bit of musical algorithm / translation art in my day, and actually I remember a couple of people in school enjoying it. I could go off, crazy, in a direction of music and algorithm, I could dive into that pond and swim away and never come back.

But for now I’m in single-digits (tourspeak) before leaving for Florida! Yay!

I got a little miffed at the woman who needlepointed the soundwaves of war speeches (http://www.louisabufardeci.net/) just for a short time, because I didn’t understand what needlepoint had to do with war and soundwaves (and also because I was jealous) but now I understand that needlepoint is a very quiet and contemplative and repetitive thing whereas war isn’t. Well, it’s a bit repetitive.

I wonder how to put Make blog into an art exhibition. And I wonder if I’ll get to.

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This is my response to someone who has emailed me asking me for suggestions about creating a mobile recording studio housed in an airstream, like the StoryCorps project. I almost ought to write a paper on this…. (http://www.roadsideconversations.org)

Dear Juliette,

How exciting for you - it sounds like a most wonderful project. The biggest thing I can remember (and is still a problem) is that we spent a lot of money on a carpenter who made the most beautiful wordworking for inside the airstream - and built cabinets to hold computers - and the computers either almost didn’t fit, or fit “perfectly” which meant that if you wanted to pull something out or re-plug something back in, it was almost impossible. We would have to tear the cabinets out or saw holes in them. So make sure you have your carpenters talk to your computer engineers and work directly with them, because you can have the most beautiful cabinetry and then it’s all done, and then your computer engineers need to get in and fit stuff in and take stuff out constantly. Things constantly break and need to be replaced.

Also, in the summer, with lots of computers going, the airstream would get intensely hot, and the air conditioner didn’t quite cool it down enough.

Additionally, it was very important to remember to take down all the monitors and secure them before travelling with the airstream (one member of the team forgot this during a travel session.)

We had a wooden panel with foam on it to partition off the recording studio, but it was still open on the sides for traffic to flow through - but as a result, if anyone was in the other part of the airstream talking, it would affect the recording.

And lastly, it was actually quite hard to compel people to tell their stories, and also hard to get people to come into the airstream, if they just ‘happened’ across it at an outdoor event. I thought that was very interesting. Most people would sort of peek in and run away quickly; they thought it was maybe for workers or something… so make sure you have enough signage around the outside of the trailer, and I would recommend free-standing signs near the entrances.

I think that’s it - feel free to ask any questions!

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I think I might be working on a proof that all art can fit into the category of Data Visualization. So from now on, after I complete the proof, I can start calling Art “Data Visualization” instead of Art. Or art. Yay!

I had an interview for a job. You can tell I’m a pretty good fit, except it was pretty obvious to me what parts of the job I would have to do some learning in. It’s wonderful, though, to have a job where you have to learn, where you don’t know everything. Of course, if you’re smart enough, all the jobs are like that; you learn from everything.

I think the museum is going to have a Howard Finster retrospective, which is cool, because I really like Howard Finster’s stuff. It made me drag out my little Finsters and the book I had and google myself up to find that tour report where I’m sitting and arguing with Finster. The Paradise Garden book - and looking at the shots I took with that old Apple Quicktake camera - reminded me that there is a LOT we could do with our backyard… hee hee hee…

And. It’s time to get to work.

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