Art display? 2010-06-20

While in Sydney, Australia, I went to the habour area with my uncle. One of the things recommended by others was to take a ferry ride, and someone mentioned Cockatoo Island at one point... so off we went. I wasn't quite sure why exactly... As so it happens, it was the location for the 17th Biennale of Syndey, a contemporary art festival. The island housed a quarry, some industrial warehouses, a prison, and also a dry dock during WWII. It was quite an interesting setting for many of the art pieces on display. I don't consider myself knowledgeable with visual art, but it was not too difficult to imagine old, abandoned warehouses and rusty machinery to be a suitable setting for a modern piece of sorts.

Personally, the most striking thing I saw on the island, however, was not any of the art pieces. Instead, it was the campground. As follows:

I thought it was one of the pieces on display... but it was not :-)

Other pictures from that day, including some of the other art works: here.

NIME presentations 2010-06-16

This was the main presentation room at the University of Technology Sydney for NIME2010.

The particular talk was a comparison between the open source monome and the Yamaha Tenori-on - two quite similar devices technology-wise, but presented under different business models. The gist of the presentation was that an open source project allows people to constantly modify and update a device according to the whims of the user/developer, while a close sourced one (obviously) does not. As such the monome has undergone hundreds of firmware versions, while the Yamaha has maybe a handful. However, as one of my professors on the trip, Bob Pritchard, pointed out: as a musical instrument, are such quick changes (even if they are improvements) always a good thing?

Aside, have you noticed that identical images from two identical projectors placed side by side never look identical? :P

North Head, Sydney 2010-06-14

An awesome day of sightseeing: View from North Head of downtown Sydney.

The three awesome people I stayed with for the first part of the trip, before the conference started: James, Anna and Maria.

Blue Mountains, NSW 2010-06-13

A breathtakingly beautiful place... (and a pretty good hike to boot - Grouse Grind eat your heart out :)

The hike took around 4 hours, with quite a bit of ups and downs. gpx track here.

Climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge 2010-06-11

First day in Sydney; Anna and James took me to the habour area, and I took some obligatory pictures of the you-know-what :P. One of the more interesting things I noticed was they had a special tour that involved walking up the Habour Bridge. Looks like fun, but not $200 fun.

Flight from YVR to LAX 2010-06-10

Postal Service is awesome. Moreso when flying down the California coast.

"I watch the patchwork farms' slow fade into the ocean's arms
And from here they can't see me stare

The stale taste of recycled air"

~Postal Service