Museum Day

For the past month (at least) our neighbors have been renovating. The noise of electric saws and excessive hammering has woken me up almost all of those days and is often mixed with yelling. This morning was no different but somehow irritated me more than normal. I showered and left the house for a full day of museums.

My first stop was the Immigration Museum, which is located in the beautiful old Customs House. I had already known most of the general information from history classes so I was able to focus more on the specific details of various immigrants' journeys.

Quick timeline of significant events:
1788 Britain sends convicts to Sydney.
1848 First non-British ship of settlers comes from Germany.
1860 British agents paid to recruit unmarried women to Victoria.
1861 Legislation confines Aboriginals to reserves & missions.
1888 Chinese prevented from disembarking ships in Sydney and Melbourne.
1892 Colonial government restricts all non-European immigration.
1901 Federation of Australia.
1965 Labor Party removes the "White Australia Policy" from their platform.
1967 Aboriginals counted in census and governed by Federal legislation.
1993 Native Title Act recognizes Aboriginal rights to their land.

The museum also had a spectacular exhibit about Hampi in southern India. In addition to hundreds of photos taken of ancient Hindu temples and beautiful ruins, there were a couple interactive rooms utilizing techniques I'd never seen before.

One room had a light table with photographs spread across the surface. Each photo had a barcode; when scanned, the slide projector would enlarge the photograph and show it on the wall with a description about the particular image.

Below image from UNSW iCinema Centre

Another room housed a circular screen with panoramic, 3D images of various sites. Visitors stand on a platform in the center of the room and move the projector to both choose which site they would like to visit as well as move around within that site. Other visitors can stand around the room and explore the 3D element of the video, sensing the depth of ancient temples and examining ruins.

Next up was the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. The current exhibit is about the history of technological advances in video. There was information about video games, early TV, cinema, YouTube and so on. Though the material may not sound incredibly new to many of my generation, the reason for visiting ACMI is often to experience the displays.

Highlights included a massive zoetrope, an interactive monster-making silhouette screen and a multi-camera sphere akin to The Matrix.

My favorite was Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal. Upon stepping into the dark room filled with fog machine haze and beams of light, you may not think it will be more than a few seconds of entertainment. After all, the light projection on the wall is just a simple outline of a geometric shape. So you take a few steps into the room and block part of the light. Your shadow breaks up the shape on the wall, but it also breaks up the beam of light traveling across the room. And as you continue to move through the beams you start to play more with the light. You can duck underneath the beams, try to block large portions, small portions, or just watch the swirls of fog traverse across the room. And if you wave your hand rapidly enough through the light, colors appear between your fingers.

The third and final museum of the day was the Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria Australia. The collection of work by Australian artists ranges across time periods, genre and artist backgrounds. It covers immigrant settlers' work as well as Aboriginal sculptures and paintings.

The architecture is quite impressive as well. Some art museums attempt to be works of art on their own, and it doesn't always work, but this one does. Placed inside Federation Square, the sharp-angled windows mimic the rest of the building and frame highlights of the cityscape, turning the city into a piece of art itself.

Pipemakers Park, Circus

On Friday, the Melbourne Women's Circus opened their end-of-year show. The venue was an old bluestone building in Pipemakers Park. In the late 1800s, the area belonged to a large meat cannery. The business began as a way to make use of sheep no longer suitable for shearing and it did good business for quite a few years.

Walter Hume purchased the land in 1912 and started up a concrete pipe factory with his brother. Within a couple decades the Hume Pipe Factory had become the largest supplier in Australia and exported their goods worldwide. Additional buildings were constructed for increased labor and production; but the company's continued growth led its relocation to Laverton where more space was available. The factory still produces pipes today.

While the factory was located along the Maribyrnong River, many pipemakers enjoyed spending free time on gardening. The location was ideal for growing plants and some men used leftover factory materials to craft structures for the garden.

I read inside a large pipe, out of the rain, while waiting for the show to begin.

The Women's Circus is not a professional circus; rather, it's a community of women from across the city with different strengths and different reasons for coming to circus. Some women are in their 20s, some in their 50s. And they all are amazing to watch.

photo from Womens Circus

It started up in 1991 as a resource for women of sexual abuse. It was meant to be a safe environment where they could learn to take control of their bodies and appreciate them in a new way. Other women use the circus to focus on the strength of their bodies instead of just appearance.

Two of my housemates performed in the show. All three of them actually take circus classes, but Hannah chose not to be a part of the show. Scarlet did trapeze and acrobatics, Jayt played with fire and rolled in a barrel. Though the latter doesn't sound incredibly interesting, it works very well as a humorous interlude. Overall, the show was a fantastic blend of physical beauty, amazing feats and comedy.

Tree lighting, MTC sale

Without Thanksgiving or much Halloween celebrations, Christmas had already started to take shape last month.

On the 18th of October I first noticed the giant tree being erected in City Square. Last week there was a large celebration and lighting of the tree, complete with rapping and breakdancing elves. It was slightly terrifying and entirely peculiar.

The Melbourne Theatre Company was changing offices and had an enormous sale to lessen their stock of unneeded items. There was office furniture and supplies as well as a surplus of old costumes, props and set components from past plays.

It was interesting to walk into a room of such peculiar furniture all mixed together. There were leather chairs and a faux fireplace next to a neon yellow, leopard print couch the size of four normal couches.

One room was fairly empty by the time I arrived, but it held items like nose molds and leftover "meant to be broken" ceramics. Though the idea of buying a platter just to smash it was intriguing, I just walked out of the sale with a couple shirts.

A Day with Flat Isabella

A friend recently e-mailed me about one of her students who is taking part in a 50 states class project modeled after Flat Stanley. They were going to start the project in November, but this student has Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia so my friend sent out e-mails to try and get responses quickly.
Instead of printing out the photograph of Isabella, I drew her myself so that she could be more comfortable. It is, after all, not quite the right weather outside for the long sleeved shirt and pants she was wearing. Hopefully she likes the new outfit.

We hopped on the tram and spent Saturday wandering around around town to see the sights.

Once we got into the CBD, we went to Federation Square. There just so happened to be an Indonesian festival going on when we got there. Performers had been flown in from various islands in Indonesia to dance and play music. We sat and watched for a while under the warm sun. There were intricately designed costumes and plenty of beautiful dances.



Just across the street was Flinders Street station. It's a train station and one of the landmarks for Melbourne--seemed like another good place to show Isabella.

Then we crossed the bridge over the Yarra River. There's a ferris wheel in a park along the river, but we didn't have a chance to go for a ride. We did, however, take a brief trip to the Queen Victoria Gardens and smell some roses.

We finished off the day with a visit to the Melbourne Theatre Company. It was the last day of the International Arts Festival and there was a play I really wanted to see. Thankfully, she didn't mind coming along. We took a picture outside the theater with my sister and Stephanie who are both visiting from Seattle. Then I hid Isabella in my bag and snuck her in so she didn't have to pay for a ticket. There certainly are benefits to this method of traveling...

We saw the Apocalypse Bear Trilogy. It wasn't the most appropriate choice for a 2nd grader, so Isabella stayed in my bag. I loved the play with all of its oddities and eeriness.

Throughout the play there was plenty of humor and even a song sung in a school cafeteria. The three sections all involved the bear showing up, doing things such as preparing after school snacks and offering to pick up groceries, but then the bear would burst into a fit of his violent personality. We never saw him kill anyone, but he spoke of death in gory details. Overall, a very strange but intriguing play.

Prom

On Friday, the Melbourne University Food Co-op hosted a prom as a fundraiser. Australian schools don't have proms, so the turnout was quite large considering the minor amount of advertising at Uni Melb. Most of the people there knew about it through word of mouth from excited hippies who had never been to a prom.


Most people were decked out in secondhand formal wear, but there was a vast array of outfits ranging from '80s wear to modern gowns and suits and even a bear costume. Men in dresses, women in suits, genderqueers in whatever they wished, and mixtures of all the aforementioned. I picked a couple roses from our garden before heading out and tied them in my hair.

I perhaps put far more effort into this prom than any of my previous ones. Earlier in the day I was running errands. Upon passing by an op shop, I thought I'd look for some new shoes. So I spent a little while in the store dancing, jumping and jogging around to test out a few pairs. One pair seemed comfortable enough...

Later that night, walking several blocks to the prom, my feet started to hurt. It wasn't soreness and it eventually turned into significant pain. Even after I went shoeless, the blisters on my feet prevented dancing from being much fun. Thankfully (though perhaps not so much) the music played wasn't very good. Live bands performed bad covers of '90s songs.

My date had to work late, so she met up with us at the after party. I'm sorry not to have photos of her in a beautifully tacky red dress.

Bach Organ

For almost 16 consecutive hours on Sunday, musician Calvin Bowman played the entirety of Bach's organ works at the Melbourne Town Hall.

This was yet another part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Though, Bowman resides in the state of Victoria, so I don't believe internationalism is necessarily a criterion.

He started playing at 8am and continued on through to 12:40am. There were only several short breaks scheduled during this feat for rest and meals.

Color-changing lights lit the 32-foot organ at Town Hall in all of its splendor. At times it glowed red, then shifted to a light blue or green. There is only so long my interest can remain piqued by one man with his back to the audience, and the shifting hues of the room made for additional observations. Some parts of the organ were only very visible in certain colors so each change was an opportunity to see more.

I attended just part of the performance for "Major preludes, toccatas and fugues II."
Take a listen, if you'd like. The video itself is unexciting for its entire duration, if at all, so I did not bother to make the dimensions large.

After the session of organ amazement, I went to the airport to pick up my sister. In addition to the long flight from Honolulu, she'd spent two days of her Hawaiian vacation in the hospital with inflamed intestines and was feeling ill. So we came home, she settled into the house and got some much needed rest.

Party

Yesterday was Jayt's birthday. One of her family's traditions is to have cake for breakfast, so I was up late baking the night before. I attempted to make them look like breakfast foods, but a failure to check for food coloring before shopping resulted in "eggs" with blue yolk.

In the afternoon, I went to the Antiverse (as opposed to "universe") Arts Market. It was located down an alley, in a squatted warehouse teeming with hippie punks. Just as I arrived, a man stepped on stage and started to perform tricks. He did some hat juggling and told jokes. Then he was assisted into a straight jacket, had a hat lit on fire and placed on his foot, after which he kicked the flaming hat into the air and caught it on his head. He escaped from the straight jacket and swallowed a curved blade sword for his last trick.

Jayt and I wandered around the market for a while. In a hippie fashion, there was free dumpstered food to eat and fabric flowers adorned a swing that hung from the rafters. The more punk aspects included a DIY tattoo station and numerous anarchist zines.

After the market, we went to a thrift store down the road in search of outfits to wear to prom next week. While I was perusing through racks of evening gowns, Scarlet and Erin came into the store looking for dresses as well. That night we were hosting a party. With the newly acquired dresses, we decided to make it a formal event.

Preparing for the party was incredibly fun. It had been secret project for the week, involving sneaking around three housemates and several late nights of work.

On Friday, after trolling up and down Sydney Road for supplies from all of the little random goods stores, I was so excited about the balloons that I inflated one as I was walking home--which made many other pedestrians stare and smile. Over the course of 24 hours, I think I got relatively good at the craft.

Hiding the pinata from Jayt was difficult. I had to move it from place to place, depending on when she would be home and where she may or may not go within our house. Considering how massive the dinosaur ended up, moving it became more difficult as the project continued. In the end it was hidden in my closet for everyone to find as the finale for the treasure hunt.

People were hesitant to whack the dinosaur. (I think this was because they were impressed by the craftsmanship.) After it was broken open, Jayt slipped inside the opening and wore it as a costume. Then we lit sparklers and ate cake.

Arts Festival Events #2

A friend double booked herself for the evening and was needing to unload a ticket to Körper. My original plans were to see a different show, but the German modern dance performance was calling.

The stage was bleakly set. There was a black tiled floor and a freestanding wall with a window. The music, as well, was minimal. It was reminiscent of sound effects, not so much melodic.

Parts of the show were spectacular. The group had amazing choreography in blending with one anothers' bodies. They lifted men into the air with the slightest of touches. Figures seamlessly wove in and out of the crowd. One man's legs became those of his partner, then the pair switched and her legs were his. It was all quite poetic and strange.

One of my favorite parts of the show was a scene taking place entirely within the wall window. Two women started in the window. They slowly moved to make room for two men, then two more, then even more. As it grew crowded, the dancers inched their way around and between the others. Using the glass and the wall, some of them rose to the top of the frame, all the while appearing to not be standing or holding onto anything.

There almost always tends to be an annoying patron or two who, for whatever reason, decided to see a show they clearly weren't going to enjoy. This time, the two men
were directly next to me. First, they had forgotten to turn off their cell phones. When the first man's mobile rang, his friend acted quite high and mighty. A couple minutes later, his phone rang too. They continued to talk, fidget and finally ended up standing up, stepping on the seats and exiting from the row behind. Now, these were relatively old men and were not at all graceful or speedy in their departure. Instead, one of them kicked my seat as he stumbled over the back of his chair.

After Körper, I headed over to Federation Square to see the end of Mary and Max--my original plan for the evening. I joined the group sitting on the cobblestone and watched the last half hour. It was cute and visually appealing. Perhaps I'll go back to see the first part another day.

There was also an installation at Federation Square with six young rappers from Sudan, Liberia and Tanzania. Though the video that goes with their music is slow, repetitive and not that interesting anyway, the teenagers' lyrics are insightful. Some of the topics I was already familiar with, but hearing them in this medium was interesting.

Arts Festival Events

Fringe ended on Sunday. The Melbourne International Arts Festival started Friday. For three days, the city was buzzing with both opening and closing weekend art shows.

Sunday evening I went to events at both. First was the International Arts Festival's bell-related trilogy. They had organized cathedrals and other buildings in the CBD to ring their bells in song at 7pm. I was too far from the activity to hear, but others' accounts made it seem no different than the usual chimes.

The Federation Bells are computerized to play songs on their own several times each day, but for the weekend Strange Fruit, a performance group, climbed onto poles and manually played the bells at sunset. As it grew darker, silhouettes of swaying figures against the sunset became lit from a golden glow underneath. Men and women clad in bright red swayed in all directions to ring different bells, even bending almost upside-down to reach the lowest ones.

The first couple songs were similar and a little too slow to remain interesting through the end of the second composition. Drums were brought in for the third, which had a quicker pace and I felt better blended the various pitches into one work.

After the show at Federation Bells, my friends and I headed out for a quick meal and then to Alexandra Gardens for a performance by Transe Expresse. The group wove medieval theater, circus and music to create "Ringing the Bells." It started by performers running with torches through the audience to platforms spread around the garden. From the platforms, the performers yelled in French accents at the surrounding viewers. After several minutes of this, they would run off to replace a performer on one of the other platforms. The costumes were stunning, yet peculiar, and gave off a creepy medieval aura.
Below photo by Xhanatos














All of the performers then rushed to their instruments on the center stage, which was then raised into the air far above the audience. They stood on hoops and small platforms, playing music from the sky as the structure spun like a mobile. During the show, the tent-like structure appeared to bloom, raising and opening the petals that held each of the musicians. All the while, three women did tricks on trapezes and ropes suspended in the center.

My final venture of the evening was a show at Bar Open in Fitzroy. The concept of "Guitar Relay" interested me: fifteen guitars were set up for musicians to use in improvising a song. The idea was that one person would start playing, a second would join in, then a third, and so on. If you initiated this with a group of people who know each other well and have practiced, I imagine it could be good. This was not.

Six or seven men sat on the floor of the bar with guitars resting sideways on their laps. One stood, playing his electric guitar with a violin bow. The others struck one or two chords at a time, letting the reverb carry the sound and fizzle out before playing more. Behind the men was a projection of astral images overlapped by the bar scene being recorded and modified on the spot by a man moving the camcorder from side to side on a tripod. Every few minutes one of the players would start playing a riff that was actually enjoyable, but it never lasted long and the screeching noises would take over. I tried to stay for a while to see if guitarists would change or the music would start sounding like music, but after 40 minutes little had changed besides the room beginning to empty.

Back Home to the Audley House

Back home. Lots of homework to do, friends to get together with and shows to see. For the sake of catching up with real time, I'll summarize the week.

Over the course of my first day home, our white board slowly gained more writing and drawing. It began when Jayt saw the clean kitchen in the morning and was later drawn on by Scarlet upon seeing photos of my bungy jump.

I got back into being domestic the next day by shopping and making a seitan stir fry with sushi for dinner.

The next few days were spent working on a significant amount of classwork, with several breaks of art events and getting together with people.

Sunday I upheld my regular visit to the Victoria Markets for produce. There happened to be a cooking demonstration because it was Asian Food Week. I had arrived at the markets early, so I sat and watched while waiting for the time when vendors slash prices.

Later that night, I went with friends to see Hannah Gadbsy perform a stand-up show at Trades Hall for the Fringe Festival. After the show we walked down Lygon Street and had dessert at one of the cafes.

Monday I had lunch with Carmel, my former homestay host.

Tuesday we had a large group of friends over for dinner. I used cooking as an excuse to take a break from working on my assignments. Thus, our guests ended up feasting on a variety of Greek dishes. (SIDE NOTE: HAYMERCHANTS, I'VE ACHIEVED POCKETS IN 100% OF MY PITA.)

Wednesday I met April for storytelling night at Willow Bar. Three of the four storytellers were great. The fourth was either too drunk to tell a good story or just wasn't funny. He told the kind of humor that I, and many others who did not laugh, interpreted as simply crude for no reason other than shock value.

Thursday was minimally eventful. We had a substitute instructor in swing dance class and I was feeling rather uncoordinated after two weeks vacation.

Friday we went to another Fringe Show. The Last Gasp, hosted by Daniel Kitson, was a collection of short comedy, musical theater, and theater sketches, as well as combinations of the genres listed. Kitson was hilarious. He decided it would be fun for the man next to me to throw a milk crate at him and award prizes if the crate landed on his head. This activity occurred between each set in the show, to a total of seven times. By the end, the man had won numerous treats from both backstage and the convenience store that Kitson ran off to for the specific purpose of buying prizes. He also got a bottle of his choice from the bar. But this man did not want all of his treats, so he gave me and my friends all something from his loot.