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.

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.

Launceston, Take Two

My last day in Tasmania was spent back in Launceston.

I went to the local museum, looked at some art and explored the old blacksmith workshop, which was still in use until the 1990s. There was also a theater showing old government videos. One of the videos was to record the beauty of a small lake in the middle of the mountains before it was to be flooded and destroyed for the creation of another dam. The government recognized the area was unique and paid for this film to be made, but for some reason it didn't seem worth saving the actual lake.

There really wasn't anything left that seemed necessary to see so I spent the day wandering around town and drawing at a cafe.

Hobart

I was relieved to be in Hobart and see people walking about. With 210,000 it's about twice the population of Launceston, and 300 times that of Strahan.

I started off at the museum/art gallery. There was a large variety of things all packed into the building. It's not that it was small or had little to tell about each subject, it was just a very good use of space. Areas of the museum included exhibits about local Aboriginal cultures, civil rights, ships, Antarctic exploration, prison colonies such as Port Arthur, woodcraft, modern art, Chinese art and calligraphy. It was a bit overwhelming.

Though plenty of things in the museum were intriguing, my favorite was probably learning that Aboriginal Tasmanians have a style of basket unique to their culture. They craft water carriers out of large pieces of kelp.

Next up was a walk through the domains and along Soldiers Walk where men are remembered by plaques and trees planted in their names. In 1917 the walk was established. Queen's Domain has since gone through renovations and replanting upon realizing that it would be better to have native trees in the domain.

In the evening I went to a comedy show at the Brisbane Hotel. Some of the comedians were a bit less than funny, but others were hilarious. And the host of the show was spectacular with short bits and banter. There were contests involving Nerf guns and stuffed ducks, a video satire of Frasier, and a few talks with a vampire off stage.

Headlining the evening was Tom Ballard, who won best newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year and works for youth radio station Triple J. We made plans during his show to go out afterward (it's slightly awkward to converse with someone while they are on stage) but the place we intended to go was closed. Instead, I just talk to him and a few other people after the show.

In the morning I headed off to the botanic gardens. Most people have places they tend to visit when traveling; I always like to visit parks and gardens. There was an enclosed area with sub-Antarctic plants. Since the 1950s, Australia's Antarctic territory, Macquarie Island, has been a place for scientists to study the climate down under the down under. The cold house in the botanic gardens mimics the Antarctic climate and exhibits native plants.

After the gardens I went to visit the Penitentiary Chapel. In the early 1800s more and more convicts were being shipped to Tasmania and the current prison wasn't large enough to accommodate them all. Plans were created to build a new, larger prison. So the convicts labored to build the sandstone bricks and make their future cells. After the new penitentiary had been established, it was decided to add on a chapel to aid in the convicts' reform. It was believed that they would never overcome their evil habits without Christianity. The chapel was built with sloping pews to accommodate for cells underneath the floorboards. Luckier convicts got the tall cells in the back, others were forced to crouch into the tiny cells near the front.

Eventually, fewer convicts were being sent to Hobart because the government decided perhaps not every rumored thief should automatically be imprisoned. Because the prison needed less space, two sections of it were closed and turned into courts.

The day was an eclectic mix of activities. After the penitentiary, I went to Town Hall for a flower show with gorgeous irises and mixed arrangements. I was amid a group mostly composed of old women and families.

And after the flower show I stopped off at the Lark Distillery for a tasting of their whiskeys and spirits. The staff was incredibly friendly and the small number of customers allowed for a quite personalized experience.

Strahan

Initially, I’d planned to only be in Strahan for one day. Due to a failure to turn on my cell phone alarm, however, I missed the bus to Hobart. And because it only comes every two days I was stuck in Strahan.

The extra time allowed me to take a hike I’d wanted to do the day before. For some reason the path was closed. It was raining all day, which seemed appropriate for walking through rain forest. Hogarth Falls were beautiful.

On my walk back through town that afternoon, one of the bikers was standing on the footpath by the tavern. He recognized me from the night before and invited me to join the group inside for drinks and watching the Melbourne Cup on TV. Admittedly, none of them seemed to care much about the horse race but had placed bets on it anyway. It was miserable outside so we stayed at the tavern talking sports, art, politics and so on.

The next day I created several sand sculptures. It began with a suggestion of two platypuses. Those two weren't enough to occupy much time--and by this point I'd done everything I wanted to do in town--so I made a turtle and a snail. There were a couple little girls playing with their dads on the playground nearby, so I asked them for advice on what to make next. The girls got fairly excited about a dinosaur and wanted to help. One of them promptly stepped on all of the animals I'd made thus far while the other piled some wet sand into a mound with me. They stuck around for a good fifteen minutes before getting bored and moving on. I finished the dinosaur and think it ended up pretty good.

After creating some art, I went to look at the two galleries. They both had some amazing woodwork as well as paintings, photographs and glass. Most of the wood pieces were crafted from Huon pine. The native tree has an incredibly fine grain, growing miniscule amounts per year, and has thus been highly prized by craftsmen since settlement. Most pine forests were hard to access and high in the mountain bush, which is one of the reasons why the railroads were built to the west from cities like Hobart and Launceston. Had the pines not been so difficult to log and transport there would probably be none left. After a while they realized how slowly the trees grew and that some in the forests were over 3000 years old. Now the piners only use trees after they have fallen naturally. It limits high production of Huon goods but still allows for their use.

The rest of the day was mostly spent birdwatching and drawing. Minimally exciting. Incredibly restful.

To the West

The bus ride between Devonport and Strahan was spectacular. We began by passing through farmland and vineyards, but over the course of several hours the scenery progressively transformed into mountains, rainforest and then the ocean coast.

There were brief stops every few towns to unload passengers and enable other riders to stretch their legs for a bit. Our first stop was in Sheffield.

Almost every building in Sheffield was from the colonial era. There weren’t too many buildings because it’s such a small town, but almost every one of them had a mural. Some were paintings of schoolchildren peering in through the windows of the shop, others related to colonization, and some were purely abstract. And if that wasn’t enough there were a dozen or so freestanding murals displayed in a park by the visitor center.

We also made a short stop off at Cradle Mountain. Several people disembarked there to start the 5-6 day hike on the Overland Track. It’s supposed to be a beautiful hike, going by Dove Lake and ending up at Lake St. Clair. I thought of doing the hike myself but was turned off upon learning in recent years there have been additions of hotel-like accomodation instead of just campsites along the path. Instead, it seemed like a better idea to trek the shorter and less touristy trails and see more of the island.

I arrived in Strahan around 3pm and settled into my room at the nearly empty hostel. There was one other person staying there when I arrived, and we only ran into each other a couple times. It felt far more like a hotel that happened to be in little cabins. There were beautiful plants around the site and a small patch of forest by the creek on one side of the cabins. Rabbits and birds were often hanging around.

Before the sun set I wanted to get a good view of the harbor from Water Tower Hill—which is exactly what it sounds like. There was a row of trees blocking the view from the top of the hill so all I could see was the water. Seeing as how no one was around and the water tower itself was easily accessible… I may have disobeyed an “Authorised Personnel Only” sign. Though the view wasn’t actually much better than one spot on the ground, it was worth the fun of climbing the tower.

At a theater by the water there’s a nightly performance of a play about the last convicts on Sarah Island and their escape. Sarah Island was the first penal colony in Tasmania. It sits in Macquarie Harbor a short boat ride away from Strahan.

After the play it was still light out so I strolled along the beach and started working on a sculpture in the sand. People kept stopping by to look at me working. One woman kept asking questions about how I learned to sculpt (which I had no answer to) and was quite enamoured with the process. She invited me to dinner with her friends who were having a barbeque at the top of the beach.

Apparently these people were a large group of bikers on vacation traveling around Tasmania. Twenty years ago they formed a club in Melbourne and had since moved around the country, raised families and whatnot. This was the first time most of them had seen the entire group in years.

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.

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.

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.