Monday, November 29, 2010

There was a refreshing interlude yesterday afternoon- a visit to a little house in Stratford, where two colleagues, Persis-Jade Maravala and Jorge Ramos, are opening ip their house to the performing arts staff at the University of the East to make installations, music, artworks or whatever.
We sat around and ate things for a while (always nice!) and then explored the house, which must have been built around the same time as mine although it is bigger and has more original features, in particular big wooden cupboards with brass latches and a lovely old wooden floor with the scars of years of human traffic etched upon it.
Jorge is going to start up a blog about what we do: the project will be called Domestic Science.
Then it was back to my books and papers and some rather interesting forays into the fringes of the Internet.

I went by tube to the Regent Street site of the University of the West this morning to present some of the research I'm doing.
There were two passenger alarms in the train carriages at Camden, which the driver didn't believe and she told us all off so we went on to Euston with an unconscious passenger in the doorway.
The tube staff are right about needing staff in the stations. What if someone has a heart attack? There appeared to be only one person at Camden running the whole station and no-one could communicate with him.
There was a fire alarm halfway through the seminar, but the students were really attentive and I was glad to have spoken to them. I asked their lecturer whether my presentations skills were OK and he was very positive.
I am nervous: there are 54 male presenters and 15 female ones (roughly) at the conference next weekend. It was a debatable decision to present this research at a Music Production conference instead of a Feminist one, but I like the idea of raising consciousness somehow, rather than adding pique to the pot.
That male:female ratio is better than a music technology conference I was involved with about twelve years ago which had 50 men and two women!

1 comment:

Jude Montague said...

I think it's great that you're presenting at a music industry conference and not at a feminist one. Do it for us, HElen!