Saturday

From Random stuff Jan-Feb 09

these are my latest additions to my growing media library.

as of now, i have ALL of her albums, even exodus (ok, but i don't have precious aww.) and ALL of her videos except her 20th birthday recording (rare) and utada united 2006 (still expensive). as you can see from the pic above, i have uh1, uh2+uhu (her mtv unplugged concert), uh3, uh4 and budokan 2004 ^_^

beside all that utada (standing) is ken hirai's 10th anniversary concert dvd! the most damn expensive thing over here, it still cost me $20+ bucks after the discount!

the rest are all just as good stuff: neil sedaka, lenny kravitz, russell watson (he sings 'classical' pop - that cd in the photo is in big band/jazz style), REM, coldplay, U2, and the supremes (very famous yesteryear group).

my current mp3 collection is mostly female singers - utada, shiina, joanna wang, the corrs, stephanie sun, f.i.r, etc. this [gains from the shopping trip]will readjust the gender imbalance in the mp3 player lol. 

omg, spent $173.something in total!! i console myself by thinking that i'll sooner or later buy most of them anyway, so the 50% discount offer was well worth it. but then, i wonder, could i have found these at second-hand cd shops, i.e. cash converters. there's one at ang mo kio and another somewhere in jurong east. it's really hard to find what you want there, though. good stuff are either never sold for cash or are already bought by someone before you. one should seriously consider going there to look for old releases - i was lucky enough to find the corrs' mtv unplugged album and in blue. bought them for about $4 each!!!!!

anyway, the 1 hour long multimedia art thingy is very thought provoking, although the impatient people will probably not like the beginning. i think a single note was struck on the piano at regular infrequent intervals for what seemed like eternity, within a pitch-dark room (i couldn't see mr gooi, who was sitting inches from me). well, which is what the show is kind of about. how long is considered long? i think that part probably took 10 (agonising) minutes, or maybe more or less?

if the impatient can survive the initial part, the rest of the work is very good to watch as well. the dancer moved in reeeaaaallllyyy slow motion, allowing the single light cast on him and the accompanying shadows, formed by the dancer's build, to morph into different forms (the dancer's muscles are extremely toned!) 

then suddenly, the dancer became this amorphous thing that went mad. then just as suddenly, he snapped out of it, which elicited laughter from some. that is probably the most obvious reference to the theme of the work, 阈 (pronounced yu4, damn rare word, can.)

i like the play of lights, which came on and off at various places at different times. i often did not notice a light going on or off because it was controlled so well, so slowly. that's seriously damn cool.

the music which accompanied the dancer and lighting, no, i've used the wrong word. sometimes the music takes center stage instead of the dancer? rather, the three elements (lighting, dancing and music) both complemented and were individualistic in their own ways. very cool.

the other great thing was that there's a post-concert dialogue with the artists :D of which the guy who started this all happened to be mr gooi's friend and mr gooi started shooting him many questions regarding the work haha. i had so many questions to ask, but didn't ask most of them except "what is liminality", to which he said it was a good question (yay). his explanation for that question sort of answered my follow-up questions, still in my head then.

wow, he's compared with erik satie and ryuichi sakamoto! what he does for a living looks (sounds? haha) really cool. maybe i can try doing this in future :]