Thursday, June 19, 2008

Exchange Day... and a bit of catching up



The family portrait and the post-dinner uni-sex-hair group photo with a slight incline left to right.
We are in the middle of our research and exploration period here in Vancouver. The first couple of days we spent ingesting a lot of material about black holes and relativity and infinity and the big bang and... lots of huge ideas and theories. We've been compiling a list of questions: how did the universe begin? How will it end? Will is be a crunch? Will it sail out expanding forever, getting darker and darker and colder and colder? What is this dark matter that no one can see but everyone now seems to believe exists? why do we have such an urge to know answers to all of these questions? Is it simpler to understand the universe than it is to understand ourselves, as one astronomer suggested? We've been building a lot of clusters as we map out different strands of ideas from this material that may be helpful to realize the piece we imagine making.

Yesterday we spent the day working with The Chop. We started off the morning leading a definitely warming warm-up. Afterwards we had fun exchanging and sharing ideas. It was a rare opportunity to dialogue with another company, getting their input and fresh perspective on what we're thinking (for the moment) about "I'm So Close..." Especially at this phase of our project. It was great to have to articulate where we are in our research and to get their questions and feedback in return. Also, it was useful to provoke one another with writing assignments, interviews and composition work.

And of course, it was fantastic to go our for a delicious dinner with the entire gang (we missed you Cathy). It was a seemingly endless stream of delicious Malaysian food and nice to sit down and chat with everyone. As I mentioned to Laura, being a part of this project really is such a gift and we're thrilled to be a part of it.

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