Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

The show was up Monday, but attendance was light. I had three or four professors bring their entire classes by my pre-thesis project for quick demonstrations and participation, but a bug was rampant through the code and the performance was not ideal. All morning long I was calling Rebecca desperately pleading for solutions, however none came until after we shut down and could debug the issue. (It was funny that the bug seemed to disappear when Rebecca showed up after lunch. She was the good luck charm.) New media work is always broken, they tell me. Zero1 festival kind of proved that -- the percent of functioning pieces was well below 50%.

But Tuesday morning, we had things running like a whistle. While not many people stopped by during the day, it was a hopping party in the evening during gallery walk through. I should have some documentation up soon: it is on my to-do list for continuation in this program. (For those of you wondering and are certain you will never look at my documentation whenever I get it online, for my pre-thesis project I created a participatory iterative prisoner's dilemma which utilizes cheap DIY technology and a simple video game interface.)

The confusing part for pre-thesis work and defense -- other than doing a pre-thesis defense instead of a thesis defense -- is that the exhibits run concurrent to the presentations, in effect limiting your primary Master's degree review show to only a two day circuit. After Tuesday, presentations are held for Wednesday and Thursday and then de-installation happens early Friday. This makes no sense, especially for DMA artists who have to be present for their work to function.

I gave my 15 minute pre-thesis defense on Wednesday. Things went as smooth as could be expected with all the research and effort put into my work. [i.e. Wayne could have talked for hours on his project, but managed to fit things in the time limit. :) -bec] The professors then were allotted a 30 minute time for question and answers, ultimately to grill me. However, I found that no one was willing to confront me with any reasonable challenge. After months of stressful planning and preparation, I expected to be challenged on some level -- but, nope. I got nothing. Mostly the conversation focused on potential future venues for the project, all of which are possibilities which I wasn't willing to speculate on. The moment you speculate is the moment they catch you and you tumble down that terrible rabbit hole.

After the fact, one of my advisors commented that the presentation of my discussion material tends to be in an aggressive manner. I begin answering a question by initially describing "what it is not" before explaining "how it does function." His recommendation was to reverse those -- possibly drop the negative conjectures -- to avoid putting the questioner on the defensive. Perhaps this is good advice. My colleagues felt that I "brought my boots and took down names." A wise idiom which aptly describes my approach in dealing with a department which widely disapproves of our contemporary approach to art practice.

Aside from the minor hiccups in the completed installation, Advancement to Masters Candidacy went as well as could be expected. Perhaps the stress didn't help, but I wasn't feeling well by Thursday afternoon, yet ran one last demonstration for another Graduate class, many who hadn't stopped by during the initial run. For good reason. These were the... "traditionalists." After they left and I took down the show, I needed Rebecca to remind me of why it isn't my job to help other people understand... "things."

And Thursday night, my body finally collapsed. Lucky for me, the vicious stomach flu waited until all the important work was done before it hit me with a vengeance I haven't felt in a decade. As I was incapacitated, Rebecca was the stalwart wife and went early to campus and took down the last of my exhibition by herself. I barely survived at home, carrying my bucket with me as I wandered from the couch to the bathroom for 24 hours. She also attempted to go to our church's trunk-or-treat Halloween night, but since they fail to accurately or consistently update their website, she showed up an hour late as everyone was leaving. Why put the activity on the site, if you don't put the right time? Why have a website?

Daylight savings time messed up baby, adding to the bug that she caught from me. We're carefully watching her fever -- which at the moment has dissipated -- but the general fussiness completely wore us out today. It's hard being sick and it's hard being parents of a child who doesn't realize they want to help her with what she needs.