So, I'm back from the SCMS conference in Chicago.

Notice how my name is right on the front of the program (top left)?

Pretty cool...

I arrived at the Hilton around 2 pm on Thursday and checked into my very nice little room:

The hotel is super swanky, though perhaps a bit dated:

Needless to say it wasn't cheap, but super convenient since the conference was being held on the premises. So I could easily dart back and forth from my room to the panels. Of course it was also easy to get sucked in to all this convenience, and I ended up eating most of my meals in the hotel as well rather than going down the street to one of the many other restaurants in the neighborhood. It cost about twice what it should have, but it was pretty tasty. The fish n' chips and breakfast buffets were especially good.

So I didn't end up leaving the hotel at all until Friday night when I went down the street to Columbia College to see a special screening of the recent Indian film Black Friday presented in the new theatre of the film and video department there. Then, later that night, I ventured out to a midnight screening of Alejandro Jodorowski's The Holy Mountain at the renkowned Music Box Theatre. It was quite far from the hotel so I took a cab. That wasn't cheap either. After factoring in return travel, show ticket, and currency exchange, I figure the film cost me about $60. But it was worth the trip, as it was a beautiful gothic style building with really cool interiors:

My screening was in their smallest room, a very tiny little space but with funky decor:

But I peaked into the big room next door and it was amazing. I'd like to see a movie in there someday. Speaking of which, I've been trying to see the new David Lynch film Inland Empire for a while now. It hasn't opened in Canada yet, and may never, so I was really hoping it might be playing in Chicago while I was there. Turns out it opens next week, so I missed it by just a few days:

Lynch personally signed the poster for the Music Box, which attests to the theatre's reputation:

So, that was fun.

Then Saturday I spent most of the day at the conference, with a break for dinner with some friends at a restaurant down the street.

Then Sunday morning I got up bright and early with the sunrise...

...and prepared for my presentation at 10:15. Here I am ironing up my shirt:

It turns out that Sunday morning is not a good time for conference panels as everyone is tired from their various debaucheries of the previous evening. And the fact that it happened to be the very morning after pushing the clocks ahead didn't help either. Nevertheless, we had a decent crowd of about 10 people. That might not sound like much, but this conference is huge and there were 21 panels running concurrently during every single session of every day. That means the total crowd for the conference was split 21 ways. And that was the most common complaint I heard from people, since it means that there is almost no opportunity for people who know each other to be in the same place at the same time. You bump into friends and colleagues in the hallways, but everyone is always rushing off to the next panel which is inevitably different from the one that you're going to. So it's not a very social event in the end, and potentially alienating for people there by themselves.

Anyway, given our time-slot I think we did pretty well.

Here's our entry in the program:

My talk went very well. The purpose of my paper was basically as follows: To examine certain differences between the sound design across the two versions of Donnie Darko and suggest how these changes affect potential interpretation of the narrative. And then to use this examination of the two films as a basis for discussing the evolution of Michel Chion’s concept of the acousmêtre in the age of digital multi-channel sound, and in so doing to flesh out the substance behind Chion’s identification of this category of cinematic figure.

Here you can see me in action:

Notice that I brought my Frank the Rabbit action figure (standing in front of me) to complement my discussion of his presence in the film Donnie Darko (pictured on the screen behind me). And, as usual, my trusty laptop delivered my splendid Keynote presentation flawlessly. And once again I didn't see anyone else come close to the sophistication of my audiovisual aids, so I'm well ahead of the curve on that one. Luckily my actual paper wasn't bad either...

In the wider shot below you can see that I also made use of my portable Tivoli radio (placed on the chair in front of me). The provisions for sound were terrible at this conference, and since my paper depended upon illustrating my points with sound examples I really needed people to be able to hear my clips as well as see them. Luckily I brought the radio for use in my hotel room, and it came in handy here as speakers for my laptop. I lent it to my schoolmate Gerda for her presentation as well which also would have fallen very flat without decent sound. Yay Tivoli!

And here I am with two of my other three panelists, Mark Kerins and Benjamin Wright:

The fourth member, Bill Whittington (author of the newly published book Sound Design and Science Fiction) had to leave quickly to catch his plane. But all members of the panel were happy with the result, and Mark wants us to put another one together for next year's conference. It's also worth mentioning that the above picture was taken by Elizabeth Weis, editor of the very first anthology on Film Sound back in the mid-80s, a veteran of the field. She loved our panel and had very enthusiastic comments for us. That was just one of the nice little networking moments of the weekend. I also met the editor of a journal that I submitted a paper to last year, and was able to ask her why I hadn't heard anything back from them in all this time. She apologized and assured me that it was being read at this very moment and that I would have an answer soon.

So, with that work done, I had had enough of the conference and really wanted to see a bit more of the city before flying home a few hours later. So Gerda and I went down the street to the Art Institute of Chicago which houses one of the most impressive collections of paintings in the world.

Luckily Gerda was knowledgable about such things and could point out the gallery's magnificence to me as I wouldn't have known how good it was otherwise.

For example, they had a whole slew of Picassos, including this one which I find really amazing:

I also really like this one, Fisherman's Cottage by Harald Sohlberg:

I love how the cracks in the paint accentuate the branches of the trees, and how the house is glowing in the dark woods despite there being no plausible source for the light:

Now check this out: can you believe that the following two paintings are both by Piet Mondrian?

It seems that he woke up one morning and simply decided to change his mind about everything. It's heartening to know that this is always an option. I may have to do that one day myself.

And I learned a couple of interesting things about artistic influence as well. For instance, look carefully at Paul Gaugin's Old Women of Arles:

Who would've known that George Lucas would take this as the inspiration for Jabba the Hut in Return of the Jedi?

Of course some would suggest that there is little hope for the world when a doctoral candidate in the fine arts goes to a world-class museum, looks at what must be an incredibly famous painting, and the first thing that comes to his mind is a mutant muppet from the realm of low-brow popular culture. Oh well.

In a similar vein, have you ever wondered where the design for the Oscar statue came from? Seems to me that Emil Nolde's Figure with Flowers provided more than a little inspiration:

Of course it's a bit ironic that Oscar might originally have been a woman given the Academy's track record of honouring female filmmakers...

Amazing what you can learn at a museum.

But the very best part of all was in the basement. Take a look at this room:

Does anything seem strange to you?

It's a miniature! They have a whole wing of miniature rooms, no more than two or three feet square. You peer into them through glass, and they're all set up with cool light sources and windows out onto false exteriors. They are mind-bogglingly detailed. Here are a couple more:

And then my camera batteries died. In the gift shop I simply had to buy their book all about these miniatures. The book itself is quite big, and I was very worried about adding it to the stack of books I bought on sale at the conference book fair since I knew my bag was going to be very very heavy. When I came back from the UK this summer I had to pay about 15 pounds extra to check my bag with all the souvenier programs and things that I was hauling back with me. That's about $40, and my bag was equally heavy this time so I was fearing that much of my savings on the sale prices would be swallowed up by the transport cost. Luckily my ticket was in the "executive class" thanks to Mom's airmile points, so not only did I get to sit in a single seat - which was both aisle and window, with lots of legroom and fuitplates and snacks (while everyone else on the plane got nothing) - they didn't say anything about my overweight bag. So I got all the books home without extra charge. That was a very nice capper to the weekend.

So, that was my four days in Chicago. Next year's SCMS is in Philadelphia. I'll have to start saving for that one now...

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