I’m sitting on the 2nd floor of the Beethoven Haus Museum, which is situated in the historic house Beethoven grew up in (although, renovations have changed it significantly from Beethoven’s time). It’s a little room, with a set of couches arranged in a cross in the middle of it, a few windows, and a sign […]
Last week, I was listening to some Indonesian news through SBS, one of Australia’s publicly-funded broadcasters. They do a range of news programs in many languages, and it’s a great learning resources. Now, normally, when listening to Indonesian I can make out the general gist of a story even if I don’t know the meaning […]
Something I’ve been developing in Indonesia is a concept of how music evolves. We’re all familiar with the biological concept of evolution: organisms have random traits introduced into generations, and the traits which stick end up becoming more and more common, resulting in a species that is more successful in its environment. The story I […]
It surprises a lot of people to think about research as having a particular type of lens, particularly in the arts. It shouldn’t, but it does. I think part of this is that science conditioned people to believe that science is objective. The scientific process is great, and the process helps a lot, but we […]
Last Sunday — so that awkward in-between where it happened almost right after my last blog post — I had the pleasure of performing in an open mic in Ubud, Bali. It was a fortuitous event — I was asked by the organiser who was trying to drum up some more support, it had been […]
This week, I’ve been continuing to practice kendang, which is the drum that leads a gamelan ensemble. It’s quite difficult to get the right procession of sounds on it, so my teacher encourages me to just practice getting the sounds out first: like the Karate Kid, I need to have those basics down pat, and […]
This week, I’ve been playing around with ideas of modernity. This is partly inspired by Arjun Appadurai, who’s seminal text Modernity at Large I’ve been studying for my PhD. In it, Appadurai argues that modernity is not a simple transition but an in-flux set of scapes that influence modernity. For example, rather than a country […]
You’ve probably heard of a composer called Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach is widely considered one of the greatest composers in western music, if not one of the greatest creatives ever. He was the only musician to be represented three times on the Voyager golden record surmising all of humankind’s music. In music class, we were […]
Since I moved to Canberra for university, I’ve been working at the Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF). I started as an intern and moved my way up to now, this year, becoming production manager. It’s a job I really enjoy, and I find it so fulfilling to help make this music happen. It’s a festival […]
In Amsterdam, I went to the van Gogh museum. It’s pretty impressive and well worth the price of admission to go there and just see the entire history of van Gogh’s works, from his earliest studies to his later, more abstract works. But I couldn’t help but wonder, towards the end of the museum: was […]