Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Rebecca was really happy to have me home.

After a week of conferences in Dallas, I'm very tired and was glad to be home. I'll write about the conference in a different entry, as to cover the important topics for me to remember next year and so as not to bore people with details. I need to make a list -- or rahter transpose my list from my sketch book -- of important notes to remember for next year.

CAA functions as two conferences in one: a job fair and an art theory conference. Sadly there is a strong disjunct between the new media theory I'm used to and the traditionalist ethic prevalent at CAA, however we are trying to strum up allies wherever we can for our work. One of the alumni from CADRE was chair of a post-net.art session that went well, albeit decimated by bad weather and sickness. But hopefully more sessions like this will inform the public beyond our sphere.

Monday was our last day before the conference which we had together for the week. Rebecca had the day off for Presidents' Day, and I spent the evening at Montalvo talking with representatives from the artist collaborative Mongrel until late at night about the strowger project for ZeroOne.

Paela had her four-month checkup and is still doing fine. She's sitting up longer on her own, but still buckles backwards. After a brief visit to school, I was at the airport headed for Dallas. Rebecca tried to visit enrichment in the evening, but didn't manage to stay long.

A couple of thoughts about conference hotels. First of all, they don't offer free wireless internet -- or even wireless internet at all in most places. This is totally contrary to my work ethic so I'm not sure how they can get businesses to cough up money for a lack of infrastructure. Ultimately, conference hotels are built on the premise that "business can pay out the nose for anything because they will write it off as tax deductable anyway." What a waste.

Paela got a cold early in the week, Rebecca picked it up later. I got a scratchy throat by the end of the week from inhaling recycled hotel air and stuffy airport/plane air.

The conference went really well. I'm not the best at meeting new people and talking to them in lines, but I did make a few good solid contacts of people interested in doing things similar to myself. I wasn't able to corner Paul Slocum, either at the conference or at his gallery downtown, but hopefully we can convince him to come out to CADRE soon. I picked up as many hints as I could for the job fair half of the conference and made it to several interesting sessions. Top on my list: Neuroaesthetics from Cornell and Columbia as well as the session on emergent media with Paul. I think that James Morgan's session on net.art/newer media went well and hopefully some people went away seriously considering the things my colleagues presented.

Anyways, back at home, Rebecca tried to get by working through some conference calls while Paela talked in the background. She ate meals at her brother's house and helped Paela with her cold. By Saturday night, Rebecca had the same cold. Saturday I ran into a small group of old BYU art professors and chatted with them about what I've been up to at CADRE. I didn't get to talk with Cory Archangel again, he was stuck in NYC because of mass snow cancellations, but Mel Chin was worth listening to, I suppose.

I'm just not enough of a Yoko Ono fan to appreciate her ramblings and nonsensical name droppings.

But Sunday Rebecca picked me up from the airport and she and Paela sang me a song. And then, at home, we collapsed. A good trip, but a draining one. However, it will become one of the standard conferences I need to attend if I plan on spending more time in academia. I learned, also, that the South by Southwest festival in Austin is the REALLY important festival for me to go to. If we didn't already have a Germany trip planned and Red76 coming out that week, I'd swing by Austin. Next year, we go. [maybe even all three of us...]