We now return you to your regularly scheduled life...

I have survived the opera rehearsal period! And all of the technical elements I'm responsible for worked well enough. So that's a good thing. After a couple of weeks of daily 15-16-hour days in the theater (they let us in at 8AM and kicked us out by 11, or midnight if we'd arranged that beforehand...weekdays, weekends), we had an open dress rehearsal for an invited audience, packed up everything, and just put it on a boat for Europe, where the show will open in September. It's an amazing, crazy process. And now I am incredibly drained, physically and mentally. And have a fair amount to do before we go meet the show in mid-September. I took last weekend completely off, which helped a bit...

In the hot days of July, I really wanted to spend a lot of days looking like this (taken a couple of weeks ago before rehearsals picked up):


Shirt: Ann Taylor, thrifted. Skirt: Forever 21. Sandals: Wet Seal. Bag: thrifted.

But most of the time, I looked something more like this:


Top: BCBG, thrifted. Capris: Forever 21. Shoes: thrifted. Giant bag that could hold all my stuff going back and forth each day: thrifted.

Only imagine versions of this with a long sweater, because it was COLD in the theater! And with long jeans or black pants, because it was...cold in the theater. Still with the sneakers and flat shoes, though, because I had to be ready at any time to climb to the catwalks and do whatever was needed technically.

But it was all good. And we made things happen (though I can't take credit for the robots, I did make the set piece hanging in the second photo into a musical instrument, and have been helping the interactive visual elements):




Absolutely a traditional piece of theater, right?

Random outfits!

We are full swing into tech on this show! We finally moved everything into the theater on Thursday; it's amazing seeing the set that we've seen drawings/renderings/models of for years be put up in real physical space, in an actual theater! And I absolutely love being in theaters. I feel that theaters are places that are designed and made for storytelling, for the construction of other worlds, other universes. For intimacy and for entertainment and for virtuosity and for emotions. There's not just the actual physical space (which is generally really interesting), there's also the traces of the spaces that have been created inside that space, and the anticipation of those that are yet to be created. (Every time I end up in a theater, I know I'm doing the work I should be doing...)


Oh, right. I wear things, too.


I wore this outfit sometime last week. These pictures were taken in the warehouse space we've been renting for all the exciting robot-building and such. The top is Ann Taylor (thrifted), the skirt is INC (also thrifted), and I'm not sure what the shoes are (thrifted, again). I'm really interested by how I've begun to wear a majority of outfits that are mostly/entirely thrifted. I think this is because my shifting style has been helped along by thrifted clothing, especially the dollar-a-pound...

Also interesting: since I've been reading style blogs/paying more attention to my daily style/blogging myself, I've been much more aware of what I see people around me wearing. I ride the T or walk down the street and am just amazed at all of the beautiful, stylish, creative people I see expressing themselves through their clothing. I love seeing how the details of their outfits show me who they are, or who they're trying to be, or who they want to be, or who they accidentally/purposefully are portraying.


And this outfit was yesterday, actually. I keep trying to find things to handle the heat waves we've been having. The shirt is thrifted BCBG, the skirt is thrifted, and the shoes are thrifted Chinese Laundry. The earrings were a gift from my college roommate a few years ago.

Hope everyone has had a nice weekend, without too much work to do! (did I mention I was at the lab/theater most of the day?)

Updates

Has this summer been FLYING by for anyone else? With rehearsals and working on things for the show and our impending next rehearsal period where all the technology has to be finished and working and good, it seems like time has been progressing much too rapidly for my taste. We finished the first rehearsal period a week ago, with basic blocking completed, but still to fully integrate the performance sensing systems I'm working on, the interactive visuals, or the robots (lots of rehearsals with people carrying around music stands and pretending to be robots, though...) The technical elements had just started being worked in. So...in a week and a half we load into the theater where we're rehearsing in Boston, we have a week+ there for tech before the performers come back, and then we have a week more of rehearsals and an open dress rehearsal. Then we pack up everything up and ship it to Monaco, where the opera will have its premiere, and meet it in September for setup and the show. It's going to be exciting/terrifying.

Just for fun, a blurry picture of me with some of our robots (taken by a coworker with my camera):


The big bad news from last week: I'd left my work laptop in our rehearsal space at the lab over the weekend, and when I got back it was no longer there, nor was the not-recently-backed-up opera code that I had been writing. Fortunately none of the other gear in the space had been touched, but unfortunately I then had to spend most of last week recreating my code. But now I seem to have everything back up to speed, I think...but wow. Back up your code, everyone. Or, you know, whatever else it is you work on.

Some good news: the lovely Tieka of Selective Potential re centlyhosted a giveaway by Annie of Time Enough for Drums, who has a great Etsy shop, Timely Vintage. I was the lucky winner of a Timely Vintage gift certificate! I picked out a couple of items from Annie's shop, and she sent them immediately. Everything was carefully wrapped and beautifully packaged!


I got a beautiful pink vintage eelskin purse...the texture is amazing! (I wasn't sure I liked the idea of eelskin, but this is such a great piece...)


And this vintage owl brooch, which I had my eye on since I saw it in the shop. He's got so much character! So, thank you, Annie and Tieka!


And why not an outfit from last weekend. I wore this for running by a couple of garage sales and a brunch production meeting (though I'm not sure that "brunch" is the appropriate title for a meeting that runs till 4PM...).


Details:
Skirt: INC, thrifted.
Sandals: Naturalizers, thrifted.
Shirt: thrifted.
Bag: thrifted.

Hope everyone had a nice Independence Day weekend! I'll post some pictures of the Boston fireworks later...

All Opera, All the Time

We've finally started rehearsals for this opera my group is doing. Thus, for the last two weeks, I've been going back and forth between watching rehearsals, working on my part of the technology (coding, soldering, brainstorming interaction design), production meetings, etc. Lots of fun, but also means my time to do non-work things has been significantly limited (particularly with rehearsals/work 7 days a week). It's amazing to see the performers in our rehearsal space, to see the scenes coming together at last for this show that has been in the working for years (a number of years even before I joined the lab two years ago). Everything is finally happening! Though we do have a lot of the tech to still integrate (and by "integrate" I mean "get working") And it looks good... And it reminds me how much I love being part of the theater, how I'm doing exactly what I should be doing right now.

As a tiny bit of background about the part I'm working on...in the story of this opera, the main character attempts to avoid dying by uploading his mind into a computer system built throughout his house. This happens in the end of the first scene...which means the performer goes offstage and the theatrical set has to embody that character through visuals on the walls, movement, lighting, sound. You could have all of that just be pre-programmed (a challenging enough task). However, we want the performer to be giving a live performance, to measure aspects of that expressive performance, and have that expression shape the visualizations in significant ways. My research includes measuring the live performance and working with a coworker on the interaction between the performance and the visual system. Interesting as both a technical problem and an artistic problem, I think.

So. In the rehearsal-every-day thing, it's been harder for me to take the time to a) come up with outfits I really like, b) document what I wear at all. On the plus side, I feel like the act of having taken much more care about what I wear means my outfits when I just grab something are much more dressy than my old default of jeans and a fitted t-shirt. On the other hand, I'm now aware of what I feel like when I really like what I'm wearing, and thus am aware when I'm not getting to that point. I have a couple of outfits I got pictures of, though!


This was last Friday's outfit, for rehearsals and an opera-people BBQ. It's also interesting to try to dress for weather where it's been 85-90+ degrees outside and freezing cold in the lab...layering time!

Details:
Dress: Ann Taylor, thrifted.
Belt: thrifted.
Sandals: Chinese Laundry, thrifted.


I wore this dress yesterday, inspired by a handful of bloggers whom I've seen with similar beautiful embroidered pieces (which I believe are Mexican/Mexican-inspired). My dress appears to have been handmade and hand-embroidered (you can still see some placement marks under the embroidery). I wanted to play against the style and color of the dress with some more dressy black accessories, so I wore my recently thrifted wedge sandals. I think I got them last week (after I'd made a bad shoe choice and had to run into the local Goodwill and try to find something to replace the sandals that were already giving me blisters) and have already worn them three times since. I really felt good in this outfit...summery, comfortable, fun.


Details:
Dress: thrifted
Belt: Forever21
Shoes: Nordstrom, thrifted.

Hope everyone's having a good week! Getting close to the weekend...though I spend that in more rehearsals...