First Piano Recital

The Grand Piano at Lloyd Ultan Recital Hall

On Wednesday, April 27, 2011, I went to the Lloyd Ultan Recital Hall at the University of Minnesota’s School of Music to watch a piano recital. It was a doctoral recital by Eun kyung Ahn, a Ph.D. student of Alexander Braginsky at the School of Music. According to the leaflet I picked up at the recital, a doctoral recital is “presented in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Music in piano.” Being a Ph.D. student myself (in Computer Science), I thought of the dissertation defence which is also done towards partial fulfilment. Some 10 to 15 people had come to watch the recital, most of who seemed to be friends of Eun kyung – again, not surprising, as a defence in my case also draws friends and colleagues.

Eun kyung played pieces by Bach, Choplin, Liszt, Debussy and Prokofiev. This account is a description of my experience as a beginner in piano, and not a hard-core music patron. The most surprising observation I made was that the performer spoke nothing – absolutely nothing, zero words – during the entire length of the recital. I’m not used to such formal recitals, so I expected the performer to tell us about what she’s playing at the very least. When she first walked in, there was applause, she bowed, sat down at the piano, muttered a small prayer silently and began playing right away. Her performance had five parts – one for each composer. For some composers, she played multiple small pieces, whereas for others, she played just one piece. She paused for just a few seconds between these smaller pieces (by the same composer), and drew no applause whatsoever. At times, I almost brought my hands together in a clap, but stopped at the last moment. However, after every part (composer), she stopped, rose, bowed (and then there was applause), and left the stage.

As though this experience wasn’t funny and new in itself (no speaking, no applause at intermediate stages), the following was funnier. As I mentioned, after every part, she left the room to applause. However, she returned within half a minute, bowed (there was applause, again), prayed silently, and started the next piece right away! This was a repetition of the modus operandi of the previous part! Again, no speaking! After the last part, she left (as usual), but returned briefly (for one final applause) and then left for good.

However, the pieces she played were awesome. While most of the songs she played sounded good, not all were melodious – some were very intense. I think some of them were designed particularly to test the player. They had eighth notes, or even sixteenth notes (if they exist) and a very high tempo! At times, they required the hands to cross over, and occasionally, her hands were one above the other! Eun kyung did not use a music sheet, even as a reference. May be, they aren’t allowed. May be, she doesn’t need them after having practiced a million times! I enjoyed watching the agility of her fingers – she had shorter fingers (than mine) or that’s what it seemed. Yet, all her fingers always reached the keys she was trying to hit, and with the correct force (to maintain the dynamics of the song)! How strong must the little and ring fingers be? Mine are very stiff, very stiff!  Eun kyung played very gracefully, with her hands moving in a very fluid continuous motion, without any abrupt movements. It seemed as though she was trying to keep her hands as away from the keys as possible, while still playing – as though there were springs connected to the back of her elbows. I think I will try playing like that (and mess up, for sure)!

Although her performance seemed very flawless, I think I noticed some places where it seemed to me that there were some shortcomings. May be I’m wrong, but at times I felt that some notes were played very abruptly – they ended in a kind of weird way. May be, that was right, and the song was such. When she began playing, her fingers even seemed to shiver a little. This didn’t affect the song in any way, but it made me think of my own experiences playing for somebody else. My fingers shiver, even when I’m playing a piece with eight measures or less in our class to our instructor! Here she was, playing some ridiculously difficult pieces to a large audience, many of who understood a lot about what she was playing! She should get some concession, I think.

Finally, I’m trying to understand what a doctoral programme in piano means. Eun kyung played pieces composed by famous composers like Bach and Choplin. But why didn’t she compose one of her own? Surely, in a five-year doctoral programme, a student could be expected to compose a piece of his/her own?

Filled with Tiger’s Blood

After much trying and revising, my research paper on Cyclopath was accepted into the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) 2011 at Barcelona, Spain in mid-July. I was so happy just reading the first few words of the acceptance email I received, that I completely ignored the reviews that were included in that email. Now, reviews are very important because authors are expected to incorporate some of the suggestions given by reviewers for the final camera-ready version. I thought I would read them later. Until, my colleague Katie Panciera to whom I had immediately forwarded the e-mail started laughing hysterically. She pointed me to the last of the reviews I had received. It said that the paper was “filled with Tiger’s blood.” In Charlie Sheen’s terms, this is supposed to mean that it is pure awesomeness, apparently. That’s when I went back and read all the reviews. Turns out that most reviewers absolutely loved the paper. They said wonderful things like “the data was precisely analyzed”, and that the “topic is great and incredibly relevant”. It made me feel very happy because the earlier conferences that had rejected this work seemed to not see any of this awesomeness. May be, it was all the statistics I shoved into almost every statement I made, after the last rejection, in an attempt to improve the paper. Or may be, it was because I completely excluded the sections that were the source of most criticism (now, I had to cut something as the ICWSM page limit was 2 pages shorter than typical).

It doesn’t matter. The paper is in now. Phew! And yay!

Once a Nehra, always a Nehra!

So, my Facebook wall is always full of reactions after a closely fought cricket match. It is remarkable how a single person who bowled one bad over, that too at the end where it mattered the most is singled out for some harsh criticism. I’m not saying I love Ashish Nehra, but I’m not against him. I maintain that he is a good bowler (relatively speaking, in the Indian team) and he will have (and has had) his days. But listen to these comments:

Pranav Barve: “Once a Nehra, always a Nehra!”

Tanmay Kumar: “One of my most experienced bowlers has one over to go and whom do I pick to bowl the last over… the chap who is second choice after piyush chawla in the playing 11 !!! “

Sidharth Nabar: “Ashish Nehra.. you’re a DISGRACE to death overs bowling. Please come to the next BkB practice. we can coach you.” (BkB is a local cricket team in Seattle/Redmond)

Saurabh Singhal: “we have 6 asses and 1 horse, horse is done.. poor Dhoni had to pick one of the asses anyway”

And, generally, about the match:

Vijay Chaudhari (via Sharad): “India beat Bangladesh, Bangladesh beat Ireland, Ireland beat England, England beat South Africa and South Africa beat India! … Golmal hain bhai sab golmal hain”

Narayan Srinivasan: “March the 13th seems to be lucky for SA….5 years ago on this day they chased down a mammoth total against Australia to create history( that record still stands)…and then this match today…”

India, and her passion for cricket ..

Blizzard

Here are some pictures of Minneapolis blizzards!

View from my apartment in the afternoon

View from my apartment in the evening

The U of M during a 17-inch snowstorm

 

Acting Log: Projection, More Plays

We did various exercises for our facial muscles and voice. I found those very useful for a couple of reasons: First, actors often have to project themselves louder so that the audience understands what they are trying to convey, and for effective projection, they have to perform their facial expressions and their speaking very clearly and distinguishably. When we talk normally, we are talking just to communicate to the one person in front of us. In acting, this is different. Not only are we talking to the person in front of us, but we are also communicating this phenomenon to the audience.

We also did a play with 4 people teams. The interesting part here was the level of understanding between the actors, when in the directorial roles. We were given about 10 min to come up with a script. That is a very little amount of time for a group of 4 people. However, our group (Luke, Julio, Natalie, and I) showed great understanding for each other by arriving at consensus very quickly, and not having any idea conflicts.

Acting Log: First Play!

Yay, I’m taking an acting class at the U. I’ll post my experiences here, hopefully, on a weekly basis.

Today was the first time we did a play in class. We were put in teams of 2 for this purpose. I thoroughly enjoyed this process. I realised that coming up with a script for a play hinges a lot on personal experiences. I heard all this from T Mychael many times, but for the first time, felt it myself. As AJ and I were working for a script, both of us naturally inclined towards comedy, and tried to base the play on our respective Minnesotan and Indian cultures. That was fun.

Talk Report: The Rise of the Networked Individual

Firstly, my apologies for not blogging for quite some time now. This semester has been heavy at times, and very heavy at other times. However, this talk was so interesting that it deserves to go up here right away. Also, I’m required to do it as a part of a course, so might as well…

The Social Network Research collaborative (www.socialnetresearch.org) and the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota organised, as a part of its “Thursdays at Four” talk series, a talk by Lee Rainie, the Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nation-wide initiative that does a lot of survey-based research regarding Internet and other technology use among American people. Does anybody remember Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”? It is a famous book, that studied American social life over a long period of time and concluded that people are becoming increasingly alone or lonely, or the social capital is taking a good hit. The latest issue of the “Interactions” magazine carried an article called “From Bowling Alone to Tweeting Together” by Ben Schniederman and someone else, I don’t recollect, that talked about how today’s social networking tools have resulted in a somewhat reversal of the trend noted by Putnam. However, a note by Moira Burke at CHI 2010 reported that people who stare longer at Facebook are lonelier! So, you see, the social networking world is trying various tricks to up the social capital, but side-effects seem to hamper that.

Well, anyway, Lee Rainie, a former journalist, called his research project a “fact tank”, which meant that they conduct a lot (really, a lot) of surveys at the national level and collect all sorts of data that indicates interesting patterns and understanding about how people use technology and how that affects their social connections. The sorts of data they collect include facts like in 2000, 45% of American adults (and 50% of American teens) used the Internet, 50% owned cellphones, 5% had access to broadband, nobody used wireless, and under 10% used the cloud. The picture in 2010 is very different: over 75% of American adults (and 95% of teens) used the Internet, over 80% had cellphones, around 62% had access to broadband, 53% used wireless devices, and over 67% people stored their data in the cloud! The very experience of using the Internet has changed because of these! Of the people who do not use the Internet, are people who are more than 72 years of age (yes, the boundary is that high), people with disabilities (those that hamper Internet use), those with poor economic state, and those who did not use English a lot.

Of the many things the Internet has done, it has brought a slew of changes in the social worlds of people. Today’s social networks are bigger, looser (people aren’t as close to their connections), segmented, and layered. In other words, they are more liberated. However, people need to work more these days to keep up with the larger networks. Some work me any some of my colleagues are doing is looking at how much stuff can one keep up on Twitter and how much value can be possibly extracted from it.  Then, there is also the extra amount of freelancing. Blogs have enabled citizen journalism, where anyone can write as good as professional sources, and that people’s favourite journalists are often those who make good use of the blogosphere. In today’s UI design class for the MS in Software Engineering program (which I TA, so I was there), Prof Joe Konstan made an interesting point: the most known celebrities are those that use YouTube well, and not those who are popularised by TV!

Rainie spoke about how the Internet ecosystem has changed. He highlighted eight different areas where significant changes have occurred. In politics, the Internet has made the number of independents seriously contesting elections rise up. 44% American adults have changed religious beliefs from what they had been taught as kids from their parents. The amount of vigilance from the part of people has increased. A new class of people called the “amateur experts” is steadily increasing its membership. The classic example of this, as Rainie mentioned, is the change in the situations in doctor’s clinics. Earlier, patients used to assume that doctors were Gods, knew the solution to all their problems, and listened to whatever they said. Today, patients visit their doctors with huge stacks of printouts from the extensive research they have already done on the Internet and demand certain services! Another change is that the amount of information in the world has increased dramatically. This has resulted in increased redundancy (a lot of this information is replicated) and a high velocity of information update (look at a Twitter stream to see for yourself). The last change that Rainie pointed out was that of the emergence of augmented reality. He mentioned the Metaverse Roadmap Project which basically provided people a Terminator 2 like view of the world through their cellphone cameras where every objects they saw was appropriately annotated with relevant information from the Internet. One could imagine combing this with the extremum of life-logging systems and creating what I call “magic X-rays” which will allow you to look through the walls of buildings and literally “see” who is inside and doing what. This poses a severe threat to privacy.

Rainie said he is waiting for the outburst to happen. There are small protests here and there about privacy, intrusiveness and the like; but no major revolution. Rainie thinks this is due. The Internet has not just done good things. There are several things that lie in the dark side of this extensive networking. A good example that Rainie gave was that while the Internet allows people to find other like-minded people and organise good activities, it does the same for terrorists and other anti-social elements. The Internet is advancing upon the society in such an alarming rate, that the society isn’t getting the time to adjust its social norms to suit the situation. I agree with him. A lot of research in social computing is aimed at controlling the Internet. After the talk was over, I got an opportunity to walk with Rainie to the reception where I voiced my concerns about how children growing up in today’s age have no set cultural guidelines to mature. The ordinary “don’t talk to strangers and don’t take anything from them” doesn’t quite apply! The MySpace suicide case, and cases where children do wrong things over the Internet, not knowing and understanding fully, the consequences of their actions are just a few examples. Rainie agreed that media literacy was a problem and that several people (he mentioned a certain Henry Jenkins) are dedicating their lives to solving it. Rainie, himself, is writing a book called “Networked – the new network operating system” with someone else; and I’m not sure whether he dwells more on the bright side or the dark side of the Internet age.

This talk was very good. Rainie spoke very fast (he warned us about it upfront), and very intensely. Since this talk was also video-telecasted, there were questions from remote sites along with those present locally at the end of his talk. One of the questions was whether people’s brains develop in a significantly different way in today’s information age. Rainie pointed us to an article called “Does Google make you stupid?” which looked at whether too much spoon-feeding of information is making today’s humans incapable of thinking. Well, it is, isn’t it? How many people can write well, considering you can type everything out? What about the calculation skills in the world of calculators and computers? The closing keynote at CHI 2010 had Noel Sharky talking about robots and how they are being used to keep children occupied, and to take care of old people. What happens to a child that grows up with robots? How are its social skills developed? All unnerving questions!

Well, I think, I have ranted on for long enough.