Thursday, April 21, 2011

POST 33: S.N.A.F.U

    For those of you too young or unfamiliar with military jargon, S.N.A.F.U. stands for: Situation Normal All Fucked Up. Which is a frequent occurrence in military operations.
  The last few days getting ready for the show were harrowing because I got major computer failure, but I did somehow manage to deliver twice what I had committed to: a 30 minutes Architectural Projection show mapped to the façade of the building. I trusted blindly I would be supplied with the proper equipment for projection and audio, which I had clearly specified to the tech people in charge of procurement.I will never do that again. I do not have a completely clear explanation of what happened, and probably never will, but the fact of the matter is that instead of the single 20000 lumens High Definition 1920 X 1080 Digital DLP Projector with a Zoom lens that was necessary to play the material, I got 2 x 10000 lumens analog low definition projectors with mismatched lenses and no signal splitter, that could not fit the image onto the building, much less align the image with the architectural features. I was livid, and almost pulled the plug and went to bed. My friends, who had showed up early and paid their 15 bucks for the event, and  been waiting for hours while the technician was desperately trying to make it work (I knew all along he couldn't) insisted that I play the show anyway, and give something to the sparse public anyhow, so I did play the show in the worst possible conditions: the image was dark(only one 10000 lumens projector), low resolution, analog quality, smaller than the facade, and of course, the most crucial thing and what I had put so much effort and time into achieving, the images were not lined up with the architecture of the building. The columns of the cabinet, clock organ, the rebuilding, everything was way off. It was awful, but somehow was enough to impress the dwindling public and give them a very poor illusion of what the show should have been. 
  I have been in recovery mode since, and just today came out of a quasi catatonic state induced by overwork, exhaustion, and a huge let down. I have been sleeping and napping a lot.
   My computer is in the shop for a week and they are supposed to pretty much replace everything in it... They ordered over $3000 worth of parts for it! No wonder I had problems...
   I will be posting a movie of the show as soon as I get my machine back. Check back next week.

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