weekly INCITE

Tokyo!

July 14th, 2007 kat

INCITE is currently in Tokyo at Ubiquitous Media, Asian Transformations conference being organized by Theory, Culture & Society journal and the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, at the University of Tokyo. On Monday Nina and Goetz are chairing the New Media Arts session and giving a paper entitled New media art and the dilemmas of technological progress. Maria Bezaitis of Intel is the respondent for the session. It should be great.

I have to admit that I’ve been to a number of conferences in Europe, Australia and the U.S that featured speakers from all over the world and yet this is the first time I have heard people talk in their native tongue (which doesn’t happen to be english). What an experience! I found it an incredibly humbling, challenging and revealing experience. Firstly it should have happened before this and it is telling that that many of us assumed that the earpieces were for non-english speakers. Nah ah. As soon as the introductions started we realised that unless we all discovered a spontaneous gift of multiple languages we would be needing some assistance. After racing off to get a translation set I realised how much harder you need to concentrate to follow an alternate voice to the speaker in visual sight. Despite the incredible skill of the translator there is a disconnect between voice and body. You tend to lose the intonation, the tone and in many instances the emphasis, gaps and deliberate pauses that speakers use to shape the topography of an argument. Like a dubbed movie it was like watching someone talk with a time delay whilst simultaneously throwing their voice. Except unlike a dubbed movie the translator was female and the french/ japanese speakers were male and the speed varied. Having difficulties following the complexities of the plenaries in my first language made me even more impressed by those around me who were listening to english translations of japanese and french speakers in their second or third. All I can say is wow.

Apparently you haven’t experienced Tokyo until you have been hopelessly lost, gone the wrong way on the train for at least six stops without noticing, pointed at something with what you hope is an endearing smile in absence of being able to say anything remotely understandable and eaten something you have no chance of identifying. If this is the case we can all say we are getting close. The latter in particular has been sheer entertainment and pleasure (in most cases except for my minor pork bun experience). As a vegetarian I knew it was going to be challenging but Goetz has also has found his meals somewhat curious. Whilst Nina and I take great delight in investigating the contents of our bento boxes for what things are not and experimenting with what things might taste like, Goetz ordered AND ate a meal last night that might have stopped a lesser (ger)man in japan. Somehow in a (mostly) vegetarian restaurant that Nina found, Goetz managed to order raw tuna on raw egg on what we think was a gloopy yam porridge. The thick syrupy and glutinous consistency of the combination of the meal was mind boggling and stomach bubbling. And the taste…. well, surprisingly no one else was keen to try it but we think that Goetz’s germanic stoicism was on full display. That, and the beer must have helped.

Entry Filed under: Conferences, travel