Saturday 19 October 2013

Alright On The Night

This week I gave my outreach lecture 'On The Edge', a slide/sound show about my work, to a group of women in Abington. It all went smoothly and from the comments I got at the end, I think most of them really enjoyed it.
 I am always very nervous when dealing with technology, so I decided to have a practise the weekend before, to make sure everything was working. The sound is very important to the talk as I intersperse live commentary with a 50 year old Ted, talking  on film. This gives me a chance to check my notes to see where I am up to, but also enables me to demonstrate props which I wouldn't be able to lug around when speaking away from home. For instance, at one point when talking about the painting 'David's Journey', I am filmed assembling the labyrinth of mirrors which I used to work from, when developing this project.
Anyway, to my horror, the sound refused to come out of the laptop and I could feel panic rising inside me. I tried to keep calm and look to see if the sound had been inadvertently switched off somehow.
In the end I ran Daniel, the chap who looks after my website, and he very kindly popped round on his way to the shops.
It seems, that by plugging the lead into the laptop and not connecting it to the sound system, I had  inadvertently stopped the sound from working in either bits of equipment.
 . Daniel saw this immediately and soon got me organised. I was just glad I wasn't giving the talk on that day. 

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