geek week 1

well, it's friday and i promised myself that every friday i would update the world with my week as a geek with west space.

for any of you that have been following my twitter feed, you will know that it's been a pretty exciting and full week. i've spent a bit of time orienting myself within the space, getting to know the peeps and helping with a pretty AV-heavy install (which opens tonight - view from here, west space, 6pm, come along).



in the last couple of days, as well as doing tech support, i've been doing a tech inventory of the gallery's store room. for an artist-run-space, west space are reasonably well-stocked for artists who work in AV. my job over the last couple of days has been to start making that store-room super organised so that the gallery knows what's available and what they need. and artists will be afforded the same pleasure. it's so much easier to make work when you understand the edges of your limitations.




they already have separated boxes of cables: short and long RCA, power cables and speaker cables. they also now have one for extension leads (which is empty already). i haven't had to do too much cable untangling (despite my recent video about that same process). they have great stack of lights and their shelving is already well-labelled too, so i feel like it's a great place to continue the process. we've managed to make tech upgrades a bit sexy - lots of 'hot' adjectives added to things like lamps, globes, power, etc.


i've always thought that good tech interaction is all about labelling and so on wednesday afternoon i invested in a new label maker and have been labelling all the cables while i'm measuring and counting them. that same label maker has been labelling remotes (so that people invigilating the space know which goes with what) and the occasional funtimes.


we labelled victoria (the co-curator of the show) as a feminist. shock.



yesterday i finally started the office tech inventory, 'cos we're going to try and do some fundraising to improve their rickety equipment. i know that i'm in the right space, 'cos everything is on the Mac platform (i think i would have cried if i had to upgrade a PC environment. sorry, heart on sleeve). they're on the highest level of OSX that their towers allow, but the printers are wirelessly networked (which is brilliant when working out in the back room) and all our laptops can slot into the system pretty easily.

i've also learned a stack-load of new stuff and met some super-ace artists. i've discovered the joys of HDMI and media players, been able to chat with some great female video/performance artists like Hayley Forward and Jess Olivieri from Parachutes for Ladies, Brown Council, Hannah Raisin and Keira Brew Kurec.





last night at the next wave/structural integrity/west space opening i had the chance to chat with some of the board members and everyone is pretty happy to have me on board. they can't quite believe that i like being called a geek. little do they know...


anyway my task by the end of this week is to have finished the labelling, inventory and to sort out a weird glitch of the printer using up colour toner even when printing black only. that's gonna be fun. i'm also crafting an idea for an artwork that will capture the residency on a daily basis. stay tuned for more info on that.