Atom Egoyan at the MAC Went to the opening of one of the new exhibits at the Musee d'art contemporain last night. Atom Egoyan, poster boy of Canadian cinema, presented "Out of Use", an installation consisting of borrowed reel-to-reel tape machines and recordings. Ostensibly to explore the relationship of technology and memory, I was more fascinated by the construction of the installation itself than the theme it explored. Amazingly, a single loop of tape was being played by the dozens of reel-to-reel tape decks. I tracked the movement of the tape from one machine to another, wondering how often a technician had to come in to fix the delicate loop as it travelled around the intricate pully system. Accompanying the installation were some videos of people (they could have been actors--I'm not sure), recalling the role that the their donated tape recorder and recordings had in their lives. Very filmic. Kinda touching. On the whole, I found the piece a technical marvel, but not very evocative of the theme it was attempting to explore. You can take the girl outta texas... Finally got some pictures from Siggraph. There are some particularly fun ones of me and my friends J and K on the beach at Corpus Christi, Texas. The colour of the ocean is exactly as you see it in the picture below--dark and not-at-all blue. The water was as warm as any bath I've taken, and while I did some swimming, I spent most of my time sitting in the surf and feeling like I was in the world's biggest hot tub.