Prague Quadrennial Blogs

I woke up nice and early to get breakfast in our hotel… which like most hotel breakfast’s was a range of very good healthy food and very bad unhealthy things that i should avoid… so of course i went for the latter.

I then went straight back to bed because the effects of the traveling were still playing on my health.

At about 13:00 I went into the city to pick up some transit tickets, phonecards, phone and some software for my powermac (i forgot that my powermac didn’t have the version of garageband with the dedicated podcast editor… idiot)

I arrived at the Industrial Palace at around 6pm where i registered and met up with some of the scenofest team. I have to say the guys have been working really hard and i felt a bit guilty swaggering in after a fairly easy day of essential shopping. The first face i recognised on site was Peter Farley who was contagiously enthusiastic about his Reaching for the Heavens workshops and performance, if you are participating in this you really are in for a treat. Peter took me over to the Scenofest Teams office behind the Scenofest stage where i finally met scenofest web master and technical manager Chris Van Goethem and Head of Sound Steve Brown Chris was jumping from pc to scenofest stage throughout the day and i can’t say i envy him his job! Steve pointed out some of the key areas of scenofest and we had a short discussion about our coverage of the audio events, sound is very well represented with the Laptop Connections Performance, the Sound Effects Garden, the Babel Bell and numerous sound workshops to name but a few.

Anyhow i’ve had a few emails and requests from people about the price of things in Prague and transit tickets, so I’ll tell you what i can.

Transport first:

Trams and Metro are the best way to get around the city and are very frequent, tickets can be bought for the following price and time limits:

24 hours 80,- Kč

3 Days 220,- Kč

1 Week 280,- Kč

15 Days 320,- Kč

Just pop into any metro station or news kiosk, alternatively if you are in a hotel ask the receptionist.

more details at the pq website

Weather :

Hot Warm 24 is the highest so far, dropping to 17 at night. Today was mostly cloudly. Definately bring summer clothing and deoderant. The Palace can be very warm.

Phones :

most of the scenofest publishing team seem to be opting for vodaphone, as suggested by nikos and michelle (thanks guys)

you can get a sim card for 200 Kč, which come with 200 Kč credit, if like me you are from the UK and have an Orange phone there is a good chance you won’t be able to switch to CZ Vodaphone, the cheapest phone I’ve seen was 1,129 (but don’t forget to buy a sim card too)

Shopping :

Stuff in Prague can be either very cheap or very expensive… as a rule of thumb it seems that the expensive stuff is imported. So for example the software i mentioned earlier costs me about £59… in the UK it would have cost £55, similarly bottled water from France is the same as it might be in the UK, but water produced in the Czech Republic is much cheaper. In one supermarket a 500ml of Vittel water was 25Kč wheras the 500ml of CZ water was only 7,5Kč

Prices are also high in the tourist areas… so buy water and stuff before you get there, i saw a 33cl bottle of evian for 120Kč at an ice cream stall at the old town square.

So basically avoid buying stuff in prime tourist areas and look for local produce/goods if you want the bargains

Currency Exchange :

The rates are quite good over here for pounds and euros… however most places will charge commision, so its probably better better to exchange at home

Food :

I’ve only eaten in our hotel… and it’s not cheap… a meal for two cost us 820Kč (£21/€31) however it was very nice. The same meal in the UK would be far too expensive for me to even consider!

Generally speaking if you are eating out whether it (cafes or restraunts) i’m told £15/€22 per person a day is average.

Alchohol/Tobacco

Sorry Nikos i don’t smoke so i can’t say!

Drink… sadly i’m unable to drink for health reasons… curse this evil world! but generally beer/lager is very cheap, again the local stuff is cheaper, bottled is more expensive

if your not working in Pounds or Euros try this online currency calculator

Photo = Sound Effects Garden machine read for installation outside the Palace

I visited the Laptop Connections blog recently and read this post charting the history of the project. Well worth a read.

140Following on from Nikos’s post about Michelle, i thought i’d post my first photo of the PQ2007 taken on my camera phone. I’d popped over the the palace after checking into my hotel but as my flight was delayed there was no-one around at 23:15!

So Prague Quadrennial 2007 is almost upon us, and now we are all organized and ready to go. Like hell we are! I don’t even have a place to stay yet, or packed my bags (I leave day after tomorrow), or bought all the things I need to buy for it. So I thought I’d take this opportunity, not to do something productive like book accomodation, but to do something innocuous like make a list of things we all could bring:

1. Food and/or alcohol from your home country, so that everyone else may have a taste.
2. Deodorant. Apparently the Industrial Palace is an incredibly hot venue with no air conditioning. You will sweat, and you will smell.
3. Spare clothes (see point 2).
4. Extra money. If you are an un-seasoned traveller you will look like a tourist, no matter how hard you try, and you will be ripped off. If you are a seasoned traveller you already know that you cannot avoid looking like a tourist, so at least you won’t mind when you are ripped off.
5. Finally, don’t forget your passport, dumbass!

As soon as I wrote number 5 I realized that I haven’t seen my passport since February. I’m going to look for it now. Bear with me…

It’s okay, I found it, and it’s mine. I have to check these days, since I accidentally took my sister’s passport to Cork with me a few years ago. Luckily no-one checked it, because I don’t think anyone would believe that I was my sister, not even the Irish police, and they believe anything!

So I’m off to the off-licence to buy a big bottle of Irish whiskey. I will probably end up staying with Rodrigo Cortes, the Mexican designer from, well, Mexico, who is bringing a bottle of tequila. I’m not sure that this is a good idea. The last time I drank tequila was on my 21st birthday, eight years ago. I clearly remember drinking two shots, deciding to be sensible and going to bed. Many, many eyewitnesses later convinced me that these are false memories, and that I drank considerably more than two shots, and did considerably more than go to bed. Dancing was involved, but luckily no-one was injured.

What does the PQ mean for me?

Some time ago a number of the writers in our Prague Quadrennial Blogs wrote about what the PQ meant to them. One post which i recall with some clarity was made by Will McNeice and I recommend it to you now.

I didn’t make a post at the time deciding instead to make it closer to the time.. and so here I am, siting at my computer waiting for a car to take me to the airport. So what does the PQ07 mean for me? Meeting old friends, making new friends, opening my mind to new theatrical and artistic possibilities, a place to learn and understand new ideas, a place to enjoy myself… Even Brecht insisted that whatever the message his work tried to share that it should involve some element of entertainment… so i duly expect both Prague and the PQ/Scenofest to entertain me.

PQ07 also has a deeper meaning for me, it’s a keyframe in my life. In 2003 I was unable to attend the PQ as I was admitted to hospital, and up until 2006 hospital/day hospitals were a constant feature in my life. But now in 2007 things have improved greatly and I’m ready to further extend my my feet into the inviting shores of the theatrical world again. I may not end up following the same path that would have lead me to the 2003 Prague Quadrennial, but I am glad that it is a path that features the PQ07 as a highlight.

…. I hear a car door!

I hope to see you all in Prague… it’s been a pleasure to read all the posts and comments made here, I thank you all for taking me into your confidences and sharing your thoughts, fears and passions.

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children builded. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel (confusion); because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11:1-9)
The latest images from the Industrial Palace’s Central Hall depict the erection of the Babel Tower and the Scenofest Stage. Taken only two days ago by the Babel Tower’s co-designer Ian Evans I can’t help feeling some of the construction images resemble Meyehold’s “Bathhouse”

View the Scenofest Construction Gallery

Some while back I said that God was going to make my Babel Bell. What I meant was that I had determined a set of parameters to come up with as random a sound as possible. I selected events and reduced them to a series of mathematical possibilities which would yield either a yes or a no response. For example, I suggested watching people at a set of traffic lights, and seeing if either a male or a female crossed the road first. This would give a result of either one or the other. In other words, every decision I had to make could have been determined by the flip of a coin.

So that’s how I made my Babel Bell, with a coin, instead of doing all those other things. I just didn’t have the time, or the enthusiasm. So my bell wasn’t really made by God. Or was it? Random acts are often attributed to higher intervention, and in this cynical world where religion is being slowly snuffed out, I chose to believe that God paid special attention to my needs, and designed my Babel Bell for me. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to meet God:

As you can see it’s nothing more than a coin, a British one pound coin, with a head and a tail. But from now on we shall refer to the coin as God, and we shall treat it with the same respect.

So I tossed God several times into the air, and he told me that I should make my sound by using someone else’s recording, it should be a natural sound, and it should be a tonal sound. With those instructions I came up with the idea of using the opening piano chord from Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terrible.

I then asked the Holy Trinity what the attack, sustain and decay times should be, and he gave me a list, totalling about 20 seconds. As you may well be aware, the piano chord was less than half a second long, so I had to timestretch it. I stretched the sound by about fifty times, making it unrecognisable as a Philip Glass piano chord.

I then proceeded to apply various effects to the stretched out chord, obviously consulting our Lord and Saviour at every step of the way. Now I have to say that I was not altogether convinced by God’s abilities to make a good sound. He seemed to make decisions that, quite frankly, I found irrational and unnecessary. Nevertheless, I followed his advice to the letter, and came up with a rather bizarre sound. Never before have I had the need to apply reverb, chorus, phaser, flanger, autopan, tremelo and ring modulation all on the same piece of audio. But that’s what He told me to do, so I did it. Clearly God doesn’t believe in moderation. The sound will be played sometime in Prague, and I hope you enjoy it.

Laptop Connections is one of the Scenofest Sound events… and it’s on im pretty keen on seeing (hearing) full details may be found here or visit the dedicated blog hereThe idea is simple, sound designers from around the globe meet at a Prague railway station and create a soundscope thats kinda mixed live through a wireless network.. tbh im not really a sound guy and the techinical implications of it confuse me to hell… BUT the idea of six designers planted around one site mixing sounds live does sound very exciting… how is it going to work? What’s going to happen to the sound as you move around or as a train comes in? how aware of each others sounds will they be?

Some discussion on how the teams will communicate may be found on the Laptop Connections Blog here

Ouzo with Tolis Papazoglou were some of the first posts made in the Prague Quadrennial blogs back in February, they were three posts by Greek theatre designer/scenographer Nikos Kalaitzidis sharing a meeting with fellow Greek designer Tolis Papazoglou. The posts went down so well with our readers (and were a big part of the blogs early success) that I promised Nikos that we’d re-publish them closer to the PQ Opening to make sure they got the coverage they deserved.

The posts have been reproduced on our main site as the article “Ouzo with Tolis Papazoglou ” and is now part of our dedicated Prague Quadrennial coverage - I hope you enjoy reading the article as much as we did when Nikos first made the posts.

Only 5 days to go to the deadline for online registrations (very much worth doing as it cuts the cost and you dont have to cue up at the Industrial Palace)

Visit www.pq.cz  and navigate to “registration”