New keys and spaces

On Wednesday I walked down to my new workplace at University of Victoria, about a 45 minutes brisk walk (non-brisk is impossible) down the steep serpentine streets. The university has several sites spread widely across the city and the School of Architecture and Design (SOAD) is quite central, being close to the restaurants, cafes and numerous watering holes of Cuba Street and Courtenay Place etc. So I got to put faces to the e-mail addresses with who I have been communicating the last months. I was shown round by Doug, the acting head of department in Digital Media and I now have an office, a key to get in, an employee number, yet another e-mail address, a box of books and brochures sent to me from TaiK, a claim for a 2009 parking permit and, last but not least, a few days wait before they install me a new PC(!?) in my office. Everyone was very welcoming and efficient and the atmosphere was relaxed. Well, students and most faculty are still on holiday till February so it is quiet.

The Digital Media department is on the 4th and uppermost floor and currently well heated by the sun. Air conditioning is also still on Christmas vacation I've been informed. The building was immediately 'familiar', a 1980s? normative design school with large studio spaces on each floor surrounded by faculty and support staff's office spaces on the perimeter. Here in digital design they are having a re-fit, reorganising the space and the cables a bit and installing 50 new G5 Mac workstations. The entrance hall downstairs is also full of huge boxes containing over sized HD TV screens. This doesn't seem to be a university in recession!

As 'visiting scholar' I have very free hands and we've not decided what sort of role I'll play in the department just yet. My sabbatical plan pretty much lays out what I should be doing, basically personal artistic activity (=photography) and researching the state of the art in the region in design and implementation of locative media services and locative media-related cultural productions. One additional task is to make a short report on New Zealand's current Creative Industry development (post-LOTR).