Ruby Stark

Last week: appointment with doc where I was taken off some drugs and put on others, long, boring meeting at squat about a party, geek camp by the seaside where I spent the first night puking and went home to the warm embrace of my family and the This Life DVD box set, super fun job interview with music software company in Berlin, helping to run the geek camp I’ve been involved with organising and also learning about Go, a push internet protocol, fonts on the web, NES emulators in Javascript and design in LOST, lots of ohwhydoIloveitso banter with a lovely, long-term-girlfriended boy who I developed a painful crush on.

This week: an answer on whether I have the job, two random gigs, Efterklang with an orchestra, house hunting, supper with two old friends from school and a geeky conference about the artistic aspects of game design.

Yesterday, I went to see the Gustav Metzger exhibition at The Serpentine. It sucked. To me, when people take found objects and place them in an artistic context, they are removing their relevance. A burnt-out car means something to me when I see it on my street. But, when it’s in a gallery, the pompousness ascribed by the context saturates any significance that it holds.

I went to the exhibition with Corin, a girl I met just after I moved to London and who visited me in hospital and whom I DMed on Twitter after I got out. My original plan was to try and date her, but she is straight, so we are friends. After the gallery, we sat in Kensington Gardens and drank tea and talked about non-monogamy and Sleater-Kinney and teen films and how people maybe fancy an archetype and then will fancy other people purely because of their similarity.

I went to meet Min at my work in the evening so we could start looking for a place to live together (if I don’t move to Berlin). Afterwards, I hung out in the office and then got to Shunt for 10pm. I went to watch the livecoding, but what really blew my mind was the place.

I wandered around trying to find the entrance for a while, found it, got sent to the other entrance, got my driver’s licence recorded by Clubscan [a sick computer program that uses IDs to ban people from any venue with the system installed and records demographic, gender and age information].

I walked into the building which is just a set of high railway arches. It has that dank, squat smell that makes my heart race with excitement. I walked down a row that felt like a street. To my left and right, as I went, I saw rooms and art installations. Lights shone bright in my eyes and dust clouded my view. There were little huddles of people everywhere. I kept going and going until I came to a big area with a bar and some tables and the livecoding stage.

I was most reminded of an Aspire event I went to one winter a couple of years ago. It had the same feeling of a huge building with lots of different things going on at once. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone somewhere in London that has given me the feeling of being in a secret, wonderful world.

I watched the livecoding for a while. Most of it sounds like random beats and beeps with washes of noise, but some order does emerge.

It got very enthusiastic applause. There was such a strange mix of geeks and hipsters. It was very cool.

Presently, Lightening, a chap I met randomly at a hack weekend a while ago, touched me on the arm and said hello. We spent the rest of the evening palling around together. We found this exhibit where an image of something like iron filings was projected onto a white brick wall and movements in front of it moved the filings around like you were swooshing through water. We went into a dark room where you could only see a white screen with the silhouettes of people on the other side projected onto the San Francisco skyline by a bright light. It felt strangely intimate to see them move and talk and laugh and put their arms around each other when they didn’t know you were there.

Lightening and I talked about his impending move to Berlin, geeky projects we’re working on, the art installations and livecoding. He leaves in a week and nodded when I suggested he DM me on Twitter if he wants to meet up before he goes.

I forgot to say. About four months ago, I was set up for a telephone interview with a very cool music software company that is based in Berlin. Unfortunately, that week, I died. I got back in touch with them a few weeks ago, set up a new date, did the interview and they said they like me and want me to go for an in-person interview at their offices in Berlin. Super excited.

Matte is throwing a leaving party this coming weekend. She will be moving out of her house and beginning to travel around the country. Some of the time she will spend on Abel’s band’s bicycle tour, some of the time she will spend in forest protest camps. I know I won’t see her for long periods, but I think I will also see her for longer periods.

I will meet Abel for the first time at the party. I had decided to go to Bradford on Saturday and come home on Sunday a) because I have booked tickets to evening geek talks on Thursday and Friday and b) to appear offhand. However, as I was sitting on a beanbag watching boring presentations at this weekend’s hack day, I thought, Fuck it, changed my mind and texted Matte to tell her I would arrive on Thursday.