My Residency in Banff, Alberta, Canada

Started the day today with an indoor run on the running track in the Sally Borden Recreation Centre. It goes around the perimeter of the viewing gallery above the basketball gym. Quite a nice idea, but the circuit is not very long- only about 100m. However, I managed to make myself do 100 circuits (10km) as I wanted to keep a feel of running a certain measure of distance. I may do some filming there- in any case -we talked about doing some initial tests using a lengthy extension cable. I also need to keep up my training and was concerned I might not get out again today to run outside as I was due to meet Kenny to continue where we had left off yesterday. It was very boring run going round and round- I had to make myself keep going. It was also too warm and the atmosphere was very dry. I didn’t seem to have any altitude problems though or shortness of breath. Not bad since up here we are at 1500m. Must be getting used to it now.
I met with Kenny after 1pm to go into Canmore, the nearest bigger town, to try to find a USB video capture device that will connect to the computer and that I can connect my cameras to. Edwin the line producer for the residency came with us. He wanted to collect some things for a film he is shooting in the next couple of days. We also wanted to find a larger mobile ‘phone store to get some information on mobile ‘phone internet connection. It will be easier for me to use kenny’s ‘phone in the end whilst I’m here as the cost of increasing the capacity of my own ‘phone or buying one here, is too prohibitive.
Canmore is a strange sprawling town- really spaced out and flat and made for driving in- a real car town quite industrial and surrounded by mountains.
Got back to Banff around 3.30 to try some initial tests on the running track with my cameras. I’d got hold of some very long extension leads in the morning as the capturing device we were using has to be plugged in. After getting all the kit up there, none of it worked! (it seemed that east my PDR recording unit wasn’t recognising the capturing device). Went back to the studio and realised that the unit will stream live video to the internet via the capturing device, but it is unable to record at the same time. It’s looking increasingly likely I’ll be using webCams to do this- much simpler and less connections, but I’m concerned about image quality. Now I know what the problem was this afternoon, we’ll try again tomorrow with the PDR units on standby.
Ended the evening by attending the Ed’s (another artist) screening choice: Lucky People Center International, an extremely rare anthropological documentary from 1998 with the common thematic of dancing running through it. Great film.