Back in Paris, encore visit to IRCAM

After Tokyo, I briefly returned to New York to pick up my kids, and arrived in Paris this weekend.  I'm visiting IRCAM again, following up with our work together and discuss new developments.   Frédéric Bevilacqua, the head of the Real Time Musical Interaction Team and I, met last Monday in New York, the day after we both arrived from our  original home countries: Fred from Lausanne, me from Tokyo.  Fred invited me for "VIP only" MOMA opening for "Talk to me" exhibition, where IRCAM's "MO", Modular Musical Objects, which include my bowing motion sensor "mini-MO" (the smallest and the latest model) won the first prize in a competition and is now displayed there.   We were both spectacularly jetlagged that we were wide wake :)

Then Frédéric went on to visit his old school UC Irvine (Fred has PhD in Biomedical Optics!) giving lectures, and returned to Paris today, joined us for lunch practically right off the airplane.  What a guy! :)  Then he went to an appointment at IRCAM...  I on the other hand, herded my kids through JFK where our Air France flight was about 2+1/2 hrs late, but somehow pulled through since my kids slept through the flight.  I admittedly was quite tired, since my jet-lag from Tokyo/NYC was never cured :) decided to enjoy Air France's free Champagne and free red wine, and happily went to sleep.  Only a few hours later, woke up feeling so sick!   Bad decision, and my French husband scolded me later "Don't mix Champagne and red wine... if you have Champagne, drink only Champagne all the way!"  Oh well I did learn my lesson LOL!  All is well, and my children are with their French grandparents who very kindly are keeping them so I could work at IRCAM staying in Paris, and of course, for their second summer of complete "French immersion".  And my brother-in-law kindly let me stay in his apartment near Republique where his family is away in Madagascar.   I can walk to IRCAM from this quiet part of town.  Here are my poor kids, waiting while I was looking for our luggage at CDG (there was Air France strike, and everything like baggage collection took a very Loooong time :)

Here is Nicolas and I, Nicolas Rasamimanana, my formidable collaborator at IRCAM who now runs his own NPO, Phonotonic, a 'spin off' of IRCAM pursuing individual projects. He said he might incorporate by the end of the year, to go "for-profit"!  :)

Nicolas is a violinist also, and such a wonderful mathematician and scientist, that when we are together, what I do is to start saying something, and he goes, "Yes, that's right..." or "That's something I wanted to do anyway..."  Although he speaks fantastic English, we really don't have to say much, and we could communicate with motions, music, or mime :)  I count my blessings being able to work with him.  I discuss what I need from the sensor data, and he starts talking to himself programming, and I just listen to his murmuring like music :)  Then we try, then he programs, repeat....  In short half a day, we got already so much done.  We also tried our scenarios for Fukusuke Nakamura, Kabuki actor wearing the sensor while he dances, by looking at the movies and data I made in Tokyo two weeks ago.  (See the last post)

And of course, I'm in Paris, so my first lunch out with Nicolas was Salade de Gésiers.... I was dreaming about this :)  Nicolas had crêpe, and we both had Cidre... :)