Technology and Performance

On our nightly walk this evening, my wife made the interesting observation today that what we did as kids and teenagers, we’re still doing now, and it really resonated with me.

She reminded me of a story I told her about this presentation I did for French class in the 7th grade where I did a live ‘commercial’ for a nose hair trimmer. I played the guy in serious need of a nose hair trim (I think I had some fake hair coming out of my nose or something) as well as the announcer who had just the solution for me. The announcer part I had pre-recorded on a cassette tape at home, and I rehearsed it so that it me and the ‘announcer’ talked to each other. I have no idea whether it was any good, but I loved doing it so much.

In some ways, that presentation is the crux of everything I did after, including my career. It’s that weird combination of art/performance and technology. Since then, I went on to do drama in high school, where I acted and helped out with the stage crew, and loved doing both. I did drama in university, and one of my major final year projects was an audio tour performance of our Drama faculty building. I even wrote a play that involved technology and performance - Napoleon and the Turk!

My career ended up more technology than performance, but I still get a kick out of doing presentations, training, and hosting work events. And what is this whole blog project but a combination of technology and performance?

Anyway, I just found it an interesting little insight.