For some reason most of this weekend was spent around the Pompidou center. No reason why, but it just somehow we ended up either passing through, hanging around and finally going in to see some art!

The first thing to notice is the big yellow scrawling all over the main square outside the center.

I've turned the picture upside down, which gives it a bit of a vertigo effect, but it's just so you can read the words. The Beauborg area is to become the first in Paris with public wifi. There's been a few experiments before, for instance where they turned an entire bus route into a wifi area, but I think this is the first 'official' area. There was an announcement that all of Paris is to be wifi, but I don't think this has anything to do with that. To be honest I'd be amazed if it actually happened and was *good* quality. There is usually a lot of behind the scenes business stuff going on - did you know that the whole of Paris is served by only *one* cable company? All the regions of France were dished out to different companies, so no local competition. The company for Paris is called Noos, which seems to be missing an 'e' to me...

Anyway, we went inside and half the modern art museum seems to have disappeared - all the 1905-1950 stuff, which was a real disapointment. It looks like they're refurbishing, but there weren't any signs that told you what was going on.
The moving image exhibition that's going on right now is cool though. It's a chronological history of how film has moved into the gallery's, and went from initially merely recording performance art to become an art form in itself. It's worth seeing.

And in art imitating life imitating art, here's my contribution;

C minus, 'could do better'...

Finally we ended up just sitting around outside. Too hot to do anything other than go back and forth to the corner shop to get cans of beer. We decided one can at a time was the only way of having *cold* beer. There was the usual hopeless musicians and street artists littering the place, but there was also this couple playing aboriginal instruments;

The girl playing the didgeridoo was amazing. It wasn't just the usual reverberating up and down sound you normally hear, but all sorts of pops and whistles going on at the same time. At first we thought it must be someone else playing at the same time, but gradually we realised she was making all the different sounds with just the one instrument.

Click on this link to stream a recording I made (again with my lame phone).

The higher pitched flute sounds are the guy playing (he was pretty good too I guess), but listen to the digeridoo - you can hear the low wahwah sounds (bit quiet at first), but also some plop sounds - they're not percussion instruments but are coming from the didgeridoo. The recording doesn't give them much credit, but if you see them stop and listen (and give them some money! - they didn't seem inclined to go round collecting money, and just left their hat on the ground...).