I am in Chile, attending 2009 Ai-Maako festival, here in Santiago. I presented What the Bird Saw, On the Way to Fwarrheu, and Welcome to Hasla, as well as Out of Breath by Paul Koonce and Cyrosphere by Yutaka Makino.

The concert was well received and I had a good time.

I also gave a presentation on “Acousmatic Reasoning and Imagination in Electroacoustic Music Listening” where I had some enthusiastic audience.

Since I had a few days before leaving for Berlin, I (and my wife) visited a place called “El Cajon del Maipo” for some trekking fun. It is about 2 hours from Santiago, surrounded by the Andes Mountains. The weather up there was harsh, with lots of snow still on the ground, strong winds and sudden drops of temperature. But we just loved the place so much; it was as if we were a non-place—certainly, it was a non-place because we did not have any memory (previous experience) of such a place. It was a place foreign and strange, yet to be experienced, which made the place so much interesting and exciting for both of us.

We wanted to walk all the way up to the place very close to the glaciers, but the snow was too much and we were not prepared for that.

Don’t know whether and when we can return to Chile, but it will be our plan to go back to that place to continue our walk in the future.