Julian Maynard Smith starts his workshop this afternoon by showing images of some of the extraordinary range of work he has achieved with Station House Opera over the last twenty-five years.  It's a wonderful archive which ranges the world - large works, small works, indoor works, monumental works outside. It's a staggering display of one man's intellect - made visual and concrete - a series of moving images, with their own complex inner logic and rules. The audience does not seem particularly interested or impressed, when I go in, and I wonder if they are picking up their mood to some extent from Julian himself. He projects a mood of boredom and disdain about his own work - none of which is quite what he would like it to be, and which always falls short in some respect, of what he would wish for. In speaking about it, he does tend to emphasise the enormous difficulties he has encountered in making the work.  This is not what people necessarily want to hear. This can be the physical difficulty of arranging  a mountain of breeze blocks, the communication difficulties of working across time zones and various cultural expectations, or the intellectual difficulty of following a set of challenging instructions in a performance situation. He sets himself these difficulties of course deliberately as almost impossible obstacles to overcome, and labours intensely  to come close to achieving what he hoped for - which is usually an impossible task. None of this makes for easy listening but I do find myself getting a little irritated at times with the way the group is apparently taking Julian's own critical and detached opionion of himself at face-value. So why don't they give him something back? Applaud or exclaim when another  breathtaking image fills the screen? A sharp intake of breath might give him some encouragement. We are fortunate enough to be dealing here with one of the major artists of our time.