Oh hello, lots of shoes hanging infront of a balcony? This sort of arty shit makes me happy. I pottered around Clerkenwell Design Week (by which I mean they lie as it lasts only 3 days) before going to the Pop Up Pirate typography bar thing (Bitchbuzz review here).

I thought a light by Dare Studio was cool, but distracted myself from a lot of things that weren’t that interesting by trying to juggle a camera and a square of pizza. Pepperoni can be a tricky bitch.

It was all pretty interesting apart from the section about floor panels. The band that played from the balcony was pretty good, though I don’t know their name. There was lots of shiny stuff to keep me entertained. And fancy back-lighting of a wall behind a chair. Some of it came in mirrored cubicles. I could have wept. Photos instead of words.

Oh, and a Robot thing that doubled as a bike rack. CAN I HAVE ONE?

Here’s my very old video from Kinetica that I’ve just put together. Because of camera ineptitude there’s no video of my favourite part: the lights that reacted to sound, but there’s an inadequate photo of them here on Flickr.

The exhibition had a section with the pencils that rotate and make circles (above) – which drew on our ability to stand aimlessly watching pencils draw motorised circles. Something I noticed is that the holder design didn’t allow for the pencils to get shorter – it didn’t compensate by pushing defaultly against the wall, but left them suspended away from the paper when they were blunt going round in sad little circles. Perhaps I’ve got too much pencil empathy.

There’s also the small beer robot that poured you beer into plastic cups and then flashed red in an alert to tell you it’s drinking time. Lots of good stuff there.

Two weeks ago in January, before I lost the ability to blog on my own site I went to ‘If You Could Collaborate’ at an obscure school hall (Rochelle’s Foundation Gallery) near Shoreditch that was rather nice. It was made up of 33 collaborations in which pairs of people made arty things. There were some Four Dimensional Glasses in a beautifully made vintage wallpapered box with lovely instructions; overall really well put together.

The dark rooms filled with brightly lit things caught my eye with colourful bits, and quite unoriginally liked the AVEC designs most. Sorry. I’ve made the obligatory video of the Neon signs, which was the nicest neon sign I have seen. They’ve also turned the text-based building designs into a downloadable font.

There is my little Flickr set about here, and I took my Dad’s old analogue camera and managed to to use it without looking blundering like a ninny.

(Overall downside, I managed to miss The Rainbowgun though.)

I feel like I’ve done a lot of new things this summer, so I made a big list (all with tedious links to relevant posts) because lists please me.

Lived in a big city
Cycled in london
went to barcelona, rome and naples
Saw two lots of prostitutes (Naples)
Saw dead bodies in pompei
Went to a wedding reception as a grown-up (conclusions: danced better as child)
Went to Lovebox and Bestival
Saw Florence and the Machine a lot accidentally
Went to first Tweetups – Cozytweetup in St James’ park, Ale 2.0 and Twestival,
Became a paid blogger,
Started writing for Bitchbuzz,
Went to pretentious grad and grown-up design shows
Went to my first company party (Moo). Stole balloons.
Went to a press conference
Did my longest placement to date.
Walked my soles out in london.
Saw my favourite comedians: Bill Bailey and Eddie Izzard
Was excited by seeing the countryside (felt horrified by this since i come from the countryside and clearly need to leave the city.)
Went to Ben and Jerry’s festival and did Press Pit runs. In front of the crowd is good.
Made candles.
Learned to cook more.

I haven’t made Naples sound great. It was very prostitue-ridden and a restaurant hunt ended in McDonalds. Also best driving at crossroads have ever seen in life – may not be of interest to those who do not like 6 minute videos of driving (I am mystified as to where the 102 views came from: Youtube search must be gold). I would love an aerial view of this:

Last day of (untitled) ends at the pub. I cycle merrily away 20 metres down the street and chain my bike up outside Aldgate East and head off to a pub somewhere else. Helpfully some fool tries to tamper with my bike lock and has a successful jamming session with the combination.

The next day I am lurking outside Brick Lane 118-ing my heart out for a handyman. The handymen are not by their diaries, and whilst my father offers to leap in the car with bolt-croppers and drive up from Reading I politely decline this and wait for alternative help.

Hello said I, popping into the Free Range art display. Hello said Loughborough textiles. We’re soft and pretty, stroll around and take photos of us. So i did. I also touched when I wasn’t meant to. Sorry about that.

Nice things by Jenny Appleton; Stephen Fry and Gherkin prints and a witty table. Said witty table opens with a drawer concerned primarily with sodding tea and biscuits (see first photo).

Then in T2 or some other slightly more arty (read lofty and poorly lit) warehouse I discovered some art. Ingeniously putting the most confusing work downstairs in some effort to either make people shuffle quickly into the building in or to dissuade those not seriously into art, upstairs had some interesting things.

It also had rogue animal farm-esque chickens sprawled on the floor by walls and pillars. I liked the installations which were mostly odd and included a space ship.

There were some giant WTF, OMFG, and LOL letters, and some laptops sitting in front of them which played a giant selection of youtube clips. Commentary on society no doubt, but appealed to me mostly through the appearance of Keyboard Cat on a laptop. This is significant because I like Keyboard Cat and his piano music-making is my ringtone.

Here is a link to the ’100 most iconic internet videos today’ and although I have not yet fully investigated this gem, I see that Noah, Charlie and Powerthirst are there so it must be reliable.

Here is a link to keyboard cat as Dizzy Rascal falls off the stage. Plink plonk.

There was also a ‘Box of Not Knowing’ with bars of soap with life’s terrifying questions on them. Each one essentially a premise for ‘sex and the city’.

I also liked the free rock and took two. Sorry about this also, although there was no sign or candy attendant. Perhaps something to look into.