Very excited by my Cress Head, I continued to be until it grew and proceeded to smell like pee. It doesn’t make putting the cress in sandwiches too appealing. Now Mr Cress Head is fully dead. He may have fallen out of the window too. Before it was dead, I got it ready to take some photos of the green hair and inadvertently stuck my thumb through its face.
Careful eggshell realignment took place and I had lots of fun (to the extent cress can be) with my E-P1 on full zoom, focusing on the tiny bits of cress hair. They look wonerfully intricate. So, pretend I’m talking in the voice of Jeremy Clarkson: Here’s cress. Up close and personal.
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.
Kinetica, a number of Saturdays ago, was a mad mess of flashing lights and things that swirled. I love that it counts as art. I spent the day joining the league of irritating people with cameras, toting an EP-1 that’s never left the house – and thus have video footage.
Beside the robot that served you beer, my favourite bit was a block of hanging lights that reacted to sound. Simple but wonderful to watch. As part of the league of camera holders the adults lined up against the wall to do camera jiggery pokery, whilst a small kid ROARED at them. It was lovely, but I failed to hit the record button or some more technical error (very sad). May have to practice my button-pressing. Video on way – my laziness with it has already delayed this brief post. It will appear one day.
On Friday I went to Bestival, danced like an idiot to Soulwax and burnt my face. I also put my digital camera in the depths of my bag and after a short panic that I’d lost it, got hold of two digital cameras from an over priced off-license. I loved having a disposable, and I’ve just got them back from the shop (I’ve still got half a roll waiting to be used on the other camera so they might get developed next year).
I love how they look. The set’s here. I love how they look a bit like photos of me and my parents from the 80s, the photos of my childhood which I’ve always loved the aged quality of, with a faded ‘this is history’ look. Some of them aren’t straight, some I took by accident and I’ve discovered I’ve got an excellent knack for sticking my finger over the lens, but I don’t really care because I don’t have enough ‘real’ photos and love the novelty.
Beautiful shooting. Came across this guy from a set of underwater shots he’d done that attracted a bit of press. Then I found the rest of his photos. His flickr is here.
I’ve really liked reading this blog recently. It’s by photographer Thomas Prior and although it doesn’t contain many words, the short descriptions and different photo choices (chosen for non-portfolio reasons) make it very lovely. And the photos are ace.
Suspect I have picked mostly girly photos. Here is a nice picture of fire to counteract 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.
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.
A blog in which I make obvious my like of the word hyperbole.
At some point a few weeks ago (can be ratified) Central St Martin’s college of the illustrious University of the Arts London held a design show (University of the Arts; a place my father frowned at and said in a very father-like voice that it was not somewhere he had heard of) . I went because design shows I figure are better than reading prospectuses, and I’m quite interested in the digital design course.
Ground floor was art which I chiefly ignored and took a few photos of bright things and of some knitted food.
Digital media was downstairs. It was very nice, but didn’t hold attention and I was mildly disappointed. There were some nice uses of technology; A video with hanging strips of blue and red in front of it which produced a slightly different video depending on where you stood. It might have stretched the suggestion that each video gave a different viewpoint when they were really quite similar, but It got the audience to jump around between screens which was nice to play with. There was also a podium which displayed different ‘layers of lives’ (video fragments) which played depending on which sensor hand hovered over. Someone had a play making an augmented reality shopping assistant which was good for a wave around.
Upstairs, after some nicely rickety wooden staircase was photography. A guy [Fen Yu Jen] had done some photo adventuring around the UK taking photos of people who serve tourists as their job. I liked the photos. Using a button trigger, the photos are nice; really serene in a simple sort of way.
I found some illustration work by Kelly Joy Sandall. Blurb:
“Anxious by the passing of time compounded by a personal sense of loss and absence, I set out to capture illusive moments. The personal became a vehicle in which to express this loss. The balloon can be used to celebrate, mask, burst of reveal. It can hide a moment, it can create a fleeting moment, it can be erased completely in an attempt to peel back time.”
Sure I like pictures of balloons. I wondered if in finding a dissertations theme whether this just creates philosophical hyperbole. Work should impress first and be supported by words – and if there’s art and philosophy behind it that then wonderful, lovely. But when it seems as thought short paragraph of art hyperbole is what drives it then the product seems to take a dive. I overheard a girl telling her mother how a friend had made an awesome book where as you turned the pages, the overlapping of pages moved from predominantly light to predominantly dark, not only representing the light changes during a single day, but also through a year. Very clever, thought I, viewing the book in a new light.
Maybe that’s my problem. I want to see digital design that uses new technology, makes sense and is interesting, and doesn’t set out a hyperbole alarm off.
This is the result of a cultural enlightenment trip during a lunch break to Whitechapel Art Gallery. The artist liked Mannequins.
Some were dressed in space suits and lay on the floor, and some wore other things and lay in other positions. One piece was very yellow and involved some netting, a trolley and some pipes.
Nice photos from this man, a Mr Max Dworkin. Fond of having people jump mid-air with regular expressions in front of big natural things. One photo (here) reminds me of my first car. I used to come home and sit in it because it was ever so exciting. I used to listen to music and fall asleep from excitement.
