May 14, 2008
ten
In answer to all your letters and telegrams, here are the ten:
three off the top boards
and seven off the lower boards, of which you can see six here
Posted by john at 10:36 PM | Comments (1)
After three, one… two…
“Nowhere on the Internet will you find a picture of more guys simultaneously jumping off a tree than the 10 shown here”
thanks Shorpy
Posted by john at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2008
a whole bag full of thinking
Hee hee, give me a couple of 10 grand and we'll knock this thing into shape...
... in the mean time, I'll get on with it as best I can. I should be able to get seven minutes together by the end of June, even if it doesn't have the swirling red-saturated smoke and the three dancers. Hey ho.
Posted by john at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
That thinking thing
The mind is a big place, huge, bigger than a computer, bigger than the internet – hell, it’s exactly the same size as the universe [which is no coincidence].
It does being big by being able to jump from one thing to the next without taking all the inbetweeny steps. Unlike this switching-engine under the desk. Particularly big leaps are sometimes called creativity.
10:36 am
This morning the universe in my mind is focused on a few square inches of paper in front of me. The paper is the portal, the paper is the medium through which the ideas try and escape.
10:44 am
In the dim cold dark matter of the mind images are conjured up like third magnitude stars and whole worlds evolve, collide and dissolve in moments, while feelings and emotions are shuffled and stirred.
10:58 am
As I draw the images, trying to nail the thoughts to something tangible, other images keep appearing, and a whole heap of possibility occurs, bound only by time and money.
Posted by john at 12:02 PM | Comments (1)
May 12, 2008
The future of literature.
Leave a paperback out in the sun and the wind and the rain for a while and the result is a true palimpsest:
Three pages are creating this jumble of type, as you can see by the three visible page numbers at the bottom. On the top page, page 153, the paper has almost completely rotted away, just leaving the ink.
So when books rot just the ink remains, just the letters, the great libraries of the world will eventually become just a pile of letters. In the future Space People will try to put the letters back into some sort of order and create wonderfully inaccurate stories about our civilization.
Posted by john at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2008
Local brick
Amongst the rubble of a demolished lunatic asylum the bricks proclaim their makers, silent witnesses of unknown distress.
Posted by john at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2008
Clickety Stuck
Photoshop’s all very well, but it’s a bit of a bum-numbing clickety-fidget. I mean where are the spatial dynamics? Where’s the movement? The action? It might be a lot of things but Photoshop ain’t physical. At least Final Cut projects exist in time as well as space.
Photoshop’s clever, damn clever, but at what cost? As well as the RSIs currently impinging on my right wrist, what does it do for the eyes, staring full screen at glaring pixels all day long?
I’ve spent the best part of the last two weeks hooked up to the G5, tapping the occasional key, clicking, interminably, on the clicky thing. And I’ve got some acceptable results, I guess. But I feel flat. I feel stuck.
In the painting studio I pace about, barefoot, whilst flinging paint at the panel and talking to the model – hell, sometimes I pace about [barefoot] while talking to the panel and flinging paint at the model, it’s a choice thing.
There’s something happening. There are deals being struck by the minute. There’s some walking about going on. There’s plenty of vim and not a little vigour.
Taking pictures, likewise, I dance and jig and generally wiggle around [while flinging paint at the model, obviously] and it’s a real-time event, of which the pictures are the product.
But sitting with a computer as my companion? Dear God! There’s no connection, no action, no dialogue.
This is no new thing, two centuries ago people were already worrying about the amount of time office workers were spending at their desks, and contraptions were constructed accordingly.
I don’t particularly feel the need to indulge in the above, whatever it is, but I do need to engage in some physically creative endeavour, hands on.
Posted by john at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
Heaven and Earth
This is what happens when a volcano erupts in the middle of a storm:
more here
Posted by john at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2008
Cooper Man
Been photographing Jim Bond's latest piece.
A full-size man made of riveted copper.
It goes on like this all the way down to the feet.
Posted by john at 05:48 PM | Comments (2)
May 05, 2008
Continuous Grid & Anode Potential Tests
People often ask me what my father did. He was an Electrical Research Engineer. This is the sort of thing he got up to at university:
Photograph showing arrangement of apparatus for Continuous Grid and Anode Potential Tests.
Posted by john at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)
