Monday 6 February 2012

The Obliteration Room






Yayoi Kusama's exhibition in Brisbane... started with a completely white room, transformed with her signature colourful dots stuck on by visitors to the gallery. Her work is always bursting with the weird and wonderful, like you literally step into her crazy polka dot mind. Looking forward to seeing what she brings to the Tate Modern this month!

Thursday 26 January 2012

The Strange Face Project



The Strange Face Project started when as a teenager, Michael Burdett was given permission to trawl through the skips at Island Records to look for old tape demos he could use to record over. He then stumbled upon something that caught his eye
“I picked it up because it had ‘Nick Drake, Cello Song’ and ‘with love’ written on the box. The words ‘with love’ made me think that it had to be Nick’s handwriting and on that basis I couldn’t let it go to the dump.”

When over 20 years later, Michael eventually listened to the tape he was amazed to find an unknown version of the song. He has since then set about with his camera and a cd player to approach people all over Britain offering a unique opportunity to hear the lost recording and capture their moments on first hearing the piece.

Showing at Idea Generation Gallery 27/01/12 - 12/02/12

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Wednesday 14 December 2011

christmas!

“Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang ‘Cherry Ripe,’ and another uncle sang ‘Drake’s Drum.’ It was very warm in the little house.
Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

Dylan Thomas

Ruins



New Portico Quartet song, Ruins.... It's bloody lovely!

Sunday 11 December 2011

memorialized


On Tuesday night, Ted Hughes was celebrated as great English poets often are: with a memorial in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. His memorial stone quotes his poem "That Morning":

So we found the end of our journey,
So we stood alive in the river of light,
Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.


here is a beautifully fond celebration of the life and work of Ted Hughes here on BBC Radio 4: Ted Hughes - Memorial Tones

Monday 24 October 2011

Semiconductor

Hannah and I went to see Semiconductor's exhibition as part of Lighthouse's Brighton Digital Festival.

On in Barcelona RIGHT NOW, is a group show called Invisible Fields (co-curated by Honor Harger, Director of Lighthouse and José Luis de Vicente), which contains a new specially commissioned piece called 20 Hz.



20 Hz from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

"20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception"


If, like me, you can't make it to Barcelona to see this, I strongly recommend turning up the volume, switching off the lights and immersing yourself in this video of textural and sonic delights.

Saturday 22 October 2011

not so Lucky Dragons

Well, the luck would be my luck. Its taken me 4 attempts to see them live and even last night when i did finally see them it was slightly botched by my friend having to go back across to the other side of london to turn off an oven her mother had in fact NOT left on.

Obviously, i've been trailing this duo (Sarah Rara and Luke Fischbeck, also founders of sumi ink club) for a while. It was something about making sound with people touching each other that got me.
What i saw last night was a more recent work which involved a live feed from a video camera pointed up at a glass table top with 2 large sheets of lined paper and light shining through it. The participation factor came when they invited members of the audience to push the top layer around to create pockets of light with the layer below going into the camera and into a live feed which was projected onto a wall to show the movement...and into a mixer to alter the sound of one or more of the tracks playing, depending on the size of the light pockets.
In the mean time the duo were responding to and influencing the people at the table.

If you are wondering what the touching each other bit was, its all about circuits and currents. This project was aptly named "Make a Baby". here's a clip that explains it all:


The bonus of the evening was getting the old squeaky singing train from London Bridge back to Brighton. Just the right time to get some inspiration with about 6 months to work on my final degree project.

Also, if you haven't already, go to the post below, its a winner.

hello feist


Wednesday 12 October 2011

After Apple Picking


My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.


by Robert Frost

Tacita








I'm so excited about seeing this!

Thursday 6 October 2011

quote

climbing

Chris Sharma: The Legacy Continues

I like how he describes climbing as '...a very creative, artistic thing as well as being an athletic sport. It's about finding beautiful things in nature and interacting with them.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVXdC-PY-nw

If you've never seen a climbing film before prepare for some shouting at the rock