27/03/2011: Six Layers Of Lustrous Piano Lacquer

It was Matthew(Britton)’s Birthday the other day and as he made me a mix for my Birthday, so I returned the favor for his. Always a pleasure. The cover turned out to be an unintentionally sense-making cut-up in that the seemingly unrelated title I’d composed seemed to fit rather nicely with the image, hence its inclusion here. I couldn’t help but feel a little dissatisfied with the second side, it just didn’t seem as tight a grouping as on the first side. Still good though. I’ll have to wait and see what Matthew thought… Cover art and Tracklist:



Side A:

1. When I’m Older – The Systematics
2. Bad Mood Guy – Severed Heads
3. Nudies – Lemon Kittens
4. The Skunk Rolled Down The Hill And Ruptured It’s Larynx – Garry Bradbury
5. The Twist – Klaus Nomi
6. Dancing With The Bears – The Fibonaccis
7. The Fall Of Christopher Robin – Current 93 and Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson
8. Cherry Tomato – Freshly Wrapped Candies
9. English Faggot/Nothin Man – Foetus Interruptus

Side B:

1. I’m Scratching Peace Symbols In Your Tombstone – The Manson Family
2. Aries: The Fire Fighter – The Zodiac
3. Lotus Land – Martin Denny
4. Ramblin’ – Ornette Coleman
5. Triple Sun – Coil
6. My Number One Love – Esquivel!
7. Play With Fire – Durex And The Temple Of Art
8. R.U.Xperienced? – Caresse P-Orridge and Sickmob

23/03/2011: Classic David Jones

Thomas The Tank Engine And Friends, Series 4 - Amazon Customer Review (Unsubmitted)

During a period of obsessive model-train video-watching on the internet in the first year I found myself watching episodes of Thomas The Tank Engine on YouTube for supposedly nostalgic reasons. 100 or so episodes later I wrote the following with intent to submit it (though I never did) to Amazon’s customer reviews for the Series 4 DVD as I wasn’t satisfied with the apparent nonchalance of the other reviewers. Philistines.

“Though I like it for purely personal/circumstantial reasons, this for me is the most enjoyable series of TTTE. As a young child I was very familiar with the original Rev. W. Awdry book series and television series 1 and 2, and although I was a little older by the time 3 and 4 were made, I still watched and enjoyed them because of the (long anticipated) introduction of less-showcased/one-off characters like Oliver, Bulgy and Mavis and then of course my favourites, the "Skarloey engines"

As the latter were from a narrow gauge line (and therefore smaller than Thomas and co.) a whole new collection of beautifully modeled sets was presented along with a load of new incidental music and character themes, creating a general feeling of refreshment from the standard Thomas/Gordon/Henry/James lineup (which to me always felt a bit plain and more obviously marketable after the Skarloey engines had appeared) The engines themselves were brilliantly detailed considering their smaller size (likely 00 gauge or similar) and lovely sunset-orange twilight scenes seemed to feature more than in previous series too. The line itself always felt wonderfully cosy and peaceful, with little woodland stations, cliffside branchlines along the coast and many a trickling stream to cross/pass by (all real water by this point rather than the static resin often seen in the earlier series) - This is one for the connoisseurs in my opinion, at least visually.

Episodes like "Granpuff", "Trucks", "Steamroller" and "Train Stops Play" are among my all-time favourites (each of these featured rarer characters - Duke "the lost engine", the slate mine trucks, George the steamroller and Caroline the car) and although Series 1 and 2 are indeed classics as far as the TV show goes, this series is very sweet and will always be special for me. There are a couple of dud bits - in particular Driver Ben's review was right in panning "Rusty To The Rescue" as it's a completely unnecessary rehashing of Douglas' rescuing of Oliver in "Escape!" (Series 3), done with less panache and very questionable plausibility (highly unlikely that the Skarloey engines' railway would extend so far and to such a place, for example) and the episode "Toad Stands By" is disappointing in comparison to the Rev. W. Awdry's original book version. Though to argue with the aforementioned reviewer, I might add that I always preferred the multi-colour approach to the Skarloey engines - having them all the same red as in the books would have just been boring and more likely quite confusing for the younger audience, if not any viewer.

This was the last series of TTTE I watched, and by the looks of things was probably the last great series before things started to get silly with some of the newer dumbed-down/downright silly characters invented by Mitton and Allcroft for subsequent productions. Ignore the mediocre ratings, its wonderful!”

15/03/2011: Snippets From Brideshead

“Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud, and said it's going to rain - would that be bound to happen?”
“Oh yes Father”
“Yes but supposing it didn't. Supposing there was no rain...”
- - -
“I suppose it'd be sort of raining spiritually, only we were to sinful to see it?”

“Throughout our married life, again and again I'd felt my bowels shrivel with envy at the things she said. But today in this gallery I heard her unmoved and suddenly realized that she was powerless to hurt me anymore. I was a free man. She had given me my manumission in that brief, sly lapse of hers - my cuckold's horns made me lord of the forest”

“I had not forgotten Sebastian; he was with me daily in Julia. Or perhaps it was Julia I had known in him in those distant arcadian days. Every stone in the house had a memory of him, and hearing him spoken of by Cordelia as someone she had seen a month ago, my lost friend filled my thoughts”

14/03/2011: On Reality/Realities

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about “realities” and how “real” they are, or can be. Think about the way feelings of fear or guilt or happiness from dreams remain with you the following day. Constant immersion in the developing landscape and balmy heat of my Cinema 4D project and the sadly halcyon world of Brideshead Revisited along with lots of wine for the last four days has reminded me how I felt during the first year – more “escapist”, and more comfortable as a result of rebuilding this forgotten dimension and residing in it, a glass of hot Lipton Morroco and the smell of Pine incense as the morning sun pours through the bedroom window unintentionally reminding myself that it is indeed all real. More often than not the realities I create for myself suggest themselves to be more real to me than any supposed, fixed, actual “reality”. Three nice quotes on the subject, previously collected and unused (including a belter from Mr. Klee):

“Now that inter-reality travel is possible, we will become the very substance of hallucination. All realities are equal. We will enter and leave at will all realities regardless of their location. In the retreat from matter all realities are equal.”
- Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

“Let us go on a little trip to the land of the deep understanding of things: In times gone by, people painted what they had seen or enjoyed, or would like to see in the world around them. Today we emphasize that what we see physically is only relative. There are things we cannot see but which are still real; there are many other realities and other truths in the universe - our reality is only one isolated instance. Compared with all the universe and creation, Art is only a parable - an example - just as Earthly life is only an example, an illustration, of cosmic life. Art goes beyond the visible world - it plays the game of creation without knowing what it is doing, just as a child playing is imitating us, so we imitate those unseen forces which created the world itself. In the make-believe world of Art, we should draw upon everything we know or feel or understand, good and bad. Art should be like a holiday - something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view. The artist knows that the process of creation is never complete. What he sees is the act of world creation stretching from the past into the future, Genesis Eternal.”
- Paul Klee

“If you can’t imagine things, you can’t make them, and anything you imagine is real”

- Alexander Calder

12/03/2011: Olfaction – A Note

* On the link between olfaction and memory and the potential manipulation of this to invoke states of being:

If one had a willing sexual partner with which to practice, for example, one could choose a specific variation of incense to burn during sessions of lovemaking. By implementing this practice regularly and repeatedly, in theory a stronger sense of ritual could be developed over time with regard to lovemaking as the emotions of past experiences are invoked instantly through a sub-consciously edited memory-collage. As time passes the collage expands and the experience gathers increasing meaning and connotation, its quality heightened – the incense becomes a ritualistic tool for the enhancement of experience, as indeed it has traditionally always been.

06/03/2011: Film Week

Watching Lawrence Of Arabia last Sunday threw me back into a filmy mood after quite a substantial dry patch. At least one a day, not unhealthy:

Sun 27th – Lawrence Of Arabia --- Excellent; proper FILM
Mon 28th – Downfall and Lassie Come Home --- Boring/Rubbish (better than Downfall though)
Tue 1st – If… --- Fantastic; energizing and sensual
Wed 2nd – Mon Oncle and Cat People (1942) --- “Whimsical” – Mont, Amazing Colours esp./Rubbish
Thu 3rd – Cul-De-Sac --- One of the best films I’ve ever seen – perfect
Fri 4th – Grey Gardens and Mon Oncle (Post-Lynch…) --- Endearing and fun, both truly charming
Sat 5th – Caligula --- !

Couple of noted quotes:

If…:

The sexually repressed, somewhat alluring matron, Mrs. Kemp, sits with the boys at dinner. Quietly, placidly, nervously, sadly (?) she declines to all but the glass of water. Malcolm McDowell referring to the ketchup as “this” tickles me somewhat.

“Water Mrs. Kemp?
Lovely day Mrs. Kemp...”

“Salt Mrs Kemp?
Spring Greens Mrs Kemp?”

“Dead man's leg today Mrs Kemp.
Do you need this Mrs Kemp?”

Cat People:

Bullshit 40s B-movie I rented thinking it was the 80s remake with McDowell and Nastassia Kinski. Awful acting and boring story. I did like this monologue, delivered dreadfully from an old lady who ran a pet shop, that was about it. Landy deary me.

“Animals are ever so psychic, there are some people who just can't come in here - my dear brother's wife for instance, she's a very nice girl, I have nothing against her, but you just should see what happens when she puts her foot inside this place. The cats particularly, they seem to know, you can fool everybody but landy deary me you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right, if you know what I mean...”

Cul-De-Sac:

“THAT FROGGY BITCH PULLED MY EAR OFF!”

05/03/2011: Notes On Sound (To no avail…)

* Brief notes made back in February, can bare them in mind...

I like loops because they provide a space, a parameter in which to work, as a piece of paper or a canvas. Loops provide rhythms of a sort, as we generally know rhythms to use repetition. A loop can be altered as it plays using effects or alteration of speed/volume etc. However they can also be used as sonic filler due to laziness. I want my sound work at present to be soundscape type stuff - mood sound of some sort. Rhythm is not especially needed for this but repetition of some sort is perhaps desirable. The repetition need not be consistent either; it could fade in/out once or more or could be tampered with as mentioned above. Voices can be useful in giving extra character for a piece but it should be something relevant/appropriate - perhaps consider using samples of my own voice though not necessarily obvious/dominant in the mix.

Boyd Rice and Frank Tovey
- Extraction 3: Nice changes in sound of constant loop (EQ filter of samples?) Too repetitive.

Cabaret Voltaire
- Doraseal: Voices through switching filters, delay, interference of tape play.
- Partially Submerged: Birdsong as atmospheric subconscious time/place positioning, speed changing of sample subtle and slight, important to have plenty of other sounds on the go

04/03/2011: Mon Oncle – A Note

* On the “morality” of the way information influences one’s opinion and how it does not exist and should not be imposed upon people:

“Red pipes, from Jacques Tati’s movie Mon Oncle. I just try and put them in my movies every now and then. I just love Jacques Tati” – David Lynch

Why not take more of an interest in said film after reading this? Lynch breathes new life into Tati – a perspective providing relevance and sense; additional foundation substance as a more reasonable vehicle for the desired appreciation of its neat 1950s Ladybird-utopian imagery. Ben put the same into Lynch for myself. And I choose my friends accordingly, in points of time, as I now choose Tati…

27/02/2011: Sound Recording/Archive

Been continuing some tests with the Rode Mic during the week - see pictures below.
Also been reading a lot more Cage. Some interesting quotes:

“Hearing sounds which are just sounds immediately sets the theorizing mind to theorizing, and the emotions of human beings are continually aroused by encounters with nature. Does not a mountain unintentionally evoke in us a sense of wonder? Otters along a stream a sense of mirth? Night in the woods a sense of fear? ...

“These responses to nature are mine and will not necessarily correspond with another’s. Emotion takes place in the person who has it. And sounds, when allowed to be themselves, do not require that those who hear them do so unfeelingly. …

“New music: new listening. Not an attempt to understand something that is being said, for, if something were being said, the sounds would be given the shapes of words. Just an attention to the activity of sounds.”

John Cage, from Experimental Music (Silence)


“Masterpieces and geniuses go together and when by running from one to the other we make life safer than it actually is we’re apt never to know the dangers of contemporary music…” (or even be able to drink a glass of water – SIC)

John Cage, from Composition As Process: III. Communication (Silence)


“The way to test a modern painting is this: If it is not destroyed by the action of shadows it is genuine oil painting. A cough or a baby crying will not ruin a good piece of modern music.”

John Cage, two excerpts from 45’ for a Speaker (Silence)


Below: Top - Rode Mic with shield removed, wedged in a bottle for recording
Bottom - Shoved up t'hoover, nice twang noise when the hose is flicked

20/02/2011: Three Horrible February Weeks – Rants and Experiments from a Mire of Misery

Began the week by trying to rearrange my room, which took a couple of days to complete in the end. At the expense, I might add, of the two-day project thing that was set for us by the 3rd Year tutors. I assumed it would be useless and a waste of time and from what I’ve seen/heard I was not wrong. The new layout is great, I think it’s better as a working environment now, especially as I’ve binned a lot of clutter...

Wednesday I went out with Mont and Christian to Fog Lane Park in Didsbury, where we worked on Mont’s super-positioning project again. This time we walked to opposite ends of one of the fields and shot each other at a distance with and without zoom and using our phones to exchange directions, so that each video view of one person has the voice of the other accompanying it. As a space-piece it seemed to work well, with unaccounted for elements like a woman jogging laps that would pass behind Mont and then 5 minutes later infront of Christian and I. Bought a wedge of heavily oxidized, earthy smelling cheese from the Cheese Hamlet on the way back, which I realise now I’ve yet to eat.

Thursday Kay and Marcin had their first video club thing in the studio. I thought it was pretty good though their choice of Derek Jarman’s “Blue” seemed baffling to the majority of those who watched, which is fair enough when none of the group bar Marcin and I had ever seen another Jarman film and would therefore have no frame of reference for the style and content. Hardly the most accessible of the Jarman canon in any case. It was enjoyable though and made me feel just that little bit closer to experiencing something of that “art school” thing people dream of so...

Discovery of the week (at least) has to be Cinema 4D, a CGI modelling/animation programme shown to me by Mont’s Derby friend Joe. Mont’s using it to model for an upcoming show at Blank Media but the process looks like fun so I’m going to attempt to download it at his house later on. It’d be the perfect solution to my video/sound re-direction - CGI imagery/movement with hissy reel to reel sound? Severed Heads as fuck, potentially. More on this later...

Yesterday I was thinking about Kay and Marcin’s video club again and the possibility of me showing re-soundtracked videos as a pre-film extra. For example the 22 minute film “The River Clyde” from the “Seawards The Great Ships” DVD coupled with Coil’s “Remote Viewing Part 3”, or “Glasgow’s Docklands” from the same DVD with Nurse With Wound’s “Dirty Fingernails”. Anyway, thinking along these lines I put on a library copy of Robert Flaherty’s “Nanook Of The North” and decided on a soundtrack of the Psychic TV “Electric Newspaper” compilation albums. As the synthesis of video and sound seemed so inkeeping with the Burroughs/P-Orridge etc. cut-up tradition I set about expanding the idea and put together a potential flyer/poster for the work, were it ever to be shown. The idea for the work at this point is for a double showing of Nanook set to issues one and two of the Electric Newspaper series, with two gap-filling insertions of sections of the 25 minute “Iron Pyrites” track, used previously in a different edit on the Derek Jarman Super 8 film of William Burroughs in London, the name of which escapes me at this moment. As the piece as planned will play for 157 minutes, it is not intended to be a sit-down-and-watch-from-beginning-to-end work, so the perfect place for it to be shown really is not the video club but the Link Gallery. It then becomes a work that people catch snippets of as they walk through and this is the way it works best. Obviously some parts won’t work as well as others and the sound will not sit comfortably with the visuals. At other points however the viewer may be pleasantly surprised with the merging of the two elements, perhaps even tricked or confused as I have felt for those interesting flashes of time where the subconscious is quicker to react than the mind and one starts to check the DVD player volume to make sure it is the new soundtrack that fits so well and not the original one creeping into the mix. See the end of this week’s write up for my current design for a poster to grace the doors at either end of the Link and promote the showing of the work around the university, along with a visual aid to the combination of video and sound. Some might say the work isn’t that great but then what work that’s ever shown there is?

Finally, last night I played about somemore with the Rode Mic, using the length of the wire to advantage and having it tripod-mounted in the kitchen. I’d then listen to the sounds of the kitchen on the stereo in my bedroom. Took this to another level by concealing it in a cardboard poster tube and putting it out on the window ledge in the hope that I’d finally be able to record the pidgeons in the morning. I listened to the sounds of Wilmslow Road amplified through the stereo until I went to sleep and woke at 15:33 to no pidgeons. Perhaps I slept through them or perhaps they never came. Must now spend the week recording for my new archive and experimenting further with recording positions and methods...

Below: Top - Poster design for R.U.Xperienced?
Bottom - Video/Sound Arrangement

20/02/2011: Three Horrible February Weeks – Rants and Experiments from a Mire of Misery

Week Ending 13/02/2011:

Back toward the start of this week we had our “table top review” and were put into randomly selected groups of 4 to talk about our current work. Listening to people I don’t know very well’s shit ideas and then their conversational digressions into righteous hippy ramblings about the homeless and the law isn’t my idea of time well spent; nothing was gained.

In the morning of the same day I attended the Whitworth talk where we had this MA Tutor from Goldsmiths show us through various things he’d worked on. After a stiflingly boring introduction it picked up and I became more interested in him but his attitude toward the end of not caring about other people’s experiences in relation to either his art or his teaching put me off a little. At least he was honest. Another thing I can’t help but mention: at one point he told us about a project where he and his group had hung razor wire across a high street somewhere, at lamp level like Christmas bunting or something. I think it was Northern Europe but I can’t remember. And the story finished with him being told “you’ll never work in this city again” accompanied by twattish laughs from the audience. Shit isn’t it. Boring concept, boring visually, lazy - nobody even got hurt. People in these circles are too easily impressed I swear.

I spent the rest of week messing with the TC 280 for the most part. More tape loops and fiddling with the delay, which I downloaded the manual for and found that: A. You can get it to work in Stereo (sort of) by using both outputs (one speaker gets the original noise and the other the delay echo) and B. That using the Hold function you can take small samples and distort them as they loop, by twisting the duration knob to make the sample repeat faster or slower. I’ve also realised that by changing speeds on the TC 280 you can record things at different rates. Having the recorder on the fast setting while recording gives you a slowed down recording when played in the standard mode, and vice versa with the slow setting.

Christian and Mont and I have spent several evenings with the DD3 now using it with an AV Store Rode Mic to create feedback sounds with the stereo and shouting stupid things into it to hear them reverberate. Which has been fun though not particularly productive.

I’ve been quite frustrated with regard to getting on with some proper sound work. Having a list of particular tracks I admire/aspire to could be seen as a good thing but seems more of a hindrance at present. As there is a reasonable mix of styles between the tracks I’m looking at (sound-scapes/mood pieces, collage, loops, rustic pop) I’m finding it hard to decide which direction to take. Tracks are as follows:

Boyd Rice and Frank Tovey - Extraction 3 (1984)
Cabaret Voltaire - Doraseal/Partially Submerged (1978/1980)
Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign - Come Home And Have Your Tea (1979)
Nurse With Wound - Ooh Baby (Coo Coo)/Fashioned To a Device Behind a Tree/Rockette Morton (Pt 1/2)/Steel Dream March Of The Metal Men (1983 x2/1990/1992)
Severed Heads - All Rights Reserved/Hawaii Torso 97 Cigarettes (1979 x2)
Throbbing Gristle – Exotica (1979)

20/02/2011: Three Horrible February Weeks – Rants and Experiments from a Mire of Misery

Week Ending 06/02/2011:

Went to speak to Will at the start of the week regarding a letter sent to me by email from the course - designed, as Will later put it, to give me a kick up the arse. Which I suppose it did, sort of. Hardly made me feel any better however. The bullet points of the causes for concern were as I remember:

- Failure to submit journal for the January deadline
- No evidence of blog
- Lack of appearance at Whitworth talks
- Lack of appearance at 1:30 Course Talks

Something else too, I think there were five points. Fair enough - I haven’t got the blog up yet due to not having the Internet here at my flat so yes I’m behind on that. The Whitworth talks are shit though and just not relevant to the kind of work I’m interested in. It’s always just contemporary gallery stuff and both words make my skin crawl. Going to the seminar afterward is often even more of a patronizing waste of time: briefly skim over the content of the Whitworth talk, exchange a few worthless opinions about that, then sit about being asked “how could the course be made better?” Of course I don’t care at all how the course could be made better because I won’t be there to experience it being better, so why should I? My only recommendation is this – the university ought to have a tougher selection process for getting onto the course in the first place. No pain no gain kind of thing. There’s too much variation in the levels of knowledge, interest and ability amongst everybody and as a result nobody ever bothers to get a decent debate started about anything interesting, let alone art.

Anyway I digress. I also spoke to Will about my current state of mind and that I was considering seeing a doctor/counsellor. I’ve registered with the doctors now but I’ve not made an appointment yet. I don’t know really what to do about it...

This week Mosley Street Gallery opened a new exhibition of Grayson Perry work so on the Wednesday Mont and I went to have a look. It wasn’t great but there was some nice work and it got me a little more interested in GP, enough at least to watch some interviews on YouTube later in the evening. I’ve written my first gallery review for the year on it all so details are in that.

Thursday I went on the train to Liverpool to meet with Will and the other IAers that hadn’t gone on the Berlin trip (Dan, and later Mont) at Fact cinema. It turned out there was something going on in the city about Nam June Paik and so Fact and the Tate both had work. Fact had one of these shitty “artist response” things like at Grayson Perry the day before (evidently the latest trend) and a large canvas cone with laser projections on it, neither of which I enjoyed particularly. Upstairs though they had some interesting videos of international satellite-linked music and dance performances organised by NJP in the 1980s with some hilarious footage of David Bowie and Merce Cunningham. The Tate exhibition was more interesting as it had all the TV sculpture stuff and a decent section on Paik’s collaborative work with John Cage including prepared piano and tape experiments. Generally though it was a depressing day, I felt shit, found it hard not to be sulky and communicated poorly with people. Liverpool is always so fucking bleak anyway. They only gave it Capital Of Culture status to dupe people into going there.

In better news though I won the bids for, and received, two items from eBay - a Boss DD3 Digital Delay pedal and a Sony TC 280 reel-to-reel tape recorder which I intend to use along with my mixer for getting on with some new sound work. I haven’t done a lot with either yet as I’ve just been fiddling with the two seeing what they do. Plus I need to pick up various cables and connectors before I can link everything up and get going properly. I did spend Saturday evening cutting and splicing some tape however, making randomly compiled loops to feed through the TC 280. Results varied...

Meantime I began some video tests with Mont in an attempt to loosely combine our work and kill two birds with one stone so to speak. As his project is focusing on super-positioning I thought we could combine the idea with the documenting of my sound recording processes and so we made a couple of videos to test this (and yes this is a belated version of our proposed Edge Of The Wedge re-enactment. Belated and a bit shit):

- Tripod standing on record deck turntable with Rode Mic elastic banded to the top and dictophone connected and sitting on the turntable below. Player then spins at 33 1/3 rpm while I sit holding a note on my Stylophone, which I hold toward the player from my stationary position. Result on the final recording is that the tone, rather than staying at a monotonous volume, audibly swipes past the microphone creating a kind of WOM-ing pulse of quiet and loud. Nice effect to bear in mind... Monty sorts out some angles to film from with his two AV store camcorders.

- Camcorder wrapped into a ball of bubblewrap and dangled on a length of string. Stylophone also dangled on string with the stylus taped/white tacked in a note-playing position. Both are activated and held over the banister into the stairwell of my flat along with the Rode Mic in its foam windshield, and Christian and I swing them about below while Mont films it all from the break part of the stairs. It was fun to do but the result wasn’t very interesting, mostly nauseating infact as the camera wouldn’t stop spinning.

Below: Top - Sony TC280 Reel to Reel with Boss DD3 Digital Delay
Bottom - Turntable/Mic experiment

30/01/2011: Silence

Spent the week doing some practical experimenting with the 4-Track. Learning, but slowly. Mostly seems a case of having the correct wires and enough of them to be able use the thing as you want; couple of complications with various modes and knowing which ones activate or deactivate others etc. It doesn’t make for particularly interesting reading, too much of a practical activity. Been playing the semi-warped records and recording snippets of static and pops onto the 4-Track to see what kind of volume level they’re output as. I’ve also taken John Cage’s Silence out of the uni library and started to read bits of that.

28/11/2010: Fostex

I purchased this from Jason this week:

21/11/2010: Watercolour Challenge

I’ve now begun to create abstract collages using different pieces of card cut into random or at least semi-random shapes. I am using watercolours to create mottled textures for some of the cards and others are being inked or stained. My current aim is to explore methods of chance in relation to composition and experiment with varying levels of both. The compositional idea initially came from browsing some works of Hans Arp:

Below: Before My Birth, 1914

14/11/2010: Exotica!

A musical style I discovered during those sun-drenched final weeks of my residence in New Medlock through Martin Denny’s album of the same name. Recently I have begun to further investigate the past-phenomenon of “Exotica” and its associated genres – music highly connotative of American “space-age bachelor pads” of the 1950s/60s (think the real-life equivalent of Thunderbirds or The Jetsons) – and am beginning to see a parallel of a sort between it and my own work, or ideas for work at least, with regard to the idea of artifice and interpretation.

Some notable releases of the genre with sleeve examples:

- Martin Denny – Exotica/Primitiva
- Les Baxter – Ritual Of The Savage/Tamboo!
- Yma Sumac – Voice Of The Xtabay


* A personal note on the “artifice” of “Exotica”/Manifestation of sorts on “Trafford Centre Art”:

Take something of interest (in this case “far-away”, non-western lands and cultures – but could also be applied to something else complex that people don’t care enough about to know the difference between pastiche and the genuine article - religion, magick, history etc.) and rely more on personal interpretation rather than fact to create some sort of image – not unlikely it will be shared by others. Trafford Centre art as it were - the bits that people value from historical periods remade now. In that example the grandeur of ancient Rome and Egypt among others are stripped of meaning and cheaply reenacted solely for the purpose of enhancing the shopping experience. The music of the Exotica genre itself is hardly of Polynesian origin, more in the vein of American cocktail bar and lounge music of the period and simply given an “exotic” sounding makeover; a relatively small detail which eventually becomes the main selling point. Many releases of the Exotica genre depict wholly American, or Western at least, ideals about the islands of the Central Pacific, their inhabitants and traditions, and not least, sexuality – particularly evident in the fantasy-romance-implying covers of Ritual Of The Savage (where we see a Western man attempting to woo a native beauty who looks suspiciously on the alert, probably for her husband) and Exotica (a sultry-eyed woman emerging from bead curtains (!) - an image not dissimilar to plenty of other Denny records), not to mention the amazingly voluptuous cover woman of Primitiva… These are playfully inaccurate interpretations that illustrate something that is in fact real – not in the places and cultures depicted but in the minds of enough middle-aged suburban Americans of the day to get Exotica to the top of the charts for several weeks in 1959.

12/11/2010: London

Escaped to London for a few nights during the week to visit Ben. Monty came down midway through and stayed a night too – in the daytime we visited Jenny Lomax’s Camden Arts Centre, as featured predominantly in the talk she gave at the Whitworth recently. Monty wanted to enquire about potential work-experience/networking possibilities but it turned out there were no positions at present. Nice building, good cafe, some interesting books in the bookshop. Artwork was bullshit though.

Went into the Royal College with Ben one afternoon to do some tests for his work with a digital projector based on the notion of the Dreamachine – we projected animated flashing videos directly onto our closed eyelids for the Dreamachine effect and tried the same method using a sheet of paper curved round our open eyes, which produced a different effect totally; certainly less headache inducing than the first.

I also had a good talk to Ben about my work and current uncertainty with regards to direction; we brainstormed and reasoned my thoughts for an hour or so.

Below: Top - Dreamachine simulation using digital projector
Bottom - Problematic Brainstorming

07/11/2010: Writings

Most of the work I’ve done this week has been writing – a return to the typewritten note-cards I began to keep toward the end of the first year, before moving into 11 Tenby for the summer without my typewriter. I recently finished off my summer-read, William S. Burroughs’ The Soft Machine, giving me renewed enthusiasm to keep on top of dreams, memories etc. in free form, punctuation-less prose. Perhaps needless to say, I have for the time being stalled with the permutations…

01/11/2010: Permutations

I went to the university library earlier in the week and rented a documentary about, and a book by, Hans Richter. Having seen some of the old film work of his (Rhythmus 21 etc.) at the Bauhaus Archiv I felt compelled to get back into him as I’d enjoyed Dreams That Money Can Buy a couple of years back. The most interesting parts of both the documentary and the book were the bits that looked at his relief work in wood, plaster, debris etc. as this was again composed as collage, and indeed very elegant. Most notable was his use of a specific kind of tile, of his own design, to cover wall areas (for example) referred to by him as a Pro-Contra. These consisted of two parts each – a plain square of thick plywood (this served as the base for each) with another square the same size cut by a band-saw along a kind of J-shaped line, splitting the square into two linkable sections. One half only of the resulting asymmetrical pair would then be glued as a relief onto the base tile – the other half would be glued to another base tile (or not, depending on the composition) and each would finally be painted (usually white all over but there were also colour variations) Once enough had been made to cover the area in question, they would be positioned either by chance or as composition (or Richter) dictated.

I mention this in particular because I’ve been reading simultaneously about permutations in Brion Gysin’s Back In No Time – visually he would often use loose grid formations, created by chance using a segmented and inked-up decorators roller, as a basis for image-collage or cut-up text pieces, and he also explored the idea of “authorless” permutation poetry, most memorably with I Am That I Am – and I’ve now put my original drawing project on the shelf (I suppose I am still drawing but not in the same way at all) and have been designing tile grids in my notebook using name/initial Sigils designed at the end of the first year as basic shapes to create composition from permutation.

Below:
Top - Example of a Richter Pro-Contra relief composition
Bottom - Permutation Poem Rub Out The Write Word by Brion Gysin

24/10/2010: Berlin Revisited

Spent five days of this week in Berlin with my Dad – bizarre to be back there so soon (returned from a trip there just a month earlier with Monty and Arnold etc.). Unfortunately I had a cold the entire stay. It was a bit depressing to be in the same city but going to completely different places – walking past Watergate in the daytime, seeing Teufelsberg in the distance from up inside the Fernsehturm, not visiting Keb-bup in the small hours... But I did see more of the place. We got out to Wannsee and visited the mansion house where the Nazi’s proposed the Final Solution – the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz – very bleak down by the lake this time of year. Went to the communist memorial at Treptower Park. Went up the Fernsehturm twice, once in the day, once at night. Loxx Am Alex – Miniatur Welten Berlin, one of the world’s largest model railway layouts (awesome). The Bauhaus Archiv – they had a brilliant exhibition of experimental work by students of (and including works by) Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a few nice Schlemmer sculptures, a handful of excellent architectural models including Mies Van Der Roe’s gargantuan, un-realized glass skyscraper. The Pergamon Museum - amazing, particularly Ishtar gate and the Pergamon itself. The DDR Museum too. All in all I guess we saw quite a lot over just four full days…

A eugenicist doctor examines the eyes of twins – from a display in the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz:

17/10/2010: Bodies

The drawing is going well – I attended a life drawing session at the Cavendish pub behind the uni on Wednesday for a couple of hours and made about fifty postcards worth of marks and abstractions; some of them even turned out vaguely figurative surprisingly enough. I really enjoyed it and felt I’d had a better, further exploration of drawing blind, with speeds and levels of density in composition for example, although the group leader didn’t seem to see it in the same light. Aside from making blind drawings from visually focusing on a model, I’ve also been experimenting with drawing from touch alone, placing one hand somewhere on my body as the other marks the card according to sense or assuming a position of some sort whilst noting interpretations of physical sensations in terms of abstract impressions – really quite relaxing and with interesting outcomes.

I also received the developed Super 8 footage of the previously mentioned living room escapade, shot back in August. It was amusing to say the least; some bits were really quite good. Some nice footage at the start too of shelved skulls from St. Leonard’s Ossuary in Hythe, taken way back in June. As yet this is all confined to its reel – the projector seems to be playing up a little so I’ll have to use somebody else’s to make a digital transfer…

10/10/2010: Back In No Time

I have spent the week reading and drawing – Brion Gysin and Arnold Pollock respectively. The Gysin book (Back In No Time – A Brion Gysin Reader) has been fuelling my desire to draw, as his paintings and prints have something of a collage quality to them, creating shimmering illusions of life through well-designed brushstrokes and simple abstractions. As Arnold comes from a family of drafts-people and draws a lot himself, I decided to meet up with him to begin practicing again with the hope of picking up some new ideas or techniques to work on, and so we have sat drawing one another throughout the week, at his house or in coffee shops, generally using various pencils, drawing pens and charcoal. For the most part I’ve been doing all the drawing blind, focusing on sections of the body whilst drawing, to try to capture lines and textures purely rather than trying to make portraits or anatomical studies as such.

I also sent an email to the Tate Archive to enquire of any information about their – supposedly – archived work of Genesis P-Orridge and the possibility of making an appointment to view it, as of course this would be an amazing networking opportunity as well as exciting in itself. I heard back promptly with a friendly and helpful response, in which I was informed that along with a massive 80% of the Tate’s archive, P-Orridge’s work is as yet uncatalogued. However:

“If you would like to see material in an uncatalogued collection, please write to the Archivist at the address below, giving as much information as possible about the subject of your research and the material you are interested in, allowing at least three weeks’ notice.”

03/10/2010: Shelter

The first project of the second year – Shelter – has been set this week. During the first year I didn’t really work to the project titles at all and that worked out fine as obviously I was still doing work, but as I have only a rough idea of the kind of work I want to be working on for the next few weeks I have decided to take the project title into consideration and work against the idea of Shelter as this feels appropriate for me at present. The collage and film work I made over the summer felt like closure to the direction taken in the first year – I had no further desire to continue making sexually based collages, I decided to hastily wrap up my sci-fi/masturbation film project – as progress had happened too slowly over six months or so – in the form of about two minutes of Super 8 footage of me in costume gyrating in my living room, and I had (and have at present) no further ideas as such for any other video projects.

As it is then my intention is to return to drawing, or mark making, to begin the year afresh using my hands as opposed to technology, which I relied on predominantly in some form or other throughout the first year in video, sound and even collage (as this of course uses printed photographs). I also have a sense of guilt with regard to drawing as it is often considered a fundamental skill yet I tend to shy away from it whenever I can: this is the shelter – shelter from drawing (or any other unfamiliar/lesser practiced medium) – I want to remove myself from, in order I hope, to further extend the spectrum of my creative ability and confidence.

The last collage made during summertime – Where Red Is The Colour Of The Multipla Dream. Made as a gift for Monty’s 30th in August: