Monday, December 18, 2006

space station

wow, just came across this brilliant image on stuff.co.nz from nasa. it shows astronauts working on the international space station. 400 kms below you can see the top of the south island and bottom of the north island of new zealand. read the story here.



















on the stereo: 'until dusk' by Frank LoCrasto, from the album 'when you're there'.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

bob dylan

here's an advert i just got from aj bell. he and derek lind and some others have put together a band to play bob dylan's gospel stuff. they are performing at parachute 2007. but before that, they are doing a gig in hamilton. aj says,

Kia ora good people of Aotearoa...not doing anything on Tues night 12th December???...fancy a trip to the megatropolis of Hamilton for the debut of the Bob Dylan Electric Gospel Band??? ...all yours for $10 in the name of TearFund ...along with poet maestro Arthur Amon and Jervais-inspired stand up...once only opportunity to catch this performance outside of the 2007 Parachute Festival.

Yours from the deep part of the river
Andrew Bell

whoa, this should be really good. and as aj hints, it includes my esteemed compadres in the poetry revolution: arthur amon and also ross millar! (click the ad to see it a bit larger)


on the headphones: 'no woman, no cry' by bob marley, from the album 'live!' www.bobmarley.com

Sunday, November 26, 2006

U2 pt2

this post follows my review of the concert - so read that first if you haven't yet (below).

if you have a look at the comments on the review, you will see one from ben who got a lot closer to the action than we were and was much more blown away by the experience. immediacy is definitely something you miss out on in a big concert unless you are up close. which is also the reason why jamie, in an email to me, said he wanted to see U2 play in a 1500 seat venue one day!

i found this excellent photo gallery at stuff.co.nz that gives a better taste of what the band is like up close.

and to further complexify the question about what bono meant when he said "Jesus, Jew, Mohammed - all true", anna pointed me back to this excerpt from the book 'bono on bono' which i read earlier this year (my review is here). in what bono says there seems to be no doubt that he believes that jesus is supremely true, and he even speaks against the idea that jesus was just one of many prophets... [edit: also read a comment from ben, which i have since added to the end of this post too - he may well be right]

Assayas: I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?

Bono: Yes, I think that's normal. It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

Assayas: I haven't heard you talk about that.

Bono: I really believe we've moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.

Assayas: Well, that doesn't make it clearer for me.

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I'd be interested to hear that.

Bono: That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep shit. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.

Assayas: The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

Bono: But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there's a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let's face it, you're not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point. It should keep us humbled… It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.

Assayas: That's a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it's close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world's great thinkers. But Son of God, isn't that farfetched?

Bono: No, it's not farfetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says: No. I'm not saying I'm a teacher, don't call me teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet. I'm saying: "I'm the Messiah." I'm saying: "I am God incarnate." And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take. You're a bit eccentric. We've had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don't mention the "M" word! Because, you know, we're gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no. I know you're expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he's gonna keep saying this. So what you're left with is: either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. I mean, we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. This man was like some of the people we've been talking about earlier. This man was strapping himself to a bomb, and had "King of the Jews" on his head, and, as they were putting him up on the Cross, was going: OK, martyrdom, here we go. Bring on the pain! I can take it. I'm not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that's farfetched…

Bono later says it all comes down to how we regard Jesus:

Bono: [I]f only we could be a bit more like Him, the world would be transformed …When I look at the Cross of Christ, what I see up there is all my shit and everybody else's. So I ask myself a question a lot of people have asked: Who is this man? And was He who He said He was, or was He just a religious nut? And there it is, and that's the question. And no one can talk you into it or out of it.

[edit: ben's comment...]

hey man i might be wrong but the way i heard it was "Jesus, Jew, Mohammed - its true, Jesus, Jew, Mohammed - its true. all sons, all sons of abraham" then he went on about the middle east and how the 3 religions of christianity, judaism and islam all came from abraham and are all congregated in that part of the world and how they all need to get along. he sung something about "father abraham look at your sons" or something along those lines. i think the "Jesus, Jew, Mohammed - all true" is what some random christian person heard and spread it round so thats what you are expecting him to say. pretty sure thats not what bono is saying. doesn't make sense if he goes from saying "all true" to "all sons of abraham"

Saturday, November 25, 2006

U2 auckland 2006

last night (friday) anna and i went to the long-awaited U2 concert at mt smart in auckland. i say "long-awaited" because i remember saying that U2 was my favourite band when i was 10 and this was the first time i have seen them live, and also "long-awaited" because they were supposed to come in march but had to postpone until november - that on top of a 12-year hiatus in touring to new zealand.

needless to say, i had hyped up the whole event quite a bit in my mind
beforehand, so i was ripe for anti-climax. when we arrived in auckland i was able to witness a whole new side of my wife when she was suddenly overtaken with a brilliant obsession for seeing the members of the band outside of the concert environment. that obsession was greatly fueled by finding out that our hotel was 5 minutes away from the hyatt - where the band was rumoured to be staying.

we spent a total of about 4 and 1/2 hours standing outside the hyatt over two days, before being treated to a fleeting glimpse of adam clayton and larry mullen as they left for soundcheck on friday. i didn't get a decent photo - my one shot on my little point and shoot was blurry. it must have been the heat of the moment, because all my other photos that day were sharp...


that done we got in the car and headed for the venue - arriving finally (after getting a park) at about 4pm.
there were no real queues so we splashed out on $45 tshirts.

the 5.30pm gate opening happened at about 6pm and i managed to 'smuggle' by c
amera in past an over-zealous security (they confiscated the plastic bottle tops off everyone's drink bottles... that is still a mystery - but as we had a plastic bottle, it caused a perfect diversion for my smuggling). i'm not sure how you were supposed to get into the famed 'ellipse' at the front of the stage, but we didn't get in there - we were about 15 metres from the front of the ellipse.

as is always the case at these things - our comfortable space was pretty quickly invaded by a more anti-social element. our part
icular bane were a group of drunk and dope-smoking university students from otago, followed by a group of four drunk pre-middle-aged blokes who barged their way through the crowd before stopping right in front of us. they endured a stunning burst of vitriol from the other punters who had been in the area long before them - and rightly so. i had a particular problem with a 6"5' member of the invading group who decided to stand directly in front me. lance was more perturbed with another member of the same group who decided to take piss in the middle of the crowd.

the sky over mt smart decided to follow suite and also leaked all over the crowd. the jacket, that i had been 50/50 about bringing, paid off.


kanye west opened the concert and i have to say that i was quite impressed with him. i would put him in the top three american intelligent hiphop innovators (knarls barkley and outkast are the other two). kanye struggled to work the more rock-orientated crowd, but informed us that of all the places
they had played on this leg of the tour, nz gave him the warmest reception. that being the case, my heart goes out to the guy for the way he must have been received in australia.

after that, U2 took blimin' ages to come on. but when th
ey did they erupted the stadium with 'city of blinding lights' and then 'vertigo'. i loved their light show - i couldn't see the stage. the aforementioned sixfootfiver turned around to me after a couple of songs to ask if i was feeling a bit happier now. i thanked him and said that i had an excellent view of his back. fortunately, because he was drunk, he swayed quite a bit - allowing me priceless glimpses of the on-stage action.

that aside, the concert rocked on nicely but seemed to hit a bit of a speedbump when bono began his sermons about poverty, justice and a
bout muslimchristianjews all needing to get along. i've been to a lot of christian concerts in my life, so i know what it is to have a concert interrupted for a quick sermon. and i'm in favour of makingpovertyhistory and justice, and for an end to religious violence. and if someone had criticised U2 in my hearing for the way they push 'the issues' in their concerts, i would have thought that that person was obviously shallow and had no idea. but at the concert itself, i found myself inwardly begging bono to just let the songs speak for themselves and just get on with the music.

i suppose that feeling wasn't helped by me not agreeing with at least one point that bono seemed to be making. he delivered his (in)famous "Jesus, Jew, Mohammed - all true" while wearing a headband that made the word 'coexist' out of a crescent, star of david and cross. quite apart from a tendency i have to lean heavily in favour of "jesus being true more than
the other two" (also a rhyme), it seems to me that bono's line is a throw-away when you consider that jesus's teaching contradicts that of mohammed, and that mohammed's teaching directly contradicted that of jesus and the jews. how could "Jesus, Jew, Mohammed - all true" be true? i would wholeheartedly agree if bono had stood up and said that we could learn something from jesus, jew and mohammed. but what does he mean by "all true"? was he saying that they are all equally true, completely true? am i missing his point? i can't see that secularists could have been particularly inspired by his dictum (other than to have their belief strengthened that religion is the main cause of the problem ) - and i am certain that secularism was the dominant religion in the crowd at the stadium last night. but you see that he has at least achieved one of on-going aims: to be controversial to generate discussion.

anyway, to get back to
the music: after that glitch, the concert picked up again. a highlight was when they performed 'one tree hill' - written about an auckland landmark. my favourite bono preaching part came later in the concert when, referring back to one tree hill and the fact that the actual tree had been killed by an act of vandalism years after the song was written, he said: "they tore down our tree, but you can't tear down poetry. you can't cut down poetry with a chainsaw." which brought a tear to my eye - i really did love that tree and really wish it was still there. but the place is still called 'one tree hill' despite the absence.

the concert closed with the obligatory encores where key U2 songs were played - including the impressive new 'the saints are coming' which was brilliantly done. i should also mention bono's rendition of 'miss sarajevo' in which he sang luciano pavaroti's part flawlessly. his voice seeme
d to be in fine form - despite the fact that i thought i had heard it declining on their last album when compared to earlier albums.

the concert finally ended with the song 'kite' from 'all that you can't leave behind'. and so there it was. the crowd lingered as we pushed our way out. the concert had been and gone - all that waiting, all the hype, and nothing left to do but go home. my personal feeling was a mixture of pleasure and disappointment. you don't want anything to tarnish something that you
have been waiting that long for. that being said - it really was a brilliant concert and they are a brilliant band. and if they ever come to nz again, i will go again (but next time i might get seats - far away from the rabble, but not so far away that i can't see them standing behind taller than normal drunk guys and getting rained on from all directions).

some pictures... (the first one's by me, the rest are by anna - click to see them bigger): (top to bottom) anna waits at the concert, the edge and larry, coexist, letting go...




Wednesday, November 22, 2006

playing music over skype, israeli beauty queens

i was using skype for the first time yesterday, and it suddenly occurred to me how cool it would be to be able to play music off your computer in the background (or foreground) of the conversation so that both parties could hear it.

true to form, if you can think of it, someone is bound to have already done it. ideally i wanted a plugin for itunes, so that whatever was playing in itunes would also play in the background of the conversation. i didn't find anything like that, but i did find a software mp3 player that plugs into skype. called tunesup for skype (beta). it calls itself freeware but it does launch its own website in the background. also it displays an error message when you shut it down on my system - probably something to do with the "beta" bit...

but the program itself is pretty cool. there are mixer sliders for mixing the level of music compared to the microphone etc. it loads mp3 files and a couple of other file formats as well, and also loads m3u playlists.

unfortunately itunes doesn't save playlists as m3u. but more trawling the net uncovered this conversion wizard: SonglistToM3U. what you do is export your playlist out of itunes as a txt file (available under the export options in itunes) and then run it through the wizard. the wizard creates an m3u list out of that. so you and i are away laughing.

now for the bit about the israeli beauty queen that you've been waiting for. this from stuff.co.nz:

Beauty queen downs arms to save legs - 17 November 2006

JERUSALEM: Miss Israel has been given permission not to carry her assault rifle during service in the Israeli army because she says it bruises her legs.

Reigning beauty queen Yael Nezri, a private who recently completed basic training, said the bruises were making it difficult for her to model in photo shoots. The Jerusalem Post reported that Nezri, 18, had been granted an exemption by her commanders during her two-year army stint.

Monday, November 20, 2006

little world, little room

i've been reading the excellent book 'contemporary new zealand photographers'. this morning i came across some nice imagery in the introductory essay by gregory o'brien that is part of the same general universe as my safe little world concept...

"The camera is a small room
large enough for you and me
but one of us
will have to stay outside...

The camera has four walls, a roof and a floor; it is a miniature house in which shutters are opened and closed; in which light and shade are constantly being adjusted... if the camera is indeed a small room, how has the architecture around it changed? And what about the neighbourhood?"

nz art has always been very conscious of the nz landscape - there is an on-going, however slight, sense of unease about our human intrusion on the nz wilderness. the nz landscape is often a place of frightening beauty. in part, my safe little world concept is about the suburbia we've placed on that landscape, and no matter how far suburban boundaries extend, our rugged nz wilds are just around the next bend in the road - the mountains, the bush, the sea.

i found out by reading o'brien's essay that there is a bit of an on-going theme of small structures in the middle of that wilderness (o'brien says that those structures can act as a metaphor for the camera itself). and the more i think about that the more i see that that is true. i am always drawn to pictures of small buildings in harsh environments - drawn as if i have no choice in the matter.

when i was young we used to go to our family bach on kawau island in the hauraki gulf north of auckland. that was a place of frightening beauty for me. we had a small two-storey house with the bush encroaching down a steep hill behind us. each summer dad, my brothers and i would pull tiny manuka saplings out of the hillside to keep them from growing big, to stop the bush from reclaiming our section. in front of us was the harbour. i think of rainy days when mist was hanging on the hills across the harbour and in the bush there was a kind of intense quietness. at night, unless the moon was out, it was completely dark. the wekas (like a kiwi but with a short beak) in the bush around us had an incredibly strange other worldly call that they used to sing in chorus.

as much as i loved that wilderness, there were times that because of its strangeness, loneliness and darkness, our little bach was a necessary sanctuary.

my favourite photo that i have taken so far is this one:














which, as you can see, fits very well with what i'm talking about. the location of this bird hide (a small building to watch birds from) is miranda on the firth of thames, south of auckland. my parents have managed to find another wilderness place to build - their house is further up the road. the firth of thames is another rugged strip of nz coastline - a place of strong winds and impressive skies. the hide in the picture looks across the firth towards the coromandel ranges - a mountain range covered in almost impenetrable bush. on the far side of those mountains is a playground for wealthy aucklanders. but those mountains are always at their backs, and the pacific ocean is always in front.

on the headphones: 'fitter, happier' by radiohead, from the album 'ok computer'. http://www.radiohead.com/

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

sigur ros

the sigur ros website is brilliant - not so brilliant looking, but it has loads of cool stuff on it to download - including a lot of free mp3s. if you're not familiar with sigur ros, they are a post-rock band from iceland.

through their website i also found these pictures of the band - on tour in iceland. they performed live with a local marching band... brilliant. i love their cool geekiness (if that isn't too much of an oxymoron). the pictures come from a small town icelandic newspaper. click on the images to see them bigger...
















oh, and if you're icelandic (unlike me) and you'd like to read the blurb that goes with these images:

Sigur Rós í EdinborgSigur Rós kom hélt tónleika á Ísafirði þann 26. júlí í Edinborg á Ísafirði og voru tónleikarnir aðrir tónleikar sveitarinnar í Íslandstúr hennar. Áður hafði hún spilað á tónleiku í Ólafsvík og á litlum óformlegum tónleikum í Selárdal í Arnarfirði. Verið er að gera heimildarmynd um Sigur Rós og voru bæði hljóð og mynd tekin upp á tónleikunum í Edinborg. Gríðarlegur búnaður fylgdi hljómsveitinni og starfsliðið með tónlistarmönnum slagaði hátt í 50 manns. Er þá ekki talin Lúðrasveit Ísafjarðar en vel var til fundið hjá Sigur Rós að fá þá til liðs við sig í einu lagi. Þakið ætlaði að rifna af Edinborg þegar Lúðrasveitin birtist á sviðinu, Villi Valli, Höddi Þorsteins, Elli Skafta og öll hin komin upp á svið með heimsfrægri hljómsveit! Sjónarspilið var allt hið magnaðasta enda leggur Sigur Rós mikið upp úr sjónræna á tónleikum sínum. Hljómsveitin tók lög af öllum sínum plötum,sum hver í útgáfum sem ekki hefur heyrst áður. Blásarakvintett og strengjakvartett var með í för rétt eins og á öllum tónleikum sveitarinnar nú til dags. Meðlimir Sigur Rósar höfðu það á orði að nú muni fjölga enn á sviðinu því svo vel tókst til með Lúðrasveitina að það verður erfitt að sleppa því næst. Það er alveg á hreinu að aldrei áður hafa verið haldnir aðrir eins tónleikar á Ísafirði og langt verður í að það verði gert aftur. Ljósmyndari blaðsins var á staðnum og tók þar meðfylgjandi myndir.

on the headphones: 'softness, goodness' by starflyer 59, from the album 'talking voice vs. singing voice'. http://www.sf59.com/

the kiwi flies

i just came across this nice little animation (on one of my favourite blogs - drawn!) starring a kiwi in the lead role. it was done by dony permedi for his master of fine arts project at the school of visual arts, new york...



on the headphones: 'meo blodnasir' by sigur ros, from the album 'takk'. www.sigur-ros.co.uk

Friday, November 10, 2006

matters of style

i'm not a big fan of presidential quotes, but i like this one:

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

in other creative-orientated news, i've started keeping a digital scrapbook. any images or whatever i see on the net that inspire me in some way i am now pasting into an indesign file and keeping as a pdf. obviously, due to copyright there isn't much i can do with my scrapbook other than keep it for my own enjoyment, but according to a seminar on design i heard a couple of years ago, keeping a scrapbook is always a good idea.

today's additions to my scrapbook were found here and here.

can i also say in passing, how impressed i am with the new version of mozilla firefox? it includes inline spell checking when you type on the internet - which is brilliant for blog writing and stuff.


on the headphones: 'honey (azoia dub)' by tosca, from the album 'different tastes of honey'. www.g-stoned.com/artists/tosca

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

all saints day

happy all saints day! for my money, i think all saints day (nov 1) would be much cooler to celebrate than halloween. you probably already know this, but another name for all saints day is 'all hallows day' - 'hallow' meaning 'holy' - as in the lord's prayer, "hallowed be thy name". "een" is actually "e'en" - a contracted version of "even" or "evening". so "halloween" literally means the evening before all saints day. so there you have it.

in other points of interest, the latest edition of cs news - nz's main christian arts magazine - arrived today. this publication just keeps on getting better. they are doing a great job. you can download or just view the entire latest edition here.

and now for another [mildly] interesting point. i came across an excellent contemporary fine art photography blog the other day, called
Conscientious. it is really worth checking out. the photograph below by olivia beasley caught my eye. she does these fantastic photos of commercial spaces at night, but i was also struck by the detail of the space she is photographing. i don't know where this building is, but it looks like it has curtains of images as a design feature. it kind of reminded me of a giant version of my postcard montages - one day i'll exhibit on that scale!



bono

i just realised that the u2 concert that was postponed from earlier this year is happening this month! hurrah!

meanwhile, here is a story sent to me on email (courtesy of lance) - i have no idea about the truth of it:

At a U2 concert in Glasgow, Bono asked the audience for some quiet.

Then, in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands.

Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone, "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies."

A voice from near the front pierced the silence, "Well, stop f***ing doing it then!"

on the headphones: 'semaphore' by jakob, from the album 'Cale:drew'. www.myspace.com/jakobmusic

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

nothing in particular

i don't really have anything to say in this blog entry. other than the fact that i spent 9 hours yesterday (labour day) drawing a picture in illustrator - and it still needs colouring...

and also i just came across this photo of radiohead, and thought how nice it is to see thom york smiling (2nd from left)...

and also to say that today my keyboard got tea spilt all over it and stopped working. so i've been using the on-screen keyboard that comes with windows. it is frustrating and takes ages to click each letter.

here is a picture of me writing this post - the keyboard is clearly visable near the bottom of the picture. (click on the image to see it bigger).

this post has taken me over 00:17:25 to write.

on the stereo... oh stuff it

Saturday, September 30, 2006

trinity (philosophising pt. 3)

this is not what i said i would talk about in my next philosophising post, but an idea came to me and you have to strike while the iron is hot... (if you want to catch up on what i've been raving about so far, the whole lot is here in pdf form)

one of the great mysteries about God is how the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) functions as one. it occured to me that if we could could grasp the idea that in God's mind "physical" water (for example) and "spiritual" water are the same thing, the Trinity would not be so hard to envisage. it is made up of something concrete and something spiritual, but it is all same thing "conceptually".

but i came across something else interesting last night. in the study of semiotics (the way words and their meanings function) there are normally two parts to a "word" - the "sign" (ie the concrete word), and the meaning (ie the concept or object that the sign has been attached to). there are all sorts of other aspects in semiotics that look at how the sign becomes attached to the concept or object, but that's too much of a diversion to discuss here.

semiotics is normally based on "dyadic" thinking (ie involves thinking about two elements). but as we have seen earlier, ultimately God often prefers odd numbers, eg ones and threes.

walker percy (a christian novelist and thinker) proposed a third essential element to the study of semiotics. that is, the mind, or rather soul, in which the connection is made between sign and meaning. he called the inclusion of this third element "the delta factor" (because if you draw it on paper it looks like a triangle).

i'm actually not wanting to discuss semiotics here. i'm wanting to discuss a possible way of looking at the Trinity based on percy's semiotic model. whenever i see something profound that has three elements, i always try and superimpose it over the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) to see if it reflects the relationship within the Trinity in any way and to see if it can help me understand the Trinity better.

in this case, percy's triadic structure seemed to have a rather interesting fit. supposing we lay his model over the Trinity. on one corner of his model we have the sign, on another corner the meaning (or "object"), and on the third corner, the element that connects the two.

the sign lines up rather neatly with Jesus, the son. Jesus is the concrete Word, the visible incarnation of God, so in that sense is rather like the sign - ie the visible word on the page.

the meaning (or "sense") lines up rather neatly with God the Father. he is the meaning of the Godhead (by Godhead, i mean the combined elements that make up God), the underlying "concept", the object, if you will, that "gives birth" to the word.

that leaves the third corner - that is, the thing that connects the two, and in our model that leaves the Holy Spirit. that would make the Holy Spirit a kind of glue that holds the Godhead together. robert inchausti in discussing percy's idea (in the book 'subversive orthodoxy') uses this phrase to discribe the third element: "a third 'player'... an invisible, immaterial 'coupler' that unites sign and sense". i have no idea whether percy or inchausti envisaged this similarity between percy's model and the Trinity - perhaps they did, in which case i'm getting excited about something that has already been thought of. but that description fits very nicely, i think, with a conception of the Holy Spirit.

the Holy Spirit is the element that holds Father and Son together. an element, interestingly, which Jesus gave to believers to unite them with God. percy also calls that third element in semiotics "the interpretor". which further bolsters the connection between the Trinity and his semiotic model, as Christian thought envisages the Holy Spirit as that which helps a person understand the mysteries of God.

now let's lay a third model over these two - the parts that make up a person (body, soul and spirit).

"body" overlays sign (word) and jesus (son), ie the concrete existence of the person. then i would say that "soul" overlays Father and meaning. the soul is that which makes us unique people - it is the concept and blueprint of who we are. "spirit" therefore overlays Holy Spirit. it holds body and soul together - it is the "lifeforce" (to use a word unfortunately laden with new age connotations) or the breath of God in us that gives us life - the connector between our parts. when the connector leaves, the body and soul are separated.

it is always exciting when you can overlay the parts of God to the parts of humankind, because it forms part of the meaning of God's phrase "let us make man in our own image". in a perfect, pre-fall state, a human would function internally (between their three parts) the way the Godhead does.

so, anyway, next time i plan to write about what i planned to write about last time: what it means creatively, here on earth now, to seek to work towards God's concept of unity given the nature of a world in division, and about the creative energy that exists in aiming towards this unity.

on the headphones: 'pepita' by calexico, from the album 'feast of wire'. www.casadecalexico.com

Saturday, September 23, 2006

jumping

last night i headed out with some mates to play pool. here are some pictures of us jumping...












duane















lance















me















matt


earlier on in the evening, lance, matt and i had placed second in our church youth talent scan using sock puppets to lip-sync to the mxpx version of keith green's 'you put this love in my heart'.

on the headphones: 'check the meaning' by richard ashcroft, from the album 'human conditions'. www.richardashcroft.com

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

hurrah!

the art enigma banksy strikes again!

latest target is paris hilton's new album.

read more here, here, here, and banksy's website is here.

on the headphones: 'zoo station' by U2, from the album 'achtung baby'. www.u2.com

Saturday, August 26, 2006

semi-permanent 06 - the report

for some unknown reason, the blog's been offline for a few days - but now that we're back in business i can give you a bit of a rundown on the conference.

i had a great time, very cool being in that creative environment for a day. the event was sold-out and about 1200 people were there.

first up was genevieve gauckler from france. she has a very quirky style involving collage and recurring cartoon characters. her design process involves pain-stakingly cutting out photos in photoshop to compile on her works. needless to say, she takes loads of photos everywhere she goes. when she spoke she apologised from the start for not being able to speak english expertly, but she endeared herself to the audience. very cool stuff. here you see a cover that she did for 'flaunt' magazine. in this picture, the background is photographic with her trademark characters overlaid on top.

then it was tokyo plastic from uk. i won't bother trying to sum them up with an image. if you've never seen their website then head there now, by clicking on the link above. it was the website that launched the careers of the two man team. it is an incredible piece of flash animation - possibly the best on the internet. anyway, since then they have gone on to do a number of commercial projects, including ads for microsoft and animation work for guy ritchie. they are way out of my class and do things that i will probably never even attempt to do, but it was interesting to hear the story, and the guy who spoke was funny and well-prepared. some nice dry english humour in there.

after lunch, it was nz's own huffer. these guys have done an amazing job creating nz-designed and manufactured clothing. their stuff is often painfully cool. in fact anna and i were looking at their summer range today - very 80s, but people will lap it up no doubt. i've always been a fan and managed to score myself a rather nice huffer hoodie just the other day. as for the actual presentation at the conference, the two founders presented something which seemed to be pretty off the cuff - a style that didn't always come off. nevermind, they earn respect for doing what they've done with their company in nz. and it sounds like it would be a pretty cool place to work.

next up, michael c place. this guy was the highlight of the day for me. aesthetically i liked his style the best. he uses a lot of symbols and his work is very clean - almost like a medical label at times. he was terrified on stage but also very honest - the same tactic (if you can call it that, because it is natural) as michael leunig used the time i saw him speak. it comes from dragging creatives who are used to working alone out onto a stage in front of 1200 people in a two level auditorium. in the end he seemed reluctant to finish his slot and showed us heaps of work - all very good. have a look at his website to get an idea of his aesthetic.

after the afternoon tea break was abake. i really have no idea how to explain these guys - two french, one welsh and one japanese who live in london. they seemed (from what i could gather) to be as into performance art as design. one of their projects involves an old band rotunda in london somewhere - they are trying to restore it and hold regular community events there. their presentation was interesting as they all took turns standing in a spot light to tell us about various projects. at the end they took a video of everyone firing off their camera flashes in the darkness of the auditorium.

and then finally for the day, was taika waititi. he's the bloke responsible for the award-winning nz short film 'two cars one night'. he began his slot by showing us an incredibly funny low budget movie that involved him running around and shooting at things followed by a trademark smirk and thumbs up into the camera. his segment was like a one-man stand up comedy show and was really brilliant. including doing live drawings to illustrate his points on a wacom tablet attached to the big screen. he also showed us some of his drawings and paintings - showing that he really is an all-round creative guy. brilliant way to end the conference and keep us all awake as the day wore into early evening.

all good - i plan to be back next year.

on the headphones: 'who needs forever? (theivery corporation remix)' by astrud gilberto, from the album 'verve remixed'.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

semi-permanent 06

today i'm heading north to go the 'semi-permanent 06' design conference in auckland (and catch up with me mum and da, and me brother, and friends, and have business meetings).

this will be my first time at a design conference so should be pretty cool. the main speakers are: taika waititi, abake, tokyo plastic, michael c place, huffer, genevieve gauckler.

back sunday afternoon - so will do a bit of a write-up after that...

on the stereo: 'change down' by bonobo, from the album 'dial m for monkey'. www.bonobomusic.com

Monday, August 14, 2006

value of art

i'm reading a book at the moment called 'the worth of art: pricing the priceless' by judith benhamou-huet that discusses the various elements that effect the price that art is sold for.

i've come across a bit that talks how the myths surrounding an artist add to the price, and about how pieces of art are almost viewed like relics of saints.

a few months ago someone was selling the floorboards of one of colin mccahon's studios on trademe. i don't know if they sold or not, but it caused a bit of a fuss. mccahon's family saw it as bizarre. and perhaps rightly so. but i found myself thinking that i wouldn't mind having those floorboards in a room of my ideal house. why? i'm not really sure, but it is the same buzz you get by going to england and going to places that famous people lived and famous events occured. and for the same reason that jack kerouac's famed continuous roll of tyescript for 'on the road' is touring american libraries.

here are some choice morsels from 'the worth of art':

"In today's art market, an artist's work is interpreted through the prism of the myth associated with his life ... All that is asked of them is that they embody a myth. In this family of artists, figures whose 'art and life are one', Van Gogh is the absolute champion, in all catagories. Madness, the severed ear, unlucky in love, unsuccessful commercially - Vincent was no winner, and not even a moral example. But he did suffer, and that is a serious point in his favour. You can imagine the high priests of the artist cult having him replace Christ's words, 'for this is my body' with 'for this is my canvas'." [p93]

"The value of the painting is of course not just aesthetic; it is a relic, whose authenticity justifies the artist's suffering and by its presence allows us to share it." [quoted on p95]

"Ever since art was severed from its spiritual function (men have praised God through their art since time immemorial), it has been constantly in search of new justifications: beauty, sublimity, emotion, provocation, transgression. Why make art? In the end, for painters, getting rid of God as the ultimate source of inspiration led to 'art for art's sake'. But for many art lovers, and therefore buyers, art is not a sufficient reason for art. Enter the cult of money. To think in terms of 'art for money', or rather, 'art in exchange for money', is to give art a tangible criterion of value, a gold standard. It is a way of making art accessible to man, so that, for a while, man can pretend to be God." [and connect with the myth of the artist - his struggles and genius - through the one-off and original art work] [p103]

on the stereo: 'lay me down' by breaks co-op, from the album 'the sound inside'. www.breaksco-op.com

Saturday, August 12, 2006

modern means

i've just finished reading a book associated with an exhibition that ran at the museum of modern art new york in association with the mori art museum tokyo in 2004 called 'modern means'. in recent times galleries have moved away from displaying art in terms of chronological art 'movements', and have begun grouping pieces from disparate periods along the lines of theme etc.

i think the thematic divisions that MoMA came up with to group modern art were quite interesting. here are the definitions that david elliot (director of mori) gives for their divisions (examples are loose, as some artists fit in more than one catagory):

primal: centres on the strategy of finding energy in the primitive forces of nature and the subconscious human mind. (eg. gaugin, munch, rodin, matisse, de koonig, gorky, pollock, bacon, freud)

reductive: traces the impulse to strip away inessential elements of form to uncover the 'purity' of what lies underneath. (eg. lloyd wright, picasso, mondrian, o'keeffe, kandinsky, albers, gego)

commonplace: considers ways in which art has absorbed mass culture and media, finding new forms of beauty in them and changing their nature in the process, sometimes with socially critical intent. (eg. christo, indiana, warhol, lichtenstein, rosenquist, hamilton, johns, koons, opie)

mutable: looks at the transforming power of art, its ability to make familiar things strange and endow them with new significance, sometimes with positive but more often with profoundly disturbing results. (eg. ernst, miro, man ray, gober, sherman, hurst)

aesthetically, my favourite image in the book was the one above by edvard munch called 'the kiss IV' and dated 1897-1902. and not at all like 'the scream'.

on the headphones: 'following' by chungking, from the album 'we travel fast'. www.chungking.co.uk

Sunday, August 06, 2006

philosophising pt. 2

as promised, here is the next installment of my ideas about breaking down dichotomy-based thinking. see below ('sun is shining') for part 1. today, by the way, the sun is most definitely not shining. in fact, we're having continuous rain.

in part 1, i talked about how dichotomy-based thinking could potentially be broken down by going back to a "hebraic" philospohical framework, and about how this could break down our traditional view of things like metaphor. but when you look around, and indeed when you look at christian thinking, you can see that there does seem to be evidence for a dichotomy. eg. light and darkness, sin and perfection - those sorts of things. so, i wanted to look at how the dichotomy came about, and what it can mean in reality.

when we look at things from a christian perspective, i think we can break ideas down into 'pre-fall' and 'post-fall' (there's a dichotomy for you). 'pre-fall' is a reality based on the conditions that existed in the world before sin entered it - God's ideal system. 'post-fall' is the stuff that became reality as a result of sin. it doesn't 'replace' the pre-fall system (that is the system that God works towards restoring), it is a system that came into effect as an ultimately temporary solution to deal with the realities of sin in the world.

one of the primary features of sin is that it divides. when it entered the world it created polarities. so, now instead of just having wellness, we also have sickness etc. it also drove a wedge between God and nature. because of this reality, the whole system has been forced into recognising dichotomies. even my differentiation of "pre-fall" and "post-fall" is a dichotomy that we are forced to create because of that reality. humans have helped to entrench those dichotomies by coming up with such ideas as "spirtual = good, physical = bad". in many ways this has been a coping strategy. it is evident that a lot of sin stuff happens in the physical, while it seems that if we could only think more "spiritual" then we could avoid a lot of sin. so hence the dichotomy emerges.

but, regardless of this coping strategy and the realities of the post-fall world, it is important to acknowledge that God has an agenda for unity. ultimately, his aim is to destroy sin and establish perfection forever, meaning that all dichotomies cease to operate. God's agenda is a kind of "higher logic", if you will (here another dichotomy i am forced to use), or as c.s. lewis might have put it, "a deep magic". a world in which "tangible" water and "abstract" water are one and the same entity is a world in which the logic of God is operating. we will probably never be able to experience the full extent of the collapse of metaphor in this regard in this current world. so we have the promise of a new heaven and new earth.

a feature of this new world, is the merging of "physical" and "spiritual". a demonstration of this is that christ's post-resurrection body was able to pass through locked doors but also able to be touched. it was both scarred and glorified. likewise, to go back to my favourite example, there will be no difference between "spiritual" water and "physical" water - there will be one entity eminating directly from God's primary concept of water.

the beautiful thing about this restored system is that the post-fall strategy will prove not to have merely been just a holding pattern while God sorted everyting out, but will be shown to have become an integral part of the main story. Christ's scars came about because of the post-fall strategy, but they nonetheless remain on him in the restored system - bearing witness for all time that God entered the post-fall system and has the marks to prove it.

i did have more to say, but i'll leave it for the next installment. next i'll talk about what it means creatively, here on earth now, to seek to work towards God's concept of unity given the nature of a world in division, and about the creative energy that exists in aiming towards this unity.

fun with scanners


the other night i experimented with putting stuff on the scanner. i found that if i left the lid up, i ended up with this nice wine colour in the background. scanning at 300 dpi picked up a lot of detail, including dust - but also the streaks left by the glass cleaner i'd used, which look a bit like wood grain. this is the picture i did of my box brownie camera. the picture still needs some cleaning, but otherwise this is the raw form of what the scanner gave me.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

sun is shining

beautiful day today. anna and i went for a walk along the waterfront and i took my lomo with me. the tide was in, the water was perfectly calm, and no clouds in the sky. took some low shots of the sea and sky with a silhouette of the port providing a horizon line. so as long as i have been able to get my horizon level (one of my weaknesses) and have avoided lens flare shooting into the sun, they should be nice shots.

anyway, i've been reading g.k. chesterton's book 'orthodoxy'. i'm particularly enamored with his idea that christianity is a belief system that allows two seemingly opposite ideas to be held true with equal and undiminished strength ("the paradoxes of christianity"). one of his examples is that orthodox christianity treats suicide as a sin and matrydom as a virtue. it doesn't mean that if you are a christian you can believe whatever you like (there is an established orthodoxy) but it seems to me that chesterton's angle on christian orthodoxy gives it strength in a postmodern pluralistic world. i could go on for hours about this.

in postmodernism there is an idea that no "truth" precludes any other "truth". because of the difficulty of this position in practical everyday terms, society has come up with the idea that you have to do what is right for you. obviously that's not a position that a christian can hold (because we believe that God has established clear standards), but in the last few years i've come to think that perhaps the simple christian view that things as are basically a dichotomy is actually simplistic. rather than being a "christian" point of view, i now see that approach as being more of a grecio-roman point of view. ie, it was constructed through the heavy influence of greek thinking and logic in the western world. i seem to recall that this process was helped along by aquinas in the middle ages (i think, from memory, it had something to do with plato).

[this is getting way too long for a blog post.] the first thing that lead me in this direction, away from a purely dichotomistic view, was looking at the way logic functions in the old testament, hebrew, worldview. i don't think God really uses metaphors - not in the way we tend to think of them anyway.

we see a metaphor as being a thing that stands for a another "higher" meaning. so when the bible talks about "water" (for example) we like to divide those instances up in "actual" water and "metaphorical" water. but i'm not sure that that is the way God sees it. i think God sees water as conceptually the same whether it applies to spiritual or physical matters (maybe there is ultimately no division between spiritual and physical - but i'll use those terms for now, otherwise our minds might blow up). i think that in God's framework, what we consider to be material water and metaphorical water are in fact exactly the same thing conceptually. so whether "water" is material or "abstract" it always functions in the same way: it provides life, healing, sustainance and cleansing - it doesn't matter how it is embodied.

the same thing holds true for the bible's description of christ loving the church like a bride, and the bible's command that husbands should love their wives like christ loves the church. i think we tend to build a hierarchy into that truth. we see earthly marriage as a metaphor for something more spiritual, thereby implying a hierarchy between what God has us doing on earth as opposed to his own activities. i don't think such a hierarchy exists. instead i believe that christ loving the church and husbands loving their wives is in fact conceptually identical. that comes about because the same God had the same concept for both humans marrying and christ uniting with his church.

here's a practical application of what i mean: over the centuries, commentators have interpreted song of solomon (or 'song of songs') as being a giant metaphor about christ's love for his church. that interpretation avoided the embarassment of all the "racey" potential of some of those passages if they are in fact about human erotic love. in recent times, commentators have said, "come on, this is obviously a celebration of human sexuality." but if you move song of solomon into the framework i am proposing, it is in fact BOTH of those things equally and indivisably - not one or the other. conceptually, both those things are the same thing. that fact has come about because the designer or author (God) has applied the same concept to both human sexuality and the intimacy between God and his church.

this is a work in progress, so i'm yet to fit all the pieces together in my own mind, much less try and communicate them in writing. but i think there is some way in which chesterton's idea fits in with what i'm saying. and that all this serves to show that christianity is as relevant today (in the postmodern world) as ever. i think it cuts to the heart of the postmodern desire to get away from dichotomy. and so, rather than try and communicate that, i'll just cut and paste the pertinent passage from 'orthodoxy':

"...sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and ... the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is - Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved."

i might write a part two on this. in part two, i might argue that the establishment of a dichotamistic view has been a survival strategy in a world where ultimately "physical" and "spiritual" cannot be united perfectly because of sin. and that the final consummation of those two seemingly opposed elements will not happen until there is a new heaven and earth. that might be interesting.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

stuff to look at

here's some stuff to look at.

three cool movies i've watched recently:











fahrenheit 451 is an old 1966 sci-fi - with lots of crazy goings-on, all about a society in which it is illegal to read books. saints and soldiers is about a group of american soldiers and one brit who find themselves behind enemy lines after germans massacre a group of unarmed pows - fascinating look at human nature. and syriana is all about american corruption in its oil dealings, full-on and beautifully made.


here's something else to feast yer eyes on - the website of our (incredibly) talented friend michelle (shelby) hyslop. not yet 21 - what will happen? www.michellehyslop.com

Sunday, June 25, 2006

nu stuff

a long awaited upgrade has just occurred on www.andrewkillick.com

there is now a third page to the gallery, featuring some of my more recent work - click on the photo in my hands on the home page to access the gallery, and then click 'page 3'...

also, you can now buy an eBook version of my poetry book 'epilogue' (given that there are virtually no paper book copies left). that costs US$4 on paypal, and you get to that bit on the website by clicking on the cover of the book on the home page of the website.

sweet.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

little world

i'm currently in the process of reading an excellent book called 'the christian imagination' edited by leland ryken (sounds a bit boring i know - but truly isn't). i'm always on the look-out for quotes etc that help define what i mean by my 'safe little world' concept and how that can be realised through art.

in an essay by gene edward veith jr called 'reading and writing worldviews' included in 'the christian imagination', i found this quote:

"The very act of writing involves the articulation of meanings - drawn from the author's beliefs, assumptions, and imaginative constructions - that constitute a little world, which readers, by letting the language play in their own minds as they read, can access in their own terms."

on the headphones: 'we r the omc' by omc, from the album 'in the neighbourhood' (various).

Saturday, May 20, 2006

great music question survey results!

well now, i had a great response to the music question. this was the question: "if you had to choose the musical works of just one artist/band/composer and forego all others, who would it be?"

and now for the results...

1st=: Bach, the Beatles, and U2.
2nd: Miles Davis

the really interesting part is that other than those four artists/bands/composers no other nomination received more than one vote. the other nominations (in no particular order) were:

pink floyd
massive attack
linkin park
mike post
steven curtis chapman
the vineyard worship team
king david
crowded house
sarah mcloughlin
tom waits
bob marley
third eye blind
tangerine dream
radiohead
colm
vivaldi
bob dylan
don mcglashan
bic runga

it has to be pointed out that some people cheated a little bit and said more than one (i've included those as well). but in general, answers were pretty clear.

what i plan to do now is a weekly article on each of the nominated artists - so stay posted. feel free to leave comments below.

on the headphones: 'let's talk' by coldplay, from the album 'x & y'. www.coldplay.com

Saturday, May 06, 2006

artisan

i read a couple of the print editions of the artisan journal this week. very cool. artisan is christian arts/media organisation in the uk with networking into ny and la.

having been impressed with how cool their journal is (read the copies cover to cover) i visited their website which turns out to be a great resource.

anyway, as an offshoot of that, i found this quote in an article on their website by makoto fujimura, artist and founder of IAM:

"In art we create and imagine our belongingness. We are, in this sense, creating a home for our imaginations to inhabit. What kind of a home is it? Is it inviting? Is it haunted? Is it a loft in a city or a farmhouse? Or is it a home far away, a home that we can only long for?"

i love this quote, and think it is spot-on for me and my 'safe little world' concept, which celebrates the safety of an imaginery/real world, (sub)urban homes (or homes set up against the wilderness) but also questions the safety of it. so there we are.

on the headphones: 'j connais mon role' by mc solaar, from the album 'mach 6'. www.solaarsystem.net

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

noise


i went to the noise conference last weekend. 1500 christian musos got together for two days of teaching, music and electives. while i'm not primarily a muso, i get a creative buzz out of going to the conference (this was my second time) and my official excuse is that i play hand percussion and do some bv's for church music.

noise featured a few quite big names in christian music. nz's own brooke fraser (pictured - not a photo i took, by the way), phil joel of the newsboys, hillsong united from australia, and speaker phil baker amongst a lot of others. in the event, all these people i've just listed were highlights - brooke fraser for her sheer talent combined with genuine commitment to God, phil joel for being a down-to-earth and onto it talented new zealander, hillsong united for delivering the most full-on praise and worship music ever, and phil baker for being an incredibly good speaker, with clear insights and brilliant humour.

once again the noise conference delivered, and i'll almost certainly be there next year. i had a little run-in with the gravel carpark outside the venue (sprinting + gravel = sore knee + torn jeans) but nevermind - maybe i got a little over excited.

you can see parachute music's official photos of the event (including the one above) here.

on the headphones: 'no roots' by faithless, from the album 'no roots'. www.faithless.co.uk

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

my computer

i got this picture by email today. what incredible foresight these scientists showed in 1954. it looks exactly like the computer i had in 2004 (see caption, click the image to see it full-size)...

on the headphones: 'the sicilian' by bonobo, from the album 'one offs ... remixes and b-sides'. www.bonobomusic.com

Friday, April 21, 2006

stuff all crammed together

hello. after another hiatus in posting, i have again accumulated probably more info than you'd normally squeeze into one post.

pt 1: we've just had the easter jazz festival here in tauranga. my father came down and we caught a couple of great concerts. firstly, the nathan haines show, and then a tribute to miles davis with some of the best jazz musicians in nz. some brilliant virtuoso playing all round.

pt 2: my mate malcolm dunn is working on an ep under name 'colm', and you can check out the post-rock niceness at his myspace site.

pt 3: i've completed my art project - a6 cards of my work, printed and cropped and then arranged into a montage with fotoclips that now hangs in our lounge. the cards are starting to curl and i don't suppose that will stop - i really needed to add more clips, but for now i am telling myself that the slight curling is part of the appeal of the medium. i've taken a somewhat nasty picture of the montage with my cheapo digital camera and you can see it by clicking here.

pt 4: don't forget that if you're so inclined you can subscribe to this blog over there on the righthand column, and get newsfeeds as i post new stuff.

pt 5: i'll be putting two new book reviews and maybe a film review on intraspace very soon.

pt 6: the film 'noi the albino' is great.

pt 7: next week i'm off to the noise conference in auckland. last year this was brilliant - a two-day conference for musicians with a little thrown in for creatives in general. inspirational and exciting, it's the main thing i've been looking forward to so far this year. stand by for a report on that in a couple of weeks.

on the headphones: 'could you be loved?' by bob marley, from the album 'legend'.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

projects, concerts and innovations

another long delay between posts. so what's new?

well, for a start you can now subscribe to a news feed from this blog - meaning that whenever i update you will get the new content sent to you. you can subscribe to this (free) by clicking here or on the link to the right. i also have a subscription service for my reviews blog, intraspace. subscribe to that one here or by visiting intraspace.

speaking of intraspace, there is a new review on there - a review of the book 'bono on bono'. well worth checking out.

in my creative world, i am working on a project to help me better visualise my aesthetic approach, and to see some of my artwork functioning away from the computer screen (ie on the wall). at the moment i am using quite a few different visual styles. there is a common thread in that they tend towards 'pop art' but in some cases they are in very different areas stylisitically. so, i'm in the process of turning some of the pieces (including some of my photography) into A6 pictures (partly also in preparation for my postcard project) printed on card. once i have a few of these printed out, i'm going to crop them and then put them together with photo clips to create a montage which will then hang on our lounge wall. i've always seen my visual work in terms of groups of images displayed close together, so apart from this being a learning experience it will also help me realise that aim. the process has already helped to stimulate my creativity and last weekend i made four brandnew pieces as well as polishing some existing ones. the finished montage will evolve and grow as i create and print out new pieces. i'll post a pic of the montage when it is ready to go.

in other news, rob and i went to the bic runga concert at tauranga's holy trinity church. the whole thing was brilliant. she played a lot of her new material which is very atmospheric. her band included neil finn, shayne carter (dimmer) and anika moa plus the guitarist from pluto (tim arnold). they were supported by flight of the concordes, a brilliantly funny musical duo (sold out concerts at the edinburgh fringe festival etc). i don't normally go in for joke music but these guys are great. if you get the chance to see bic or flight of the concordes then get to it.

on the headphones: 'lsd partie' by roland vincent, from the 'ocean's twelve' soundtrack.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

interview! innovations!

well now, the next time you visit my website, you will see (especially if you use mozilla firefox) a tiny little picture of me in the address bar of your browser (known as a 'favicon')! tremendous!

also if you save my website in your 'favourites' list, that little picture will appear in your favourites menu beside my website name. wow! if you want to know how to do this on your own website, go here (i used a little program called 'iconomaker' rather than their online ico maker).

AND, as if that wasn't exciting enough by itself, here's an added bonus for you. below is a link to an mp3 audio file of an interview of me by rob holding, originally broadcast on radio rhema before christmas.

you can either left click the link below and listen to the interview in your browser window, or if you right click and do 'save as...' you can download the interview so that you can listen to it again and again at your leisure. either way, the file is about 1.2 meg so is rather easy to download.

interview of andrew here

on the headphones: the interview of course...

music video and artwork

the music video that i worked on the creative team for is now streaming at amplifier.co.nz.

click here to have a geeze. (don't look at me with regard to that 'parental advisory'...)

also, i'm thrilled by this - visit digirama (nz's current equivalent to itunes) and see some artwork i did for jamie - i did the artist pic and album cover (see below the track list)...

free photography books

it is well worth doing a post dedicated to this link...

at www.democraticbooks.org you can download free photography books. they are pdf files which you can download and then print out and make into a book. so far they have 14 books featuring the work of different photographers. very cool.

i found the link through www.lensculture.com which is my all-time favourite photography website (see the links page of my website).

on the headphones: 'prosperous' by gROUSE. download it free here.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

depressing reading, exciting listening

sorry for my silence, oh you my faithful reader(s).

look, i just read this:

"The number of online weblogs has reached an estimated 27 million, a new report has found. According to blog search and indexing site Technocrati, around 75,000 new blogs are created every day. US-based Technocrati said it tracks about 1.2 million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour." here

i'm just so thankful to have my slice of that enormous pie - isn't it great? (depressing?)

well, to aleviate our collective depression at being tiny numbers in a very large and exponentially growing equation, go and visit the jamie strange page in the music section of download.com. there are three tracks to download there - two are happy and one is more pensive. jamie, as i've mentioned before, is a mate of mine making catchy pop rock and aiming for world domination (we are soon to start work on some tv commercials for him).

on the headphones: 'hymn of the big wheel' by massive attack, from the album 'blue lines'. www.massiveattack.co.uk