andrew killick (safe little world)

installation views

2011-11-12T11:17:00.005+13:00

Well, the piece is now up at draw inc., in Hamilton. Some installation views and video...

safe little world: gallery installation at draw inc., hamilton, new zealand from andrew killick on Vimeo.

quote

2011-11-12T10:10:00.002+13:00

another quote apropos to the safe little world thing:

"The work you do as an artist is really play, but it is play in the most serious sense. Like when a two-year-old discovers how to make a tower out of blocks. It is no halfhearted thing. You are materializing - taking something from the inside and putting it out into the world so you can be relieved of it."

Leslie Dick, faculty of CalArts, when asked “What is an artist?” in Seven Days in the Art World, by Sarah Thornton.

exhibition (at last)

2011-11-10T21:15:00.007+13:00

an exhibition...

14 -21 November

draw inc. 35A Ward St

Hamilton, New Zealand

micronaut

2011-11-05T09:50:00.003+13:00

Last weekend, while visiting the World Press Photo exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery, I unexpectedly encountered the work of New Zealand artist/illustrator Graham Percy. Big, bad, wide world, shrunk beautifully down, as I ascended the stairs to the upper gallery, into safe little world.

Then I wandered across the road into the city library to see if they had the book of the Percy exhibition. It's called 'A Micronaut in the Wide World'.

"A micronaut" says Gregory O'Brien in his introduction to the book, "is someone who dwells on or is moved by small things; he or she is a student of miniature objects or a traveller across minute spaces. Seated at his work table in his South London town-house, Graham Percy was a micronaut par excellence. His eyes would scan the objects, works of art, postcards and books in the room. He began with these, the smallest, most unassuming of things."

"As well as being an astute observer, Graham was scholarly in his attentions. If he were to sit down with the present book, I imagine one of the first things he would do is look up the word micronaut in his dictionary - to find it derived from naut (Greek), 'a sailor'. Micro- is easily sorted. If he searched further he would find the term was used by an American [toy] distributor in the 1970s for a range of science-fictional tin figurines..."

"Continuing to research the word 'micronaut', he might arrive at Friedrich Froebel, an nineteenth-century German educationalist best known as the inventor of the kindergarten. Froebel described the child as the archetypal micronaut - an explorer who should be left to make his or her own discoveries. Since Froebel's time, much has been written about the affinities that exist between the modern artist and child. Graham Percy's approach was very much that of the wonder-struck child... Weaving together imagined and observed realities, and inspired by intellectual as well as material accumulations - the books and bric-a-brac with which he surrounded himself - his 'micronautical' art embraced the wide world beyond the personal and private.'

Boom!

Percy's love for his little world was so complete that, when he died, his ashes were placed for safe-keeping inside a scale model of the Le Corbusier-inspired house in which he and his wife lived for 26 years. The model is kept within the real house. It is made of tin, wood and frosted glass. You can put a candle in the front section of the model house so that it lights up - to remind you of Percy working on his drawings late at night. O'Brien describes the model as the "last residence of a micronaut".

I'd never heard of a 'micronaut' before, but I want that title! For this micronaut, there is too much to get excited about when I connect all this with Safe Little World.

bret vs rod: the punch dance

2011-10-30T16:28:00.003+13:00

VS

VS (the original)

Pledges

2011-10-29T15:21:00.008+13:00

I'm raising capital for an exhibition project I'm working on at the moment. I'll be exhibiting a large piece (consisting of 23 individually framed images) at draw inc in Hamilton, NZ.

Good times! The pledge target is NZ$350 - which sort of covers the cost of framing.

So, if you'd like to be part of it, you can pledge. Pledgers get sweet Safe Little World items as a thank you.

Get amongst. Click the link below to check out the project and / or make a pledge:

www.pledgeme.co.nz/Crowd/Details/31

unpacking terms

2011-10-14T19:57:00.001+13:00

I find the meanings and implications of words and phrases fascinating. All words and phrases have a history and a web of connotations. It can be interesting (I think) to unpack some of the terms we use almost without thinking… yesterday I used the term ‘religious experience’ to on my tumblr page to describe something that isn’t easily describable that happened to me one time when I encountered a Culbert - Hotere artwork.

After that, I got into a bit of a discussion about the word ‘religious’ with a friend on Facebook. The word ‘religious’ has become a bit dirty in the last 50 years. Generally speaking, contemporary people aren’t big fans of religion. Even in Christian circles the term is avoided because of its associations with a tired, old-fashioned, legalistic, formulaic, nominal form of belief.

In thinking through my use of the term ‘religious experience’ I found a rather nice definition of the phrase on Wikipedia, and realised that the term was more appropriate to what had happened to me when I saw that artwork than I had hoped or dreamed when I somewhat casually used the term in yesterday’s post:

“Religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience in which an individual reports contact with a transcendent reality, an encounter or union with the divine. A religious experience is most commonly known as an occurrence that is uncommon in the sense that it doesn’t fit in with the norm of everyday activities and life experiences, and its connection is with the individual’s perception of the divine.”

The article also carries William James’s description of the characteristics of a religious experience, which I also found fascinating:

Transient - the experience is temporary; the individual soon returns to a “normal” frame of mind.

Ineffable - the experience cannot be adequately put into words.

Noetic - the individual feels that he or she has learned something valuable from the experience.

Passive - the experience happens to the individual, largely without conscious control

mount ruapehu

2011-06-16T17:03:00.008+12:00

a few shots from a cloud-covered dusk expedition up mount ruapehu (turoa)... (click on 'em to see 'em a little larger - and a little less noisy)

dillard quotes

2011-06-16T13:10:00.002+12:00

more quotes, hijacked to be subsumed into the 'safe little world' concept that obsessively captivates my mind... (this time annie dillard is the source - 'a pilgrim at tinker creek')

"We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumours of death, beauty, violence..."

"We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise."

"Everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames."

the little things 1

2011-05-14T15:59:00.003+12:00

it's the little things.

i find clothing tags make very pleasing book marks. look at this one marking rob bell's book 'drops like stars'. it's matt black, it has a brass eyelet, a black ribbon, a tiny black safetypin. you better believe this is where it's at!

how about this one? it's doing its thing between pages of jack kerouac's 'the subterraneans'. it fulfilled its first job hanging off a huffer tshirt. now look at it! it's shiny black, with a shiny silver ball chain, a little silver huffer charmy-thing, and a weird little safety pin with a bulbous end! it marks my book with style and panache.

Sex God!

2011-05-12T10:32:00.000+12:00

a little something to add to the noise around rob bell. my review (ostensibly) of one of his old books. this review also appears on Goodreads.

Before that book, the one about love winning, Rob Bell was already famous. He was famous because he'd written a book about the Christian faith called Velvet Elvis. Who'd ever heard of a book about Christianity having a title like Velvet Elvis? Extraordinary. His second book was called Sex God.

In both Velvet Elvis and Sex God, Rob Bell established a method of writing that revolves around a 'chatty' writing style, story-telling, the sound-bite, beautiful design, and of making statements and asking questions that are intended to spark thought and discussion more than present a dogmatic fixed position. It was a style that presented truths but trusted that the reader would be smart enough / thoughtful enough / be prompted by God Himself enough to be able to consider concepts (perhaps outside the strictness of 20th century evangelicalism) without risking their soul to eternal peril. It was, in short, a style designed to speak to a postmodern (substitute "21st century" if you like) audience.

We now know that this style can land a man in the depths of the ugliest controversy. A controversy so ugly that it has led some to attempt to push God off His seat, assume the role of judge of mankind, and assign Rob Bell to hellfire.

This all kicks off, in large part, because Rob has a tendency to be controversial. His style invites controversy. Take the title of our book, for example, Sex God. How a title like this avoided the kind of heat that Love Wins attracted, I'll never know. Or what about a chapter titled God Wears Lipstick? This controversial edge has a tendency in two directions (formatted here a la Bell):

To be compelling

or

To be sensationalist

It's a fine line that Rob Bell walks. I love him for being prepared to take the risk, but it is a risky business indeed. In all fairness to him, I believe his intentions are good with regard to controversy. He wants to get people thinking for themselves. He wants them to see things differently at least for a moment. He wants to communicate that there might be more to things than what we often automatically accept. That's the ideal, but have we seen that what happens in reality is that, when confronted with controversy, people often tend to retreat more deeply into their citadels? By now, after everything, will Bell wield the tool of controversy more carefully?

I feel certain that underneath all this, there is a mild mannered man with a profound level of insight. And to get back to the matter at hand, reviewing Sex God, here is a book that will certainly challenge your thinking. It isn't really the controversial book that the title and its chapter titles suggest. Instead, it is simply a book that explores ideas about what sex really is, and about how what it really is plays a part in who God is and what His plan is for humankind.

Which brings us back to talking about Bell's overall output to date. What we have is an author who, though he wraps his work in controversy, is really just a guy who wants us (whoever we might be) to think about God, our relationship with God, and what that means.

Sex God is excellent.

waltex

2011-05-05T18:32:00.010+12:00

a little encounter between me, a waltex magnifier, a copy of fashion quarterly, and a 15 cent 1966 action comic book... (click 'em to see 'em a little larger)

a quote

2011-04-25T11:13:00.002+12:00

a quote here from t.s. eliot which is dear to my heart as far as the creative process goes:

"A thought to Donne was an experience: it modified his sensibility... the ordinary man... falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes."

serendipitous random song list poems

2011-04-12T13:05:00.004+12:00

a lot of the time i listen to my music randomised across a pretty big music library. every so often, i'll notice a combination of song titles has formed a rather cunning little poem (henceforth established as a new genre under the designation: 'shuffle poems')... here are some that my music library and media player have created over the last few months:

(1)
Spies Spies Spies
Groovin' with Jesus
Lord Lord Lord
Don't let it pass

[artists: the naked and famous, the violinaires, kanye west, junip]

(2)
I can't sleep
Out here in the cold
I'm Jimmy Carter

[artists: frakkur, gotye, vancouver sound]

(3)
Hold you close
Asleep in perfection
The ghosts you draw on my back
O Death

[artists: stereobus, augie march, múm, ralph stanley]

(4)
How to be a Werewolf

Spooky
Bright little things
I have the moon, you have the internet

[artists: mogwai, starflyer 59, funki porcini, the fields]

bonus material! this random playlist pairing: 'ball of confusion' by the temptations, followed by 'sphere of no form' by biosphere.

church art

2011-03-07T11:25:00.005+13:00

this here is a version of a graphic i put together for the website of a new church i'm going to be attending ('new' as in new for me, but also in that the church is holding its first public service this coming sunday). the church is called st lukes. the graphic is for a series of sermons / talks that pastor joseph mcauley will be doing based on the theme of 'stories'. you can see the final version on the st lukes website.

wedding invite design

2011-03-04T16:01:00.005+13:00

a month or so ago i completed these wedding invites for my sister-in-law and her fiancé. they wanted a retro/scrabble/lamp/tiffany blue thing, so this is what came out...

the front cover is 2/3 the width of the back cover so that the lamp on the right hand side of the inside is visible from the front.

man on a mountain

2011-02-27T13:56:00.004+13:00

i made this this week (click it to see it a little bigger) - perhaps a product of a milieu of existential angst that came about as a result of the christchurch earthquake, a murder 5 minutes from our house, and some on-going spiritual wrestling. but it is also, of course, just a picture of a cartoon character standing in snow!

i don't want to flood a perfectly nice little picture with over-discussion, but i'm probably going to anyway. look away now.

the thing i like about the process for the creation of this picture, is that it took ages to come together, and then came together very quickly. the elements for the picture have been sitting around for years (literally) waiting to be used for something...

the photograph was taken on slide film at the top of fox glacier over five years ago. in the time between having the slide developed and scanning it into the computer it grew mould on it. this is very bad from a preservation perspective, and i always intended to clean it off the scan with photoshop. in this composition it looks best left there.

the little man came about after i read a book on graffiti street logos a few years ago. i decided i needed one for myself - even though i don't think i'll use it unauthorised on any walls. i loved the aesthetic, and designed this guy. he looks a bit glum.

i collect pictograms (wingdings / icons / picture fonts) and had always been fascinated by a set i had of cellphone related symbols. i thought the half-charge icon would be perfect for this guy. (his battery is half full or half empty depending on your perspective [cliché acknowledged].)

the last step was to paint him up with a rough sort of white paint look. put a little shadow at his feet too, but you can't probably notice that - just cements him on the landscape a bit better.

music 2010

2010-12-31T12:48:00.008+13:00

So here's a summary of my listening in 2010. First up, my most-listened-to artists for the year. Because 7 out of 8 of these artists released new albums this year, this list also kind of serves as my best albums of 2010 list as well (though there were other great albums too - 2010 was actually an extremely good year for music)...

1. Massive Attack (unsurprising as they're my favourite every year - 2010 saw the release of their new album 'Heligoland' and a live appearance in NZ), 2. Gorillaz (in 2010 released 'Plastic Beach' and toured NZ), 3. Mux Mool (quirky mashed up electronic, in 2010 released 'Skulltaste'), 4. Radiohead (nothing new from them in 2010), 5. Bonobo (downbeat electronic, always a favourite of mine, this year released 'Black Sands'), 6. Arcade Fire (this year released 'The Suburbs'), 7. Caribou (canadian electronic, this year released 'Swim'), 8. Paul White (mashed-up, sample based electronic, this year released 'Paul White and the Purple Brain').

and now, my most-played-tracks:

1. Gorillaz – Rhinestone Eyes
2. The Naked and Famous – Young Blood
2. Glass Vaults – New Space
4. The xx – Intro
4. Massive Attack – Atlas Air
4. Gorillaz – Stylo (Feat. Mos Def And Bobby Womack)
7. Musical Youth – Pass The Dutchie
7. Massive Attack – Girl I Love You
7. Glass Vaults – Forget Me Not
10. Mumford & Sons – Awake My Soul

Gorillaz, twice, 'Rhinestone Eyes' is awesome and 'Stylo' was the lead-single featuring Mos Def - yeah! The Naked and Famous - NZ music done extremely well. Glass Vaults, twice, released an EP that is outstanding - more NZ music. The whole XX album is great, the intro track is super moody. Massive Attack - are geniuses - two tracks from them on the list, both from their new album. Musical Youth, 'Pass the Dutchie' - what can I say - this year I rediscovered one of my favourite songs from when I was 5 - thanks to the superb NZ film 'Boy'. And Mumford & Sons - these guys are stormin'.

Happy new year!

sometimes...

2010-10-30T12:32:00.003+13:00

you see an image that you desperately wish you'd created. the one below is utterly wonderful. i dig everything about it. conceptually it's the kind of thing i love - that couple! that typewriter! aesthetically it's close to my 'own style' and the style i aspire to, but more skilfully done.

so those are my lovelorn ravings... information about where the image comes from: it's the cover illustration for a book by matthew allard - the illustrator is ian dingman. allard wrote stories based on the illustrations, rather than the other way around.

immanence

2010-10-25T11:25:00.004+13:00

one area of the Christian faith that i'm really interested in is the presence of God - ie the ways in which God is present in the created world, the ways His presence is experienced, and how people throughout the Christian tradition have experienced it. 'immanence' is a term used in theology when people talk about how a transcendent God is present in the created world.

i might put a few of my thoughts about the subject down here on the blog from time to time... this might include some of my own personal experience, but i thought i'd note some conceptual ideas about how God is present first of all.

one of the upshots of immanence is that God is close to us, understands us and identifies with us. He knows us.

in the Christian tradition, God is trinity - that's a vast concept, which i'm not going to attempt to even try and summarise, but suffice to say that the trinity involves the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

aspects of the extent to which God knows us are evident in each part of the trinity.

Father: in the sense that we are God's children, He knows us. the concept of God being our father can get a bad rap because our understanding of the concept of 'father' is inevitably influenced by our own personal experience of what a father is. nonetheless, this concept of God represents what an untainted father is. a true father wants what is best for his children and experiences a level of bond and connection (love) that can only come because the children are his. we are made in God's image - He recognises the things in us that came from Him.

Son: Jesus is God coming to earth to exist as a human. God's experience of what it means to be human (the human condition) is firsthand. in other words, He knows what it's like. He knows what it's like to be in a human body - the strengths, weaknesses, limitations - He knows what it's like to think like a human - apart from the union of God and humanity, He's also felt the gap that humans experience between themselves and God.

Holy Spirit: the Holy Spirit is the part of God that lives inside a human when that person places their life in God's hands. the Holy Spirit dwells in the essential core of the person and as such is utterly involved in what that human experiences. the Spirit is right there where the emotions and thoughts occur - where the subconscious happens, where all the memories and personality are stored, and where the neurological and other biophysical interactions occur that make us function.

these aspects of the immanence of God are so effective that God knows us better than we know ourselves. it is impossible to be better known than God knows us.

free mp3 fresh from new zealand

2010-10-15T21:43:00.011+13:00

in recent months three - no, four! - very nice free new zealand albums have fallen into my lap... there's an indie introspective theme to them. here they are now:

1. the haints of dean hall

the album is called 'sleeper'. their second album. stuff recorded in the front lounge. little bit country. acoustic.

the album is available from arch hill recordings for free and you can download it here.

2. secret knives

the album is called 'affection'. first full album (i think), though there is an also a rather nice ep. this is indie shoe gaze stuff with some nice synth ambience with some strong melodies popping out.

the album is available from a low hum for free and you can download it here.

3. avalanche city

the album is called 'our new life above the ground'. the first album of dave baxter. according to the website, "Armed with a sack full of vegetarian single serve curries Dave Baxter headed into the countryside and moved into a little community hall called the Kourawhero Hall, just north of Auckland. There he spent the week alone recording and playing everything himself with only the cows and the milk trucks as company."

he then decided to give it away for free. it's got a folk vibe to it (a la mumford and the decemberists and fleet foxes and stuff). and you are the lucky recipient of this third musical treat also: here.

4. glass vaults

american indie hype blog, i guess i'm floating, describes them thusly: "New Zealand continues to impress with solid music... the small Pacific Island [sic] has more aural deliciousness to offer. Glass Vaults is the two-man project of Richard Larsen and Rowan Pierce, crafting elegant synth sounds perfect for rendezvous on moonlit shorelines... Driving all of the diaphanous sound is a rhythmic beat intermittently thumping along, with shades of Animal Collective-esque composition mixed with vocals that lull in a manner similar to Thom Yorke’s."

it is very lovely and ambient (indie ambient not dance-musicy ambient, in case you're worried). so then, all you need to do is download it by going here.

there we are then.

little house on the island

2010-10-03T15:11:00.003+13:00

another instalment in the intrepid adventures of my little house... the earlier episode is here. this time, the little house is on kawau island in the hauraki gulf...

safelittleworld: little house on the island from andrew killick on Vimeo.

theologising / philosophising: the nature of man

2010-07-17T10:14:00.008+12:00

there's a quote that always nags around in the back of my head. i can't shake it. it's creatively compelling. when i first read it, intermittently staring up at a clear blue sky and what i was reading as i lay on a recliner in the backyard, i wrote it down in my notebook. i've had other notebooks since but i get anxious if i don't know where that notebook is - mainly because i worry about misplacing the exact wording of the quote.

the quote comes from pascal's pensées (VII:434). pascal was one of the world's greatest thinkers - a genius of science, but also an astute observer of the condition of man, and a christian. when he died in 1662 he left behind an unfinished work, in notebook form. pensées (french for 'thoughts') is a collection of notes that he jotted down about life, the universe and everything.

the quote ('my' quote) is his definition of humankind:

"Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe."

this captures the massive paradox, the tension, in what it is to be human. another quote that captures the same paradox is found in psalm 8:4:

"what is man that you [God] are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?"

to my thinking, we are all aware of this tension.

when i was at university, my research topic was 'christian poetry'. i was interested in poetry written by christians that was an established part of the 'canon' of english literature. two of the more prominent names, for example, are milton (in the 17th century) and eliot (in the 20th). another name that requires consideration is christina rosetti (19th). while researching her work, i came across a book in which the author (mary finn) had critiqued rosetti's poetry from the standpoint of a concept devised by soren kierkegaard (the 19th century philosopher and theologian).

that concept was the idea of 'incommensurablity'. i might be a little patchy on this - i'm working from memory, and i doubt i ever fully grasped exactly what kierkegaard was on about even at the time. but for our purposes, and i'm probably hijacking kierkegaard's concept here a bit, it describes in another way the tension described by pascal in the quote above.

mary finn's point was that out of this tension - this struggle to unite the paradoxes of the human condition - comes some of the greatest works of creativity.

kierkegaard overcomes this 'incommensurability' by something he calls 'the leap of faith' - ie, while holding the paradox (in the form of 'doubt') to be evident and undeniable, the chasm can be crossed by making a leap of faith into belief in God.

in the essay that resulted from my research (which also touched on the writing of eliot as well as rosetti) i argued that incommensurability was ultimately overcome by 'consummation', ie the union of God and humankind (the Bible describes it in terms of Christ and his bride) that is ultimately furnished by God in the form of heaven, and (now that i think of it) the new heaven and new earth, and the kingdom of heaven, and the Word becoming flesh in Jesus.

this morning i was reading an essay by karl barth (the 20th century theologian) called 'God's Word and the Decision of Faith'. he poses psalm 8:4 as a direct question that demands an answer. what is man, that [God] is mindful of him? he says,

"Here there is only one answer: This man is man in the decision of faith."

'the decision of faith', as barth terms it, is our response to the Word of God (including the fact that the Word became flesh, ie Jesus is the Word).

it is this decision, and the fact that we are in the position to need to, and be able to, make this decision, which ultimately defines us. as barth puts it,

"Man is what he is and he is everything that he is in the decision of faith."

i think a good illustration might be to look at it in terms of a 'male' and 'female' plug. the 'male' plug is the Word of God, the 'female' plug is our decision of faith. to allow 'power' or 'signal' to flow the two have to be connected, joined.

in those two parts is the process of redemption - redemption being the process by which the paradox is overcome and the 'contradictions' in humankind settled. the ultimate act of creativity and consummation.

to pick up, and finish with, barth again:

"For in the decision of faith [man] moves toward being ascribed and given the human nature which Jesus Christ has united to Himself, that He might establish in it peace between God and man. In the decision of faith, he stands before God as the man God intends and in the way in which God wills to have him. In the decision of faith, he exists and stands before us in his true nature. No matter how it may be with other determinants of man, in the decision of faith and only there is he his true self as a true man!"

new safe little world piece

2010-05-25T16:31:00.003+12:00

this just completed...

downloada 0510

2010-05-09T15:20:00.003+12:00

i'm quite into downloading new music. excuse me, i'm also prone to understatement. yes, im very into downloading music.

one of my favourite sources is emusic. they work on a monthly subs plan. i pay about US$12/month and get 30 tracks/month.

this isn't some veiled advert for emusic, i genuinely dig the new music that that service has revealed by virtue of not representing the big name music labels well. instead we find all kinds of gems that have escaped the attention of the mainstream (universal, emi, sony etc - i'm looking at you).

so i'm going to do a new regular feature on this here blog where each month i list (with a brief comment) the music i've discovered around the net (with a bias towards music obtained on emusic).

- Radio Citizen 'Berlin Serengeti' [an oldish album but very cool - solid downbeat for fans of the likes of bonobo]
- Mux Mool 'Skulltaste' [the new-comer delivers an album where virtually every track is good]
- The Radio Dept. 'Clinging to a Scheme' [new album from providers of lovely swedish indie pop]

those are the main ones, then there is a vast smattering of one or two tracks from other artists. highlights include: architeq, neon neon, phantogram, balmorhea, delorean, beach fossils.

to see evidence of these tracks being spun, visit my last.fm page.

lewis quote

2010-05-01T15:33:00.003+12:00

in my never-ending quest to map the multitudinous by-ways, back alleys, feeders and exits that tangle their way across the landscape that is my safe little world concept, i keep an eye out for quotes that can fall victim to my uses. these hapless quotes are extracted from their contexts and then configured into my plan.

here's one from c.s. lewis's 'the problem of pain'...

"The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy."

what a line!: "We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy."

[quote resumes]

"It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and [be] an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home."

p103.

easter continues

2010-04-07T17:21:00.005+12:00

here's a late entry in the easter poetry project... this one's from Rob Holding:

When I think of Easter,
Sometimes, I wonder that You came.
When all we do is find more nails,
Was it really worth the shame,
Of putting on our dirt forever,
Or are there moments You regret,
Deciding 'ere You made the world,
That You would pay our debt?

free compilation

2010-04-06T11:02:00.003+12:00

ghostly international is a rather cool record label. they have a great roster of electronic artists and are generous with their music.

they have just released a free compilation (of 320k mp3 files) called 'music for creatives'. all this seems to be part of a drive to work alongside creative types and follows exposure on the kitsune noir blog (which is awesome).

the compilation is here (via 99% (behance), via facebook)...

easter poetry jam

2010-04-04T13:20:00.014+12:00

upon seeing a rather good poem posted by keith newman on his facebook page, i was suddenly struck with the idea of rustling up a posse of poets (alliteration) for an impromptu easter poetry project.

in the most part, the poets posted their poems on facebook as status updates or wall messages so the format and character count were limited in this way, which i thought was rather nice. only mark laurent circumvented those limits, which was also nice (how postmodern of us).

so here on easter sunday are some easter poems...

Keith Newman:

SACRIFICE You hung wrists nailed to wood a broken carpenter Tree stained blood spilling from your brow again and the open wound in your side Blood and water life and death potent potion unleashed spent seed upon the earth Soaking it up like a hungry womb Curtain torn in the ancient temple but we’ve been trying to sew it back together ever since.

Jonathan Nalder:

Easter: The day comes wen every1 must face up 2 the things they'v dun/ A day came in old Jerusalem wen 1 man faced up 2 the things WE had done/ Its called Easter-hav u heard of it? Its called Grace-can we fathom it?/ Forgiveness without reason, reason without cause, cause without us even knowing the depth of our need/ We need 2 kno we are small, but r loved all the same. Let chocolate & foil direct yor thorts thence

Andrew Killick:

IMMINENCE 33AD: And on the black, despairing day/ Simon Peter, did you feel/ That as your heart was torn and rent/ That the passage was opened up/ And God was close/ Without the dark and heavy curtain/ A pre-dawn/ Glimmer of/ Impending reconciliation/ Taking hold/ Upon your soul.

Fraser Duncan:

FROM THE GROUND: from the top of a cross/you can see forever/and it never seems far/enough to separate the dross and gold/ for when you look down/you are never very far/ from the ground.

Mark Laurent:

DEAD MAN

After all, how useful can a dead man be?

Because that’s what I am – dead
– I’ve finally realised it.
Every aspect of me
Seems to have closed down;
I’m out of work, out of health,
Closed-down and passion-depleted,
I feel as lifeless as this hopeless season,
Stripped bare as this hibernating orchard.

God knows I’ve tried to wrest meaning
out of my life
I’ve focussed on improving myself
Cried out “I want to be of some use!”
I’ve resisted the devil and begged Heaven.

But this morning, as I sit here alone
Under a naked plum tree
beneath this ragged winter sky,
Too tired to even feel depressed any more,
I know at last that I am a dead man
(though I’ve suspected as much
for some time…)

And the most curious thing happens…

I start to laugh…

A deep belly laugh, as intense as grief;
A burst of profound, volcanic release!
I’ve finally made it – dead!
The thing we all fear most,
But somehow it’s ok!
This is not how I expected to feel…

When the shaking spasm ceases
I sit very still, feeling the deep silence
That follows after every storm.
Just below the surface of the chilly soil
New life is waiting patiently
For the comfort of the sun
And the freedom of the thaw.

There might even be some good things
about being dead;
I don’t have to be great at anything,
Don’t need a successful career,
It doesn’t matter if I’m famous or rich,
There’s no pressure to feel proud
or righteous,
Or save the world…

Since I have nothing to lose,
It might be easier to give;
Does an empty heart
Have more room to hold love?

A plum stone that falls into the dirt
Gives up its identity
So that a plum tree can grow.
We pick the fruit and spit out the stones.

After all, how useful can a dead stone be?

i'm here

2010-04-03T17:24:00.003+13:00

may i point you to the 30 min spike jonze short film 'i'm here'? sponsored by absolut, it is an incredibly well-done piece about two robots falling in love. you can watch it online. everything is so stylish and cool about it - even the web interface. nice to see corporates sponsoring stuff like this (and without any product placements).

feature artist

2010-04-02T10:02:00.003+13:00

if there's such a thing as an american christian arts establishment, then image is that establishment's voice.

i subscribe to their email newsletter and my take is that most of their coverage is given to middle-aged white americans (at least, as far as their 'artist of the month' section goes).

but their write-up of this month's feature artist is a nice piece of work. artist of the month: God.

here's a snip:

"Controversies over God’s creative process have frequently overshadowed a proper critical recognition of his work. To be sure, God is often lauded as "wondrous" and "awesome"--acclaimed for combining unfathomable mystery with everyday accessibility--but God’s genre-bending creations deserve nuanced analysis quite apart from scuffling over how long it took him to make them all ... Another notable work, The Universe (date indeterminate), is often cited as a highly influential piece. While the creation of The Universe signaled a turning point in God’s craft, the searing luminescence of its execution and the expansiveness of its vision went critically unnoticed until Galileo looked at it through a telescope. Since then, as Carl Sagan put it, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe"--enabling us to attribute even this beloved American tradition to the influence of God’s early masterwork. Some of God’s later work has been met with less-than-favorable reviews, such as Seymour P. Lyman of Teaneck, New Jersey (1954), described by viewers as "mousy," and "prone to rambling on about his stamp collection." Despite such harsh critical reception, God’s fondness for each one of his works in the human genre has been well-publicized."

read the whole thing here - you can even subscribe to the newsletter yourself if you like.

happy good friday.

on the headphones: 'two kids' by cassettes won't listen, from the album 'small-time machine'.

che

2010-03-15T09:11:00.002+13:00

lance posed a question on facebook: "so... whose face is on Che Guevara's t-shirt?? lol."

spent a couple of hours yesterday compositing my reply from three images found on the net (photo of che smoking a cuban, photo of karl marx, and photo of a random guy in a white tshirt - the tshirt, incidentally, used to read 'power to the penguins').

tron

2010-03-11T18:35:00.002+13:00

de botton quote

2010-03-01T18:11:00.004+13:00

i'm currently reading 'the architecture of happiness' by alain de botton. the very title, and the idea that drew me to the book, is evocative of the safe little world hobby horse that i try to gallop out at every opportunity.

i suspected that the book would yield a few quotes that orbited within the amorphous universe of the safe little world concept.

lo and behold, while i waited for the fish to cook, i found one...

"We depend on our surroundings to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us the material forms which communicate to us what we need ... within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

"In turn, those places whose outlook matches and legitimises our own, we tend to honour with the term 'home'. Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

"Our love of home is in turn an acknowledgement of the degree to which our identity is not self-determined. We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us."

numan v little boots

2010-02-02T23:32:00.003+13:00

bbc 6 recently hosted a collab between electro wunderkind little boots and electro legend gary numan.

here is my all time favourite numan track 'are friends electric?'...

and my favourite little boots track 'stuck on repeat'...

prepare to meet thy God

2010-01-23T13:50:00.005+13:00

images from a collaborative photoshoot (my brother and me). location: miranda, firth of thames, sometime before christmas.

dusk

2010-01-12T17:33:00.006+13:00

cgi

2010-01-09T09:30:00.002+13:00

below is a short film (12min) by alex roman, done entirely with cgi. you want to see this... (in fact use the link below the video to go to vimeo and watch it larger)

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

invite

2010-01-08T17:50:00.005+13:00

here's an invite i designed for my mum's 70th birthday using an old photo of her (from 1974) and her own handwriting.

003.

2010-01-08T17:48:00.001+13:00

070110

today, constrained and pressed for time by the prospect of being at work, i visited the library and got out four books: dharma bums (kerouac) [in which beatniks hit the road], street renegades [in which artist intervene in open-air urban spaces], mail me [in which artists set their art to flight by drawing and painting on postal envelopes], destination art [in which artists create pieces in the wilderness requiring their viewers to travel to remote locations]. i step outside the library. i step outside. outside, and into my car. what is my subconscious telling me?

conflagration

2010-01-07T22:01:00.002+13:00

002.

2010-01-06T15:54:00.003+13:00

060110

after the suburban streets had returned to lazy quietness, touched with sunlight from a cloudless sky and a gentle breeze from the north, while the sun flickered off the tops of small waves, and tourists disembarked from cruise ships to wander through the village like sandal and baggy-hat-wearing hobby anthropologists with the kind of self-assured aloofness that only a costly cruise ticket can warrant and afford; i stayed at home, thought of you, and wrote this.

little house

2010-01-04T10:28:00.004+13:00

a few months ago i posted a video of a location from an art project i was working on involving photographing a paper model house in various place. ages later, thanks to being on holiday, i've been able to do some post-production work on the photos, and so here are a couple of them. some bare-bones info about the project:

- create a model based on our house
- take it to various locations
- photograph it
- part of the 'safe little world' concept
- conceptually something to do with transplanting and juxtaposing the safe little worlds we create with perhaps 'hostile' environments

two of the images (ruapehu and turangi):

on the headphones: 'lisztomania' by phoenix.

001.

2010-01-03T12:03:00.003+13:00

030110

the more i think about it the more i know. it’s good that we find hope lurking around just outside the buzz and hum of the white noise. just outside the outer atmosphere of our own little worlds. it’s there in a big quiet space that God resides, very much alive and well, quietly sustaining the universe and allowing things to function. tentatively, you make a little hole in the outer skin of your atmosphere and peek through. tentatively, and a little reluctantly, you shed the outer skin, widening the opening so that the spirit of God spills in. and then, more suddenly than you expected, you are different. your world becomes more than static, everything is moved and moving; and you notice faith, hope and love.

music 2009

2010-01-02T17:34:00.004+13:00

there are way too many 'best of 2009', 'best of the decade' music lists all over the internet at this time of the year. they all vary depending on personal taste. i decided it would be rude not to create a list of my own; my list would be even more self-indulgent and not confined to music released in 2009 (or indeed the 2000s for that matter).

you may be familiar with the fact that i'm a bit of a last.fm freak, finding perhaps too much enjoyment in seeing lists and statistics related to my own listening habits. well anyway, here is a list of my most listened-to artists of 2009 (complete with ramblings about each artist). (oh, and the picture above has very little to do with the list - it's just a photo i took sometime in the last few years of a hercules (i think) nz airforce transport doing circuits over tauranga at dusk.)

1. massive attack. predictably, as they are hands-down my favourite 'group'. they push music boundaries while combining some of the best things about human existence: mood, electronics, samples, art, the uk, spoken word, collaboration, bass, and beats that tick along about the same rate as a resting heartbeat ('womb tempo' we'll call it). my one criticism is that they could afford to lighten up a bit at times - their earlier material had more lighter moments.

massive attack stormed back into the public eye this year with the release of their 'splitting the atom' ep. great stuff. my most played track of 2009 came from that release, but it wasn't the title track. it was a remix of a track called 'psyche' featuring martina topley-bird. new album coming in 2010.

2=. rhian sheehan. it feels good to have a new zealand artist this high up my list - and it is position well deserved. known for his ambient soundscapes, samples and field recordings, sheehan took these elements to their best possible conclusion this year with the release of his album 'standing in silence'. he stripped most of the beats out of this project and let the atmospherics talk. in the process, he played directly into my tastes - creating a beautiful album that reminds me of the best of the likes of múm.

2=. mogwai. like massive attack, another perennial favourite of mine. the scottish post-rockers didn't release a new record this year (2008's 'the hawk is howling' is their most recent). but their material is just so strong. to my mind, you could chuck out all post-rock and just keep mogwai and be pretty happy (you would also need to hang onto your sigur ros and radiohead). i also discovered at some point that it was possible to edit text with their music playing in the background while i worked, so they got a fair few plays this year.

4. cassettes won't listen. the work of indie electronic artist jason drake of new york. i still haven't pinned down exactly why i like this stuff so much. but i suspect it's the catchy hooks. also drake is very generous - he gives a lot of his stuff away. over the course of the year i collected a fair bit of his back-catalogue and rarities. 2009 was also the year in which he released 'into the hillside' - a rather fetching instrumental album with some excellent tracks on it. new album coming in 2010.

5. deastro. another generous indie electronic artist - this time it's randolph chabot of detroit. this year he released his second full album 'moondagger', but this fact seems to have escaped my attention (mainly due to it not appearing on emusic, where his superb debut 'keeper's' was championed). it must have been the free stuff that he gave away that kept my listening rate up. i really like his music - (sometimes quirky) electro-compositions that verge at times on the anthemic with an apocalyptic edge. i shall now go and attempt to remedy my oversight regarding his latest album.

6. m83. anthony gonzalez of france. amazing electronic-post-rock soundscapes morphed into 80s-tinged synth-pop in 2008 with 'saturdays = youth'. this album still has moments of his atmospheric greatness, but i personally prefer his more abstract stuff. once again a rather nice sonic background for my editing work.

7. zero 7. zero 7 at number 7. zero 7 of england released a new album this year, 'yeah ghost'. my like of the band stretches back to their first album and i have most of their music in my library - this fact combined with the new album, kept rotation high in my listening habits. i have to be honest and say that i really haven't given the new album much of chance and need to investigate it further before delivering my considered opinion on its merits. my feeling at this stage is that it isn't their greatest work, but thanks to their talent still rises above a fair bit of stuff that other artists release.

8. roots manuva. british hiphop. this man is a true innovator in the british music scene. the way he combines inner city attitude, intelligent and cleverly-written lyrics, with cutting edge electronic music (with a dub bedrock) make me all weak at the knees. 'cool' seems to seep out of all the cracks. i'm also fascinated with the christian themes and self-critique that comes out in the music thanks to his pentecostal up-bringing. manuva has a fascinating love-hate relationship with the things that shaped him as a child and it runs head-long into the lifestyle he has more recently indulged in as a rapper. his latest album 'slime and reason' (2008) sees him older and disenchanted with the lifestyle but still trying to reconcile all the pieces.

9. vangelis. and now to the grand-dad of electronic! casting your eye back up this list you will see at least two acts (m83 and sheehan) that would seem to exhibit hallmarks of this man's influence. i'm sure the others on the list would acknowledge his greatness also. the greek vangelis (aka evangelos odysseas papathanassiou) is probably most famous for the 'chariots of fire' theme. my listening revolves around his soundtrack to 'bladerunner'. a three-disc collectors edition of that soundtrack keeps him as a strong presence in my library, and he also finds himself in the same category as m83 and mogwai for providing a soft bed for me to 'recline on' while doing my editing work.

10. efterklang. the sole representatives of a strong 'viking' presence in my music library. i was somewhat surprised to find them in the top ten (rather than, say, sigur ros or múm) but 2009 was the year in which i discovered the danes and downloaded all three of their available albums. i don't know how to describe their sound: sonic soundscapes, choirs, electronics, folk instruments. the whole thing exhibits a particular arctic quality. in the last month i added 'performing parades' to my collection - a rather nice collaboration with the danish national chamber orchestra.

so there we have it. oh, and happy new year. it's 2010.

synth

2009-11-22T14:23:00.003+13:00

if you have any interest at all in electronic music, you should watch this stormin' bbc documentary about the birth of synth pop in the uk. here's part 1 of the 9 parts that can be found on youtube...

beached

2009-10-24T09:38:00.003+13:00

i guess ideally blog posts are supposed to be on the leading edge of the hype wave. everyone trying to pick the next big thing. this post here is decidedly derivative - not terribly original at all. but i thought i'd like to point out 'beached az' - a series of animated shorts in which australians take the mickey out of new zealanders and do it very well. here's a sample - there's loads more on youtube...

zero massive chinese air

2009-10-05T09:16:00.004+13:00

it's a big month or two for kids like me who like trippy downbeat music. three of the legends of this kind of sound have/are bringing out new material:

1. zero7 - released their new album 'yeah ghost'. (zero7 released their first album 'simple things' in 2001 - mellow loungey music but subsequent albums have explored new musical territory while maintaining that essential mellowness)
2. massive attack - have released their new ep 'splitting atoms' this very day. (the greatest band in the world. yes you heard me. released the groundbreaking 'blue lines' in 1991 thus changing the world's musical landscape forever. the new ep is four tracks long - the lead single (made with damon albarn of blur and gorillaz fame), and three superb remixes of songs that i assume will be on the full album - to be released sometime next year)
3. air - release their new album 'love 2' today too. (quirky french loungesters that march to the beat of their own drum exploring all sorts of sonic fields. very french. they released their severely popular and very classic album 'moon safari' in 1998)

and that picture up there isn't a still from some fantastic new (or old) sci-fi film, it is in fact rows of chinese policemen taking a break while guarding the aquatic centre during the beijing olympics in 2008. [source: time]

mos def

2009-09-27T15:21:00.002+13:00

i've liked mos def for a long time since seeing him on a dvd doco called 'freestyle: the art of rhyme'. recently he's probably been more publicly visible (read: "visible in the mainstream") as an actor (ford prefect in 'the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy' and as chuck berry on the recently released to dvd 'cadillac records'). but while i enjoy seeing him in films, it has to be said that rap is where he really excels. his latest album 'the ecstatic' is fantastic.

so first up here's a little clip of him dropping some lines while walking along some japanese street:

and here's a clip from the aforementioned 'freestyle: the art of rhyme':

pull my heart away

2009-09-03T15:30:00.003+12:00

i think you might need to be a hunk of wood not to like this song - and i think even some hunks of wood would appreciate it...

little house on the central plateau

2009-08-25T18:46:00.002+12:00

this is a bit of a teaser... a short video clip from one of the locations of one of my current art projects. the project involves a paper model that i designed and constructed (based on our house) photographed in different locations. all part of my safe little world concept. on the weekend my brother and i went off photographing and i commenced my project with locations in rotorua, the desert road, mount ruapehu and turangi. the film clip was shot in the desert road location on the same camera as i was taking the house photos on (my much-loved canon g10). a spectacularly beautiful location with cold wind and views of mount ruapehu. afterwards we realised we'd actually been standing in an army training area...

safe little world: little house on the plateau from andrew killick on Vimeo.

a brittle filament

2009-08-11T21:59:00.004+12:00

nice little animated music video from Hrishikesh Hirway who performs as 'the one am radio'. track is called 'a brittle filament'... music is available from emusic - oh, and if you decide to sign up for emusic (recommended) then let me know before you do - because if i refer you then we both get free music : )

audio player software break-down

2009-07-03T16:49:00.003+12:00

me and mp3-playing software go back a long way. it all started with 'music match jukebox', which came with one of my computers about 8 years ago. in those days i wasn't really into the mp3 thing - i was most definitely listening to cds - frankly my hard drive would never have coped with a big music library. it wasn't until i upgraded to a computer with a 200gb drive that my hard drive-based music collection began to take precedence.

after a brief dalience with windows media player i moved on to itunes. most people go to itunes because they get an ipod but i was just using it because it seemed to work well. i liked that it was free and i liked features like 'smart playlists' etc. but apple kept on upgrading it and making it bigger and bigger so that it started taking up more space and i started to go off it. by then the itunes store had come to nz so i was using it for that and intitially i thought i was stuck because of the amount of itunes music i had (still in the days of itunes drm).

then i started doing some research and after a bit of trial and error decided on mediamonkey. it was feature-laden, had a smaller memory footprint than itunes and, when i tried it out, actually seemed to be making my music sound better. not only that but it played my itunes music fine and supported last.fm (another must).

and thus it continued for over a year. but mediamonkey - despite what they say - is not actually free. its advanced features are locked away until you pay. and unfortunately some of those advanced features are to do with smart playlists - limiting what you can do without parting with cashola. i always thought i would end up paying for the full version of mediamonkey... but just recently i decided to delve into the world of mp3 software again.

the first program that really caught my attention was songbird. it is a very cool concept that has a lot of features and is still in development so should continue to improve based on user feedback. songbird's particular claim to fame is that it also works as an internet browser, making it very handy when you come to interface your music collection with the resources of the internet.

i was happily using songbird one evening and playing the software version of risk when i noticed that risk was hesitating before certain actions - a sure sign that something was using a lot of ram. sure enough i discovered to my dismay that songbird was using twice the memory that mediamonkey had used and research on the net revealed that this a well-known weakness of the program.

so i went looking again and this time i came up with j.river's media jukebox. this software used to run on the same basis as mediamonkey with a free and paid version, but since j.river released a new software solution that encompasses all the media in your home they have made their music player 100% free. and it's a great program. you have to put up with a bit of advertising for amazon's music download service and i found that j.river want payment for the mp3 encoding feature (you can also use your own external encoder), but other than that it is feature-rich, sounds great, has native last.fm support and is very customisable. and for all that, its memory footprint is actually slightly less than mediamonkey, plus you don't need to run the last.fm program to scrobble so you save memory there too.

the shop

2009-06-13T12:50:00.007+12:00

here are some pics of the new shop in cherrywood that we have opened... for more about annie blackberry go here.

magic llama

2009-06-10T11:09:00.002+12:00

there's a mysterious magic llama for sale on trademe at the moment. it gives the owner a number of benefits including invisibility and, somewhat paradoxically, attractiveness.

realistically, i should be keeping this discovery under wraps, but i'm a generous soul who only hopes that the llama will go to a home where it is most needed.

the golden llama can be found here.

on demand

2009-06-07T16:40:00.002+12:00

over the last year or so, i've really got into watching 'tvnz on demand' - free streaming video from tvnz. in particular it's excellent for watching the material which tvnz itself produces. since going digital and introducing its freeview tv channels, tvnz has found a home for some of the more obscure special interests programs that it makes - including two of my favourites: 'the gravy' and 'new artland'.

i don't have freeview (we've got sky instead) so for now i watch this content online.

it started with discovering 'the gravy' - a show in which the hosts go out and interview creative new zealanders - the range and scope is vast. it is shot beautifully and uses nz music as its soundtrack. with tvnz on demand, i can watch the episode whenever i like, so once i ran out of new episodes (we are currently between seasons - i hope) i decided to check out 'new artland'.

'new artland' is hosted by chris knox and each week features a different artist. the show follows the artist from concept to completion of an artwork especially commissioned for the episode. excellent stuff.

tvnz on demand has recently relaunched, integrating itself into the overall tvnz website. so, here are the links to the two shows:

the gravy: here
new artland: here

this week i was particularly interested in an episode in which a video artist went to a faceless apartment complex in mt eden and interviewed the residents before projecting those interviews onto the outside of the complex. very cool concept that rang my 'safe little world' bells.

star wars news episode IX: star trek

2009-05-12T09:23:00.004+12:00

the triumphant return of star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom. this time in celebration of the release of the new star trek movie. this footage was captured over san francisco...

this edition of star wars news was brought to you in association with the quote: "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not, hmm?" - Yoda

creative juices 1

2009-05-05T18:57:00.006+12:00

two almost completely unrelated things have caught my imagination in the last week. sometimes something you see or hear or read pushes your imagination that much further on - gives you a little kickstart...

1. the bone people by keri hulme. a new zealand book that won the booker prize for fiction in 1985 and has consistently been on nz bestseller lists ever since. i studied nz literature at university but somehow missed reading this. the only thing i knew about it was its reputation - i knew nothing about its plot etc and that is still a mystery to me that's unfolding as i read. i'm only a few pages in but what i've read has captured me with its beautiful writing, unconventional narrative styles and a host of other things that might be ruined if i try to put them into words...

2. rip - a remix manifesto. watch this thought-provoking film for free. a documentary about remix culture and the things threatening it...

here's the first chapter, the rest is here...

<pd_original_url>http://dev.osc.clients.raincitydev.com/shanghai-record-110-seconds</pd_original_url></xml>">

video platform
video management
video solutions
free video player

music video

2009-04-23T09:49:00.007+12:00

a very nice bit of video using old 8mm stuff by jamie strange. he tells me that he was thinking of me when he put the video together because i love old footage. he's right:

droppin' kiwi style

2009-04-19T15:22:00.005+12:00

darn there's some nice kiwi music floating around these days.

on friday night anna and her sister and friend and i went over to hamilton for anna's birthday outing. we cruised into hamilton on the weekend of the V8 street races. we were in 'boganvillia' (not to be confused with the island in the solomon's group or the red-flowering creeper of the same name). at each intersection in town rock poured from pubs while blokes in high-waisted tapered jeans (motor racing shirts tucked in) wandered the streets in various states of inebriation checking out pit girls in outfits described by the female occupants of our car as 'underwear'.

our destination was the casino and the slot machines. i always find casinos pretty surreal places - so much money leaving people's pockets, surrounded by gaudy glittering lights. expressions range from out and out excitement to tired wan resignation. i feel an intriguing mix of sickness and fascination.

anyway, on the few occasions that i visit a casino it's always my aim to beat the house, even if just by a little. in the event my $20 capital grew to $30 (twice). unable to exceed that $10 profit i gave up trying.

all this is an unnecessarily long story to say that because i didn't lose my money at the casino i had some extra disposable income in my pocket today. unable to think of a better self-indulgent outlet, i decided to download some tracks from amplifier.co.nz. (i thought of using it at itunes but amplifier looks less like 'the man' and i imagine that the artists see more of the revenue from there.)

i came away with 11 nz tracks which proved to form a rather cool / crunchy / dubby / trippy / catchy / stomping / quirky mix. i list the tracks below with glowing recommendation:

4 tracks from sola rosa's latest album 'Get It Together':

Lady Love Featuring Bajka
I've Tried Ways Featuring Serocee
Turn Around Featuring Iva Lamkum
Love Alone Featuring Spikey Tee

the p-money single:

Everything feat. Vince Harder

all 7 tracks from the kora remix album 'Kora! Kora! Kora! The Cabaret Voltaire Versions':

Skankenstein (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Pop Your Bubble (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Flow (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
On My Mind (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Burning (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Crazy Things (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Burning Reprise (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)

all this is evidence of good things happening in nz music, especially when you consider every one of these tracks is a collaboration - and in some cases these collaborations are transglobal (with appearances by german and british artists).

art (or 'why you hate art')

2009-03-27T10:42:00.008+13:00

three comments about art that i stumbled across this morning. the first from the website 'new math' by craig damrauer (via ffffound)...

the second is from the website 'but does it float' curated by folkert & atley, a statement which reads...

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery"

the third from an article about the psychology of why creationism is attractive (via aaron). the article isn't about art at all but provides a quote which fits rather nicely with the question of why people, in general, struggle with contemporary art and poetry:

"According to [University of Michigan psychologist Margaret] Evans and other psychologists, including Deborah Kelemen from Boston University, there’s a very specific cognitive glitch that invades our rationalist thought whenever we’re pondering the subject of life’s origins, something those who do research in this area refer to as “teleo-functional thinking” (reasoning about the functional purpose of an entity or object in question). When scratching our heads over an artifact—with the end product before us, asking ourselves how it came to be—these scientists find that we tend to start off by trying to deduce what it’s meant for."

while this tendency might actually have the potential to make a person study the art piece until they find meaning, combine that tendency with a short attention-span (and the fact that much art evades one specific meaning), and the viewer quickly gives up or disregards the piece rather than investigating it more deeply.

on the headphones: 'part 12' by rhian sheehan, from the album 'standing in silence'.

standing in silence

2009-03-26T17:50:00.004+13:00

i rush to write this even before i've finished listening to all the tracks - nz electronic musician rhian sheehan's new album 'standing in silence' is a triumph.

i've long been a fan of ambient electronic music probably since it subliminally forced its way into my young subconscious via endless hours of my brother playing the likes of tangerine dream, vangelis, jean michel jarre and other synth geniuses.

anyway, in recent years i've developed a distinct taste for artists like m83, mogwai, sigur ros, mum etc often from the chilly climes of the northern hemisphere. i've always liked rhian sheehan too, but not this much...

his new release channels a whole lot of great stuff, and i can hear a bit of mum in there and sigur ros, maybe a touch of vangelis. it also reminds me of the soundtrack for the aussie film 'somersault' by decoder ring.

to make it that much more tempting, you'll find it on itunes for NZ$11.99 in a non-drm high bitrate form (also on emusic). 14 tracks of absolute goodness for 12 bucks!

HSR safelittleworld remix

2009-03-25T20:48:00.005+13:00

the second piece in my remix project.

some comments about the piece: The 'cut-up' methodology for this piece was more extreme than it was for the Kinkade piece, and the 'remixing' more extensive. I read through the Steiner Rice volume and wrote down individual lines that appealed to me - extracting words from their rhyming couplet context. The role of personal aesthetic was even more evident here than in the Kinkade - as lines that resonated for me may not resonate for another reader. Having written a fair bit of poetry myself, I couldn't help feeling slightly guilty about removing the lines from where Steiner Rice had placed them. But I came across an interesting footnote in the collection I was reading: "This poem combines favorite lines from several other Helen Steiner Rice poems, a practice Mrs Rice sometimes used when pressured to produce new verse on demand."

Using some of the lines I had selected, I reworked them into a new poem, placing lines together with a kind of conceptual flow, and thereby creating meaning by placing concepts side by side. Graphical treatment of the resulting poem had a lot to do with typography. I further fragmented the lines by placing them as broken parts across the page. I liked the idea of having certain parts of the text blocked out. There is a mystery to blocked out, crossed out, twinked out text - it sparks a kind of desire in the reader as you look for hidden words and meaning. Working with the Steiner Rice material and reading her biography, I couldn't help feeling there was powerful subtext operating in her poetry, hidding behind the greeting card rhymes and sentimentality.

In an urban context, graffiti is also blocked out by city officials - as can be seen, in fact, in the photograph I chose for this piece.

To create the text to be blocked out in the poem I used 'latin' place-holder text and then crossed it out with a very heavy typographic line. In the event I actually quite liked the poem with it's 'nonsense' 'latin' interjections, for example "all my dreams were built around you dui te dunt / alit lobor augait iure i send a loving dart" - but kept with the blocked out text concept instead.

The final visable text reads:

but it is also my cathedral

all my dreams were built around you
i send a loving dart
built on ideals of
girls and boys
in lovely rapturous surprise
God,
grant rebirth to man’s slumbering soul
a mere interlude of inflamed fascination
i’d like to be your shadow
across the years, we’ve met in dreams
but to keep the peace we must conquer the soul
become a seething sea of faces
the life he’s dreaming of
it’s the why and wherefore of infinite living
Christ is more than just a figure wrapped in ethereal glow
the comfort of transformation
so rest and relax and grow stronger
life is forever! death is a dream!

TK safelittleworld remix

2009-03-21T14:15:00.004+13:00

so here's the first piece of the thomas kinkade and helen steiner rice remix project. see this post for a wider discussion about the two artists. the text down the side of this piece reads: "kinkade morning light safe little world remix 09".

some comments about this piece: Having searched through the Thomas Kinkade coffee-table book that I got from the library, I found a few pictures which I thought might work for the project. I tried out a few of these on photographs I'd taken of back alley walls - an 'urban setting'. At this point it was clear that personal aesthetics were going to play a part. I was choosing my source material for what looked good (to my eye). My piece would be a remix or collage where my personal taste would come to bear. The Kinkade component that I chose is from a painting called 'Morning Light'. Kinkade's caption for the piece reads, "In 'Morning Light', a flower garden becomes a fabulous canvas onto which the morning sun paints a glowing picture. Suffused through the mist, the light dazzles with subtle flashes of color."

I liked the juxtaposition of the brick wall with the urban alley wall, and the vivid colours with the muted tones of the photograph. Where others have subverted Kinkade, I tried to treat the material with more positivity, genuinely aiming to make the Kinkade element look its best in the context. I wasn't trying to make fun of it.

I overlaid the Kinkade part and 'degraded' it a bit and wrapped it around the window to make it blend and appear more like it was applied to the wall by some very talented urban artist. At the bottom of the picture though, the Kinkade part overlaps the curb so that in some ways it is still distinct from the wall itself.

tomorrow: the steiner rice piece.

the painter of light, the ambassador of sunshine vs safe little world, pt 1

2009-03-07T12:52:00.007+13:00

Two of the most commercially successful artists of the American 20th century also happened to be Christians. Poet Helen Steiner Rice and painter Thomas Kinkade 'captured the hearts' of the American middleclass with a commercially viable artistic style that could be called something like 'Christian Romanticism' - a warm view of the world and humanity laced with Christian concepts.

Burgeois, trite, chocolate-box, sentimental, kitsch in the view of people that appreciate art and literature on the cutting edge, what Steiner Rice and Kinkade have produced is undeniably 'successful' in terms of sheer popularity.

I grew up surrounded by Christian pop culture, albeit removed from the USA. Our Sunday School and Bible-in-Schools classes were illustrated by flannelgraph and soft-focus poster images of woodlands overlaid by uplifting scripture verses. These illustrations were indicative of a machine that was (in the early 80s) already in full swing manufacturing product for a lucrative Christian market.

My first awareness of Helen Steiner Rice comes in the form of a memory of Mum buying greeting cards at the local news agent stationery shop. As a four year old (or so) I helpfully select a floral card from the rack for my mother's consideration. She looks inside, and with a definite air of something on the spectrum of repulsion says, "No, that's a Helen Steiner Rice card." My mother is clearly queasy about a type of poetry which I would later come to label 'doggeral', overly sentimental, and perhaps penned under the influence of Christianity tainted by humanism (that concept came from Mum). We did, however, have a collection of HSR's poems on our bookshelf at home - a gift, as I recall it - from a well-meaning friend of my mother's.

My concious awareness of Kinkade came later, after I had already grown up and been to university, after I had turned my back with disgust on Christian cliché and had gone off seeking after artforms that I felt engaged with Christian concepts in a more meaningful, grittier, cutting edge way; before then returning to kitsch Christian commercialism with a kind of curiosity touched with affection. In hindsight, I had probably seen his work before, but my attention was drawn to him sharply by a book called Making Contemporary Art: How Today's Artists Think and Work by Linda Weintraub. In this wide-ranging book, Weintraub had clearly decided that America's top-selling artist should be considered along with all the other artists more readily acceptable to the tastes of the art establishment. My interest was piqued.

In my own art, I had been looking for opportunities to critique the product of Christian commercialism that I had grown up with. I decided that a way to do this was to attempt a blending of the two bastions of Christian commercial art - Steiner Rice and Kinkade - with a style that I was personally working with - a gritty urban context. I wanted to see what would become of their work if I took it, 'remixed' it, and reimagined it a context removed from the comfortable living rooms of Bible Belt America.

In the event, the conceptual side of the project has probably outweighed the artistic merit and weight of the finished product. The more I thought about the project the more it formed a conceptual grid of ideas in my mind - most of them probably impossible to make explicit in the art itself without some kind of accompanying document.

I started out by doing some research to learn a bit more about the artists and also find the material that I would 'sample' for my remix. A coffee-table biography of Kinkade, illustrated with large colour reproductions, was easy to find at the local library, as was the collected works of Steiner Rice.

Thomas Kinkade is self-styled and promoted as 'the painter of light' - interesting when compared with the fact that Helen Steiner Rice was known as 'the ambassador of sunshine'. The research lent some interesting insights into each artist.

Steiner Rice

Steiner Rice was born in 1900 and died in 1981 - a life and career span that takes in all the turmoil of the 20th century. Her work was in marketing for an electric light company and then later for Gibson Art - a greeting card manufacturer. When the greeting card editor at Gibson died suddenly in the mid-1930s, Steiner Rice took over the job, and so the mass output of her verse began. When the stock market crashed in 1929, her husband (a banker) descended into depression and never recovered - taking his own life in 1932. Having been touched by this event and some of the other dramatic events of the 1900s, one thing that is noticeable about her poetry when it is read in collected form is that her subject matter is not always light and airy. She writes about grief, death and winter, but nearly always with a hopeful twist appropriate for a greeting card. What is also notable is that regardless of her subject matter, her style is always the same.

An advertising poem she wrote to promote the use of electricity in the home:

The Happiness of Housekeeping

Your room shines out in splendour,
No dirt or dust is seen,
Because the rugs within your house
Are bright and Hoover-clean.

A poem that deals with her own death:

When I Must Leave You

When I must leave you for a little while,
Please go on bravely with a gallant smile
And for my sake and in my name,
Live on and do all things, the same -
Spend not your life in empty days,
But fill each waking hour in useful ways -
Reach out your hand in comfort and in cheer,
And I in turn will comfort you and hold you near.

Helen Steiner Rice’s books of inspirational poetry have sold nearly seven million copies.

Thomas Kinkade

Kinkade was born in 1958. Having started as an art student at University of California at Berkeley, he dropped out after two years and eventually published a guide to sketching which sold well. He hit upon a popular style of painting which sold extremely well in galleries across California and he eventually formed his own company, Media Arts Group Inc. The paintings are sold through mail-order and dedicated franchises, and are available in formats ranging from 'originals' (hand painted copies signed by Kinkade) to posters and calendars.

Meanwhile, from 1994-1997, Russian artists Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar hired a research company as part of a fascinating conceptual art project to conduct interviews to find out what ordinary people most want to see in a painting. The research was conducted across several nations, and then Melamid and Komar painted the pictures that people most wanted to see (according to the resulting statistics). To summarise their findings, people most want to see landscapes, hills, a tree, a big lake, they like the colour blue, they want to see deer, families and George Washington (I assume that last one is influenced by American data). 88% of Americans surveyed favour outdoor scenes over any other representation.

Interestingly, quite separately to Kinkade, they have arrived at a rather fitting description of Kinkade's work (although I've never seen this fact mentioned elsewhere). The genius of Kinkade was hitting on the formula without the research. And so, it is estimated (by Kinkade's own company) that 1 in 20 American homes have a Kinkade print. Kinkade is reported to have earned $53 million for his artistic work in the period 1997 to May 2005.

Melamid & Komar:

Kinkade:

In rough form here are some of the things that I wanted to experiment with in my project:

commercial art tested out in a non-commercial space
idealised sentiments tested out in an unideal context
'Christian Romanticism' remixed into an 'unromantic' context
a test of Christian culture in the 'marketplace' - the commercial marketplace and the 'marketplace' in the sense that evangelicals talk about it as the place we live and work
if the work of these two artists is in fact 'beautiful' then they are being given a chance to 'beautify' an 'unbeautiful' space
testing work designed for a refined suburban context in the back alleys of an urban / suburban setting
contrasting the aesthetics of urban / street art with the aesthetics of popular art - both are 'art of the people'

That's the background, next up my pictures...

black out!

2009-02-18T21:00:00.003+13:00

t-shirt

2009-02-11T13:05:00.003+13:00

a superb 'flight of the conchords' tshirt that all you ex-pat, oeing kiwis may wish to invest in - will save time with casual enquirers... [available here].

mash

2009-01-09T12:39:00.003+13:00

i was just thinking how much i like mashups: "a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. A mash-up is a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another. In full swing at the end of the 20th century, mashups have been described positively as "ultimate post-modern pop song[s]" or "'culture jamming in its purest form'". [wikipedia]

here are some reasons i like them:
- they take the catchiest part of tune and use it shamelessly
- they use samples that you would need to have hundreds of millions of dollars to get clearance for
- they subvert the pop form
- they are all about enjoyment against money-making

here are some great examples so you can check it yourself...

- stereogum (in association with team9 - hey jono, they're aussies!) releases a free annual mashup compilation: vol3, vol2, vol1
- girl talk is one of the best-known mashup artists: his latest album is available on a pay what you want basis.
- and then there's 'bootie' - a mashup party in usa. each year they release a free 'best of' compilation: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.

just a slight word of warning: because rap vocals are easy to lift, a lot of mashups use them, and there is corresponding bad language in places.

movie still 5

2008-12-08T17:26:00.003+13:00

two shots from the opening of the film 'sunset boulevard' (1950). the second one of the man floating in the pool provided a technical challenge for the camera crew without the use of underwater cameras. instead, they placed a mirror on the bottom of the pool, heated the water to a level that didn't effect the clarity of the reflection and then shot downwards from a platform, recording the image reflected in the mirror. all technical aspects aside, the shot is stunning and helped to make the film a classic...

camera fun

2008-12-07T15:53:00.007+13:00

a couple of weeks ago i fulfilled a long ambition and purchased a new canon g10 camera. i've had my eye on the g series for ages, and to be honest this is the first really nice camera i've owned. the g10 follows in the great tradition of range-finder cameras, yeilding beautiful photos from a convenient and easy to use package. enough of the review!

it was my little baby when i got it but anna has become besotted with it. she wandered off into the garden a few evenings ago at dusk and when i went out to see what she was doing i found her over the fence in the neighbour's back yard.

our neighbour recently passed away, and he'd built his house and lived there for about 50 years or so. it's a nz classic - weather board painted a vibrant sky blue. i've always loved the look of it. our little house and his were the original inspiration for my safe little world concept. in fact a picture that i took of his house (which i then drew on) was the first place i used the term 'safe little world'.

anyway, in his back yard he has a little shed - a kind of haven with a comfortable chair, work bench and tools in it. i'd wanted to photograph it for a long time. the place is currently vacant and anna had gone over there and wandered into the shed.

i went over too, and what resulted were some very nice pictures that we took. the golden light of dusk was falling perfectly through the shed door and we were armed with my g10. here is some of what we got... (anna took the first two and i took the second two)

[on the headphones: 'vaka (live in vienna 2002)' by sigur ros. download it free here.]

movie still 4

2008-10-26T12:15:00.003+13:00

got movie stills coming out my ears - i'll have to post them more often. this one is from the film 'black robe', the moment just before the huron tribe accepts christianity...

the transcendent nodes of SP08

2008-09-30T17:25:00.010+13:00

before i leave well enough alone and stop talking about the semi permanent 08 design conference, i want to mention four moments i found particularly profound - nodes that occurred during the two days of the event and seemed (to me) to transcend the normal talk about design.

it seemed to me that abstract notions, altruism, emotion, passion, love (...) were much more present at sp this year than other years. perhaps as a reaction against the superficial, mechanical, commercial aspects of design, the speakers were expressing 'deeper' desires, flirting around the edges of art, and aiming to express something with more meaning. here are four examples that struck me particularly...

joel gethin lewis talks about hiraeth. joel gethin lewis: an interactivity designer (for want of a better phrase) who combines artistic and technical smarts to create incredible and mind-blowing interactive spaces. to date most of his work has been with uva (see to believe).

as part of his talk, he spoke about returning home to wales, to his roots, exploring the countryside, seeing a rare red kite soaring through the air, and experiencing firsthand 'hiraeth'. hiraeth is a welsh word that means something like 'a sense of place' - connectedness to land and the place you come from. it seems that this experience propelled lewis into a more art-based working method. he is now working exclusively with open-source solutions and sharing his research with the world.

karsten schmidt quotes from judges 5:5. karsten schmidt: a designer (perhaps mad scientist genius) who designs by writing computer code and allowing his code to formulate visual output based on the parameters he programs.

his talk was very philosophical. we said that everything is moving if you look at it long enough - nothing is static. even mountains are moving if you look at them long enough. at which point he quoted judges 5:5, "the mountains melted from before the LORD". actually he quoted "the mountains flowed before the Lord" (maybe his own english translation from german). young's literal translation has it, "hills flowed from the face of Jehovah". his point being that the mountains are moving, you just need to be God to observe it (ie around long enough).

personally i found it very nice that he was using a biblical passage to illustrate his point. he later went on to give us the disclaimer that he actually doesn't believe in God. he said that the randomisation in his work is one reason. my personal take is that his work definitely doesn't imply a lack of God. the randomisation that is inherent in the work steams from source code that he himself programmed (the code itself is not 'chance'). showing, i think, that the 'randomisation' we see in nature could steam from a generating source code programmed by a master programmer.

kate bezar quotes 1 corinthians 13. kate bezar: was a business consultant who chucked it in to follow her passion and create an interview magazine about ordinary people achieving great creative things (called 'dumbo feather, pass it on').

as if one creative quoting from the bible wasn't shocking enough, kate bezar did the same by quoting from 1 corinthinans 13, commenting "i bet this is the first time you've heard the bible quoted at a design conference" or something like that. she quoted, "when i was a child, i talked like a child, i thought like a child, i reasoned like a child. when i became a man, i put childish ways behind me." it was a scripture that she recited en masse as a school girl during school assemblies.

kate's angle was that by starting 'dumbo feather', following this scripture is exactly what she was NOT doing. she equated the business world she was once in to "putting childish ways behind" her, and that starting 'dumbo feather' was rediscovering and embracing a childlike approach.

i can't resist critiquing this. i think it is totally brilliant that she ditched the commercial world for an enterprise like 'dumbo feather'. in fact this is totally compatible with christianity, which (in part) calls for people to favour deeper, more beautiful things over materialism. as it happens, kate has taken the scripture out of context, because the verses immediately proceeding her quotation basically state that there's no point doing anything unless you do it with love. which is an idea she's embraced by starting 'dumbo feather' - she is now using love as a driving force, where love was absent from the grind of her former business consultant life. st paul's meaning in 1 corinthians 13 is that the more advanced way to do things is through love. the bible in no way denigrates a childlike approach to life. jesus himself said, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (matthew 18). i think she took a step closer to the true meaning of 1 corinthians 13 when she started 'dumbo feather' rather than a step away.

danny yount's sea anemone. danny yount: a title sequence designer responsible for such things as the opening titles of 'six feet under' and the end titles of 'iron man'.

the finale of sp08 for me was when yount put a picture of a sea anemone up on the screen, and said something to the effect of (and i wish i could remember his exact words), "this sea anemone sits on my desk. when i need inspiration i look at it closely. look at it - it's perfectly designed. God has surrounded us with an amazing creation. so when you need inspiration, look around you."

movie still 3

2008-09-28T13:08:00.006+13:00

here i am skiving off from what i said i would post about next (again). here are some movie stills from the film 'control' about the life and death of ian curtis (lead singer of joy division). the film is directed by famous photographer anton corbijn, so you would expect some lovely black and white visuals... (click on 'em to see 'em bigger like)

SP08 (part 2)

2008-09-07T14:49:00.008+12:00

day two started with one of the speakers i was most looking forward to - derek henderson. he is one of new zealand's most respected photographers and seems equally at home photographing models in venice as he is photographing the deserted streets of backwater new zealand towns. i wasn't disappointed - he showed us a lot of his work and added anecdotes to each of the images. interesting stuff.

sea design were next. i actually can't remember too much about their presentation - probably due to the fact that i've taken so long to get this review posted, but also maybe because it didn't make a huge impact on me. when i was researching for this post, though, i visited their website: home page = wow. check it (refresh it to see different background images).

then dumbo feather after lunch. kate bezar is a new zealander based in australia - a st cuths girl turned management consultant turned magazine publisher. her magazine 'dumbo feather, pass it on' is an interview magazine that talks to ordinary people achieving great things. kate's story is a classic 'getting sick of corporate world so decides to follow her passion and using all the money she made in the corporate world to do something new and altruistic' story. her talk was based around that theme. i don't mean to sound sarky about it - it was a good talk.

debaser are an australian design agency that specialises in album cover design. they had some nice work and it was interesting to hear about their experiences and the processes of album art.

after afternoon tea was danny yount - i think i might have a new hero. he's a seemingly ordinary guy who ended up in the business of creating title sequences for movies. for me this is fascinating because it often involves typography in movement. danny yount designed the opening titles for a fairly successful tv program called 'six feet under'. his recent work includes the end titles for 'iron man' and 'the invasion'. he has also recently finished work on the new guy ritchie film. fantastic talk.

the superstar of the event and the supposed headline act was stefan sagmeister. he's fairly famous (to say the least) in design circles. he's the sort of guy that people will pay any amount of money to design whatever he likes. that puts him in a whole different universe from most of the people at the conference. he talked us through a project he's worked on called 'things i've learnt' or something like that. it's a famous project that most of us had probably already seen. he didn't seem too worried about the time constraints and was still going when i left half an hour after the finish time.

morning and evening - the second day.

it really was good having the event as two days this year. at the end of the first day i wondered how i was going to absorb another day's worth of info but i was ok after a nice sleep. you run into problems when you put designers in front of a large audience - a lot of them probably never dreamed that they would be hauled away from their macs and placed in front of a vast auditorium of people. but the proportion of speakers that were able to make that transition well was higher this year than the other two years i've been. i think the organisers of this event should be congratulated because they are clearly trying to bring the latest thinking about design to new zealand. that means that we are getting the benefit of a vast amount of cultural capital every time this event is held - and i think this was particularly true this year.

i'm not finished posting about SP - next i'm going to write about some interesting highlights. meanwhile here is some design work from the speakers (in order of appearance):

sgt. james brown gets it on

2008-09-04T11:02:00.004+12:00

yes, i know i'm supposed to be posting part 2 of my sp08 review - it's coming. meanwhile here i am getting distracted by yet another triviality.

i get a fair bit of spam through my inbox and take great delight in the sender names that these emails come from - some of them are just brilliant - here are a few i've collected in the past: mauricio lee, consuelo hobson, ernesto mcclellan, ruthie salazar, ringleader e. artifact, hartford v. vestibule, jesus jolly.

great stuff. so you can imagine my delight when this morning i received an email from one sgt. james brown.

normally i immediately delete these things without opening them but sgt. james brown! now that's what i'm talking about. turns out to be one of those 'nigerian' scams. but sgt. jb is determined to quell any fears that i might have about this being non-legit.

to quote sgt. brown: "It’s true that one has to 'be hesitant of such a transaction' but you must know that Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serve to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."

quite a philosopher is sgt. jim. turns out though that this is blatant plagarism. this is in fact a quote from henry miller. how can one trust such a plagariser? and here i was about to assist sarg in his transaction - lucky i checked quoteworld.org first!

and now for the REAL james brown (got it here) (the irony of the fact this appears to be a picture of james brown leaving prison does not escape me):

SP08 (part 1)

2008-08-23T17:46:00.007+12:00

for the first time, the semi-permanent design conference was held over two days this year. and that really is too much to talk about in one post, so i'm going to break it up into two with a third part that talks about my personal response.

the day launched with marion bantjes from canada - one of the best speakers first up. she presented really well and showed us some lovely work. her trademark style is lots of curvy lines.

she was followed by design by pidgeon from australia. this was real solid work by david pidgeon with some nice ideas. the session wasn't hugely rivetting from an entertainment point of view and included a lot of discussion about the australian pavillion at the venice benninal.

after lunch it was joel gethin lewis and i was tremendously excited about hearing him after he spoke on behalf of uva last year. this welsh kid is an absolute genius - and i think i might mean that literally. having told us about the work he did with uva for massive attack and the interactive regent street christmas lights, he went on to tell us about his new projects involving utlising open source software in visual art and media. some other things about lewis: he got a job as a game interactivity tester when he was 14, worked for ibm when he was 17, and has a science degree and a fine arts degree.

then it was collider from australia with designer andrew van der westhuyzen presenting. this was fairly well presented and i particularly enjoyed discussion about the work they did for the mtv australia awards which including a very cool photo shoot using high speed cameras.

after afternoon tea we heard from the wilderness and it was blimin' nice to hear some nz voices. this was co-presented by a guy named kelvin who i once had coffee with to talk about an alternative christian arts magazine idea (which as far as i know never eventuated). so it's interesting to see that he's become one of nz's finest designers.

and the day was rounded out by toxi (aka karsten schmidt). this session was a real mind-bender. schmidt does all his design by source code. so instead of drawing something in illustrator or photoshop he writes computer code that draws the object by itself. he is big on creating randomised elements. he was adament that we should all go out and learn how to program so that we could get on that wave. it was also a very philosophical talk and i'm going to put him in the genius catagory too, and maybe even the mad scientist sub-catagory. while it's unlikely that many of the designers there will go out and start creating the way he does, it was nice to have the framework of our brains stretched.

and there was morning and evening - the first day. i'll review day two in the next post.

some images (in order of appearance):

jamie strange let loose in the wild

2008-08-21T10:04:00.005+12:00

i'm still procrastinating about posting about the things i was going to post about. but other interesting things keep coming up.

i should have mentioned that we finally finished work on the album art for jamie strange's album - he's had some copies printed up and is unleashing it on the music world as we speak.

i think he has achieved something pretty cool with this album - he's showed incredible determination in seeing the project to this point and deserves plaudits for this. i should be focussing on his work with the album, but instead i'm going to get all egotistical about it and point out my own appearances on the album. apart from working on the album artwork with my esteemed colleague mr roland bart ebbing, i also have a couple of tasty vocal appearances.

jamie gave his album to hamilton student radio station max fm and they have added three of his tracks to their playlist - two of those tracks have me on them... a brief punk vocal on 'rockstar clone' (currently max fm's most requested song) and some spoken word on 'screaming without words'. you can visit the playlist page here. but because it will change one day i've immortalised the moment here (click on it to make it bigger):

and because i know you're anxious to know what words i speak on 'screaming without words', here is a transcript (i wrote them especially for the song):

All the time I thought you knew, compressed by this distorted voice
My silent world drowned out by the city's long low hum, and groans that words can't express
The sound of traffic with our conscious minds
My stream of conscious thought against my subconscious thought
I wrestle with this dark angel morning through night
'Til night fades and is carried away by dawn
All the time I thought you knew, all the time I thought
And here it all begins to fade away
I'm screaming without words to say

i'll post some images from the jamie strange artwork in a later post...

guitar hero

2008-08-20T16:47:00.002+12:00

i've got a billion little things in mind that i want to post about - for one thing i got back from the semi permanent design conference on monday, and i want to review that. and i've come across some more star wars stuff. and more cool stuff. and i've got loads of movie stills. i guess i'm just going to have to try and post stuff more regularly.

but instead of posting about any of those things, i'd like to draw your attention to a particularly nice piece of music/video from my friend mark laurent who is a particularly fine guitarist...

here it is now:

movie still 2

2008-08-03T10:49:00.010+12:00

here's the second installment of 'movie still'. this time a little bit of kubrick magic, and no matter what anyone says about space odyssey 2001 it is undoubtedly a stunning film visually. i got so lost in the visuals that i only remembered to capture a few frames - but virtually every shot in that film could be captured - especially once the film moves beyond the annoying apeman opening scenes. my favourite shot is the last one below...

20,000 tracks under the sea

2008-07-21T11:44:00.003+12:00

i've blogged before about the inane sense of enjoyment i get from watching as the music i'm listening to on my computer appears on my last.fm page.

that enjoyment doesn't seem to have waned in the over two years. so you can imagine my excitement (perhaps) when this morning i hit 20,000 tracks played since joining last.fm in may 2006. that's a fair bit of music listened to (an average of about 25 tracks a day).

my milestone roughly coincides with a redesign that last.fm have just launched. i'm getting used to it but i feel like it is less destinctive now and more like facebook. the functionality is pretty good - an improvement i think.

anyway, here's a souvenir of the moment i accomplished the 20,000 mark (click to enlarge or download it as your desktop wallpaper!)

jewellery

2008-07-20T16:07:00.003+12:00

Anna, my wife, has just launched a blog about her designer jewellery line... check it: www.annieblackberry.blogspot.com

movie still 1

2008-06-28T12:30:00.011+12:00

another new regular feature for my blog: movie stills. one of the biggest things that attracts me to a film is the cinematography. i can sit and watch a film that would ordinarily be 'boring' and love it for the camera work. when i studied film at university i remember coming across a comment that in the great movies you can take an individual frame, and composition and lighting-wise it will stand up as an image by itself.

often when i'm watching a dvd on my computer i'll see a shot that i particularly love and the photographer part of my brain tells me to press "c" to capture the image using the dvd software's in-built capture feature.

over the last couple of years i've gathered quite a nice little collection of movie stills on my computer, so i thought it might be cool to start posting some of them on the blog. the range of movies is very wide - from established 'classics' to more recent films. occasionally i might even post an image from a film that i have forgotten the title of....

so here goes - movie still 1: 'noi the albino', and actually this film is too beautiful to post just one image...

star wars news episode VIII: the drunks of mos eisley

2008-06-24T18:33:00.003+12:00

to quote the late great obi wan kenobi, mos eisley is a "wretched hive of scum and villainy". situated on the planet tatooine, legend has it that it became the capital of the planet when jabba the hutt moved part of his crime empire there (source: wikipedia).

in the town of mos eisley is a rather infamous bar called the mos eisley cantina which has a house band called figrin d'an and the modal nodes.

we all know that it is not a very nice place because we have witnessed firsthand how han, luke and obi wan got on when they visited. the mos eisley cantina is full of drunkenness and general debauchery. what better place to set a drink drive commercial in then?

click on the link below and see a public service announcement from 1979 in which a caring member of the mos eisley community helps out a drunk buddy... and let it be a lesson to you!

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/05/18/votd-star-wars-1979-drunk-driving-psa/

this episode of star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom what brought to you in association with the quote:

"watch your mouth kid, or you’ll find yourself floating home." - han solo

something cool one

2008-06-15T21:19:00.005+12:00

here's another potentially regular slot - let's call it 'something cool'. that title can be like 'ironic' because we all know that a blog slot that was truly cool would never call itself 'something cool'. dig?

so here's something cool: the band 'tilly and the wall'.

what makes them cool: they are an indie band that has a tap dancer instead of a drummer. the story goes that they were missing a drummer and had this friend who was a tap dancer so they asked her in to tap some rhythms for them to practise to. they thought it sounded so good that they added her to the line-up. so now, when you go to a tilly and the wall concert, on the riser behind the band is a tap dancer instead of a drummer.

you think that sounds a little bit naff? well it is potentially but listen for yourself... at betterpropaganda the song 'pot kettle black' has serious attitude (don't blame me, it has a bit of bad language).

star wars news episode VII: beware of the ewoks

2008-06-13T13:05:00.006+12:00

yeah! in yer eye george lucas! i managed to produce VII episodes of my franchise! and it really wasn't that hard.

now, on star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom i do bang on a fair bit about stormtroopers. it's because, despite the fact that they work for the dark side, they're cool.

so anyway, today i got wind of a cool-sounding project by eight illustrators paying tribute to star wars by interpreting elements of the original movies in their own way. the book is called 'harvest is when i need you the most'. (a reference to uncle owen's impassioned speech to luke near the beginning of the first star wars movie - but you already knew that.) i found out about the book on drawn and you can see the book website for yourself here.

this particular frame (by branden d lamb) took my fancy. damn ewoks...

this episode was brought to you in association with the quote: “aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” - princess leia

viewmaster goodness

2008-06-13T12:46:00.004+12:00

i've been meaning to tell you all about anna's new jewellery range. and i fully intend to - i'll do a big post on it soon. in her hunting around for cool stuff to put on the end of a chain, anna came across a rather fantastic black viewmaster on trademe.

so we bought it. it's a 1950s model (i think) manufactured in belgium (yes belgium of all places), we think it's made of bakelite which makes it even cooler. it is nice and heavy and has a serious industrial-feeling mechanism. it came with its original box!

here it is now:

star wars news episode VI: fightchix

2008-06-05T09:55:00.003+12:00

i've become very aware in recent days that there's something that star wars news (news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom) lacks: hot celebrity gossip. cutsy pictures of stormtroopers are all very well, but what this news series needs is something with a bit more bite.

right on cue comes this excellent and exciting news piece.

it turns out that george lucas's daughter, amanda, quietly slipped into new zealand last week. all true star wars fans will know that "Amanda has ... made an impact on the big screen, appearing in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. She was dancer Diva Funquita and the voice of Trade Federation battleship communications officer Tey How in Episode I The Phantom Menace, Outlander Club patron Adnama (Amanda spelled backwards) in Episode II Attack of the Clones, and Senator Terr Taneel in Episode III Revenge of the Sith." i can't believe you didn't know that.

but here's the really awesome bit. she came to new zealand to fight in a mixed martial arts event called 'princesses of pain'.

just because she's the daughter of someone famous, doesn't mean she gets treated any differently. 'princesses of pain' promoter (that's a lot of alliteration) belinda dunne says, "Within her team-mates, none of them really give a crap (about her links to fame)."

wearing a shirt with the catchy phrase 'fightchix' on it, amanda 'powerhouse' lucas fought against nz kickboxer nicole kavanagh who, by the look of this picture, managed to inflict a certain amount of damage.

my mate johnnie b has been trying to get close to george lucas for years. if only we had known that george's daughter was visiting maybe we could have set up a date or something. unfortunately john is in the uk at the moment, and as it turns out amanda 'powerhouse' lucas's "American bodybuilder fiancee" might have had something to say about it.

original story on stuff.

this episode of star wars news was brought to you in association with the following dialogue:

[a large-eyed creature gives Luke a rough shove and starts yelling at Luke in an alien language which Luke doesn't understand...]

Dr. Evazan: He doesn't like you.
Luke: Sorry.
Dr. Evazan: I don't like you either. You just watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems.
Luke: I'll be careful.
Dr. Evazan: You'll be dead!

star wars news episode V: stormtroopers v the bill

2008-05-31T11:09:00.005+12:00

i once read a book called 'ss-gb' by len deighton - a novel about what it might have been like if the nazis had occupied great britain in WW2. in particular, it is about a british police detective working in the london police force after it has become answerable to the german ss.

well, that's all fine and dandy, but what if great britain had been conquered by the empire? what then eh? i think this picture gives us a bit of an insight into that situation. clearly the empire's stormtroopers (more heavily armed and equipped, not to mention backed by the entire authority of the empire) have the bill exactly where they want them.

the original of this pic is here and i first saw it on boingboing.

this episode of star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom was brought to you in association with the quote: "i'd prefer a straight fight instead of all this sneaking around" - han solo.

star wars news episode IV: the colour of vader's money

2008-05-23T18:04:00.006+12:00

star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom, or in this case from the dark side of the force.

the empire really had their systems and government structures together, a pretty well oiled machine.

today we have a rather interesting artefact from the imperial economic system - bank notes used as currency throughout the empire during the time of the rebellion.

these bank notes were designed by one j. scott campbell (aka diablo2003) (also happens to be an artist for marvel). i came across them on ffffound image bookmarking, but they were originally posted on deviantART. the blurb on deviantART says that j. scott designed them as a guest artist at a star wars fan day. read more about the bank notes here and more about j. scott campbell here.

this episode is brought to you in association with the quote "i find your lack of faith disturbing" - darth vader

star wars news episode III: stormtroopers just wanna have fun

2008-05-19T13:46:00.007+12:00

i sent this link last week to a few friends, but it was one of the inspirations for star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom, so it needs to be shared.

a flickr user (one Doctor Beef) has taken to documenting the secret lives of stormtroopers. the flickr slide show is here. but here's my favourite pic [sometimes you see a photo and think, 'damn i wish i'd taken that photo' - this is one] and the Doctor Beef caption that goes with it...

The guys insisted we stop at the beach so they could see the lake, then got mad when they discovered it was frozen over and we put them out on the ice.

"We're not Snowtroopers," said TK-327.
"BRRRR" was all I could hear from TK-704.
"It was HIS idea to come out here, not mine," shouts an accusatory TK-218.
TK-315 wasn't so bothered - he'd filled his mug with hot coffee from Teolly's cuppa before we got out of the car.

this episode was brought to you in association with the quote: "you could use a good kiss" - han solo.

the man

2008-05-17T20:01:00.007+12:00

i'm sick - i've got a head cold thing. strangely, when i've got a cold sometimes i get more creative - it's almost as if the cold creates a kind of insulation against extraneous data and my mind settles into its natural tendency (ie to make things). or something like that anyway. a similar effect is the half awake zone as you drift off to sleep. or when you get away from work and have a proper holiday - inevitably the things you love doing most come to the front of your mind.

anyway, a few days ago i was doodling and came across an interesting little character, which i refined over the last few days and practised as i watched dvds (ken burns's documentary series on jazz). today i finally drew a version that i was happy with (he's a bit random the way he comes out on paper when you draw him freehand). so i scanned him into the computer and cleaned him up.

here's the little blighter now:

he's designed to be drawn quite quickly with just a few strokes. it's amazing how much he and his brothers change their attitudes and stature as they randomly appear on the page.

this version has been put through illustrator's live trace 'inked drawing' process and then tidied up a bit.

i'm wondering if subconsciously his rather rotund little figure is influenced by louis armstrong and charlie parker.

chur little bro.

on the headphones: 'crosstown traffic' by jimi hendrix from the album 'experience hendrix'.

star wars news episode II: vintage star wars

2008-05-16T10:41:00.005+12:00

hello, and welcome to the second episode of star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom.

most people assume that the star wars movie that came out in 1977 was the first one (even though it was actually episode IV). in fact, thanks to recent film research, a much older version of star wars has been unearthed, dating back to the silent film era.

youtube is the world authority on rare and hard to find film, and so now, for your viewing pleasure, the original star wars movie (unearthed by neonstz):

this episode of star wars news brought to you in association with the quote: "help me obi wan kenobi, you're my only hope." - princess leia

star wars news episode I: namby-pamby jedi cameraman

2008-05-14T10:48:00.004+12:00

a bit about me and star wars: i was released the same year as star wars - 1977. when i say 'released' i mean 'born'. my older brothers (10 and 12 years older) were into star wars and i grew up with it.

when my brother rob went on his oe to europe he came back with a range of fantastic star wars toys for me, including a speeder bike, x-wing fighter and a laser canon. one of my friends ben was also into star wars in a big way and we had epic games with our star wars figures and vehicles. he had a millennium falcon and an at-st walker. when we got to be 11 or 12, ben went off star wars and agreed to sell me his at-st walker for $10. i'm still the proud owner of that walker - albeit slightly guilty as i know ben has regretted the transaction in later years.

needless to say, i love all the original star wars films and saw return of the jedi when it first came out at the movies (plus a couple of ewok movies but we choose not to discuss those). i am deeply ambivalent about the newer star wars movies and lay much of the blame at the feet of george lucas's poor dialogue writing abilities. the dialogue of the first three movies was saved by harrison ford.

i welcome and embrace your own comments about stars wars and your personal recollections.

and now for star wars news episode I: so in view of my star wars fascination (and i should say i'm not one of those guys who dresses up and goes to conventions - although one day i would like to own a stormtrooper helmet) i come across quite a bit of star wars ephemera on the net and most of it is just too good not to share.

in this video, two members of the 'jedi faith church' of holyhead in the uk are attacked by a drunk guy wearing a black plastic bag, wielding a crutch and yelling "darth vader!" and, in what is possibly the most namby-pamby jedi moment since luke skywalker sulked about going to town to get some power converters when his aunt and uncle wanted him to do chores, the jedi cameraman upon being hit with the crutch says, "ahh, that's really quite painful."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/7398202.stm

where i found out about this news: boingboing.

hone

2008-01-17T20:58:00.000+13:00

just a few days after ed hillary died, another important nzer has passed away. hone tuwhare wasn't as famous as ed, but he played an important part in nz literary history. he was a well-loved nz poet - accessible, witty and insightful. in 1964 he published 'no ordinary sun' - the first published full book of poetry by a maori written in english. it remains in print and is in it's 10th impression. he was also known for his collaborations with visual artist ralph hotere.

one of his best known poems is this one:

Rain
I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

[image from www.honetuwhare.co.nz]

sad day

2008-01-11T16:18:00.000+13:00

i was just out delivering some work and noticed that the flag at tauranga airport was at half-mast. and then i noticed another one further on that was the same. i thought, "who would warrant that kind of respect?" and my first thought was "sir ed hillary". sadly, when i came home to check, it turns out that it was in fact ed hillary who passed away today.

ed hillary was easily the most famous new zealander alive - he and nepalese sherpa tenzing norgay were the first people to reach the summit of mt everest. or as he put it "we knocked the bastard off". he came to personify the typical kiwi bloke - no fuss, just get the job done sort of attitude.

he was an all-round adventurer and travelled to the north and south poles - the first man to achieve the everest, south pole, north pole trifecta. he was also a humanitarian, tirelessly working for the nepalese people. tragically, nepal claimed the lives of his wife and daughter in a plane crash in 1975.

it's sad that he's passed away - it's a loss for new zealand. at 88 he had a good innings, and will always be considered a legend.

[image from wikipedia]

5 days into 2008

2008-01-05T16:37:00.000+13:00

this morning i watched a biopic on jackson pollock starring ed harris. it was a pretty good film. i can never watch a movie about art without wanting to do something of my own. ever since taking pictures in alleyways in town a few days ago, i've had multiple ideas firing around in my head about how to use them.

watching the pollock film gave me the idea to just get on with it and see what emerges. i decided to start work on an idea i've had for several weeks. like the last piece i did (the plastic stag one) it was a long-term idea that really evolved when i started playing with the elements.

it incorporates the following elements: one of my alleyway photos, my standard artwork of me (blindfolded and degraded), an image of blue sky over the suburb of bureta, the safe little world brand, and as a little bonus, a map of tauranga (bureta to central city) that covers the area where the alley is, taken from the perspective of where the blue sky is.

on the headphones: 'thou shalt always kill' by dan le sac VS scroobius pip. check it (you won't regret it).

verge of 08

2007-12-31T19:31:00.000+13:00

well, here we are on the verge of 2008. i've just been on a nice little road trip / work trip with lance that included a stay at my brother's holiday house north of auckland. very cool.

anyway, the intention - like last year - is to get some creative projects finished during my work holidays. that includes (somewhat dauntingly) a revamp of my website. it also includes realising some concepts i've had in mind for some time for visual pieces.

i'm working on a series (long-term) that incorporates grid designs done on my etch-a-sketch. today i finished the second of these pieces - 'plastic stag'. it's satisfying to complete this, because the idea for this particular image began to emerge very early this year when i took the background image at a music team retreat in the country.

here's the finished piece:

i'm immensely pleased with the final result as it truly incorporates all the aesthetic elements i like - the etch-a grid, iconography, text and photography. the photography itself has good colours and subject matter (i like switches and plastic forms). the text reads "plastic stag [bagged and mounted by a plastic huntsman]. barometer rising. safe little world."

meanwhile, to provide more background material for these pieces i fulfilled another long-term idea to go into town when it was quiet in the evenings and get some pictures of urban walls. the lighting was great and as well as the walls i was thinking of, i also found a few more nice ones. i had my work camera (a sony fixed lens that provides 10.3 mp images) at home so i used that.

here are a couple of examples:

so that's about the sum for now. happy new year - hope it's a good one.

on the headphones: 'rain' by fat freddy's drop, from the album 'live at the matterhorn'.

the story of stuff

2007-12-24T08:42:00.000+13:00

please have a look at this little video. it's called 'the story of stuff' and it is an excellent summary of the whole consumerism, global economy thing and its inherent problems. the presenter talks to you a bit like a primary school teacher, but it's worth watching anyway (cool animation graphics).

here is the first part (5 minutes). the whole thing is 20 minutes long and you can watch it at www.storyofstuff.com

what makes you so busy?

2007-12-18T20:12:00.000+13:00

the workload i used to have and which i once thought was full-on now seems like something of a holiday since taking on quite a bit of extra work a few months ago. it's been good, but i'm definitely looking forward to a nice break and a chance to do some non-commercial creative projects (like getting safelittleworld.co.nz up and running and doing some more artworks).

in the midst of all my busy work (which has also included editing, designing and releasing a new castle publishing book, completing work on the typesetting of a book for the salvation army, creating issue 3 of abb engineering's bimonthly product update, and various work for HOTmilk), here are a couple of quite nice looking projects that i've worked on in the last month or so...

reservegroup b&b website

this was my first project for my new web photojournalism job. i wrote all the content and took a lot of the photos for this b&b establishment. the guys at reservegroup did a beautiful job of the design. my first project went live a week or so ago.

a screenshot of the front page (have a nosey at the whole site here):

expanse christmas card

another cool project i worked on was a christmas card for my friend alex, who operates a town planning consultancy called 'expanse'. the brief was to create a card to communicate that expanse had purchased a dairy cow through world vision's 'gifts of hope' programme.

the first step was to create this hand-drawn / hand-painted cow (which i did with some reference photos, photoshop and my wacom tablet):

i then overlaid it on a stock photo of a city street at night (to bring in the town-planning aspect) that included christmas colours, making the image look painterly, adding a bright glow behind the cow and including the phrase "the cattle are lowing..."

the card was printed digitally on gloss stock and came up right nice.

on the headphones: 'call a cab' by lionrock.

the home of the future

2007-12-15T09:32:00.000+13:00

i'm hoping to get a bit more time soon to make some more posts on my blogs... but for now a slacker's post.

here are a couple of videos about 'the house of the future' at disneyland back in the day (found via boingboing - which, by the way, would be the blog to choose if you were going to read just one blog a day). sponsored by monsanto chemicals it was made almost entirely out of plastic. what a safe little world that would be.

part 1:

part 2:

on the headphones: 'go it alone' by beck, from the album 'guero'.