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.
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...
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'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...
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!)
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...
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!
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).
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
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!
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.
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!
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: 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
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.
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'.
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
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
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
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.
.jpg)
