Sunday, 26 December 2010

netting the spectres

here are some images from a 3d project i'm working on




Thursday, 16 December 2010

Monday, 6 December 2010

2000

Some how this makes more sense coming from the lips of nick cave. Like a slow dance at a disco that ends in a punch-up.





would you like to meet me maybe,
you can even bring your baby,

The Flight of the Navigator


These are Satelloons, PAGEOS, pictured above before its launch in 1966, and Echo, below, in 1959. They played a role in Stellar Geodesy which was a method to measure the earth by launching sateloons into space, then photographing the mirrored spheres against the stars from several different locations on the surface of the earth.




The practice was later replaced by the development of lasers but there is something very familiar about these images.

Friday, 3 December 2010

an sgurr

A generic term in gaelic meaning rocky peak, but also the name of an actual rocky peak on the Isle of Eigg.



I like places where I've never been.

Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Burning churches



Luc Moullet

A relatively forgotten french film maker from the french new wave. Essai d'ouverture is a short film that traces his efforts to master the skills of opening a bottle of Coca-Cola.




The english retitling of his film 'Une aventure de Billy le Kid' is rather more exciting i think.

Friday, 26 November 2010

Thursday, 25 November 2010

Gerard Byrne - 1984 and Beyond


Gerard Byrne's films seem able to create a mood of complete familiarity and complete otherness. Set amongst the serene modernist interiors of the Kröller-Müller Museum at the Sonsbeek Pavilion in the Netherlands Byrne restages the discussions from the article '1984 and Beyond' that was printed by Playboy in 1963 and that gathered together 12 key science fiction writers of the time including Ray Bradbury, Issac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. The dialogue is performed by accented Dutch actors dressed to match these 1960's utopian spaces which along with the clarity of Byrne's style of filming has the effect of further distancing us from the source material. It is a hazy dream like montage of styles that merge a dated retro-futurism with the stern knowingness and European sensibilities of contemporary pluralism. It is a reality that has eaten itself several times over which when said out loud becomes a temporal trainwreck: a modern retelling of a past event in which writers of science fiction discuss a future that is now past.



There is nothing new about the re-appropriation of image and meaning, so it goes from relational aesthetics all the way back to Duchamps urinal, what is telling about Byrne's films it the level of comfort and ease with which these realities coalesce. I feel we, as an audience of 2010, are less concerned with the positioning of reality whether it be up, down, left or right from the piece, it no longer needs to be located. The artist (and ad man) work on a vision that touches many places and times but are all a means to an end, a perfect vision existing at 'the expensive of reality' which is an ethic born, in some ways, from the utilitarian wants of the marketplace. I feel comfortable with this constant rehashing and realignment of material, it feels like home; its alien-like utopian nature is seductive and calming and from which I had to save myself from drifting off to the accented sounds of amateur Dutch actors.


Monday, 22 November 2010

Friday, 19 November 2010

I was searching through a stack of tapes in crystal palace a month ago and came across a few dozen home made compilation tapes with alot of john peel sessions, the covers have been made with a type writer that seems mildly obsessive 80's serial killer who works part time as a library archivist.

There is one tape that grabbed my attention which simply had the words 'CITY CENTRE' inscribed on the cover which I first thought might be the music project of the same name but it turned out to be something a whole lot stranger, i'll save with the explanation, here it is:









A Whiff of Death