olliebetts

2010-08-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

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Sick Brompton

2010-04-22T06:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm leaving for Amsterdam and the Brakes on my Brompton i'm taking have seized up. I'm working all day, have no tools or knowledge of how to fix the problem and every bike mechanic in Bristol's is fully booked. At 9.30 am I call Ross of Tayloredcycles and explain the situation. Although he is also fully booked he thinks he can fix the problem and squeeze me in, so at 10.30 am Ross arrives at my place of work, inspects the sick Brompton's brakes and in no time has fixed them before my eyes!. The cost of this unbelievable service was very reasonable indeed and I would urge anyone who has neither the tools the time or the knowledge needed to fix their bike to give Tayloredcycles a call.
http://www.tayloredcycles.com/

Knots and Tie Grrrs

2010-03-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Leisure-Culture/Museums-Galleries/coming-soon-tiger-display-at-bristols-city-museum---art-gallery-.en;jsessionid=109F13E7713E4CF6819701CCD7845146.tcwwwaplaws2

fluke

2009-12-20T17:08:00.001-08:00

http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=9982566

wasted hours

2009-12-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=9982206

fantastic contraption

2009-12-20T10:21:00.001-08:00

http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=9979710

above as below

2009-09-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

you don't buy beer
you rent it

M.I.A

2009-08-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

2005 - NOVEMBER, DECEMBER
2006 - JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH, APRIL, MAY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER
2007 - SEPTEMBER
2008 - JANUARY, FEBRUARY, APRIL, MAY, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER
2009 - FEBRUARY, APRIL

* 90'S ENCYCLOPEDIA

2009-08-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

mahr
SEHL
doo
SHAHN*

this is because...

2009-08-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

This is because of the yellow
The yellow card and the yellow remote controlled plane
This is because of the fast and slow
The explosive forces of Karate against the serene peace of people listening to music on headphones
This is because the man is dreaming
He has passed out. He is dreaming of escaping to wide open plains and starting a nomadic life
This is because we couldn't have this without that
The burning oil field in the desert and the office with its communications and computers.
This is because of knowledge
The shepherds simple life is full of knowledge and learning as is the ordering of the complicated amount of information in the library
This is because we are all voyeurs
The woman being filmed is watching, as are we and the audience in the auditorium
This is because we want to be amazed
The children are amazed by the dinosaur skeleton on display in the exhibition and the crowd in the big top are captivated by the circus

htmlsauce

2009-07-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

http://kemistrygallery.co.uk/

Quick Watch Time!!!

2009-07-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.danieleatock.com/

X&Y

2009-07-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

the joy of painting

2009-06-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

A psychological line?

2009-05-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

plan & elevation

2009-05-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

the new salt seller

2009-05-18T04:07:00.001-07:00

Gamborchini time

2009-05-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

Sitting with a sniveling nose watching question time. Started doodling because I could. Took photo on my phone of doodle. Newtoothed to the puter, then potatoshoped the hell out of it. What a great waste of time.

It's art Jim but not as we know it!

2009-05-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

The affordable art fair was brimming to its beautiful rafters with a torrent of delightful contradictions and ironies that would make for hilarious viewing pleasure in the capable hands of somebody like Christopher guest. I recommend to anyone with an appreciation of spinal tap or best in show to go along to the opening night, grab a free glass of wine, and witness for themselves this remarkable spectacle in full flow.

web 2 training

2009-05-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

Having a lovely time in emersons green library where there are some lovely pictures of birds.

J: I wonder who drew those birds

L: HA HA Ha HA

O: okay so this is how all this blogging stuff should work!!!

the parish records

2009-03-31T04:46:00.001-07:00

Hidden in Plain Sight

2009-03-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

Walk into a room. In a glass case ontop of a waist high plinth, 3 standard stoppages. Duchamp's acknowledged favourite work. 3 meter length tailors thread attatched to a very thin piece of canvas painted carbon copy paper blue. Beautifull wodden guides duplicate the bezier like curve's made by the thread. Plaque on wall takes Duchamps word for it and tells us he dropped the meter threads from a meter height and then fixed them to the canvas. Canned Chance. Experiment years later in which john cage tried unsussesfully to duplicate the action. No matter how many times, the thread never landed with the gentle curves that Duchamps threads display. Closer inspection. Threads are sewn through two points on canvas. 3 x 2 xy coordinates in total. Canvas strips are glued onto pieces of glass. I am thinking about time and space. Did Duchamp have a some kind of string theory? Canned laughter? Looking from the side, close up to the glass, it is unbelievable, the colour, it's like a mediterainian blue, i mean its really pure, refreshing, maybe it's more like a sheet of ice in the antartic, or one of those ice cores. Skip to wikipedia. a snippet from their deffinition: "The composition of these ice cores, especially the presence of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, provides a picture of the climate at the time" more canned laughter!!! Moving around the display case with my face pressed up against the glass I start to attract attention, especially as I seem to have noticed "something" and am taking notes. Other people come up to the display case, take a minute, then bend their knees and look at the stoppages from the same angle. Another person is also taking notes, looking from different angles. A turn around to see a small child laying down on the gallery floor, it's mother says "your tired now arent you" as she picks her up and plonks her into a push chair. The chair just so happens to be at the right height for the child to get a great view of the three standard stoppages. After a breif moment of contemplation the child says "that's nice"

On and Off Kerrrouac and McCarthey

2009-03-06T05:51:00.000-08:00

When asked if he understood James Joyce's writing, the composer John Cage said that he enjoyed Joyce precisely because he didn't understand it. He added “I enjoy Joyce, I am an enjoycer”!!
I think it was Abbas kiarostami the Iranian film director who once said he preferred films that sent him to sleep in the cinema but that woke him up once he got outside. I like this idea, that a film or a book creates a kind of dream state that we can inhabit when we experience it and then starts working on us when we leave or finish it.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy sent me to sleep. After I had woken up, It started working. For days and months it has been sitting there, somewhere in the back of my brain, quietly, working. But working at what? I have no idea.
When I think of the Road, a split second before I do, I sometimes insert the word On in front, so that The Road becomes On the road, and now I am thinking of Kerouac.

the mind in the cave

2009-01-31T04:02:00.000-08:00

Mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or at least in the process of formation.
KARL MARX
there is no solution because there is no problem
MD

connections

2008-12-10T00:26:00.000-08:00

I left work at five and walked up park street towards the wills memorial building to attend a lecture entitled In two minds: neuroscience of perception and creativity, that was to start at six. I decided to go into a stationary shop to kill some time. Stop. Memory: A) The shop was flooded in the heavy rains and a lot of the stock in the stationary shop was ruined. B) Desmond Behari’s posters on coloured paper for the pull the strings gigs.
Start. I had a look around and ended up at the back of the shop looking at coloured paper thinking about the covers for my Film portraits. “Ollie” came a voice and I looked around to see who it was….well I knew who it was but I couldn’t for the life of me place the name. “Dude how are you doing? I said “I’m going to a lecture”, came the reply. NO way I said, the lecture with Richard wentworth? Yes. “wow that’s amazing!!” You see I hadn’t seen this person in a couple of years. So we decided to go and have a coffee. At the café we found out that a cup of tea was £2.09 and that between us we didn’t have enough money for both a coffee and a tea. The woman behind us then offered to give us a £1 so that we could buy the tea, which we graciously declined thanking her for her kind offer. At this point my friend who’s name still escaped me said that it didn’t matter and that he would get a cake in sainsburys before we went into the lecture. I told him all about the film portraits that I had been working on and we decided that we should defiantly make a portrait of him. We decided to exchange mobile numbers, but I still couldn’t remember the name so I said I would phone him. When his phone rang he told me that my name had appeared and that he still had my number. I still couldn’t remember his name to put to his number which was now stored in my phones memory but figured I would eventually. I told him I had his number and put my phone away. So after the coffee we went to sainsburys. All the time we were talking about what we had been up to and I was trying to remember his name. I waited for him outside sainsbury’s and decided to call Emile, because she had studied with the dude at college. In fact she had shown one of his films at the cube cinema which I could remember and was brilliant. Anyway Em didn’t pick up and so I was still none the wiser. However as we where walking to the Wills memorial building.
Stop. Memory: I remembered Emile and Luke and this dude outside the college, on Queens road and I suddenly remembered that Luke had the same name as this dude. It was Luke, they where the two Lukes!!! Start. So once inside the lecture hall, which was amazing, I proudly said “”Luke where shall we sit dude?” After a short wait Richard Wentworth director of the Ruskin School Of drawing and fine art, Mark Lythgoe, Director of the center for advanced Biomedical imaging, university college London, and another dude took to the stage. When Wentworth finished his little introduction, which was very precise and gave everyone a good idea of what was to come, everyone clapped and Luke said “Fuck Yeah” What followed was a hugely entertaining lecture. I recorded it on my little Dictaphone and at the end of the lecture the discussion was opened to the floor. There was a great silence. The chair speaker asked Richard Greggory who was in the audience a question to get things going and then a number of people started asking questions. For some reason I realized that I was holding my pencil in such a way that the point of the pencil was digging into my thumb as I held it. Also my body was very tense and my back was beginning to hurt and when this bloke started a question that was counter to what the panel had been discussing I hung my head and look at my shoes. After the lecture the woman who was sitting in front of me, who looked like this woman Aiylish that I knew, got up and left. To my surprise sitting in fromt of this woman was the real Aiylish!! I said hello and Luke went to talk to the bloke who had asked the counter question. He said “I have got to go talk to that dude” and I kind of hung around. Then I decided to go listen to what Luke was saying to the dude who had asked the counter question and there on the other side of the room was this dude that used to go to the life drawing class I attended about three years ago. I had bumped into him a couple of times since and I waved to say hello to which he threw a crumpled up paper ball at me. However he didn’t through it with enough force and so it nearly hit Richard Wentworth on the head, who was talking to the woman who I had originally thought was Aiylish. The dude who attended the life drawing class and who’s name also escaped me said that he had attended a lot of the lectures and that he was waiting to talk to Mark Lythgoe. At this point Richard Wentworth had become free, so I went up to him and told him that I had really enjoyed the lecture and that I had heard him talk a few years earlier, I reminded him that he had filled his pockets with corks. He said that he remembered and asked me if I was an artist. I kind of stumbled and said that I worked in a public library in Bedminster. After a bit more chat I told him that I had studied an M.A in printmaking and asked him his thoughts on Marcel Duchamp. To which he replied that he probably knew too much, and that Marcel Duchamp was first and foremost a dandy. He told me that a friend of his had taken a picture of Duchamp and informed him that he was a very handsome man. He seemed fairly animated and ready to talk and said Duchamp existed in a very turbulent time. He pointed to the architecture in the building and said that he had come out of this very bourgeois French existence and moved to America. He said the best way to understand Duchamp was to look at history. He talked about the fact that the French where not yet an industrialized nation in the way that America was and that Duchamp was probably aware of this. We walked and talked out of the lecture hall and he said that the readymades where not a throw away gesture, that they were very specific objects. I thanked him again, shook his hand and me and Luke left the building. We decided to go and have a beer and on the way to the bar where Luke was meeting an ex-girlfriend we talked about the lecture, being a chef, cooking, taste, the brain, science, Art, Bright white light and film. For some reason when I got home I felt the need to write all this down. What is a thought? How, why and what makes or doesn’t make these thoughts pop into existence in the movement of time and space? What’s for sure is that if we don’t force them and they suddenly appear out of nowhere they give us a smile and a warm feeling inside.

I have been to a number of lecture’s this year. For example I’ve been to one on agriculture, on plumbing and construction, on linguistics, on glass blowing and window manufacturing, on time and dimensions, on chance and probability, on gender and alter ego’s, and one on engineering and perspective to name but a few and at the end of each lecture I have always asked the same simple question. “What do you think about Marcel Duchamp?

What time is it?

2008-12-08T14:10:00.001-08:00

error 100%
please visit again
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fyl5z/Horizon_Do_You_Know_What_Time_It_Is/

when I grow up I want to be...

2008-11-25T12:59:00.000-08:00

The other day I was in London. I went to meet a friend. We ended up hanging out in a pub with a load of my friends friends who I had never met. It turns out they where quite an eclectic and interesting bunch. I had my moleskin with me and through out the evening I decided to make a number of drawings of the group. Here they are:

I started out with the guy with the beard. I mean you've gotta love his moustache.
I was kind of nervous and so I just went for it. His eyes went well wonkey but it made me laugh, he's a tattoo artist, a young guy who started out as a receptionist and worked his way in. He seemed to cross over, I mean he spoke really well, with great diction, but kind of slow, he was interesting, full of energy but also quite reserved.

Next up was the girl with the smile. She was a musician but also an artist, she had studied at the Slade and seemed very tuned in. She was talking a lot and was always laughing.

When I asked what the next guy did he told me he had started his own business, as a Milliner. The music was loud in the pub so I couldn't hear so good and when I asked him what? he said "A milliner, somebody who designs, makes, sells or trims hats and dresses"
It turns out he was one of the hottest young designers in the country and we got on quite well, I told him all about the Hat Museum in France that I had visited earlier this year.

The next dude was harder to pin down. He was constantly engaged in conversation. Very articulate with an impressive grasp on world affairs, he had just got back from Beirut where he had been living for the last two years as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian. Surprisingly he was also a fan of Beirut the band and spoke at length regarding the cancellation of the bands recent tour and Zach condons motivation behind it.

I always regard the royal college as a passport, in much the same way as I see the BBC. The next portrait should have been full of trepidation due to the fact that the sitter had not only studied at the royal college of Art but had also made illustrations for Paul Smith and exhibited alongside the likes of Tracy Emin. However she was so laid back and unassuming I really enjoyed it. She didn't even mention the Paul smith trousers I had on.

I would like to say that it is easy for me to come to terms with the fact that although I work in a public library (which I enjoy) I have studied art all my life. So whenever I meet a young practicing Artists who is for real I find it slightly unnerving. The next dude was a jack of all trades, a chameleon, who was doing his MA at Chelsea but who was also moonlighting in the worlds of contemporary Illustration, fine art painting and drawing and performance. To be honest I thought it was going to be an up hill struggle but as soon as he started talking about Marcel Duchamp I knew we where onto a winner.

The next dude was a gem. A complete nutter. He was all over the place, making sure everyone had a drink and having a good time. He seemed to fit into any conversation, and was the first person to really ask what I was doing or what I was up to. I found out that he was teaching at the London college of communication and that all though he had worked in California for a couple of years he had returned to London in 2002 to work for pentagram, while exhibiting his own work.

The next bloke was hilarious, he told me all about the independent magazine and the fact that they had approached him to include him in an article entitled the creative 30. He told me the independent, Volvo, VICE magazine and Yahoo had teamed up to find the 30 most creative people in the country and where planning to run an article in the Saturday supplement. I told him I was sorry I hadn't heard of any of the people on the judging panel and we laughed about his interest in Physicalist philosophy and hermeneutics.

I had never heard of the Shapes. However before we got to the pub my friend had warned me that the songwriter from the band was going to be there and that she was quite a character. As soon as my friend pointed her out I knew that I wanted to make a drawing of her but it wasn't until the end of the night that I managed to convince her that I could do so. We talked briefly about music and we got onto the subject of sonic art. She told me all about mixing various grime collectives and studying at the Guildhall School of music & Drama.

The last drawing of the night turned out to be a double portrait. She was the youngest of the group and had been taking pictures all night. Turns out she was a self taught photo enthusiast who could really capture a picture or two. She was currently studying fine art but was really into fashion and was getting some great exposure. She only agreed to let me draw her If she could take a picture in return.

How to draw

2008-11-09T16:08:00.000-08:00

the other day at the library
one of the kids came up to me
and asked
if the library had any art books
after a little search I found a book
on Leonardo da vinci
and
vincent van gogh
the kid explained
“i don’t want a book on art!! I want a book on how to draw”
“but you already know how to draw”
i said, and
opening up the Van Gogh book to a reproduction of the sunflowers
“look, have you seen this picture”
“no”
“wow really”
“yes”
“okay wait a minute”
at this point
i grabbed
a piece of paper
a pencil
and handed it to the kid
“right, okay draw those flowers”
erm….?
“no, go on, I know you can, don’t worry about it
Just draw the flowers as you want”
“okay”
later…
my colleague
handed me
a piece of paper
with a drawing of the sunflowers
my colleague said
“the kid wanted you to have it”

and now we come to the question, 'what
is drawing?' strange such a question
should have to asked. But some of
us have forgotten

walter richard sickert

tablepod due to launch at macworld 2009

2008-08-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Steve jobs is said to be very excited about apples new portable player which sees the company move into an exciting new market. Users from all over the world are able to share their tabletop compositions via the apple mac website. Users simply download tabletops to their portable tablepod, which they can mix using apples innovative design features.

In a rare sneak preview an animated Jobs demonstrated the pleasures to be had on the nifty little device by mixing a seemingly endless number of tabletops. When asked about the future of the tablepod Jobs said that “the tablepod was part of a wider campaign to enter the home furnishing market. In the next ten years we hope to see the tablepod grow from strength to strength so that eventually we can introduce the tablepod plasma which will replace the family table altogether”

Imagine a beautifully designed apple table with a durable wipe clean plasma tabletop able to accommodate all of your favourite tablepod tabletops!!

I know I want one!!

Pat wrick & Oily beds 24/08/08

T-Gel

2008-08-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr Drummond

I have a vague memory from my childhood sometime in the eighties of my Brother my Mum and I watching Top of the Pops in utter bewilderment. We couldn’t understand what had happened to pop music, what it was trying to do. I think we all reacted with distaste “what is this crap!!”

Many years later I was introduced to the KLF and the book the Manual. By this time I had also listened to Chill Out. Then one day I found out that you where to be talking at the Arnolfini In Bristol. I failed to go see the talk with my girlfriend who wanted to go (she was the one who had introduced me to the manual and the KLF). Disappointed I came across the book How to be an artist by bill Drummond in a bookshop in Cardiff. I bought it for her. I started reading it on the train ride home to Bristol and I think I ended up reading it before she did. After 4 years together we split up.

The other day I had to go see the Doctor, I knew I would be in for a bit of a wait so before hand I popped into Borders to look for something to read. I came away with a copy of the17 by Bill Drummond. At the doctors I got down to reading and waiting and waiting and reading.

A couple of weeks have passed and I have just finished the Book. I would like to say that it’s a job well done. Just like How to be an Artist I shall be reading it again, and again in the future.

Just a minute ago I was looking at your web site and I clicked on the painting FOR SALE PENKILN BURN POSTERS FROM TEN TO 10,000 QUID EACH. I decided that I would like to buy one of the posters. I clicked on the produce button with anticipation and after a few mille seconds was confronted with the words “Produce coming soon”. Deflated I decided to email you to let you know that I would like to buy a poster.

I have just read out loud this email to my Girl friend who expressed excitement at the prospect of displaying one of your posters in our flat. Now she has gone to bed and is reading while I type these very words and I am beginning to doubt my actions and motives. “PRODUCE COMING SOON” is pretty clear and this email has turned into something of a pointless exorcise. What was I thinking? A sign is a sign, shut the gate means shut the gate. So now I am thinking about writing and in particular writing and form. This is turning out to be one of those letters that never get sent, a post card from nowhere to nobody posted from the singular to the plural.

“PRODUCE COMING SOON” I’ll be waiting.

*editors note: this really was to be an email, and for those of you who like starring at a screen after a hard days work of starring at a screen, it stopped being an email and turned into this post right here “I would like to say it’s a job well done”

the original post had the same title as this one but was a lot shorter and went:

No day off, no itchy Flaky scalp, no doctor, no waiting room, no boredom, no borders, no new book by Mr Drummond.

Cause our reality. Because we’re worth it, we lose (months without shampoo) we gain (cure without a cause) A book full of nonsensical inspiration from Mr Drummond and prescription shampoo.

visit: http://www.penkilnburn.com

Plagiarism: Form over content or content over form?

odd event, even!!

2008-07-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

chabot

2008-07-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a bit of time on my hands and so I removed a chair out of the living room. Story, in which a person complains about the lack of space in there home. An answer is sought. A solution is given. Put more things in the space. ie a couple of chickens. Result, it’s even worse. Answer, add a couple of sheep. Result, come on this is impossible!!. Answer add a cow. Result, I am at the end of my tether!!! Answer, remove all the animals. Result, ahhh thats much better. Chloe came home and we talked about chairs. We decided to go out and look for a chair. On the stairs we met our downstairs neighbour, we told him we were looking for a chair. To which he replied, we have a couple of chairs you can have. He invited us in to have a look. The chairs where the same as the two chairs that we had already bought from Ikea!! except that they had been varnished. Four chairs instead of two just like that.

Open the gates

2008-06-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Mega bus
meet at the tree
what time?

Is it painting Jim but not as we know it?

2008-06-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

"In the second case, the person not reading abstains, like musil’s librarian, in order to grasp the essence of the book, which is how it fits into the library as a whole. In so doing, he is hardly uninterested in the book –to the contrary. It is because he understands the link between content and location that he chooses not to read, with wisdom superior to that of many readers, and perhaps, on reflection, with greater respect for the book itself."

page 13 of “How to talk about books you haven’t read” by Pierre Bayard

Now if we do a little surgery and swap this for that we get:

The person not painting abstains, in order to grasp the essence of painting, which is how it fits into Art as a whole. In so doing, he is hardly uninterested in painting –to the contrary. It is because he understands the link between Art and History that he chooses not to paint, with wisdom superior to that of many painters, and perhaps, on reflection, with greater respect for
Art itself.

"You see, I haven’t quit being a painter, now I am drawing on chance"

- It's Mr D again!!
- Oh no run for the feckin hills!!!
- Will it ever end (head in hands between sobs)
- Say it again mo fo I double dare you!!!
- "You see, I...Blam Blam Blam!!!

Aquoiboniste

2008-06-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

- Just say what it is!!
- what……like?
- yes, Say exactly what it is in no more than six words!!! -
- Just what it is?!!!
- Yes “Lack” of weapons in the middle east!!!
- Ha ha ha yeah that’s it!!!

This is something of the conversation I had with Tim in the Highbury vaults, struggling with the title for the lack table I was going to be submitting for the Bristol Design Festivals Grafikea Competition. The idea was that you modify an Ikea Lack table in some way, put a price on it, submit it, and wait to see if it would win the £250 prize money. Back in 2007 I had already come up with an idea for the table and although I had bought the table from Ikea I had never gotten around to submitting it to the competition. So for a year the table just sat in my workroom being a table.

When 2008 came around and due to the fact that I already had the damn table which to be honest was getting in the way, I now had no excuses, and had to enter the competition. I found myself in a fine art supply store buying three tubes of oil paint and late one evening I painted the letters WMD, first in red paint over and over in the top third of the table, then in green I painted a big WMD evenly spaced in the middle and finally WMD in black over and over in the bottom third of the table. Job done!!

The next morning I got up and left the flat carrying this lack table that now had a load of still wet WMD’s all over it. As it was very light for its size and because I could hold it with the legs I had no problem walking with it to work. However due to the fact that the painted surface was facing outwards in front of me, people kept on looking at me funny as I walk on by. I started to get a bit self-conscious and so I decided to balance the table on my head so that people would not be able to read the surface of the table. I made it safely to work and waited until lunchtime when I again walked with the Lack table to the venue in order to drop it off. The Bristol Design Festival was being held at the old Fire station in town and so it wasn’t long before I got there. After being let in, dumping the table off next to all the other tables and handing over my entry forms I was off and back to work.

A couple of days later I was back at the Fire station to have a look around the exhibition. I was impressed again by the venue itself and also by the work that had gone in to making it look the way it did. After a brief chat with Neil one of the organisers, who informed me that they had had over 600 people attend on the opening night, I took a walk around to check out the Lack tables. I find it amazing that a bunch of people that have never meet each other and who have been given the same brief never come up with the same idea!! There was only one table that had WMD’s painted on it, one table that was unmodified placed in a Perspex box, one table that was chained to the stage area with a bloody hand print painted on it and a pot plant and Mug, and one last years winner with a solitaire game on it. Overall I think that they all looked great and who knows why the public on the night voted for the table that had a retractable hood that allowed you to work in privacy?

A day or so latter I was playing chess with my Girlfriend when we got talking about the lack tables again. Chloe said, if she would make one next year, she would like to make one with a chessboard on it, the pieces made from the Lack table legs. After a bit more chat I/we suddenly struck on an idea that I now wished I had made instead of the “lack of WMD’s” idea. It should/could have been simply titled a “Lack of imagination” in which the table was
presented as is.

The more I thought about this “lack of imagination” the more I realized that this was what the original idea had wanted to be. I began to project this idea onto the show I had just seen. I imagined turning up with the table with nothing but the title. Of meeting Neil for the first time, of walking into the space, with all those other tables, those other ideas, of the looks from the others. What if somebody else had had the same “Lack of Imagination”? What then? Or what if there had been a “Lack of imagination” in 2007? This “lack of imagination” didn’t exist, but maybe it had already existed as a thought, as an idea, and had been rejected.

What if the germ of the idea in Lack of WMD’s had born out the idea of “lack of imagination”? Now I imagined one of the 600 people at the Opening night looking down on the Lack of WMD’s table, glass of wine in hand, turning to one of their friends and saying something like “Lack of WMD’s phaff !!! Why didn’t they just present a table with nothing on it and call it a lack of imagination!!!” to which their friends and others would laugh nervously in “oh my god I can’t believe he just said that” agreement.

the dapper cosmic dwarf

2008-03-22T02:25:00.000-07:00

patrick film test

2008-03-04T16:35:00.000-08:00

An indifferent crack

2008-03-03T08:09:00.000-08:00

Duchamp 2008

There is a crack. A very convincing crack in the Tate Modern Turbine hall. It starts as a hairline fracture by the front entrance and expands in width and depth as it runs down the whole length of the hall. I took a photo of it as it continued under the wall. Once I had finished a fellow spectator, who had a really big camera, smiled and congratulated me, she said I had made a great Art shot!!!

Upstairs I had my first encounter with a mirror in a frame in a gallery, which for a brief moment, held my portrait. The mirror, one of three, had been signed backwards by Marcel Duchamp and was apparently one of his ready-mades.

Later on, On the train ride home, it occurred to me that I hadn't asked Chloë if she had been able to see her portrait. She told me that she had, which got me thinking about size and distance.

Much later in the pub I broached the subject with Tim and Freya. They both agreed that if you where too tall or short for the mirror, you would need to walk backwards in order to see your portrait. After a short pause Tim said "People tend to get smaller in the distance!! there not really that big you know!!!"

Anyway back in the gallery, there we all were, in 2008, each spectator, famous for a few seconds, starring back at their very own portrait, A portrait by Marcel Duchamp that had been conceived in 1964 (10 years before I was born!!)

I took a photo on my phone. Because I could, or because I wasn't allowed? or maybe it was because I had missed the point?

Some time later I went back to make a drawing. The room was full of people and I had to wait in line to see the mirror. It was like being on a conveyor belt. As I got closer to the mirror, sketchbook and bic medium in hand, I began to get nervous. I was already hot and I felt a little dizzy from the coffee and cigarette I had just had. Finally I was in front of the piece, I was committed with nothing to do but draw the mug that was starring back at me!! I heard two little children say "look he's drawing himself" and I could feel the eyes of the spectators on me. The conveyor belt line had stopped and the other punters wanted to know why.

radio in your own head

2007-12-17T15:33:00.000-08:00

is it me or does it work in a weird way when you play all the youtube clips together at the same time? please try it and let me know.....
If so did they plan this?
If not what a coool idea!!! some one should and manipulate it better, its like the hidden sum of the parts idea. yeah man its like sound vs music or the individual vs society. take control man and make your own music outta radiohead
good grief Charlie brown!!
they where a good band though, that live gig in the eighties with mr byrne running round the stage like a lunatic "same as it ever was" crazy hand movement down the arm and away...

question:

play em all together from the following link (one ring to rule them all?)

http://www.ateaseweb.com/2007/11/09/the-radiohead-webcast-thumbs_down/#comment-13416

through precision gnome hay trees!!

2007-11-27T04:38:00.002-08:00

OILYBEDS comments in the end
Fantastic article!! check this out yawl:
http://toutfait.com/duchamp.jsp?postid=46580&keyword=

also:
Analfoni finally comes up with the goods, check out the fancy pants showing in their hallowed halls at the moment curtously of Hans-Peter Feldmann

www.ARNOLFINI.ORG.UK

Art trail 2007

2007-11-26T12:36:00.001-08:00

Jan

Jen

Sue http://suegregor.blogspot.com/

portrait with assistant

2007-11-26T12:32:00.000-08:00

2007-11-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

front room

2007-11-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

The other day Sue Greggor came into the library. She told me that she was getting ready for the 2007 Totterdown arts trail and that if I wanted too I could show some work at her house. I thanked her for the offer but told her I didn’t have any ideas. Sometime later while working at the library I noticed the big box of stamps that the general public had been collecting for the guide dogs for the blind association. The box contained thousands upon thousands of stamps and for some reason I thought it would be a great idea to make a portrait out of them, but a portrait of who? The answer laid waiting in a simple pun and went something like this: Stamps? Royal mail? Don’t you mean royal male? Ah yes but which one? Prince Charlie
of course!!
Next I found an image of Charlie on the web. Whacking up the contrast to create just shadow and highlight I then converted the image into a bitmap in order to create a template. I used the template to make the portrait with the stamps. However as my friend Mat pointed out, the template was made up of square pixels and the stamps where rectangular which meant the portrait would look stretched!! So next I had to mock up the stamps on the computer in order to visualize the effects of the distortion. To my relief the stretching of the portrait did not affect the way you read the image as Charlie. In fact it seemed to have the obverse effect and looked more like him.
I had worked out that the portrait would use up 2120 First and Second class stamps. So Chloe and I spent many hours sorting and cutting them to size.
Next I headed to B&Q to get some MDF cut to the exact size of the portrait ready to apply each stamp with blue-Tac. By this stage I knew the portrait wanted to be temporary. It didn’t want to be stuck down, of fixed in anyway. It had to be able to return to the box with all the other stamps so the charity would not lose any revenue.
Although the Arts trail started on Friday night it wasn’t until Sunday morning that I managed to get across and install the Portrait in Sue’s front room. I had decided to put a piece of blurb on the wall that read:

Royal Male
The royal male was delayed and delivered late to the front room exhibition. Conceived in Bedminster Library amongst the hustle and bustle of the day’s issue’s and discharge, the Royal male is made of 2120 first and Second class stamps. The stamps are part of a larger collection that the public have donated to the library for the guide dogs for the blind charity.

The charity have been collecting stamps for over thirty years raising significant amounts of money by selling the stamps per kilo to stamps collectors. However it was announced on their website that by the end of 2007 the charity would no longer be collecting and selling stamps. The charity said that it was no longer cost effective and that the costs associated with the collection, storage, sorting and selling now outweigh the income received.
Royal Male has been exhibited in an effort to continue the fund raising for the Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Please donate whatever you can. Unless anyone has any better ideas, after the exhibition the royal male will be disassembled and returned to the library ready to go to the guide dogs for the blind with all the other stamps for one last time.

Thank you

Ollie Betts
Library assistant
Bedminster library

can you tell what it is yet?

2007-11-26T12:21:00.001-08:00

royal male

2007-11-15T00:19:00.002-08:00

one Tablet to be used twice daily

2007-11-04T16:21:00.001-08:00

2007-10-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

drives you nuts laughing like a lunatic!!!

2007-08-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=5914662

what a band!! check these guys out they are incredible!!!

For Buck and Doe

2007-08-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

Berlin Art

2007-08-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

A friend just came back from Berlin. He went to this amazing exhabition. I can't remember who the artist was or where they where from, I think it was Switzerland. However they had made these massive paintings on glass. Apparently the originals, which where made in the 1920's where about 30ft by 10ft in size. My friend bought the catalogue, here are some of the reproductions.

edinburger

2007-08-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

note, asthetics

2007-08-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

http://littlelittlegreenhouse.blogspot.com

also think about
a) the dvd draw at work
b) the date stamp
C) Bookshelves

the catch is we didn't catch the catch

2007-08-28T10:35:00.000-07:00

The other day Igor told me a story. You see, he had invited me and Chloe over for a Barbecue and we where sitting around chatting about this and that when Igor said “Did I tell you about the trout?” and I said “the T-shirt?” and he said “Yes, one of my co-workers was...well he was looking at the trout, and he knows about our T-shirts right, I mean he knows there's normally some kind of secret meaning to them, so anyway he was staring at the trout for ages, all day he was just taking good long looks at this trout until finally he goes to me “Okay Igor!!! I don't get it, what's the catch!!!
And the thing is we didn't catch the trout!! we bought it from waitrose. It was a pretty tasty fish!!, anyway the point is we didn't intend the pun. You see originaly, our friend Rich had come up with the idea of putting a big trout on a t-shirt, I mean Just this massive Trout on a T-shirt. I really liked the Idea, this prize catch, it's like mine's bigger than yours kind of thing, mine is this big. Anyway we where going to have a back print, me and Igor, which had these hands, going “it was this big”, and the space.....I mean the gap between the hands, the 'this big' space was going to be bigger than the trout so........anyway that didn't happen, so the Trout T-shirt has always just sat there, kind of unresolved, doing nothing but.....being a trout. So it took a whole year of delay until Igor's co-worker sneezed out the pun that finished off the shirt.

At work

2007-07-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Katrina, one of my co-workers at the Library, asked me today what I wanted to do with my M.A. She had asked me because I am running a drawing activity for some of the kids at the library. Anyway some how my answer ended up revolving around the subject of old Marcel Duchamp again. I explained that instead of making and publishing a comic book of a story that a friend of mine had written some time ago, I had become ensnared and obsessed with the work of Marcel Duchamp and made work out of this. So.....anyway, there I was trying to explain why I was so enchanted with Duchamp with somebody that had no knowledge of Duchamp or his work and I said “well the thing is, you don't really need to go and see his work, I mean most of his work is in Philadelphia, but it would be ridiculous to travel all that way just to look at a urinal!!! when I can look at a urinal every time I use a public rest room!!” and I suddenly thought, Shit why didn't I think of this before? I mean that's it, the whole thing right there, you don't need to go and worship the thing itself because the thing is an idea. An idea that doesn't exist in any one original form. It is a multiple idea, one that has evolved through time and space and which continues to live in my head. Any time that I see a specific ready-made Coatrack, hatrack, urinal, snow-shovel or bottlerack, I am reminded of Duchamps general ready-made. Can something be specific and general at the same time? The main thing is..........don't forget you've been Duchamped!!! Also I think that Katrina wished she had never bothered to ask me about the M.A!!! She said although it sounded interesting, it seemed very complicated!!

Idea/Art/Design/museum/supermarket/consumption

2007-07-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

Note: Rita, one of my co-workers at the library just came back from Denmark visiting her daughter and she showed me this. http://www.theflowinstitute.com/

It was Art without the making

2007-06-22T04:08:00.000-07:00

Attention Customers......
Where's the Beef?
(pause)
I'll tell you where it is, Isle two....
Corned beef that is...
It's reduced.....
so knock yourselves out!!!

Me and Simon were queing in ASDA gettin our lunch when the above announcement came over the tanoy!!! It is difficult to put into words how amazing it was. I think, the choice of words, the tone, and the sense of surprise made the whole thing so great. Obviously the timing
was impeccable. Everyone on the checkouts just stopped what they were
doing, looking slightly confused.
Humour is a big part of what made it so memorable, however it is not clear whether the Humour was confounded by the announcer. Although there was no doubt that the announcer was a genius both me and Simon agreed that the management would probably reprimand them.
The sad thing is, we will probably never here such an announcment again although we will wait in hope that one day such an Announcer (whom is Beyond art!!!) will jolt us out of this misierable existance in the perveyance of creamy comestibles.

note

2007-06-18T04:53:00.000-07:00

The Economics of Attention Style and Substance in the Age of Information
Richard A. Lanham
Inquiry of all sorts has to be serious. That is its organizing premise. But if you subtract the object of that seriousness by putting a urinal in its place, that seriousness is turned into a game. To understand it, you must then write a serious treatise on games and play, wondering all the while what you are about. The critic, like a bull bemused by the toreador’s flashing cape, starts pawing the ground, angry and confused. Such confusion has made Duchamp famous. The urinal proved to be an extraordinarily efficient generator of fame because other people—the critics and historians—did all of Duchamps work for him.
“That oscillation constitutes a serious lesson about seriousness. But it does not constitute great art, if we think of art as composed of stuff shaped into beauty, as forming part of a goods economy. In this industrial framework, Duchamp is the charlatan some have taken him for. But if you are willing to put him into an attention economy rather than a goods economy, let him work in attention, not in stuff, then things look different. Duchamp, as few before him, knew how to catalyze human attention in the most economical way possible. The disproportion between his oeuvre, the physical stuff he left behind, and his reputation can be explained in no other way. If we are looking for economists of attention, he provides a good place to start, an excellent lesson in efficiency.”
a) Put Armitage shanks logo onto an IKEA mug
b) Give away as a gift (Put on display in exhibition)
c) Get tech drawings made on C.A.D of mug (Production drawings)
d) Make mock up of Evening Post article for wall at college (For Photo only)
e) Make meeting with Armitage and IKEA as performance....
The object is turned into an idea, an idea that catches peoples attention. When people worship the idea over the object the idea switches back into the object again.
Lets take “the” fountain. We can't, because it is not “the” Fountain but “a” fountain. The fountain has a great story.

The con strains the writing with an old sieve

2007-06-15T06:34:00.001-07:00

"the known case of the found woman"
by
He did Brighton
01. Skinny's tale
02. your neice
03. Skinny's caught
04. The clean young Millionaire
05. One ex-agitator
06. theif in spectacles has nothing to say
07. insignificant greeting
08. The huge bout between Paul and John
09. The miserable afair
10. Mrs Ill tongue finds her way
11. Skinny and your neice get on smoothly
12. Skinny and Ernie the clone
13. Skinny gets an answer
14. A very Dull Morning
15. Peas, tarts and ties
16. Your neice and spike do nothing
17. Skinny has seen it all before
18. Skinny reads Braille
19. Spikes nuance
20. Not paying attention and leaving
21. Skinny's in the clear
22. The woman in her bra
23. You idiot skinny!!!
synopsis:
A responsible free woman is walking - She is also painfully ordinary! Could it be Mrs Illtongue? Or does the Fan go Twang in the pulpits fake indignity?

He did Brighton!!

2007-06-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

The mundane Mountain

01. down in Roberts submarine
02. Robert loses out again
03. the mistaken grave
04. we can be wherever
05. a tiny explorer
06. the two men make four
07. a terrible loss
08. shut up Kiki
09. old news
10. A coarse exposure
11. The muted cave
12. in front of the dried up river
13. the safe is in the cave
14. the expensive miscarriage of justice
15. the women set the appointments
16. the freeman is locked up
17. the a-z
18. beans for tea
19. a small appointment in a plane
20. A post is the measure
21. the familiar naves
22. Got the cash fast
23. the guard in the inn is of the measure
24. go on and hide the naves
25. flips a stone in the plane
26. the gateway
27. A disks very coarse in the plane
28. the calm before the night
29. A hairy Jury
30. Robert does nothing
31. a damp squib

dada code

2007-05-10T02:18:00.001-07:00

http://dev.null.org/dadaengine/manual-1.0/dada.html#SEC1

Duchampian vultural studies!!

2007-05-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/

G.P Tips on the social text affair?!!

(groaning from the back of the auditorium while the Japanese students write it all down for posterity and the Art students throw tomatoes)

its frank

2007-05-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXWo6jXmRO8

do you take sugar?

2007-05-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/audio5E.html

The greatest Artist Alive Today!!

2007-05-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

here it is folks, sit back and enjoy : http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/10/sean_landers_th.html

Her spellbinding best seller

2007-04-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

wanderlust
everything in the house shone as the sun streamed in through the long french windows

A perfect stranger
the garage door opened eerily, it's mouth yawning expectantly, a large dark toad about to gobble an unsespecting fly.

Now and forever
The weather was magnificent.

Star
The birds where already calling to each other in the early morning stillness of the Alexander Valley as the sun rose slowley over the hills, stretching golden fingers into a sky that within moments was almost purple.

Once in a lifetime
When it snows on christmas eve in New York, there is a kind of raucous silence, like bright colours mixed with snow.

the promise
The early morning sun streamed across their backs as they unhooked their bicycles in front of Eliot House on the Harvard campus.

full cicle
On the afternoon of Thusday, December 11th, 1941, the country was still in a daze.

No greater love
The only sound in the dining room was the ticking of the large, ornate clock on the mantelpiece, and the occasional muffled rustling of a heavy linen napkin.

Changes
'Dr Hallam..Dr Peter Hallam...Dr Hallam...Cardiac Intensive, Dr Hallam...'The voice droned on mechanically as Peter Hallam sped through the Lobby of Center City Hospital, never stopping to answer the page since the team already knew he was on his way.

Granny Dan
The box arrived on a snowy afternoon two weeks before christmas.

Thurston House
The sank sank slowley onto the hills framing the green splendour of the Napa Vally.

Bittersweet
India Taylor had her camera poised as an unruly army of nine-year-old boys ran across the playing field after another soccer ball they had been heatedly pursuing.

The disimbodied voice

2007-04-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

Thinking about it at lunch, walking back from the Analfoni book fair, The lecture down the telephone seems to have the same twang as the audio stuff that rich played for me the other day at his house. His recordings where made by an American and man they where funny, I mean really funny. Anyway it got me thinking, I saw Sarah and Tom at the book fair and there was a good vibe there, its strange but I always seem to tell people what I am about to do!! Not what I am doing, Its always the germ of the idea, But it could be that this is what gives the idea a cold? Anyway I saw Imi at the Fair as well and agreed to meet her after work. It was great to see her and she gave me a big hug once she saw me standing there. This American idea and the tapes that rich played me, is perhaps the way to go, To call up American's? Maybe its their enthusiasm?
Something like:
Hello it's Oily Beds....
Who?
Listen do you know Marcel Duchamp?
What?
You know, the French guy, doesn't eat much,
Erm I don't think so...
yeah you do, you know him.......everyone knows him
I don't thi...
Well the thing is.......... he's dead!
Dead?
Yeah, its to bad. I mean it's to bad you never met him, he was a smart guy, Smart and funny
Who is this?
It's Oily, you know....Oily Beds
Look I rea...
I know, I know, Listen!!, I gotta keep this short okay, I haven't got much time, so just tell me what you know
about what?
Mr D
what?
The dead guy!! what can you tell me about him?
I don't know who....you are talking about?
Listen, be straight with me, you know about the readymade, Right?.....Don't tell me ya don't know about the readymade!!,
Readymade?
The work of Art without the artist to make it?
Who are you? What are you trying to sell?
Etc....
Need to get funding and set up the call center, or else finish the script and start phoning America!! Yes dummy get the book off rich, the gags book for insperation, do some work on sunday...get it on!!! yeah baby

classic

2007-03-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat:They took some honey, and plenty of moneyWrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,And sang to a small guitar,"O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,What a beautiful Pussy you are,You are,You are!What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,How charmingly sweet you sing!Oh! let us be married; too long we have tarried:But what shall we do for a ring?"They sailed away, for a year and a day,To the land where the bong-tree grows;And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,With a ring at the end of his nose,His nose,His nose,With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shillingYour ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."So they took it away, and were married next dayBy the Turkey who lives on the hill.They dined on mince and slices of quince,Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand on the edge of the sandThey danced by the light of the moon,The moon,The moon,They danced by the light of the moon.

original thought

2007-03-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

James my co-worker at the Library thought of the word p**********s, and after a number of attempts James offered "Kafkaesque Pipistrelles", which gave him 2 hits. Soooooooo close! Anway about a week later I had another go with pipistrelles. Getting knowhere fast I decided to visit the googlewack site for the rules of the game to see if there was anything that I was missing. It was at this point that I came across the Wack stack. You see, the wack stack is a list of all the googlewacks found so far. I quickly realised that my googlewack was only a cut and paste away! Sure enough after only two attempts my third attempt cut and paste, h***g, with p**********s, to produce my first googlewack!! The point is, can I claim this wack as my own? pipistrelles was james word, well not his exactly, but he remembered it, and the wack stack was like a skin graft. Some how I realized that this wack was not original and pure in anyway. It was a mongral. Still h***g p**********s was my first, and I loved it anyways. Sometime later I checked the wack again and was horrified to see that h***g p**********s had disapeared and in its place sat my blog!! My blog was now a googlewack!!. Because I had mentioned the wack in this post, google had picked it up, but where was the original wack? A couple of days later and the original wack entry re-appeared alongside my blog entry. Now h***g p**********s wasn't even a googlewack!! I would have to go back into my blog and catch all the references and astrix them out. Would h***g p**********s return to its original wack. How quickly can google update its search?

inland empire

2007-03-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

is it good? what's it like? is it better than his other films? What does it mean? what's it about? what did it make you think of? well firstly the possibility of digital film. The fact that we have no excuses. Secondly I felt that inland empire was a film trying so hard not to be a film. thirdly I would love to know what filters Lynch uses in order to arrive at the images that we see. Composition is always strong. Dialogue is.......wooden, but in the hands of a proffessional actor come across. With the right commitment and filters and a little bit of money its possible to make a film outside of the main stream. This means nothing unless you have a marketing bulldozer to plough through all the shit between you and that big screen.

Conclusion:David Lynch is a marketing mans wet dream.

Oh yes, I was suddenly struck by the lynchian quality of these three mills and boon covers. Perhaps we should make a film using the mills and boon filter?

even more puns!!

2007-03-01T11:44:00.000-08:00

NOT MORE PUNS

2007-03-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

more puns

2007-03-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

Puns

2007-03-01T02:54:00.000-08:00

I umm, let me just think hang on. OK. So I was thinking about what I should write to accompany the short film that I made about water, for a friends conference in Norway. I was having difficulties and decided to go shopping. While I was walking down one of the isles in the supermarket and I noticed a leek falling from a shoppers bag onto the floor. Before I could say anything another shopper shouted out Oi! Your bags leaking!

Sometime later I looked for the image of the women taring the road, and hit a brick wall. I mean I just couldn't find them. No matter what key words I used they were nowhere to be found. Days later after still no joy I typed in the words "resurfacing road" and hey presto there were my three girls! Um I now know um that the image is from 'The Union Makes Us Strong: TUC History Online"

distraction vs inspiration

2007-02-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

Just had a quick look at Dave's site and decided to check out some of the links. Man I was totally blown away by the sheer volume of work being done out there!!! It was like......fuck me!!! These people are just knocking out all this great work, but it seems to be more than that, its like a current or something, maybe more like something in the air, like this kind of scent. But more like a wave, this wave, like a kind of engulfing kind of thing, like I remember once stepping off a bus in Florida somewhere after a really long journey and it was like bbam!!! this intense blanket of humidity, well not blanket, more like wall of humidity just hit me. I feel as though I have been sitting on a bus for hours and hours, travelling, looking out the tinted window as the world rolls by and man, stopping at like hideous bugger joints, in the middle of nowhere to stretch your legs before boarding the bus again. When you get there its like this massive bam of humidity after this long air conditioned ride. Man it's exciting and scary at the same time. I am left with the question, what are these people doing? Oh yes walking back from college after dropping off my late library books (£120 fine) I came across crowds of people all walking in the same direction. People coming outta cars that had been parked all along the main roads, like jammed together back to back, all available space, like just stuffed to the gills, and there are these people and suddenly these flashing lights and its like this police convoy, its these police vans, riot vans really and they are escorting these double Decker bus's just filled with football fans and its like what the hell as they start shouting out the little windows on the top deck, then there is this massive roar as more people shout back from the other side of the road, with all these police in riot gear just standing on every road side, just waiting and watching and hoping? Later on down the road as I walked towards the supermarket I could smell beer and weed wafting towards me and I was confronted with an incredible sight. It was the sight of hundreds of beered up football hooligans jumping over a little concrete wall and leaving the pub with which they had probably been drinking in all day (most don't work?). They had heard some primal call, some cry from the drunken alpha male, some primitive being that had decided now was the time, the time to go and.......go and do what? This got me thinking, seeing all the police and all the money and investment being wasted. Both from the hooligans and the police who where trying to contain them. Why not just have two pubs. Two pubs with some wasteland in between them. You would have massive stands on either side so that spectators could come and cheer and chant. You would have helicopters flying around with search lights. you would have flashing lights and some kind of bottled testosterone that could be pumped into the arena on some kind of mist. The hooligans would be given free alchol all day and would be agitated by different means at different times until the release of the testosterone mist which would tip them over the edge and send them into a Frenzie!! of course the police would be there. But they would not be real, they would be more hooligans dressed up as police (obviously they would have to audition before hand. The audition would be based on previous police video surveillance footage) The stands would Be full of paying customers on two sides and more hooligans on the other two sides who don't pay. These are the hooligans that pretend to follow and support the other hooligans who they have come to watch. Of course the whole thing will Be televised and sold through satellite companies and beamed into the homes of would be hooligans, in order to maintain the numbers and gain recruits for the future. The whole thing could be taxed by the government or raise money for worthy charities.
check out the links below for the great work. But be warned, if you have been riding in an air condition bus for what seems like days or if not weeks, then its gonna hit you like a massive wall of humidity!!!
http://www.hackleyspress.com/
http://www.jilliantamaki.com
http://www.nebopeklo.typepad.com/
http://poppytalk.blogspot.com
http://www.pingmag.jp/2007/02/08/anonymous-drawings/

Hobby kicks arts arse, once again

2007-02-19T03:32:00.000-08:00

As garden ornaments go....

An amazing white elephant. what, where, when, how, and at what cost to whom!!

check out the www.dailymail.co.uk for story

she's a fox, a birthday fox, and she's all mine

2007-02-15T07:54:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts Happy Birthday Chloe Eardley Love Ollie Betts

http://mynamemeanstheshapeiam.blogspot.com/

The first rule of drawing club is don't talk about drawing club

2007-02-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

Brendon came over the other day. He and andy where going for a couple of beers. Before they went out they said hello. Brendon asked who had made the drawings that where on my computer screen and I broke the first rule!! Just like that, blurted it all out, I told him how me and chloe had met up with dave, freya, esther, and john and had gone for a drink and a chat at mr wolf's. All was well and we even had a band setting up ready to play for us, anyway they open up with this classic guitar rock out, with loads of noodling and rock power!! unable to hear each other we broke out my sketch book with some paper and got to work. The rule was that we would make a drawing of each other, a drawing that would take as long as the next song. As soon as the song finished, the drawing was over. Pens, paper and pencils at the ready we waited in aticipation. with an explosive power rock chord we where off, to be cont.....

freya by john & john by freya

2007-02-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

chloe by esther & esther by chloe

2007-02-08T08:41:00.000-08:00

dave by ollie & ollie by dave

2007-02-08T08:34:00.000-08:00

The images corrupt the soul...

2007-02-06T07:57:00.000-08:00

A young man came into the library today and asked me to recommend a good book. The Young man comes into the Library on a fairly regular basis. I would like to know what He thinks of Catcher in the rye. I would like to know if it works on him? So I tell him "Catcher in the rye" by J D Salinger. It appears that he hasn't read it and so I go to find it on the shelf. Unfortunately the book isnt there. When I look on the catalogue I am pleased to see that it is out. That it is being read. I tell the kid that I will write down the title for him, so that he can get it later. When I googled Salinger later, this image poped up. Apparently its been taken by a photo-journalist.

This is a picture of Salinger shortly before he died.

Today I was reminded of the primal beauty of tracks, of the different foot prints left in the snow. Looking down I could see a heeled shoe, that had walked down some steps, along the path towards the front of the house. They had made a perfect print which I followed to this huge print that exposed the Yellow gravel stones of the drive. The heeled foot prints had walked around the exposed yellow gravel and had abruptly disapeared.
For some reason I am reminded of the film Innocence. I am thinking about our past present and future. Of our ability to read signs. For instance what could those signs mean? what could the tracks mean to somebody that has never encounted a pair of high heeled shoes, or indeed the woman who wears them? And what of the car, this huge heavy print with strange tracks leading off?

write it down

2007-02-04T04:58:00.000-08:00

I was thinking, while walking, down park street. The jumper, in all saints, waiting. If only, the thoughts, could be put down, like that. In the watershed now, fresh air attracts the young families. I guess there is space for the stroller. its nice, its nicer. Islands of middle class families, paying through the media, to live the dream. My friends Igor and Helena once pointed out to me that when you have a kid, you know the cost of the stroller, and so you can't help but notice which families have which. They said its no longer what car you drive, but instead which stroller you ride. The stroller as the signifier of your wealth. The stroller as commodity. I think that this has something to do with technology and design.

Homless museum

2007-01-24T05:47:00.000-08:00

It all started when I was trying to write about the Homeless Museum. I thought I was doing all right until I came to the word indexical, at which point Berni pointed out that the word was really old, it was like a dinosaur. Realising that she might have a point, I decided to look for another word. Talking some more about the word Index, I said "wasn't that a catalogue shop like Argos?" at which point Berni created the word “Argosical” as an alternative to the word Indexical. From here it was clear that we needed a matrix and that this needed to give birth to the speculative definition. However as Berni pointed out, the Argosical matrix had defiantly not yet been born yet, so we decided that the Pro-lifers would most certainly need to protest against this speculative definition and champion the matrix's right to non existence. Then we realised that we where being silly, so we looked for some kind of fact on the web to give the whole thing a sense of plausibility. After a quick search on google we soon found“This data-mining approach is appropriate for some scientific discovery problems, but scientific understanding often proceeds through a different method”
1

1http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/discovery.html

very exciting news

2007-01-23T06:02:00.000-08:00

I am 254 in the open manifesto. Check it out at www.openmanifesto.com. I am sandwiched between “Art is living tomorrows dreams today” and “Art used to be something that was considered a talent. Now you get pretentious pricks that fill carrier bags full of rubbish and consider it art. Where's the talent in that???”. cooooooooooommmmmmme on!!

No 2 should be painted blue

2007-01-22T08:09:00.000-08:00

Came across “A heartbreaking work of staggering genius” the other day at the library. I was aware of the book which had been recommended to me by my old boss. I had even picked it up and given it a go. For some reason the book never clicked, which is strange because it is the kind of book I like. Or perhaps more precisely, its the kind of book I like now. I mean, maybe at the time I was on the cusp of liking it, In other words, I wasn't ready for it. Maybe there is a time and a place. That time and place is tempered by a chain of events. No 2 comes after No 3 or P slides into C? But this presupposes that there must be a correct order in the chain of events to trigger the osmosis or transformation of inert matter into an aesthetic phenomenon!! I don't buy that, but am curious that I found out about the Homeless Museum in the magazine the Believer which I think is an off shoot from mcsweeneys which is the magazine that Eggers edits and design's who is the author of “A Heartbreaking work of staggering genius”? Anyway I think that If you are like me, at least half interested, then check out http://www.believermag.com/issues/200612/?read=article_topol

http://www.atis.net/

2007-01-19T03:22:00.000-08:00

It was Alvin straight who made me look at tractors in a new light all be it through the vision of Mr lynch. With an uncomprimising act and vision Mr straight transformed the tractor. As Mr D would say in his creative act "This phenomenon is comparable to a transference from the artist to the spectator in the form of an esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert matter, such as pigment, piano or marble." or of course a Tractor

Life: a users manual

2007-01-16T07:53:00.000-08:00

Crazy book, no idea what is going on, reading it out loud in chunks, with chloe. Have been listening back on my new headphones as I walk around the place. up to chapter 5 i think, God bless the mp3 player. Recording makes me think of Llinos tapping her temple. i.e for her its recorded internally. I wonder How much of "Life: a users manual" is a recording of the external and how much is an externalizing of the internal? I think that I am more like a recorder. Is a recorder less creative? whats so good about creativity anyway? How do you record something that doesnt exist yet? In order to record, something has to be played. In order to play you have to create. When life is all play, you can feel free to hit record at any moment? Where is te value in this?

anger is angular!!!

2007-01-13T06:17:00.000-08:00

Had a great chat with emma the other night, some how we got to talking about drawing and mark making and also meaning and the ability to judge or interprete what somebody has created. Emma explained that everybody makes or shares the same experience of feelings and that these feelings can be represented by certain marks. For example a jagged line represents anger and swirrley ones joy etc... anyway for some reason I suggested that the interpretation of this language was based not on whhaat someone was feeling but based on what our preconceptions of what certain marks mean. I suggested that If she asked me to draw what I thought anger was I would not come up with jagged lines. Thats because you know what the marks are ment to represent and are doing something different in order to be difficult!! I agreed with her but said what does it mean when somebody does not make the marks that are given as the marks for that particular feeling. I suggested that the reason that the jagged marks was suggestive of anger was based on a collective agrement to what anger was and that the jagged lines of anger in themeselves where not indicative of anger any more than swirrly or curved lines expressed calm. I suggested that the interpretation was a collective agreement based on feelings, at this point Emma said she would prove that everyone in the bar would draw jagged lines for anger, I thought that an experiement was a great idea. Its strange how some chats generate work/collaboration and envolve the public so natuarally, dont you think? So anyway Emma goes off to collect the data from around the bar, in the form of drawings, and dave starts to record it on his digital camera. A short while later, Emma is back with her findings, and sure enough all the drawings lean towards the angular to describe anger. At this point Dave and i have entered into a conversation with two blokes on the next table. One of the two, an Irishman asks to see my rendition of Anger. Looking at my handiwork he proclaims loudly that that is not Anger, he asks "that is what you think of when you are Angry? I wouldnt want you around in a fight!!!.

don't worry be happy!!

2007-01-11T08:48:00.000-08:00

OK so I was thinking about what Dave had written on his blog, about the book 'Independents day', you see, he had written down a passage from the book which, If I remember rightly had ended with an image of a neon sign, a sign that simply read “NO”. Now Dave was some how struck with this sign in relation to his work. It jumped up at him as it where, and like all good work, Dave's thoughts on the subject had made me stop look and listen. So there I was the other night, just about to go out, when suddenly, I started thinking about the neon “No” sign again. It must have popped into my head just as I had picked up Chloe's copy of “They Called Her Styrene” by Ed Ruscha. I flicked through the pages. Looking at the pictures printed on the page, one after the other, I was struck with the relentlessness of it all, I mean, I had no idea what it was all about or how Ruscha had come to arrive at drawing and painting words, but for some reason, I was interested. I mean, they had something, what that something was I was not sure of yet, but it had hooked me and I wanted to think and write about it. So I turned to Chloe and told her that I was going to take the book with us around to Becca and Chris's, you see we had been invited to go around there for a drink, so anyway Chloe immediately says “no”, and I am like, “but I am an artist (said for effect!!) and I need to work, this is work, you are stopping an artist from working!! To which Chloe replied “you are not taking that book around to Becca and Chris's it would be rude”, “But they won't mind” I said “and even if they did, screw it, that's what its all about isn't it? Strike while the Iron is hot and all that? Never mind being rude, Its about making the work, no matter what, and I can't believe that you would be happy that my work was being stopped or that you would want to stop it” to which she repeated “It would be rude to take that book around to Becca and Chris's, and yes I am quite happy about it” At this point I was like “I see, that's Interesting” you see I had suddenly caught sight of another thought, I mean another idea had sprung into my head and I was like “A-HA!! you have just given me an idea” and Chloe said “see I inspire you to work!!”

this is your project

2007-01-05T11:16:00.000-08:00

o.k so we were going to make a post, in the watershed, i was banging these metal keys with all my heart...
what is a post?
excuse me what is a post?
I dont know i am sorry
thats o.k
you know what a post is?
well........
o.k so a post is a note on my blog
i seeeeeeeeeeeeee
right so we were trying to get somewhere.......
pardon?
what where we trying to do?...
were!!!! what where?...
not where, were!!
anyway i am going out for a cigarette..
who was that?
who was it......
right, o.k we really must get on with this, erm wow you are right what if there was somebody or something that could type as fast as everyone...
i am sure there is, they don't type with one finger
i use two fingers to type!!!
do you, you use more than two fingers,
this is boring now, no one wants to read this shit!!!!!
you would be suprised......
really?
stop it!!!!!!
o.k its no ones fault we must really finish this post
are we having an argument?
what do i say?
don't you want to write down whats on that piece of paper?
yes yes yes thats how should end this post, with the very thing that started it in the first place
go for it........

it is the third party that demands the spliting of the singular into a duality. This is an economic function.
yeah?
you might want to put a capitol,
al, capital I,
I lad, thats it!!

llinos ollie wahnei steff untitled person

Symbolics

2006-12-29T08:17:00.000-08:00

oldest web page, check it on wikipedia!!

Duchamp,Duchamp,Duchamp,**

2006-12-27T08:20:00.000-08:00

From reading the notes in the essay on tout fait issue three."Why the Hatrack is and/or is not Readymade: with Interactive Software, Animations, and Videos for Readers to Explore

i.e what is a ready made? well a “ready made” is a ready made word that was used in the garment industry that Duchamp used when talking to certain people, to describe what he had been working on. The ready made is a “brain fact”*, it exists in multiples, both in 2d and 3d forms in the outside world, i.e drawings and sculptures. These have been made at different points and times, obviously the originals have been lost!!. They relate to the notes he made to accompany the large glass, in which he talks about a new kind of perspective. This is a perspective that relies on movement. The article illustrates that the black and white photograph of the coat rack for example incorporates multiple perspective which have been subtly cut and pasted into the background image of one perspective. So Duchamp was in one of the very first photo shop's manipulating images on multiple layers!! (Always way ahead, always way ahead!! oh shut up!!).....ahmm.....So the article goes on to explain that the top plan and side elevation that Duchamp gave in the notes, which creates a 3d model of the bachelor apparatus from the large glass does not fit correctly with the perspective drawing of it in the large glass. So was Duchamp a shit draughtsman when it came to perspective? Apparently not, computer modelling using the 3D model from the plan and elevation drawings he made shows that the perspective drawing in the large glass is made up of multiple views of the 3D model all combined to create this slightly strained or new perspective of movement and time!!
check it out you all!! I implore you!!! its completely fascinating and pointless at the same time
*what the hell is a brain fact!!!
It only exists in your brain?
**To be chanted like.... rounder, rounder, rounder etc
where is charlie brown?

Dads can draw

2006-12-27T05:00:00.000-08:00

I love the marks that dad has made in this Jazz drawing. There is real movement. I think that I would stop and look if I saw these marks on a wall. In places its almost like calligraphy, I like the 21 – 6 that makes up the character on the lefts feet. I don’t think that dad intended them as numbers. Dad spoke about this drawing, which I recorded on the mp3 player, that my wonderful Chloe got me for Christmas. I will try to get the recording on here in the near future.

Collaboration

2006-12-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

Big thanks to Dave over at http://www.hackleyspress.com/ once again, for great coverage and shooting skills. Thanks to Tom the partner in crime who's recipes went like hot cakes and who had the vision to get people making pizza, for friends and loved ones. Thanks to Chloe and Freya and Jenny for their support. Also thanks to Selvie for the soundtrack and Jane for the opportunity to show in the bar. Oh yes, thanks to mum, who of course put the icing on the cake. Keep um peeled for further updates on cooking conversations number 2!!

Merchandise

2006-12-07T09:03:00.000-08:00

watch this space

2006-12-07T08:57:00.000-08:00

cooking conversations 01

2006-12-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

I need more power captain

2006-12-07T08:49:00.000-08:00

what are we looking at?

2006-12-07T08:04:00.000-08:00