Some Recent Drawings
Some Vids from around the Interwebs
Sketch-a-Move from Superflux on Vimeo.
London Thames Chalk
Picked up some chalk from a beach in Limehouse. I carved it into some special London chalk. What should I do with it now do you think?
Mastercrafts: Green Wood Craft
Amazing and inspiring documentary about wood work- really makes you want to run away into a forest and do some bodging. They talk about how in the modern world we are too disconnected from all the material sourcing and making processes and that with creating your own tools and objects (from lathes to kitchen spatulas to decorative chairs) comes a real freedom. The stuff they make is ridiculously strong and durable and when one guy talks about how he's spent 60 hours crafting a chair you get a real idea of the value imbued in that object.
Taking this topic somewhere else: I feel that if more of the stuff and objects we owned were either made by us- or had some kind of time and value invested into them by us, then that would be good thing. Possessions with a narrative attached to them- 'I found this thing here' or 'I restored this' or 'I made this'- seem to be more special and used with a greater joy than some white goods cracked out from China or something. (I think most people have a few things like this- for myself it's the chair that I found in the street, the table I made, the bike my brother restored for me, and the cafetiere that I discovered down Deptford Market.)
I'd like to figure out ways of getting some of the essence of the show mentioned into my life in London. Suggestions very much welcomed.
Vids
Facts About Projection from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.
Interactive vs. Reactive
I wrote this blog over on the Moving Brands website (under the pen name Rex McWhirter):
PAPPELTALKS from vizage on Vimeo.
Found this via the fantastic today and tomorrow blog. This CD cover designed by Hubero Kororo, leaks ink upon opening, thus creating a unique artwork where the user completes the design. T&T described the project as ‘interactive’ and I suppose to a degree it is. The fact that the trigger, and process, by which it creates surprise and mystery, is characteristic of a lot of interaction design. But I think it’s more reactive, the process can only be controlled a little and it’s a one time only event. There is something very beautiful about it and I find something really refreshing in the analogue, physical way it works.
The Secret Life of Chaos
This brilliant BBC4 documentary kicked my ass. It talks about chaos theory, fractals, patterns and loads more. The punchline is that chaos and order (pattern) are beautifully and inextricably linked. That even the simplest equations and mathematical formula, when fed back into themselves (this bit is key) cannot be examined far enough back to make accurate predictions about where the formula might end up- hence sand dunes, cows spots and nature in general looks similar but not the same. Fractals are part of this- and a guy called Mandelbrotz pretty much invented these while he was working at IBM- the whole thing is linked nicely to something called 'self similarity' which is like branches and rivers and out blood vessels and loads of other stuff. Really good but hurry click here to watch it before the 24th.