Brut Smog

Heygatecrash - The Heygate Revisited

2012-02-03T11:00:00.007+01:00

Last year I went down to the Heygate, that sprawling estate of what policy makers now like to call post war social housing (rather than council housing) at the Elephant and Castle. The residents of the estate have now been 'decanted' (which makes them sound like a fine wine rather than council tenants) to the four corners of the borough most never to return and the buildings are now mostly boarded up and awaiting demolition. It is still possible however to walk around the estate and one or two residents are hanging on in there. The atmosphere is peculiar there is a certain post nuclear depopulation, one sees hardly a soul and yet one can hear the traffic from some of London's busiest arterial roads which are a moment away. From the outside The Heygate may appear to be comprised mostly of slab like concrete blocks but its low rise buildings which make up its core were always surrounded by trees. These pockets of green now untended are spouting prodigiously in that unkempt way that nature has of reasserting itself.

I went to the Heygate armed with a couple of Snappy Snap disposable cameras. It proved however to be a lot more difficult to 'capture' the feel of the Heygate than it has been with Folkestone station or Cliffe Marshes. I quickly assembled the best pics together and added a soundtrack from David Cain's the Seasons. Little more than a trial it does look better than I remember it. See Heygatecrash here.

Other ongoing projects down at the Heyagte by other artists are also available.

A la recherche du Bugs perdu

2012-01-28T12:32:00.000+01:00

A la recherche du Bugs perdu

Storm Bugs Live

2012-01-26T20:53:00.002+01:00

Somewhat improbably Storm Bugs (as in myself Prof Jambon and Prof Fromage) will be performing Live in Nottingham in February. I say improbably as Storm Bugs were always more of a studio/bedroom band than a live outfit. Nonetheless we shall be dusting down our back catalogue for full and frank renditions of classics such as: Eat Good Beans, Tin, Car Situations, Dull Sound of Breath etc, etc.

As Storm Bugs we performed an "AV set" in the basement of the now defunct Foundry a couple of years back but to be honest it was more of a Sanderson/Ball video collaboration with little relation to the original recordings or Storm Bugs sound. In practice then this Nottingham outing will be our first live set since 1980 when we performed (but only just) in Brenchley Gardens in Maidstone. So this will be a recuperation of an imaginary former live existence mediated by time and technology. Get your tickets here

A Safe Substitute

2011-10-22T16:24:00.000+02:00

A Safe Substitute the Storm Bugs’ magnum lo-fi opus originally released on Cassette by Snatch Tapes in 1980 is now available on red vinyl from Harbinger (cat no Harbinger 096). Tracks from A Safe Substitute have appeared previously on compilations but this is the first time it has been released in its entirety - a faithful transcript of the Snatch Tapes cassette release complete with a scaled reproduction of the original sleeve artwork and full liner notes detailing the recording of each track.

Here are a few words on A Safe Substitute from the Mutant Sounds blog

‘…this is everything a fan of left field D.I.Y. song structure perversion (U.K. stylee) could hope for. Much of what's heard on A Safe Substitute (fragments of which would re-appear elsewhere) were generated from that great old British analog beast, the VCS3 synthesizer, a machine used to more tonal ends by the likes of Franco Battiato and Pink Floyd and here providing swaying pendulums of corroded bloop, greyscale warble and hollowed out rhythms triggered from filter fucked arpeggiations, upon which they graft passages of alternately morose and plangent song structure fragmentation.’

Hitchcock still by JS

Graphics

2011-10-09T10:53:00.002+02:00

Analogized?

2011-07-10T11:17:00.009+02:00

The transfer from reel-to-reel tape to a digital format is commonly referred to as digitization however if an analogy is defined as ‘a process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target)’ then perhaps we should speak of the tapes being analogized? A sematic distinction perhaps but one whcih highlights that the digital is an anologous represnetation of the analogue.

Any CD or download re-issue of an LP will proclaim that it has been digitally re-mastered – the term (and indeed the prefix re- itself) implies both a return to and a revelation of something. The implication is that through the process of digital re-mastering we might find again the elusive lost original. An original which existed as some point in the analogue past and in an analogue form. The digital promise is that through the act of transference from reel-to-reel tape to a string of bits we can travel back in time and our analogue original can be regained and preserved.

But did the analogue original ever truly exist or is it a mythical creation that haunts the re-mastering process always threatening to be revealed yet suitably unobtainable causing albums to be re-mastered not once but several times?

Let s don our white lab coats and take a look at the steps in digital re-mastering process. Firstly we must go to the vaults and take out the master tapes. The master tape would normally be large 10 inch ¼ inch reel to reel tapes recorded at 15 IPS (inches per second) and containing a two track recording. These recordings were usually mixed from (depending on the era) 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 multi-track tapes.

However there may well be more than one reel-to reel master. Until the late 1960s both a stereo and a mono master would be produced. The mono master would not simply be a mono mix-down of the stereo mix but a separate mix from the multi-track often with a quite different sound from its stereo counterpart. Whether stereo or mono a further reel-to-reel tape would be made from this ‘original’ master by the cutting room engineer as he adjusted EQ and levels in an effort to make the vinyl record sound as good as possible. Cutting vinyl was (and is) something of an art and certain cutting engineers would be valued for their work in knowing just how much could be squeezed onto the disc. Porky’s Prime Cuts for example was the name given to work by the mastering engineer George "Porky" Peckham who was famed for cutting discs - for example Porky cut a number of the T.Rex hit singles of the 1970sauch as Metal Guru (and indeed also the Table Matters EP by Storm Bugs).

So already the ‘original’ analogue master tape is becoming a shifting target. A digital transfer from the cutting engineer’s master might in theory sound more like the vinyl record but that then doesn’t take into account the degree to which a pressing can shape a sound. A cutting engineer may for example have boosted the treble in places (especially towards the middle of the record) which on the finished vinyl sounds fine but if transferred to digital would sound too bright and so on. Then there is the issue of hiss. Engineers in the pre-digital era spent considerable time trying to eliminate the background noise which any analogue system naturally produces. Digital technology has accustomed us to a hiss free soundscape and the advent of noise reduction hardware and plug-ins will tempt all but the most resolute to remove at least some of the hiss not to mention clicks, pops, crackle, hum and other analogue undesirables.

This all assumes that any version of the master tape is still in existence. Had the two track master been destroyed we could if we still had the multi-track tape mix the tracks once more. However a final mix down in the 1970s (before automated mixing desks began to appear) was often a very much an on the fly process with many hands on the mixing desk faders bringing different musical parts in and out as required throughout a song. Furthermore some effects such as echo and reverb might have been applied only at the mixing stage and so to recreate the sounds we would need to have the same effects units available and maybe in a similar way to the moving faders adjust them during the course of the mix. It soon becomes clear that replicating the original mix is going to be a far from easy task; we might approximate it but probably not reproduce it.

The re-mastering process then become not so much a one-off event as a series of séances in which the producer assisted by the latest algorithms and the finest new plug-ins attempts to make contact with the phantom original and call forth its presence - only for it to fleetingly appear before receding once more to the other side.

Exorcism in Colour

2011-07-09T14:20:00.009+02:00

Can the hauntologogical be exorcised?

Adding colour by hand it was felt brought photos ‘to life’ though often as not the overall effect was often far from naturalistic or realistic and gave many pictures a somewhat other worldly quality. An analogy can be dawn with the clever handiwork performed in many an American funeral parlour whereby a sallow corpse is turned into a presenatable body an idealised frozen represntation to be viewed by the grieving relatives. In the case of the hand coloured photograph the tiny death (La petite mort) of the back and white image is replaced by a lifeless yet preserved colour image; set apart from the moment fixed (moment fixe).

Patinas of the Past

2011-07-06T13:45:00.006+02:00

..arguably the boundaries between past and present are blurred such that there is an ongoing dialogue between the two. One might even imagine that the library and soundtrack music of the 1970s which so inspires the bands labelled as hauntological may not have been recorded in the past at all but could have been recorded now or indeed in the future and have simply seeped through the fluid pores of non linear temporality to physically manifest itself as piece of vinyl in the 1970s or as a download now or as who knows what at some future date.

Ah if only…..

‘Holding a battered copy of the Ziggy Stardust LP in one's hands, it can seem like a repository for nostalgic residues, as if the grooves in the vinyl were in some way the sculptured marks of time¹s passing. Rather than let the sediments settle, the idea behind Suicide Suite was to create a means of once again setting in motion the sounds and images that have lain dormant since 1972. Suicide Suite dose not aim to remix or add to the original but rather to create a ghostly twin; an echo of the LP that occupies a parallel but somewhat warped trajectory.‘

Through a Telephone Box Darkly

Library Sale

2011-07-03T19:00:00.004+02:00

As part of the American Ground festival in Hastings the library had a sale on - you know the sort - the ones in which they get rid of lots of interesting books to make way for popular autobiographies. Anyway I'm not complaining as I picked up some rather fine titles at 40P each. It occurred to me that if in a year's time you were strapped for cash and could not afford the new £9,000 university fees you could do worse than read these titles from cover to cover (total cost £3.20). Mind you my education was a little like that...

Secret Scuplture

2011-06-29T07:29:00.005+02:00

In the 1960s and 1970s you might be forgiven for thinking that there wasn't much sculpture on TV - in fact there was a significant amount of subliminal sculpture by anonymous artists used as a backdrop behind bands and singers as they performed on TV shows. Echoing the contemporary sculptural forms of the day these often bold and yet unassuming works (they were never mentioned or acknowledged) have never been catalogued and are all but forgotten. Many no doubt had a short life span and some were probably destroyed after the performances in which they were used. Youtube (as ever) gives us an opportunity to revisit these works. Here are a couple of stills and an edited Barry Ryan video in which a rotating wire construction take up roughly a third of the on screen time.

Touch and Play

2011-06-26T11:14:00.005+02:00

Passing by the modernist toy shop of Paul & Marjorie Abbatt (2Bs and 2Ts) at 94 Wimpole Street I noticed Goldfinger carefully cutting out wooden letters, his Savile Row suit protected by a jute apron on which the small splinters of wood landed before being brushed towards the floor.

Stepping inside the toy shop to take a closer look at the merchandise I was approached by a nice lady in a blue cardigan who said ‘you may touch and play’. Goldfinger nodded and smiled adding ‘toys should be functional in design and educational in purpose”. I sensed though his mind was elsewhere, no doubt contemplating his big new commission at the Elephant & Castle.

Modularity for Modern Living

2011-06-25T13:25:00.003+02:00

The flexibility of the living space is derived from its modular construction in which numerous adjacent square and rectilinear sections can either be used independently as individual zones or combined together to form larger units as required.

It's just an illusion

2011-06-23T22:23:00.006+02:00

Use the scroll bar on the right of your screen to scroll up and down quickly.

Fewer frames make finer films - Contracted Cinema

2011-06-23T09:44:00.006+02:00

Contracted Cinema – the reverse or, better still the inverse of expanded cinema.

In terms of defining that which we seek to invert namely expanded cinema, we could choose Gene Youngblood’s interpretation – a fluid liquid a go-go of art and life colliding as retinal consciousness which, for years had all the appeal of some bad hippy trip but now, in the age of media convergence seems timely and prescient. Alternatively we might prefer the English somewhat more sober focus on expanded cinema as involving the transformation of the spectator’s reception of the cinematic.

So contracted cinema then is the opposite of all that? In trying to achieve contraction we might try simple physical ploys like ensuring that all seats have a restricted view with pillars and obstacles between them and the screen or indeed we could take out the seats and make the audience stand to attention or slump against the wall. We might ensure that the sound is all but inaudible so audiences strain to hear over the amplifier hum or indeed we could crank up the volume sending the punters from the auditorium with ears bleeding. In terms of timing the contracted cinema programme should always begin before the audience arrives and end before they leave. But you protest, this is all too familiar, this is nothing new, your contracted cinema is what we already experience when we visit artist projections in the gallery; the black box in the white cube.

Bother - we need something less simplistic than just making life difficult for the audience or spectator. So contracted cinema could mean just less of everything; a sort of rationed cinema. Our slogan could be ‘Fewer frames make finer films’. To be fair though film stock was always so damned expensive that an excess of celluloid was rarely a problem it was video that could and often did go on and on. ”Cut out the bits you don’t need”. Sounds like a recipe for lo-fi. Should we be considering the material nature of the medium and how to foreground this, reducing everything down to the bare essence. Hell why not dispense with the whole paraphernalia (if we set light to it, it could be parafinalia) and just look out the window?

English Vernacular

2011-06-21T20:59:00.003+02:00

Whitstable doesn't have any grand buildings or architectural masterworks it does however have a lot of good old English Vernacular as per this example. For no particular reason I had a go at sketching the building which was slightly tricky as it was raining and I was standing up holding the pad in one hand and attempting to draw with the other - oh and I hadn't done any sketching for quite a few years. Excuses aside it did demonstrate almost straight away how much more of a building you 'see' when you draw it rather than photograph it if only as you repeat the action of looking back and forth from the building to the paper having for a split second to memorise what you have just seen and then reproduce or interpret it. Clearly I will be signing up for the summer water colour and drawing school.

Spotting and Foxing

2011-06-20T16:09:00.008+02:00

1st edition, hardback with inscription on frontispiece. The pages are clean and bright although slightly yellowed. The cover is a little grubby with some staining. The corners and spine are bumped and worn. The spine is split in the middle and repaired. Damage from what looks like sellotape. The dust jacket is clipped with tiny closed tear to rear, slight bumping to illustrated boards, some spotting and foxing to endpapers and closed page. Ex library stock has a number of stamps throughout the book mainly on the back of the colour plates. Numbers written on first endpage, light shelf wear, showing signs of rubbing and marks, but still pretty neat. Early pages have a few pencil notes, though generally book is clean and very readable. A used second-hand book. Condition: Fair.

High Street

2011-06-17T09:30:00.003+02:00

Spent a few days last week down in Whitstable. It had been some ten years or so since I was last there and though undoubtedly a little more touristy it still manages to avoid being like a novelty model village. The high street has working fishmongers, butchers, bakers, greengrocers, hardware shops etc all run independently, just as you used to find on any high street before the advent of the supermarket and which, you still find in most of mainland Europe (though yes I have heard the reports of Boulangeries closing at an alarming rate). It is not so much that one should be nostalgic for such times or romantic notions of ‘community’ but a working high street (and I would contrast this with the boutique foody

artifice of Borough Market) just makes the quality of life so much better.

Retromania

2011-06-16T16:31:00.009+02:00

In an attempt to get the blog up and running (or even walking) lets try going diaristic for a while.

Just came back from town after dropping off my snappy snap disposable cameras at the Boots Piccadilly Circus one hour lab, Having 60 minutes to spare/kill went off to Waterstones and sped read the new Simon Reynolds Retromania book.

Reynolds writes in a relaxed style that quickly catches you in its slipstream and there is much to recommend the book especially the sections where he documents the impact and development of online music downloads - not iTunes but firstly peer to peer and then full album downloads on blogs such as Prog not Frog, Mutant Sounds and the Library Hunt. In particular he captures perfectly the rampant collector spirit that once had Reynolds (and to varying degrees many of us of a similar age) rummaging through boxes of vinyl in second hand record shops but which in the digital age led to the downloading of so many mp3 files no one could ever possibly listen to all (or any) of them.

As documentation of such changes Reynolds is at his best, weaker though is the socio-cultural analysis and as always with Reynolds there is a nagging streak of conventionality – a reluctance to stray too far world view formed in the 1970's by the writings in NME and Sounds of the likes of Morley, Penman and Savage. This orthodoxy, which was also evident in Rip, it Up rarely departs from the accepted musical cannon. For example when writing about Minimal Synth, Reynolds describes it as in part a cunning ploy on the part of record collector/dealers to create a new category or genre and help shift otherwise unwanted self released electronic LPs from the mid 1980s by bands which Reynolds asserts would have been Dépêche Mode if only they could have penned a decent tune. For all his downloading such sentiments display a resistance to tinker with the mainstream hierarchies.

Having part digested Reynold's book I picked up a copy of the Chapman Barrett book and headed back to Boots to pick up my snappy snaps, which were suitably disappointing, and at £20 for processing and a CD rather pricey.

On Meritocracy

2011-03-08T21:20:00.004+01:00

Arguably…

In an ideal meritocratic society there should be a matching of the abilities and skills of individuals to the tasks to which they are most suited. In a situation in which there is more than one candidate putting himself or herself forwards for a task then an independent and objective way of testing who is the most able may be used as a way of determining who should best be performing it. This testing may occur at the point of application or more likely prior to applying through and education system in which the person’s skills and abilities have been developed and also simultaneously assessed.

Put in this way a meritocracy draws no subjective value difference between tasks (or those who perform them) nor does it imply that any task be better rewarded. In practice in advanced capitalist societies such as the UK. governments have promoted a narrow version of meritocracy in which certain tasks are perceived to have much greater value than others, are rewarded far more highly and for which there is much greater competition. In this narrow meritocracy much time and energy is spent on matching skills and abilities to a certain number of very specific roles and the whole notion of ability itself comes to be defined in relation to its applicability to these relatively few specific high value roles. To not have the ability and skills for these roles is to be in danger of being perceived as having no skills or ability at all.

Index

2011-01-14T15:00:00.000+01:00

Work In Progress
Ectoplasm Experiment
Pretend my Pen is a Stylus
Battle of the Pixels
Folkestone Harbour Station

Art Matters
Vested Interests
Film Gate As Cash Register
Patamatic Cinema
Connect
Bedtime stories
Altermodern
The War on Television
Camera Dances
Fishing Line

Remade Readymade
In Praise of Pastiche
Gillespie Kidd Coia
Process Progress
The Submerging Artist
Fair Trade
Gustav Metzger is my Dad
Eno
In a Whirl
Chelsea Space
Well Hung
Woolworths

Film, Photography, Illusion
Picture Motion-Some Thoughts On
What is wrong with Photography
kleptographia
Multi Faceted Cinema
Reflections on Le Grice
Subversion
Immediate Cinema
More on Photography
Turning the Picture Down
Then and Now

Hearing Things
Lo Fi
A Safe Substitute
Sound Projector Railway Special
Voice Box
Oramics Live
Sound Waves
Tagging
Old Poster
The Unnecessary Object of Desire
Boating for Beginners
Supplementary Beenefit
Sound Stairs
Snatch Paste
Domestique Electrique
Under Press of Sail
Answering Back
Instant Kitten
The Death of the Long Player
Clinging to the Wreckage
Band loyalty
Cassette Fetish
Not Fade Away
Earwitness
Instructions are contained on the tape, which you will find in the blue rucksack.
Lights Out
The venerable VCS3
Record Test
Unbalanced
Covering up the Head

Cuts
Tuition Fees
The Mask is Off
Make Art History

EVP Ectoplasm Experiment

2010-11-08T23:15:00.003+01:00

in the Raudive Breakthrough experiments one of the ways of recording paranormal voices (Known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)) was to use the white noise from a radio as a type of carrier frequency. In this ectoplasm experiment rather than a radio an algorithm is used to digitally create a constantly changing nebulous visual form. The image is scanned by and oscillator to produce sound which tracks the form and morphs from white to pink noise. This is a short two-minute extract, which may need repeated viewings and studied listening before EVP may be recognised.

Watch QuickTime or Flash

University Tuition Fees Triple - Daily Mail readers needed for protest

2010-11-04T08:03:00.006+01:00

Those who work in a sector naturally have their ear to the ground on matters directly concerning its future in a way the mass media and general public cannot be expected to share. However yesterday’s announcement by David Willets of a 2 to 3 fold increase in tuition fees brought the subject of student finance to the head of the media queue and, rightly so for what is being proposed verges on the absurd.

Students from next year on are no longer being asked to contribute towards the cost of their degrees or “top-up” the contribution made by government but in most cases cover the entire cost of their teaching. Fees will rise from the current approximately £3,000 to at least £6,000 and probably more like £9,000. What extra will the student get for this 100-200% increase? Precisely nothing as the government withdraws all funding for teaching except for some limited support for STEM subjects. Some ‘top’ universities have already signalled that they will seek to charge the full £9,000 and there is an expectation that post 92 universities (or the former polys) will charge closer to £6,000 or £7,000 though, none have signalled that this is what they intend to do. In either case universities will find that with the teaching grant gone they will actually be no better off and in the case of those who feel they can’t or shouldn’t charge the full £9,000 many colleges will actually have less money. Unless of course they increase student numbers and class sizes and lower further the quality of the learning experience. In short students will pay and extra £3-6,000 a year for less. Staff will be expected to deliver more, again for less, especially as salaries are frozen and may well actually decrease in the universities charging less.

Under the proposed changes most student will leave university with a debt for tuition fees alone of somewhere between £18,000 and £27,000, factor in living costs, add on interest and you are looking at a bill in the region of £50,000 per degree. The notion that this won’t be a deterrent to going to university or a life term burden for most young people who do is simply not sustainable.

To start quantifying degrees in financial terms is to arguably play the politician’s game but can a fee of £50,000 be justified on any grounds? The higher than average life term earnings of graduates is often cited but ask anyone working in the arts or the public sector about these supposedly high earnings and they will simply smile. When only 10% of the population went to university a degree may have been a passport to (if not even then a guarantee of) higher earnings but no longer. A degree is simply seen as a prerequisite in many walks of life. In a whole range of professions 30 years ago A-Levels would have been sufficient to start and there was an expectation that the employer would provide on the job training or time off for day release study. The modern neo liberal employer in Britain though wants it both ways; they seek ever more qualified staff but expect to pay no part of the cost for the training needed. In an entirely regressive move to a Victorian model people are now expected to pay for the privilege of learning skills need by employers.

In terms of protest at these increases there will be marches, sit-ins, possibly strikes. One imagines much of this to be water off a duck’s back to a government that is fast showing a callous disregard for the public sector that makes Thatcher look like a caring socialist. What may well turn the tide is the rising consciousness in the middle classes, those Daily Mail readers whose instincts are often conservative with a small c and who often vote for the Tories (forget the LibDems they will disappear as any kind of meaningful political party).

The middle class group are waking up to the idea that their sons and daughters may well not now be able to attend university at these prices or that every asset they have will need to be sold to cover the cost (or equity realised to use the neo liberal parlance). This group for whom a free liberal education has never perhaps been a priority may now begin to voice their disquiet and seek to overturn these absurd proposals. The government has no fear of lecturers and students but it needs the middle class vote.

The Cuts - The mask is off

2010-10-21T09:05:00.003+02:00

So the cuts are upon us – or at least the first batch for, severe as those announced yesterday are don’t be surprised if there are more round the corner when it emerges that the predicted efficiency savings to be made are not as big as Osborne expected or that the overly ambitious forecasts for growth are not met and tax receipts are down or that even at the lower level of welfare support now offered the swelling number of unemployed and homeless simply push up the welfare bill.

The cuts are clearly ideological and for the Tories a once in a lifetime chance to remould the state in a way they previously could only dream about hence the jubilation and smirks on the Tory benches yesterday (the LibDems aside from Nick Clegg looked a little grimmer knowing they are now political history). That so many people have bought into the line that Gordon Brown spent all the money and left the sweet shop bare is depressing and can be partly blamed on a right wing press but also on Brown’s strategy for promoting growth through public expenditure.

Lets be 100% clear Brown’s strategy of pump priming the economy through state expenditure did not cause the current deficit that was down to bailing out the biggest financial sector cock up in history but once so much public money was used to prop up the banks and stop a financial melt down the strategy of using the public sector to drive growth in the economy was no longer sustainable.

Brown and New Labour’s pre crash strategy to base growth on public sector spending and on receipts from a deregulated financial sector was deeply flawed as it did nothing to stimulate and strengthen the wider economy particular manufacturing. Instead the asset bubble of the housing market was allowed to expand without control and inequality depended and became more entrenched. Millions of jobs were created but these were linked to the service and/or public sector. Significantly very little training or investment was made in a way that encouraged people to make things either with their hands or minds. The opportunity to break the generational cycle of unemployment and benefit dependency introduced by Thatcher was thrown away and instead immigration control was relaxed and anew form of colonialesque exploitation was allowed to take place as millions were in effect encouraged to enter the UK to take up service sector jobs at wage rates that were unviable for the long term UK unemployed.

In short under Brown the neo liberal agenda was firmly established with one caveat that whilst inequality deepened Brown would skim off a little of the cream and redistribute it back to the poor though never on a scale to compensate for the real terms decrease in wealth. Now the true neo-liberals are in charge they are simply removing the welfare mask that disguised the true level of deprivation and inequality that existed under New Labour.

Pretend my Pen is a Stylus

2010-10-03T11:27:00.002+02:00

Watch QuickTime or Flash

Make Art History

2010-09-30T08:36:00.002+02:00

As the Make Poverty History campaign falters and with the prospect of 25-40% cuts in the arts it seems far more likely that we can Make Art History

Battle of the Pixels

2010-09-23T18:43:00.000+02:00

In the future perfect conflict will be conducted by pixel as much as by bullet - in memory of a previous Battle of Britain a photograph of a field in Kent is subject to digital attack.
Watch: streaming flash or QuickTime

Folkestone Harbour Station

2010-08-29T10:59:00.005+02:00

Folkestone Harbour -Photos

Connect by Ken Garland for Galt

2010-05-16T23:19:00.005+02:00

Go down the aisle of a Toys R Us shop today and your senses are assaulted by sequence of brightly coloured and somewhat garish plastic toys competing for your attention. Many have a quirky charm displaying something of a mutoid imagination at work but few would be seen as works of modern design. Yet for a period in the 60s two of Britain leading toy makers Galt and Abbatt produced games, puzzles and jigsaws, which, in ways are perfect examples of high modernism. The best of these modernist toys is Connect designed by Ken Garland for Galt in 1969. Garland and Associates is a firm of graphic designers and they were originally asked to redesign Galt packaging and brochures. This Garland did with aplomb using what by today’s standards would be considered very muted tones and fonts.

Having designed the packaging Garland and Associates moved on to designing the some of the Galt toys themselves bringing contemporary 1960s graphic design values to the toys and a particular emphasis upon spatialization and sequencing and repetition.

Connect best embodies this; comprised of 140 cards each with red, blue and black lines the game involves linking up the cards in style that owes something to dominos to create extended patterns that look for all the world like some minimalist artwork by Sol Lewitt or even in some ways Mondrian.

The game was designed to be played on the floor and to weave around household furniture and other objects. With its stark simplicity a whole generation of children where unbeknownst to them engaging in an early course in graphic design principles.

The rights to Connect were later licensed by the German toymaker Ravensburger and renamed Rivers, Roads & Rails. Unfortunately whilst the game still employs the same underlying principle the simple colored lines have been replaced by representational drawings and so loose its graphic simplicity and abstract edge.

Woodworkings

2010-02-18T09:28:00.004+01:00

Here then some Standard 8 footage shot circa 1990 mixed with a soundtrack by Storm Bugs from 1980. Both involved blind overlaying. In the case of the film passing the same footage through the camera two or three times and with the sound using a loop cassette to record on and then disconnecting the erase head and letting it pass round and round; overdubbing on more sounds.

Watch: Quicktime (Mac) or Streaming Flash (PC Or Mac)

A funny thing...

2010-02-18T06:39:00.003+01:00

When I woke up this morning at 5AM these lines popped into me head...

I have know you and loved you so long that

I no longer know where I end and you begin

said the romantic poet to his wife of many a year

She smiled sweetly both at his presumption

and for a moment seeing herself in the arms of Clarice Duff

the landlord’s daughter

No Particular Place to Go (Ring Mod Remix)

2010-02-16T14:20:00.005+01:00

Today a ring modulation remix of the video No Particular Place to Go made using photographs of fly-tips from the Geograph British Isles website. Each photo was scanned to produce a musical note; putting the images together a musical sequence emerged; a pastoral accompaniment to the images. Geograph British Isles is a project that aims to collect photographs of every grid square of the British Isles. The photos which were originally uploaded by numerous different people from all over the UK were produced under a under a creative commons licence as is the video. No Particular Place to Go was originally shown as an installation at the Memorial Gallery in Hastings in 2009.

Watch: Quicktime (Mac) or Streaming Flash (PC Or Mac)

To all our loyal customers

2010-02-13T21:32:00.001+01:00

So as the keener readers amongst you will have noticed there is new link on the right. Yes Lumiere et Son now have their own blog and as of today all new Lumiere et Son pieces will be posted there.

Now Close your Eyes

2010-01-30T07:46:00.001+01:00

Lumiere et Son wonder if dance really is a pathway to cosmic consciousness particularly if you must close your eyes .

Bournville

2010-01-19T23:45:00.019+01:00

A repost of a piece to mark a sad day for chocolate and the proud Bournville tradition - expect sweeter chocolate and less jobs.

Overseen Overheard

2010-01-16T00:05:00.004+01:00

Lumiere et Son are troubled by patanormal activity in which voices seem detached from the body

Lo Fi

2010-01-08T12:22:00.009+01:00

What with Radio 4's PM programme having a feature on the return of the cassette as art object it seems Lo-Fi is to be one of the themes for 2010. In which vein I was contacted late last year by a South American music (Colombian to be precise) magazine called Shock and interviewed on my opinions about analogue and Lo-Fi, Here follows a few short extracts from a transcript translation by Google with the usual amusing grammar.

Low-fidelity sounds you return the heat and dirt on the music scene that recalls, among cassettes and vinyl, an earlier time still has stories to tell. The analogue resurrected and promiscuous flirts with the mainstream, the underground and the new generations.

Philip Sanderson, who produced the record label independent Snatch Tapes, a label in the UK has been willing to resurrect the old formats of music, told Shock version of his own nostalgia. "The object, be it vinyl or cassette, has been too important in the history of music. They provide, together with the cover and liner notes, a visual dimension. An aesthetic and noise condition is lost with the downloads.

Sanderson, who in addition to producing music with his band makes Storm Bugs, one of the most legendary of DIY (Do It Yourself) in London, remembers well the little asepsis and the warmth of the old formats. "With an Mp3 file and you have nothing to what you can have fun a good time. The digital can be so clean and yet so cold I think we need to bring back some dirt and heat with similar productions and objects.

The method of producing a tape is much more complex than screwing a ribbon between two circles and is even harder if you want to make one carried by the spirit, power and the rawness of a production lo-fi. "That's not as silly specks," said Philip Sanderson, who really knows what he means to give life to a low-fidelity production pressed on this analog format. "In Snatch Tapes use many things and nowhere at the same time. We break speakers to create interesting distortions they propose other sounds to the melodies, voices and instruments; overprint tapes, we use the cacophony and noise from the environment to strengthen sound sequences. All of these techniques for very lo-fi twist and transform the sounds that eventually will rotate tangled cassette loops, "he says.

While manufacturing of one of these rectangles sound is an arduous process, its sale is a hell of work and underpaid. If hardly a music lover spends an average $ 1.29 to buy the latest hit from the iTunes Store worldwide, imagine how much would pay for the same song "bad settings" in a cassette.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, a system that collects data on sales of albums and singles in the United States in the first five months of 2009 vinyl sales rose 50 percent from those that took place in the same period last year . While for the vinyl everything is 'in crescendo', from sell 700 thousand in 2008 to 1 million in 2009 for CDs and digital albums will ruin everything, reducing its sales between this year and last in 30 million and 6 million respectively.

Juan Pablo Gallon | Shock.com.co
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Perfectly Rounded

2009-12-23T11:44:00.008+01:00

In a very short space of time Lumiere et Son has established itself as a family firm with a reputation for quality and service and attention to detail. Here is an example of their most recent workmanship giving an insight into the creative process.

Hole in One

2009-12-04T07:57:00.004+01:00

At this time of year search out one of our exclusive designs, always sure to delight. Each comes delivered in the famous pink box

Letterboxing

2009-11-30T21:40:00.002+01:00

Lumiere first met Son on a trip to England when studying a scene through a letterbox at the Barbican. The music that came to mind was naturally from Orrori del castello di Norimberga (Baron's Blood).

Twinset John & Edwad Grimes out of sync

2009-10-19T14:14:00.004+02:00

Psychologists and sociologists have long had a thing about identical twins especially those separated at birth as they provide endless possibilities for studies that try to pinpoint the exact impact of nature versus nurture; of the role of genes on our development against that of the environment we are brought up in. In wider society there is also a certain fascination with twins; obsessed as we are in the west with individuality the idea that such singularity can effectively be duplicated throws so many assumptions into something of a tail spin. There is also an underbelly to our preoccupation with twins which is to see something essentially malevolent in their bond and unspoken telepathic rapport with their almost inbuilt ability to gang up on the poor lesser world of us mere individuals. The krays best epitomise this malevolence and it is no surprise that once finally convicted the twins were separated and sent to different institutions; one to Broadmoor the other to prison. To keep both twins in the same institution would have been simply too threatening.

All of these preoccupations find an unlikely expression in this year’s X Factor in the form of the twins John & Edward Grimes from Dublin. In the auditions Simon Cowell took an instant dislike to the twins describing them as vile and willing to trample their grandmother’s grave if it meant success. Cowell himself something of a bully and control freak clearly felt in some way threatened by these two 18 year Dubliners either recognising himself mirrored back (twice) or recalling some playground trauma. Louis Walsh though seeing boy band potential (and interestingly they are in the band category – are twins a band?) and no doubt recalling the short lived though highly lucrative (for their manager) career of Bros put them through to the live shows despite serious shortcomings in their singing. For the last two weeks then the Grimes have performed and despite being largely out of tune and a serious media campaign to have them booted off have remained on the show.

Whilst they survive their performances offer a curious spectacle. More able to dance than most of the contestants they nevertheless struggle to synchronise steps or for that matter vocals. Watching their performance is a little like having your own brain dissected as they constantly dart glance s from one to the other in an attempt to synchronise their routines. The truth seems to be that twins don’t naturally align their performances but offer a simultaneous rendition of two performances by the same artist. If we took any performer, for example Paul McCartney with all his various mannerisms and got him to perform a song twice and then synced up the two versions they would be very similar but annoyingly different. A previous precedent can be found in Barry & Paul Ryan who for a brief period in the 60s shared a stage before Paul retired to write the songs and Barry remained on stage to belt them out. Their shared performances are equally as off putting as those of the Grimes

The answer is perhaps curiously not to get twins to try and synchronise but to either be asynchronous or to echo or anticipate each other combined with odd flashes of synchronisation. It seems nether our brains or theirs can cope with anything else.

And take that bed with you - Emin threatens move to France

2009-10-05T17:19:00.004+02:00

The news over the weekend that Tracey Emin is so appalled at the prospect of paying the 50% higher tax rate that she is considering moving to France is final proof if indeed such proof were needed of Tracey’s status as possibly most self interested artist of the year. Emin seems to have all too easily forgotten all the state support she has had over the years including: a fully funded (i.e. fees and grant) art education (one year Foundation, three year BA and then MA at the Royal College), various years spent signing on with Billy Childish and then of course the support of a variety of state funded institutions such as the British Council, Arts Council and the Tate. Without any of these state funded aids to her career Tracey could well still be strutting her stuff on the front at Margate. Asked however to put something back into the system and Tracey wants to keep all her money to herself. Let’s just hope that Emin has read the small print on moving to France for when the years of over doing it catch up with her she will find that the French no longer provide free medical care to ex pats and they are charged the full cost. Emin may well then come running back to the UK for some free medical treatment only to find that her new Tory friends have changed the rules and that anyone who has been out of the country for mare than a couple of years will also have to pay for NHS treatment.

The film gate as cash register: Some thoughts in response to Colin Parry’s Art Monthly piece Reel to Real

2009-09-08T09:51:00.005+02:00

I started jotting down some thoughts in response to Colin Parry’s Art Monthly piece Reel to Real: Colin Perry on the material pleasure of film in the July-August issue. The general thrust of my response was to highlight the different economics of production between the CO-OP filmmakers Perry mentions and the contemporary artist such as Elizabeth McAlpine and Tacita Dean.

I wanted to demonstrate how by using state funding (Arts Council, BFI, Camden Council) the Structural Material cinema of the early film CO-OP (Malcolm Le Grice, Peter Gidal etc) was able to occupy a cinematic space not only on the screen but also around the screen. In effect to create a cinema without profit; a cinema, which could afford to refuse representation.

For the CO-OP was a cinema and not a gallery. Tickets were sold, screenings started at a certain time, there was an interval etc etc this was most definitely not a gallery and the work was made by people who identified themselves as Filmmakers. The artists in contrast Perry mentions operate in a gallery context, which is located within an artworld where everything is valued. The gallery itself arguably is not only a framing device, which articulates meaning, but in the context of an art market suggests and imbues everything within it with value. That the specific value of contemporary installation work is variable, floating and often undefined makes it all the more problematic. Into this gallery context then the formerly (intentionally) de-valued apparatus of cinema the whirring and clattering projectors, the sprocket holes and celluloid come. Except now film become material in the other sense; it becomes valuable as fetishised object. Value attaches itself to artist film in the gallery like so much dust on the negative.

This brings with it all sort of implications. For example the decision by galleries to allocate a room to each projected piece, however short is often a reflection not of the expanded cinematic properties of the work but that the space around the screen is important as commodifying context. This single act removes the potential democracy of cinematic exhibition of showing the work of more than one filmmaker in a space and replaces it with the gallery’s concern for commodification. Film time and gallery space become entwined; as the old adage time is money takes on a new meaning. As such film in the gallery becomes not a potentially mass media, which can be reproduced anywhere for any number of audiences but localized and print specific.

These potentials where always inherent in Structural Material cinema but where suppressed and to an extent mitigated by the emphasis on cinema and distribution; the possibility of hiring works of there being more than one print. Now in the gallery the clattering of film through the gate become akin to a cash register’s frenetic addition.

Barry Flanagan

2009-09-02T10:42:00.003+02:00

So farewell then Barry Flanagan who died this week aged 68. According to a couple of obituaries I read this morning the sculptor was best known for his bronze hares and indeed Google image the artist and pictures of the leaping fellows can be seen from all over the world. Now I’m not impartial to the odd hare or two and Flanagan’s had a lyrical quality that recalled some of the work of Ravilious or Bawden but for me Flanagan was at his best in the late 60’s and 70s when his work was part conceptual part British Arte Povera. The work Flanagan made during this period easily rivalled (if that doesn’t sound too competitive) that of Merz and Kounellis and was exhibited internationally to acclaim so why then did Flanagan abandon this for the more representative work in the late 1970s. Sadly it is a common thread amongst British artist this turning from the more rigorous to the safely representational, think of John Piper’s dalliance with abstraction before sticking resolutely to painting houses (though as with Flanagan’s hares there is much to admire) through to Bruce McLean who staged some of the best performance works of the 1970s before turning to painting. Perhaps it is something in the weather or maybe it is that there just isn’t the financial support or intellectual climate to support radical work in Britain.

The anxiety of exclusion. How we all became round robin writers

2009-08-20T08:48:00.007+02:00

At school and then university there were some kids who wanted to grow up too fast. By this I don’t mean they took drugs, stayed up all night and generally took part in what used to be called adult behaviour rather they wanted to progress straight from youth to middle age. The girls would get all mumsy and sensible making shopping lists and cooking, the boys would spend the summer helping their dads fixing the house or horror they would go on some family camping trip when it was no longer compulsory. Another trait of this group is that they would send round robins. On the flimsiest pretext of acquaintance you would receive (often at Christmas) a photocopied dirge telling you exactly what they had been up to in the most minute detail. Leading by definition dull lives these were bound to be dull missives but it was more than that; the presumption that such day-to-day trivia was even vaguely interesting was the mark of utter dorkishness. Oh how we used to laugh at these old before their time bores, we would never stoop so low .Yet somehow we who knew better then have all become sucked into becoming ardent round robin writers now but under the guise of Facebook and Twitter.

Fred the Red on Facebook says ‘just picked fresh herbs from the garden for supper’, ‘yummy’ replies Marie Louise ‘lovely with asparagus’ says Chris, ‘be round in ten minutes’ says Lopez and than a few minutes later ‘only joking’. Mark says ‘baby pickles just said goo’ (accompanied by a photo of said infant looking bored and vacant – no doubt waiting for the Night Garden to begin) to which Angelina says ‘ah sweet’ and Lisa chimes in ‘broody’. And so it goes on through the endless minutiae of mundane activity; ‘network’s down’, ‘back up’, down again’ John tells us. Where once people would send out invite cards to some gig or exhibition and people would just turn up (or not) now there is a breathless anticipation about who can and can’t make it. With people keen to declare just why they can’t be there; ‘love to come, but will be in NY, have a good one’ or ‘really really want to be there but at a wedding in Bristol’. In other words ‘I’m really busy too’.

All of this over enthusiastic declaration of leading full and interesting lives, of being busy busy is so relentlessly and patiently pointless why then is it so addictive? Looking back to an older form of communication, the humble letter WH Auden in his poem Night Mail perhaps had the answer:
“And none will hear the postman's knock.
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? “
Ultimately this is the key; it is an anxiety of exclusion. Who wants to be the child at boarding school or the army squaddy who never receives any letters? Never mind who they are from if everyone else has them we don’t want to be left out. We want in; to be a part of life. This is only natural and maybe even healthy for most people if isolated soon turn to depression (hence the simple effectiveness of solitary confinement as a punishment) but something about digital communication about digital society ultimately encourages and feeds that anxiety rather than calming it. Just like the round robin writer who if they genuinely had something interesting to do wouldn’t have the time to compose their missives the status update and twitter is a sign not of people who are busy busy busy but probably in search of distraction. Distraction from life, from the very anxiety of exclusion that Facebook and Twitter feed. But like some cheap lager the more one quaffs the thirstier one gets. Gotta dash status to update.

Only For Pleasure

2009-08-03T09:04:00.004+02:00

Only for Pleasure.
Note takes a moment or two to load. In Safari if after loading you get the QuickTime question mark, just hit refresh in the browser and the file should start to play. In Firefox file will play after loading. Not tested on IE.

Sound Projector Railway Special

2009-07-20T10:00:00.008+02:00

This Friday you are invited to take your seats aboard the Sound Projector Radio Show railway special. Your footplate DJs Ed Pinsent (Driver) and Philip Sanderson (Fireman) will be playing a selection of sound and music inspired by and derived from the railways. This one off special will leave from the Resonance FM sidings at 5.30 sharp and the round trip will take 1 hour and 30 minutes. After returning to the sidings there will be a chance for refreshments later at a local hostelry. Update: an mp3 podcast of the programme is now available here. The full playlist is here as well as the stanadalone podacast player.

Patamatic Cinema

2009-07-06T22:01:00.000+02:00

Historically cinema has offered two opposing modes of reception, passive and active. In the passive mode we are swept along by the whole illusion of cinema; embedded in the narrative construct of seamless edits and musical accompaniment; we give ourselves up to the flow of the frames. Such is the stuff of Hollywood and popcorn. In the active mode the filmmaker keeps us restless in our seats by constantly re-asserting the illusion of representation. As viewers we are called to action; even if it is only to get up and leave our seats for whilst passive cinema can be a heady narcotic that leaves us ultimately drowsy and empty, active cinema can in the hands of some avant garde filmmakers pursue the denial of pleasure as almost a raison d’etre.

One form of active cinema that engages more than most is Expanded Cinema. Expanded Cinema draws attention to the act of projection itself by employing multiple screens and projectors, and a general level of performativity that involves projectionist/artist, space and audience. However the term Expanded Cinema (originally coined by Stan VanDerBeek) is quickly acquiring something of an historical edge, rather in the same way that happening or environment are connected to the heady days of the 1960s. Increasingly Expanded Cinema conjures a world of clattering projectors and mid to late twentieth century equipment, filmmakers and aesthetics.

As a concept though Expanded Cinema has an ongoing relevance particularly as a potential paradigm for video on the web. Watching a streamed movie file is everything conventional cinema isn’t. Rather than being in the dark often as not we are in a brightly lit room. Instead of sitting back in a well upholstered chair we are sitting upright no more than three feet from the screen watching a screen that far from enveloping us is often filled with text and other potential distractions. Most importantly of all we not at the mercy of the projectionist we can start, stop and move between files and perhaps consequently rather than being 90 minutes long most online movies are 2-3 minutes in duration.

All of these factors can either be seen as problems to be solved or as potentially fertile ground to be explored. The success of YouTube has demonstrated an appetite for the making and viewing of short movies on the web and indeed has created something of a cinema of spectacle but the potential both for a democratization of film production and distribution and for the emergence of some new form of expanded cinema has so far yet to be fully realized.

As is often the case the more interesting attempts to create an expanded web cinema are occurring at the margins. One such project is Spacetwo : Patalab. At first glance Patalab might seem like just another video blog with its almost daily postings of short works. In Spacetwo however there is a subtlety and complexity to the works that in part is underpinned by the maker’s undivided preoccupation with the seemingly unremarkable. Its is the nuances of space and time and of attention lavished on things that are perhaps designed not to be looked or that seek out obscurity that that elevates these everyday musings to a heightened poetic state. Patalab is as an ongoing project with seemingly no declared beginning, middle or end has echoes of Marcel Proust’s work and its continual obsessive return to the same territory, to the same places spaces and thoughts and the passage through them and back again.

Nearly all of Patalab’s video are shot hand held tracing simple steps through buildings and rooms. We move slowly up flights of stairs, down corridors along walls, pondering details as we go; a stack of chairs, an open window, a cornice or skirting. Occasionally legs and feet emerge in front of the camera as do overhead voices on the soundtrack but these are not voodles about people but about the resonance of space. Building day after day these two to three minute works create a library or repository of images from which the viewer can draw or withdraw. There is a willful denial of narrative progression and the audience is called upon to realize that they are re-tracing their own steps; going back to the same familiar passage. Forced to confront everything again till eventually seeing it all for the first time.

Into this charged space seeps the text for, all the Patalab voodles ( a contraction of video and doodle) are laced with quotes; quotes and passages from a variety of sources including philosophers artists, scientists, poets, religious thinkers. Enigmatically removed from their original context the text and ideas float on the browser page before leaking slowly into the videos. Nether obscuring or informing the quotes and links are tangential to each other and to achieving a strong sense of deconstructed purpose. A context of possibilities, open endings and beginnings; again echoing both Proust and the more absurdist Alfred Jarry Patalab is a rich source of endeavor that demands repeated viewings.

Vested Interests

2009-06-25T07:52:00.004+02:00

Just a very short time ago, it seemed we were at the end of something and the beginning of …well no one quite knew but post crash everything was definitely going to change. With the most enormous of financial bubbles burst and the now flaccid little pieces of the balloon stuck to the sides of our mouths we all stood in awe of the devastation and vowed that everything would be different this time. We shook our heads at our collective foolishness and greed and pondered our debts and how we might possibly repay them.

But the vested interests are not so easily deterred. Having been bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of billions the city after the briefest of periods of contrition is back to paying out big bonuses. Never mind that a generation has effectively been robbed of its pensions, if the new RBS chairman can get the share price up to 70P then the government can cash in and sell its shares in the bank at a profit and supposedly wipe out some of the enormous public debt that threatens to dog us for the next 50 years. In other words the mechanism that broke the system is being restarted with some vain hope that it can now fix the very problem it caused.

Over in the art world it’s much the same as Tate Britain opens Classified an exhibition featuring the work of some very familiar names: Damien Hirst, the Chapman Brothers, Martin Creed, Tacita Dean etc. Curator Andrew Wilson says of the work, "I sincerely believe that this art is amongst the best work that has been made in the last 15 years or so." Of course Tate has invested heavily in these artist in so many ways and it was highly unlikely that they would leave the pieces mouldering in the Bricklayers Arms depot but have they no new tricks to play, nothing else up their sleeves but the same old fandango? It would seem not, “who knows” they no doubt muse privately perhaps the exhibition will remind us all just how good these artist are and help get the art market bus back on the road as well and the champers will flow again and the bankers and artists can once again mingle at the Frieze art fair tent whilst the poor sucker public pick up the tab.

Last Few Days

2009-06-12T12:37:00.008+02:00

The No Particular Place to Go exhibition is on for another week. During this time the gallery is open by appointment but will also be open from 2-4 PM on Saturday and Sunday the 20th and 21st. On Sunday there will also be a screening at 3PM of recent videos by yours truly.

Still Running

2009-06-12T09:35:00.003+02:00

For the screening last Saturday various works in progress were "finished". Here then is Still Running

No Particular Place to Go

2009-06-03T17:58:00.006+02:00

No Particular Place to Go
Exhibition ran from: 7th June to 21st of June 2009
Memorial Art Gallery, 7 Cambridge Road, Hastings TN34 1DJ

Press Release:
Criminally underrated, fly-tipping displays all that is best in contemporary sculpture. Combining a range of media, fly-tips can rival early Bruce McLean or Anthony Caro in their inventive composition. At ease in both rural and urban landscapes these seemingly effortless public art works stand out in any location.

In No Particular Place to Go Philip Sanderson has selected photographs of fly-tips from all over the UK. The photos were taken and uploaded by numerous people to the Geograph British Isles project; a website that aims to collect photographs of every grid square of the British Isles and make them available under a creative commons licence.

Using this pool or raw images as a starting point Philip Sanderson has assembled the fly-tip photographs into a video. Using a custom digital process each photo was scanned to produce a musical note. Putting the images together a musical sequence emerged; a pastoral accompaniment to the images.

No Particular Place to Go presents the resulting video on discarded TVs which together with hand selected detritus form a fly-tip installation. Each fly-tip’s location, grid reference, and the name of the photographer is identified on an index card displayed on the walls of the Memorial Gallery.

The installation can be viewed at the Private View at the Memorial Gallery Hastings on the 6th of June 2009 and thereafter for two weeks by appointment. During the Private View there will be a thirty-minute screening of recent videos by Philip Sanderson including Product Recall, Fleshtones, and examples from the Chronocut series.

To view the fly-tipping video that was playing on the monitors click here. When I have worked out a good way of rendering all the individual map refs and photographers names online I shall add that as well.

ART ISN'T WORKING

2009-05-05T09:24:00.000+02:00

Hair Cut

2009-04-17T08:40:00.005+02:00

If Expanded Cinema gets too hairy try a fresh expanded browser piece here. Note ONLY works in Safari not Firefox, may just work in IE. Click refresh now and then for a different cut.

Carriage Return – the final DIY release from Snatch Tapes

2009-04-02T15:07:00.003+02:00

To mark the 30th anniversary of the release of first Snatch Tape in 1979 we are pleased to announce the issuing of a final DIY cassette. Entitled Carriage Return the work consists of two twenty minute sound collages assembled from the thirty years of accumulated reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, mini disks, CDRs in the Snatch Tapes archive.

Focussing on music and voice-overs originally recorded for various film and video projects Carriage Return weaves a fragmented narration concerning ghost sightings, car crashes, ley lines and hidden bends in and around Blue Bell Hill in Kent, England. Mixed with the spoken words is prepared piano, VCS3 synth, circuit bent Casio, shortwave radio, pots and pans and the usual melodic cacophony we have come to expect from Snatch Tapes.

Snatch Tapes is well know for its pioneering DIY approach and this final tape is a true Do It Yourself release in that listeners are supplied with all the files needed to make up their own cassette. Provided are two 20 minute mp3 files (one for each side of the tape) and full sleeve and label artwork ready to print off at home. All you need is a cassette deck, a blank C46 tape and a pair of scissors (or scalpel for a cleaner cut).

As the cost of distribution has been reduced to zero the release is provided absolutely free of charge. Listeners may of course use the mp3 files on their iPods on the understanding that after a thirty-day trial period they should either transfer the files to cassette or erase them

Collectors wishing to archive their copies of Carriage Return may send their completed tapes to the Snatch Tapes HQ where for a small fee they will be authenticated, signed, numbered and returned.

All the necessary files for your Carriage Return are here

Nearside (Side 1), 40mb
Blindside (Side2), 40 mb
Cassette Cover, 2.9mb
Cassette labels

Altermodern – or All back to mine for a theory discussion

2009-03-04T10:54:00.009+01:00

The fourth Tate Triennial exhibition entitled Altermodern has been arousing a good deal of heated debate across the media: in broadsheet newspapers, the art press and of course the blogosphere. Much of the heat seems to be being generated not so much by the art itself but by the utterances of the show’s curator Nicholas Bourriaud who has the audacity to be both French (a Frenchman curating a an exhibition at Tate Britain indeed!) and to come armed with a theory that proposes itself as the next big idea. This big new idea is outlined in a helpful “explain” box on the Tate Britain web site this takes us through to the Altermodern manifesto. Subtitled Postmodernism is dead we are told the following.

A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture

Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing

Today’s art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves

Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

The Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain presents a collective discussion around this premise that postmodernism is coming to an end, and we are experiencing the emergence of a global altermodernity.

Essentially it’s a brave new world, a mish mash of Futurist inspired speed of life modernity and good old postmodernism. It’s almost a parody of a manifesto. So why then are many critics and artists keen to tag on to the coattails of the Altermodern and an equal number seemingly incensed by it?

Certainly it has nothing to do with the exhibition itself, which is a survey of both well established names such as Franz Ackermann and Simon Starling along with up and coming artists such as Marcus Coates: and even the odd cuckoo in the nest, such as our old friend Gustav Metzger. The exhibition though could have been assembled at any time in the last ten years with or without the theory.

But it is the inclusion of theory even a rather vague one which, has caused the fuss and exposed some interesting fissures in the art world. A key fissure opening up is between newspaper critics and those in the specialist art press.

To understand this wee need to go back to the heady days of the 90’s when the yba was king (and queen). The yba movement was promoted and publicised not by obscure artworld or academic publications not even by the mainstream art press such as Art Monthly it was largely driven by coverage in mainstream newspapers. Not surprisingly given his background Saatchi knows a thing or two about PR and his lead artist Damien Hirst is a natural when it comes to self-promotion. Together thy side stepped the normal channels by which an artist would usually gain recognition and went straight for making yba artists into household names. The established artworld who might normally resist such a move sat back and enjoyed the ride. Putting the UK so long a non entity on the international art scene onto the world art map and arguably by 2000 at the centre of that map was something few were going to argue against whatever their private thoughts as to the merits of some of the work. The art establishment even embraced this new publicity led approach with the Tate turning its Turner prize (previously a sort of gong for life long achievement) into an annual headline grabbing stunt.

Journalists were quick to see the potential for easy copy and were only too happy to write endless column inches on the yba’s. A few even managed to get a book or two out of it. It was good quick money and there was no impenetrable theory to understand and the work itself was simple and direct and the artist themselves helpfully excessive in their habits. There were grumbles in the art press about the death of criticism but the general perception was that somehow we were beyond all of that now – description was the order of the day.

The party though like all good parties had to end and by the time of the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida exhibition in 2004 at the Tate it was clear the yba’s had precious little to say and even the champers was decidedly flat. The bandwagon struggled on for a couple more years with Hisrt of course making one last big sale and thereby setting up a pension pot for himself that makes Goodwin’s look small. The credit crunch though signaled that all that was truly over.

But what now? A move or return to work that is politically engaged that reflects the stark income inequalities of the consumer driven treadmill we have got ourselves onto or the environmental impact of globalization or perhaps work that is rooted in theory, that has some intellectual rigor and reflection?

None of these make good copy and mainstream journalists are naturally suspicious of theory knowing their audience will by and large distrust it as well. Such things though are the natural environments of those writing for the art press even if they are largely ignored then for the last 15 years. Gives us theory the art press says, “We understand it, even if you don’t”. And so perhaps the marriage of convenience between the mainstream media and the art establishment may be over or at the very least cooled.

Altermodern is just the start expect a steady flow of new theory, more conferences and papers and long articles that are not afraid to use words that you will need to google later. The new art universities will have a key role in all of this geared up as they are with their RAE orientated research centers and new breed of PhD art students and the need to produce a steady stream of research outputs and outcomes. Time to dust of that copy of Harrison and Wood you might just need it.

Kleptographia – or all photography is theft.

2009-01-09T14:10:00.003+01:00

There is an old term from the days of sprocket holes and projectors called found footage; meaning either appropriated footage or literally bits of film discarded on the cutting room floor and then scavenged from the bins outside editing rooms. In the 70s you would have been able to find anything from snippets of earnest documentaries to porn if you knew outside which doors to look in Soho.

Of course you would be hard pushed to find anything so physical nowadays. The web however is just bursting with (mostly low res) digital clips and stills waiting to be found and recontextualised. Keen viewers of this blog will notice that that is pretty much what I have been doing these last few years. Starting firstly not so much with footage per se but with single photos, an accordion for A Rocco Din, a Harley Davidson engine for Engine Trouble, a pin-up poster of Marilyn for Kisser and so on. More recently I have been using short sections of classic films for the Chronocuts series and this has made this appropriation far more explicit indeed, even foregrounded.

In the Chronocuts series the viewer’s likely familiarity with the original footage is an important part of the process but more generally I am always happier working with someone else’s footage or stills. Or to put it another way there is always an unease about taking or originating either photographs or video. There is a sense in which all filming or taking of images involves a certain theft; a removal of something, which doesn’t belong to you.

I shall call this process Kleptographia. There is here something of a parallel with the idea held in aboriginal cultures of photography stealing the soul of those photographed but concept of Kleptographia goes much further to say that all photographic processes involve an illegitimate transference whether they contain people or not. What problematises that transference over say a process like drawing or painting is that nearly all commercially available camera equipment produce uncanny likenesses. Truer, sharper, blacker, brighter, richer colors and detail; the terminology of photography strives endlessly for perfect reproduction to act as some kind of seamless mirror reflecting a reality back to us. Or some illusion that passes for reality. The constant need to resist the illusion of reproduction becomes a time consuming process and can make it all but impossible to originate such material. Where does one look, brazenly through the lens as one swipes the scene? Easier to break a window and make off with a fur than stand on a street corner taking photographs.

So if unhappy to be a part of the Kleptographic process and steal the images in the first place why then happy to be a “fence”: a handler of stolen shots? With found footage and stills the anxiety of the original theft is lifted. The crime being subsumed by the supposed ownership of the image taker. The image or images do not of course belong to the original taker, the thief, they belong to the scene form when they were stolen. The thief’s claim on the images enshrined as it is in copyright law means the fence in this context is by handling the goods serving to release them from the thief’s grasp. Short of destruction and the death of all who have seen the pictures the theft can never be legitimized but in re-appropriating them there is a sense in which one can partially liberate them from the notion of ownership.

Woolworths Closed – UK to follow.

2009-01-05T12:07:00.003+01:00

Many branches of Woolworths closed their doors for the last time on Saturday. Since the company went into administration in December it has offered a curious spectacle; its increasingly empty aisles filled with a mixture of bargain hunters and those who just came in to stare. Many seemed to be wandering aimlessly round the store gawping with a curious mix of fascination and nostalgia at the slow motion death throes of a retailer which has been on every UK town high street for 99 years. “Woolies” at it was affectionately known will be genuinely missed by many not least those without the transport to get to the out of town ASDA or Tesco.

In the high street the demise of Woolworths comes on top of a spate of recent shop closures leaving parts of many town centre bleakly empty. The closure of most of these shops was not however bemoaned, as was the passing of Woolworths. There was something symbolic in the closure of Woolies as one person was overheard to say “ its the end of the era”. Hardly the most original of phrases but somehow spot on. For the passing of Woolworths brought on as it was not so much by poor trading but a lack of credit to service the company’s overdraft marks some final chapter in England’s Dreaming. A Thatcherite dream that has held sway for almost thirty years who’s central fantasy was that the UK could shut down all of its manufacturing and rely on some shiny suited city types to make the money.

We would leave the nasty business of making things to low paid foreigners overseas somewhere. They could break their backs and inhale the toxic fumes manufacturing stuff and we would take the profit by pushing paper around. Indeed we even encouraged people to come to the UK to do the jobs we were not that keen on doing here ourselves. We as the first post-industrial country were beyond all that dirty work now. All those who used to make things here in the UK were either pushed into the service sector or onto incapacity benefit.

That we got away with for so long is remarkable. That the rest of the world effectively subsidised our relatively high standard of living for doing pretty much bugger all for thirty years is a trick that Malcolm McLaren would be proud of. Sooner or late though we would get rumbled and the man from the Pru really is sans culottes on this occasion.

When Thatcher was busy closing pits in the early 1980s whole colliery towns were left without a purpose; their populations stranded in the middle of nowhere without any jobs or any really reason d’etre. Much of the UK is now in that position.

Death & The Mirror

2008-12-21T10:32:00.005+01:00

Upon reflection.

Alphabette

2008-12-19T21:40:00.005+01:00

Continuing the series of Chrono-Cut experiments, today it is the turn of Alphabette.

Little Tin Soldiers

2008-12-12T16:58:00.007+01:00

The latest Chrono Cut-up (or Chronocut for short). Get your Marching Orders. BTW you need to double click the movie for it to start.

Gunslinger (No 1)

2008-11-27T09:32:00.004+01:00

You were expecting this?

Iffy

2008-11-17T18:07:00.005+01:00

here

Expanded Browser Cinema

2008-10-06T18:29:00.011+02:00

Here is a cut-up waterwork. Entitled Diced & Sliced. It is an expanded browser version of Row Row. Just how the piece looks and sounds depends on your browser, the speed of your broadband connection, amount of RAM and the general state of your computer. Its different on every set up and slightly different every time you load it.

If you are on a Mac use Safari, Firefox loads movie files in an odd way that privileges one file over the others and here the browser is showing 16 movies at the same time. Also tested on a PC with IE where it seems to work fine.

If you feel so inclined you can stop and start any slice by clicking and double clicking. Reloading the page will also shake things up. Now and then your browser may crash. Diced & Sliced

Damien Hirst - Eau de Punk

2008-09-22T10:09:00.007+02:00

I’m sure there are many who hoped that Damien Hirst’s auction last week might flop and that this might be a turning point, a chance for a re-evaluation of the contemporary art scene on any number of levels (financial, curatorial and not least artistic), but in the end with markets and financial institutions in turmoil the Hirst sale proved to be a winner and estimates were met and exceeded.

So Hirst does it again, another first for Hirst and so on. Interestingly in the run up to the sale Hirst chose to depict himself as a punk, even if by his own admission given his age he is too young to have been a punk and would have been pogoing in short trousers in 1977. What he was probably referring to was a general “up yours” attitude and importantly a Do It Yourself (DIY) mentality.

One of the many great things about Punk was that whilst the Clash were on the major label CBS and the Pistols on EMI (then famously A& M briefly and finally Virgin) a whole new generation of bands side stepped sending the demo tape to the old hippie A & R man and simply recorded, released and distributed their own records. I even played a small part in the wilder fringes of this DIY movement with my own Snatch Tapes label.

This can do attitude certainly lay behind Hirst’s setting up of the Freeze show In July 1988 whilst only in his second year at Goldsmiths College. The exhibition took place not in a conventional gallery setting but rather an empty building belonging to the London Port Authority in London's Docklands.

So far so DIY but Hirst also gained sponsorship from the London Docklands Development Corporation that most Thatcherite of quangos and thanks to the some sweet talking from Hirst’s Goldsmiths lecturer Michael Craig-Martin, the Freeze show was visited by both Saatchi and Serota. Not bad for a first student show and certainly streets ahead of the normal art student approach at the time which was to wait until a couple of months after graduation and then traipse up and down Cork street with some badly taken slides hoping to be picked up by a big gallery.

But was this really DIY or Punk in any true sense for, far from in any way de-stabalising the establishment this was simply courting it? In effect Freeze was one big PR exercise. One is reminded less of the DIY punk ethos and more of Richard Branson’s hippy capitalism. Branson famously used a local red public telephone box as his office whilst still at school and many entrepreneurs like Apple’s Steve Jobs started off in a garage. Depicting yourself as an outsider or in some way alternative helps enormously to create brand uniqueness and the cache of rebellion, this worked well for Branson and Jobs then and still does now. May Mac owners believing that somehow by buying from the Apple they are being in some way “different”.
So far from being truly DIY Hirst is really little more than highly successful self-starter entrepreneur. A charitable view might see Hisrt in the mould of Malcolm McLaren; taking the institution for a ride. But however tacky and scheming McLaren’s techniques the content was always there, even if that content was nearly always the work of others. In Hirst’s case shrewd wheeling and dealing have been matched to a highly derivative art; the veneer of difference, allied to something that is in many senses familiar. It has the aura of the other but as the rich at the auction realised is a safe bet. Ultimately this is Eau de Punk, a perfume for those seeking the fragrance of the bohemian if not the substance and the smell of the bohemian is clearly big business.

About Turn – Tate Modern

2008-09-17T18:42:00.006+02:00

When Tate Modern opened it famously eschewed the narrative of chronological isms pioneered by MOMA in favour of thematic hanging that supposedly threw up interesting and new juxtapositions between artists who would normally inhabit different parts of the museum.

Arguably such a strategy has been a success with major galleries worldwide adopting a similar approach and of course the ever-increasing visitor numbers would suggest that the public if not applauding the hanging policy are not staying away.

This morning on a visit to the Tate, I was struck by what a fine mess this approach has produced. Mess is a little like clutter; its hardly the most pejorative of terms but yet seems utterly an appropriate description for the random attractions that Tate now offers. Re-hung many time since it opened I found myself on level 5 in States of Flux. A space “devoted to the early twentieth-century movements Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism”.

Ok so far so good but what do we get at the entrance to Sates of Flux but a Lichtenstein namely Whaam!. Hang on we must have taken a wrong turn and be in Pop Art? Ah but read on “Cubist innovations such as collage were central to the emergence of Pop Art which combined high and low culture, art and commerce into forceful, celebratory and sometimes critical visions of the post-war consumer era. “ Well yes in a way, but this a highly tentative connection and one, which is not really robust on close scrutiny.

Elsewhere in States of Flux we find a room with a projection by Jonas Mekas, some Fluxus works (In a Sate of Flux(us) get it?), an After Impressionism room, a Pop Art room and so on. In other words its all other place. Consequently so is the audience. The more informed can perhaps try to put the pieces of this tentative jigsaw together but most seemed happy to walk very quickly from room to room looking for the next attraction. Few if any were stopping to ponder or contemplate instead they wandered in and out of the rooms at speed looking pleasantly bewildered.

Part of me feels that this re-hang approach should be applauded; that to break away from the old straight jacket of chrono-isms is a good thing. Certainly its nice to see something like a Mekas seemingly given the same weight as a Picasso but the mess that is Tate Modern does not speak of a serious reappraisal of art history or a studied re-valuation of works by lesser known artists it comes across as merely thrown together like some charity shop wardrobe. Rather than coming out enlightened we feel more that we have sampled a Woolworth’s style pix and mix of flavours. Ultimately it’s a form of curation that speaks loudly whilst simultaneously denying any notion of real curatorial engagement or understanding of the works or what might draw them together or separate them. Its curation up to its old trick of getting in the way of the works in favour of drawing attention to its own role.

Ring Back (sketch)

2008-08-14T19:28:00.003+02:00

Here is a little sketch for a piece called Ring Back. It uses images of phone boxes contributed by people from all over the UK to the Geography British Isles project. Strictly speaking under creative commons I shoudl be crediting each shot but heh its just a sketch.

Voice Box

2008-07-31T08:27:00.013+02:00

Tune in this coming Friday the first of August at 5.30 to Resonance FM and the Sound Projector radio show for 1 hour 30 minutes of Voice Box; a montage of spoken word ill matched and yet perfectly set to music and/or vice versa. All selections by Ed Pinsent and Philip Sanderson.

Update on August 6th: a full track listingis now up on the sound Projector site.

Multi Faceted Cinema

2008-07-10T10:18:00.012+02:00

When musing a couple of weeks back about Le Grice I began looking at the painterly aspect of such practice. Cautious as one is about the term painterly there is definitely something in Le Grice’s work which is reminiscent of forms of depiction associated with early 20th century oil on canvas practice and in particular cubism.

In Le Grice's a Lecture to an Academy (10 min, video, 2005), different passages from a lecture by Peter Gidal in Karlstad Sweden are mixed together so as to create a multi faceted representation of the talk. The more usual cinematic and sequential nature of depicted time and space are replaced by a simultaneity of perspectives.

Its easy to see how both conceptually and visually this relates to cubism. The difference of course is the factor of time; on a basic level Le Grice’s piece is time based and a cubist painting is static. However an element of cubist painting was that not only does it present a complexity of viewpoints upon the subjects but also that these viewpoints are also an expression of a disrupted and fragmented time frame. These time frames are effectively unlocked by the viewer as their eye moves across the painting reading the painting. In other words the cubist painting is essentially a distilled time based piece. The idea of compressed time in a painting is of course not unique to cubism indeed the very trajectory of painting up to modernism was associated with narrative and the “telling” of biblical, mythological or everyday stories. The difference with cubism is that there is no order or sequence to the timing, and no story to unfold or read. This avoidance of narrative is a central value of Le Grice and other materialist filmmakers practice.

So we could say Le Grice is pursuing and expanding upon representational and depictive problems or issues first encountered some hundred years previously. Bald as such a statement might be there probably is some truth to the notion that a great deal of experimental film practice did indeed struggle with problems that their predecessors had grappled with on canvas. One could ponder for example Brackhage’s preoccupation with Turner and so on. Productive as such a comparison might be perhaps there is something potentially more interesting going on if we were to look at the relationship of cubism to early cinema.

Pablo Picasso. Woman in a Chair, 1910

In an exhibition last year entitled Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism at the PaceWildenstein gallery in New York the influence of early film on cubism was explored. Alongside visiting the cinema being part of the cultural backdrop that informed cubism more arrestingly the exhibition investigated the idea that “the two artists were just as taken by film’s processes, its camera angles, lighting, shadow patterns, fades and dissolves, and editing techniques, especially time lapses and overlaps that followed the principles of segmentation, division, and alternation to create a unique pattern of scanning within the frame” (extract from press release).

The argument that cubism was effectively responding to cinema’s depiction of time and space by focusing on the “segmentation” and “division” would chime with the work of Tom Gunning, who in his 1986 essay, "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde" argues fro the non narrative uses to which editing, time lapses and so on where used in early cinema. In other words tools and techniques that would later be used to create seamless narrative flows initially were in early cinema only to pleased to draw attention to themselves. Here for example is a Georges Melies, Un homme de tetes - from 1898.

This then presents a potential conceptual flow from the early cinema of attractions or what might in this context be called disruptive cinema through a distillation in cubism of the multi faceted and a re-exploration in structural materialism of such concerns once again within the time based.

Oramics Live

2008-06-28T08:16:00.009+02:00

Last night went to hear (and see) The Life and works of Daphne Oram at the Purcell Rooms. Oram is a little like Delia Derbyshire’s maiden aunt; older, rather primmer in appearance and voice.

Things kicked off with Snow the Geoff Jones film for which Daphne did the soundtrack. Snow deserves the term “classic” a masterpiece of cross cutting on the beat edits of locomotives pitted against the winter elements all set to Daphne’s slowed down and treated version of a Sandy Nelson number. Simple enough but perfectly crafted. The lights where then dimmed for the playback of a number of Daphne’s works. This was altogether quite odd; after the screening of Snow this was very much music with the picture turned down as we were now as an audience in a cinematic mode of reception. Surprisingly it was actually highly effective. There was no sense of feeling cheated that we were just listening to a playback with no one on stage even pretending to tweak the EQ or stare at a MacBook. It created a perfect space for concentration and the space for visualisation was left purposefully empty.

The music itself was quite a revelation. The Oramics CD released last year suggested Daphne’s music to be more of historical interest than delivering actual musical pleasure but hearing Four Aspects, Episode Metallic and Pulse Persephone (which are included on the CD) in this context made one aware of just how subtle the works are. The CD mixed such pieces in with some of Daphne’s more commercial work; electronic jingles for power tools and so on and left one with a feeling of quirkiness without substance. This notion was quite dispelled by this playback.

Perhaps less mesmerising was From One to Another (1970) for viola and tape. This reminded me of those rather worthy pieces one used to sit through at St John Smith Sqaure which combined tapes with a classically trained musician’s bowing. Things were to go much further downhill though for a 30-minute remix by Andrea Parker of Daphne’s pieces. I’m no purist but this was simply crass. A selection of tired beats and buzzes were overlaid with samples, which seemed to bare little resemblance to anything Daphne recorded. It was all bombast and no subtlety. Accompanying this was some very basic video manipulation that did little to enhance the music. Andrea Parker has built quite a formidable reputation for herself but this was just a mistake and many of the audience left for the refuge of the bar.

The evening rounded off with another Geoff Jones film Trinidad and Tobago; a documentary funded by BP that avoided using an overbearing commentary but just combines beautiful footage with an Oram soundtrack. The film helped to restore the mood somewhat and sent us off into the night.

Tagging

2008-06-27T09:40:00.006+02:00

There was a time in the great hegemony of mainstream musicalsim when only one or two tags were needed to categorise music "file under progressive or popular" was all that most record shops needed with a smattering of spoken word, country, jazz and misc. Tags as a way to define or carve out a musical territory are now so prolific as to be all but absurd. Here for example is just one group's tags from Last FM: alternative rock ambient electronica contemporary electronica dark electro dark pop depeche mode downbeat downtempo dreams and fantasies electro electro psychedelic electro-acoustic electro-psychedelic electro-rock electronic electronica electropop elektro elektro-indie full-on indie electronica instrumental intrancewetrust progressive trance psy-trance psychedelic psychedelic trance psytrance retro electro...

Tgas though date faster than Nike trainers and all of the above already seem a little sad. "Anyone for trance, one lump or two" they murmur in the retirement home disco. So we need a new supply of tags to keep us box fresh. Being prompted yesterday to tag some of my own tracks I responded with blu-bleep, downdrone, avant-ambient, sickstep, homesung, duityorself, reflux, fadfeet, vuudle, etc, etc.

Heading towards another Boat

2008-06-16T23:06:00.004+02:00

Video here

Reflecting on Le Grice

2008-06-02T17:34:00.004+02:00

On Friday went to an interesting screening of Malcolm Le Grice’s digital works at the Birkbeck cinema in Gordon Square. I had seen some of Le Grice’s digital pieces at a Cog Collective screening about a year ago but this turned out to provide a far more rounded view and one of Le Grice’s comments afterwards was quite illuminating.

Almost the first thing Le Grice said was that he had been wrong to deny or ignore the overtly personal nature of the footage used in Little Dog for Roger. At the time of its making and for a number of years afterwards the choice of footage of family members and pet had been presented as almost random; a matter of chance that this old 9.5mm home movie footage happened to be hanging round and so was used to make the piece. It seemed now however that Le Grice was acknowledging that the choice of footage was not just a random selection and that the personal nature of the subject matter was in some way integral to the piece.

This is not to say that somehow Le Grice is re-branding himself as an artist home move maker in the manner of Derek Jarman but there is a recognition that the interaction between materialist strategy and subject matter is a far more complex one than was presented at the time. Over and over again materialist filmmakers chose what in any other context would be seem as overtly romantic things to film. Ponder for a moment Fog Line by Larry Gottheim or Le Grice’s own Whitchurch Down or Gidal’s Clouds. Read the accompanying texts and polemics and one learns much about process, about disrupting any sense of naturalistic representation and so on but scant attention is paid to what was in front of the camera. By reconnecting to the subject matter of these films whilst not denying the material process what emerges is an alternate form of depiction. Alternate and in opposition to the narrative impulses of the mainstream cinema of the day but a depiction nonetheless. A depiction whose material process and processing is in many respects stylized and painterly.

Attempting a reconsideration of Le Grice’s work in the context of a reconnection to the subject matter of the films and digital works is simultaneously straightforward and highly complex. Straightforward in the sense that those of us who came to such pieces after the first flush of polemical materialism often took for granted that the subject matter was integral to a reading of the work even if it was often played down or unrecognsied by the filmmaker. Complex in that a complete reinterpretation of an artist’s work that runs counter to most of what he himself has written (and said) is naturally problematic.

There is a further complication of a purely personal nature as well in that for some time I had been aware that the descriptions of my own work on the Psouper website are similarly process descriptive and avoid much if any investigation of the subject matter. “Digital videos that upset the hierarchy between sound and vision resulting in unexpected synchronisations, sonifications and visualizations.” Or “A white square is animated by a quasi-random score of electronic sequences generated in max/msp, causing it to contract, expand, duplicate and in so doing perform a series of performative movements and steps “…tells us very little about what we might expect to see and to an extent parodies the process led descriptions of structuralism.

In part this was intentional as during the 90’s when making installations and simultaneously reviewing for Art Monthly I tended to write at some length about my own work in press releases that accompanied the exhibitions. After a while this seemed, well, just a touch vainglorious and I erred on the side of letting people watch the work and hopefully on some level it would be self-explanatory. On some level it is obvious what the subject matter is and yet I would struggle to put my finger on it.

In other words I think the time is ripe for a real re-assessment of materialist filmmaking that re-connects with the subject matter and perhaps for myself to also attempt some declaration with regard to subject. These two projects are of course quite distinct but also inextricably linked.

Traffic Calming Measures

2008-05-30T23:42:00.002+02:00

Further adventures in pursuit of the roundabout; this time down in Wainscott in Kent. To see the suitably spun movie click here

Spin Off

2008-05-01T11:13:00.001+02:00

Whilst researching some possibilities for the cover image for a new Storm Bugs collection I cane up with the following Spin Off.

Hair of the Dog

2008-04-05T09:50:00.003+02:00

If by some chance you find yourself in Santa Fe today then why not visit the exhibition Hair of the Dog where you will find work by yours truely in a gallery show that: "investigates the vocabulary, limitations, and mythology of the medium of painting through modern art history and into the 21st century." Rest assured "no artists in the exhibition will apply pigment to canvas in the traditional manner; some will not use paint at all. Portraiture, landscape, and narrative are some of the structures within the language of painting to be engaged." Having been screening for the last 5 years it will be nice to be exhibiting again.

Instant Kitten (The Application)

2008-03-26T18:46:00.006+01:00

Today a piece of software no less! This is the Instant Kitten Application I built in Max/Msp/jitter a couple of years ago and which is the brains behind Fleshtones and SkyPoint.

Basically the app provides an instant audio accompaniment to any movie. So how do you use it? OK firstly download the zipped file here.. Unzip it and then double click on the Instant Kitten application inside the folder. It takes a moment or two to warm up. Once going switch it on using the big blue button. Click on the "read" button to open a movie file. Ideally the film should have no soundtrack. It doesn't matter if it does just the existing soundtrack and the new one might get in each others way. OK so the movie is playing. Next click the midi button and change it to QuickTime (unless you have some fancy midi app you want to drive instead). The sound defaults to piano but you can change the instrument in the "change instrument" box to xylophone, flute etc. The duration of the note is set to standard decay but if you want long sustaining notes in the "dur" box enter say 1,000 or even 2,000. You can slow the movie down using the speed box. 0.5 is half speed etc.

Sensitivity sort of controls the response; experiment. To get full screen mode hit the escape button, hit escape to get out of full screen mode as well.

OK it only works on Macs. I've tried it on both PPC and Intel and it seems to function fine though no doubt your computer will immediately break down and crash when you try it.

Bathing Beauty

2008-03-20T08:39:00.002+01:00

The third and final of the Standard 8 films shot in 1990-1991 finds us in Cornwall with a little Bathing Beauty.

Regeneration

2008-03-18T17:59:00.002+01:00

Okay reel 2 of the Standard 8 films brings us some footage shot in an around the old London Filmmakers Co-op. Keen observers will spot the old “palm court” glass roof overlaid with images from the canal next door. Other overlays come from a creek in my hometown of Strood and the back alley of the house I was living in at the time. As with yesterday’s Woodwork it is perhaps interesting to see how much of a prototype these films are for some recent Psouper digital pieces. Here then is Regeneration. The title refers to the fact that these locations have all now gone; sorry been regenerated.

Woodwork

2008-03-17T21:35:00.003+01:00

Between Hangway Turning and Shadowman I made a few Standard 8 films with a camera found in a cupboard at the Film Co-op . Passing the film through the camera 2 or 3 times there is some nice latensification in these lyrical (new) romantic pieces. From about 1990 then here is Woodwork. Its silent so shhhh.

Old Poster

2008-03-10T10:06:00.004+01:00

In 1981 to coincide with the release of Snatch 3 an A2 poster was screenprinted. Here is the last known remaining example.

Fishing line

2008-03-06T10:47:00.004+01:00

For a while in the late 90's and early naughties I did an occasional fax sheet called fishing line. It was vaguely on fine (art) topics of the day combined with scratchy drawings and was sent to various art mags and so on. Looking rather quaint now here is an example or two.

Shadow-me

2008-02-19T11:08:00.005+01:00

A woman waits and walks, talks on her mobile; all the while followed by her own shadow.

Quadrangle (unedit)

2008-02-13T09:29:00.005+01:00

Slightly to my surprise I am still getting requests for the Quadrangle video. Paradoxically the piece was not originally conceived as a stand-alone piece of fixed duration but as an installation. The synchronised music and image movements are produced by a quasi-random algorithm (quasi random in that its output is more akin to an improvisation based on certain parameters). Once running the piece will produce variations indefinitely with no obvious beginning, middle or end. Some intervention on the part of the artist was required to change the visual parameters on the fly, though with some max/msp jiggery pokery these too could be randomised.

I had the work running in such an ongoing fashion when visited one day by Prof Cheese who being in the throes of programming for the Island festival asked for a small slice. I duly obliged recording a section, taking some choice cuts and very quickly assembling a short self-contained piece. Here today though is the whole cut. This is in itself really an extract from the infinite unseen but gives a feeling for what an installation version might be like.

The Face of the Earth

2007-12-21T10:59:00.000+01:00

Arteries filling up with sedimentary lust....A little topotopical for the season.

Clouds

2007-12-20T12:51:00.001+01:00

The anti-illusionist project engaged but still not married to form. A form that ultimately is that of an essential nothing, either on or in or indeed on top of the screen.

Product Recall!

2007-11-29T10:36:00.001+01:00

We are pleased to announce a unique new premier product for that milestone once in a lifetime occasion such as an anniversary, birthday, wedding or as a one off gift for someone special. The product is made of an alloy glass and onyx compound that changes shape to fit the wearer and the occasion. One moment it is a ring the next a ceremonial dagger; it is wahtever the wearer desires. View a prototype sample here.

Sound Projector

2007-11-26T10:52:00.000+01:00

The latest issue of the very fine Sound Projectior magazine is out featuring an interview with yours truely about this, that and the other. Not to mention a review of the Storm Bugs LP and lots more!

Stanley Green

2007-11-22T11:07:00.000+01:00

Excellent scan of protein man Stanley Green's publication over at Another Green World

Shock Waves

2007-11-16T12:13:00.001+01:00

In the post “Turning The Picture Down” from 2 years ago (!), I mused on the relationship between reproduced sound and vision. In particular the strange phenomena of the …” simultaneous DVD and CD issues of the same live material”…and indeed “Why would (any) one buy the CD, when all you have to do is turn the picture down on the DVD and listen to the music”.

In this context I was thinking of live music concerts which are often issued as both CDs and DVDs but the Original Soundtrack album is yet another twist. The Original Soundtrack stands in a curious relation to the film whose name it shares. It is normally not the actual soundtrack as in what one would hear whilst watching the film (or indeed if the picture were turned down) but simply the music used during the film. This may be original music specifically written to accompany the scenes or a compilation of previously recorded songs that feature (if often only fleetingly) on the soundtrack during the film. Noticeably absent on both types of soundtrack are the dialogue and sound effects used in the film.

The Original Soundtrack (or OST) is then something of a memento mori for not only the lost vision of the film but also most of the sound. In many ways it is a curious anomaly. OSTs first became commercially available in the 1950’s and were conceived initially as a way of promoting the film. It soon became clear that there was quite a market for the OST and that if a film was successful tehn the chances are that so would the soundtrack album be as well. At a time when few people had access to any way of seeing films other than in the cinema (no DVD, VHS or even Super 8 copies) the OST was as close as you could get to owning and replaying some part of the movie at home.

Why the decision was taken to include just the music and not the dialogue or sound effects though remain somewhat obscure. Naturally the more popular OSTs were from successful box office films and those that contained memorable scores. Even so precisely because the music on OSTs is composed to accompany and re-enforce some form of visuals, OSTs are often a needy an anemic music. Needy in that the gap opened up by the absence of the visuals and dialogue is all too apparent. This is compounded by the tendency of OST music to be highly repetitive; often employing a few simple themes that are returned to and reworked again and again throughout the film. This neediness or yearning in a lot of OSTs is of course part of their charm and their appeal.

Such pleasures as can be had from OSTs can be well satiated by listening to the Johnny Trunk OST show on resonance fm, but what if soundtracks had taken a different turn and had included dialogue and sound effects? In some ways they would have arguably become more like some kind of radio drama. Examples do exist of such an approach though they are rare. Indeed they are often made by enthusiasts who finding that no soundtrack is available from a particular film make their own. A slightly sophisticated version of this was on Johnny Trunk’s own Trunk records when in 1997 they issued the Wicker Man soundtrack. The Wicker Man had long had a cult following and the absence of a commercially available soundtrack was keenly felt. Trunk’s release was not of jut the music and folk songs used during the movie but a copy of the music-and-effects reel for the film. Though some aficionados complain about the poor quality sound the end result is surprisingly evocative. Not a radio play of the film as there was no dialogue per se but much less of an emaciated memento mori.

In a similar vein the blog SOUNDS OF MOVIE SCORES has taken the DVD soundtracks from a number of films and skilfully edited them into mini ‘suites” of music and sound effects. To my ears one of the most successfully of these is the November the 05 posting of Shockwaves a horror film from the late 1970s the score is largely electronic mixed in with a selection of watery sound effects.

Ideal for iPod/headphone listening this little gem suggests what OSTs might have been like had they taken a different direction in the 1950s. Indeed movie moguls looking to maximise their profits could do worse than start re-issuing music and sound effects OSTs for the earphone head dirty neck generation.

Update 2009. The blog mentioned above has now sadly slipped into the ether.

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia.

2007-11-08T14:18:00.000+01:00

The post war church posed an interesting problem for architects. On the one hand a commission to build a new church offers a perfect opportunity to create a landmark building; indeed the history of architecture is inextricably linked to the building of places of worship that literally soared to the skies. On the other hand for many the church is a place of tradition and ritual and as such the inclination among a lot of both congregations and clergy was towards commissioning something that was recognisably church like. This paradox led to some dynamics such as the example below. A German post war church, which maintains all the traditional features of tower, bell and clock but is built in a self consciously sparse modern style.

Brought up as a Catholic my own parish church as a child was the English Martyrs in Kent, an interesting design, lacking any steeple and having sweeping sloping roofs.

For truly dynamic modernist designs one has to look to the Catholic Church in Scotland who commissioned a series of daring original buildings from the architectural firm of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia. Believing that the post war Catholic community north of the border would increase considerably after the war a number of new churches were built as well as a seminary. All features uncompromising modernist designs. Despite a decline in church attendance many of the buildings are still in use though some have been demolished and the seminary abandoned. An exhibition at the Lighthouse from now until February will display the pioneering work of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia.

Subversion

2007-10-19T13:26:00.000+02:00

Last night went to the Horse Hospital for the launch of Duncan Reekie’s new book Subversion –The definitive History of Underground Cinema. Less your usual drinks and canapés book launch this was more of a screening programmed by Duncan with as one might expect contributions by Exploding Cinema stalwarts.

But what of the book itself? Well in these quarters the publication has been much anticipated as an antidote to the recent wave of books by those working inside the artists film & video sector. Whilst not without their merits as Duncan points out the publications by Al Rees and David Curtis do suffer from an adopted objectivity. When talking of key UK films & videos they often omit to mention that it was they who through stewardship of the awarding committees ensured that these films were made in the first place. Now one would assume that they wouldn’t fund work which they thought to be of poor quality but essentially to subsequently publish what are purportedly objective critiques which endorse and celebrate such work is a little like writing your own children’s school reports. As has been noted elsewhere on this blog it was not so much the works which were funded as those which were excluded and denied access to the means of production which are at stake. Reekie as something of an outsider can bring to bear a certain objectivity and this is refreshing both in contrast to the Curtis/Rees books and those by those who both make work and write about the work of other such Nicky Hamlyn and Kate Elwes.

But is this the definitive history? Well not surprisingly no – a flaw is that Duncan is rather enamoured with the romanticised radicalism of the low or no budget underground cinema. Spending taxpayer’s money does confer upon the recipients a responsibility to spend that money in an accountable and for want of a better phrase a democratic manner; something, which the established film & video sector continues to fail to do. But this does not mean that because one funds ones own productions or organises screenings on a collective basis as the Exploding Cinema has done for a number of years that one can always adopt the higher moral ground. An open screening/access policy and collective decision making meetings do not in themselves ensure the objective they purport to support. Indeed for many years the LFMC had such a policy and this actually did little more than perpetuate the distribution of work by a handful of filmmakers such as Malcolm Le Grice and Peter Gidal. Similarly whilst the Exploding has shown probably 1,000s of films & video (including some of my own over the years) many however associate it with Duncan Reekie, Jennet Thomas & Paul Tarrago, three of the most active and longstanding members.

The self-conscious radicalism of the prose can also veer into self righteous indignance, for example when talking of the failed Lux project. The demise of the Lux was a tragedy but the £4.5 million spent is actually by Lottery standards rather small beer. Indeed that the Lux was allowed to collapse for such relatively small sums shows the establishment’s lack of commitment to artists film & video at the time. One might recall that the Royal Opera House gets some 27 Million every year for its minority art form from the Arts Council and one wouldn’t even want to start adding up the Lottery millions the Film Council has wasted on trying to kick start the non existent UK film industry. Rather than the lost money one might better bemoan the hours of low and no paid work put into the project by staff and board at the LFMC particularly in the ten year run up to the opening of the Lux. When I worked there for some 8 months in 1997 most of the staff were being paid 15 thousand a year andputting in a 50-hour week. The LFMC at the time was getting roughly £46,000 a year from the funders. Compare this with the AHRC award of £148,000 given in the last three years to simply establish a Database of key documents and narrative chronologies of artists’ film and video distributors, and the situation seem laughable.

Nonetheless despite these caveats Duncan’s book does contain many fresh and distinctive insights and is a very welcome addition to the literature on the sector.

The Art of Fly Tipping

2007-10-12T15:22:00.000+02:00

Criminally underrated, Fly Tipping displays all that is best in contemporary sculpture. A relaxed an un-premeditated arrangement of forms that rivals early Bruce Mclean or Anthony Caro, Fly Tips are the ultimate in public art. At ease in both rural and urban landscapes these seemingly effortless compositions stand out in any location. Fly Tips have not always met with a warm reception; described as hideous and ugly by some a small but committed number of aficionados are beginning to appreciate their latent beauty and seek to have the best works preserved. A short Fly Tip video is here .

Frieze Art Fair /KER-Ching

2007-10-11T12:12:00.000+02:00

Its that time of year again - yes it is that most cash conscious of all art ventures the Frieze Art Fair. Anyway last year I put together a little one minute mash up of various well know money tunes. I post it here for your pleasure.

The Unnecessary Object of Desire

2007-10-10T13:21:00.000+02:00

Standing at the roadside it is hard no to be transfixed by the slow motion collapse of the record industry. This high rise building that once dominated the skyline and mediated the listening habits of all that it surveyed is now sinking in front of us as artists begin to give away their music with newspapers or make it free to download.

In a blog entry almost two years ago I asked “how long will we cling to the wreckage of these outdated forms? “In its death throes the record industry at all levels form tiny companies releasing 500 copies to the majors have tried to counter the transparency and weightlessness of the download by making the physical releases self consciously tangible So rather than a single disk in a plastic jewel case one gets a box set complete with remix disks, limited edition posters, booklets, t-shirts anything and everything to give us some excuse to buy the thing even if we will probably rip or download the music to play digitally anyway. A good mainstream example of this is the recent EMI re-issue of the first Pink Floyd album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. In a 3CD box set one gets the stereo mix, the mono mix, a further disk with obscurities and previously unreleased tracks and mixes and of course - “The album is packaged in a cloth-bound book format, that will include an expanded 12 page redesigned booklet, plus a reproduction of a previously unseen Syd Barrett notebook from 1967 that contains personal artwork and lyric ideas.”

In the small backwater that is experimental and electronic music, vinyl still holds a certain sway. Vinyl’s sheer physicality gives it a head start on the purchase front as it engenders a strong sense of ownership and the large twelve-inch cover provides a good platform for artwork. There is also something highly ritualistic and fetishistic about having to remove the record from its sleeve, wipe it with a cloth, place it on the turntable (and then only twenty minutes later turn the record over) that further emphasizes the physicality of the whole experience.

One of the key micro companies re-issuing electronic and avant-garde music is the German label Vinyl on Demand. Last year indeed a Snatch Tapes compilation and this year a Storm Bugs record came out on the label; both releases on heavy weight vinyl with textured and embossed sleeves. But these releases are quite modest by the label’s usual standards as lavish 5 LP box sets with inserts and accompanying 7 inch singles and T-shirts etc (for subscription members) are more the order of the day.

Such releases are both simultaneously quite wonderful and also in some way achingly unnecessary. Not musically unnecessary, indeed quite the opposite as in bringing together these previously obscure and often only partially released recordings Vinyl on Demand is doing much to archive and preserve music that would otherwise be potentially lost or at the very least go unheard. No unnecessary in a physical sense. In a world of dwindling resources it seems hard to justify this sheer level of physicality when the essential component the music could be reproduced as a tiny digital file.

The actual resources and energy needed to make and ship a 5 LP box set are in the scheme of things not that great (particular as unlike the Floyd re-issue most Vinyl on Demand releases are limited to 500 copies); we probably all throw away/recycle more cardboard and plastic from our weekly shop and if one had a choice it would seem to make more sense to use these resources for the reproduction of art rather than a simple packaging for everyday consumables. That more energy and resources are being wasted elsewhere of course doesn’t detract though from the absurdity of both the Floyd cloth bound CD and the vinyl 5 record box set. Perhaps though we should cherish this last lavish and excessive baroque fling of the record industry (an industry almost synonymous with excess). In ten years when resources are just that bit closer to complete exhaustion, when disposing of items becomes as expensive as acquiring then, when the cost of shipping reflects its true environmental impact then the price of box sets will be prohibitive and they will be seen as a wonderful and wasteful fin de siecle excess.

Sound Projector Radio Show - Update

2007-10-04T09:26:00.001+02:00

The forthcoming issue of Sound Projector magazine, which will be available later this year, has an interview with yours truly covering all things Snatch Tapes, Storm Bugs and other sound and vision issues. This Friday (the 5th October) there is also a chance to hear my dulcet tones when I join Ed Pinsent on his Sound Projector radio show on Resonance FM. Expect to hear some previously unaired material from the Snatch archives as well as the odd Storm Bugs fave, some new tracks and a selection of fine numbers by non Snatch artists including demonstration records, crackly flexidisks and more. Tune in tomorrow on FM in London or on line anywhere else between 5.30 and 7 PM.

Update - A full tracklisting and podcast of the radio show is now available at the Sound Projector site. Note: scroll to the bottom of the tracklist for the podcast.

Solid Liquid Gas

2007-07-19T10:47:00.000+02:00

Gas

Hand Held

2007-07-02T16:43:00.000+02:00

Today - a new hand held chameleon communication device that responds to touch by synthesising thought processes into co-ordinated colours. See a 30 second demonstration here

Waterborn

2007-06-27T10:26:00.000+02:00

Inspired by watching Sam's patalab ripples late last night I whipped out my digital brsuh and spalashed on some watercolour for a very very quick widescreen sketch of my own. Nods of course to Sam, Maziere's Red Sea and all the other waterborn babies. See the watery grave here

Product Placement (A Love Story)

2007-06-24T20:23:00.001+02:00

Supplementary Benefit -Update Video

2007-06-06T16:33:00.001+02:00

Out today on Vinyl on Demand. is the latest re-issue of vintage Storm Bugs material. Matured in oak vats for over 25 years these fine recordings have a full body and a sharp prickly aroma when presented to the nose, reminiscent of carbolic and cinnamon. More precisely side 1 of the LP comprises full length versions of the the first two Storm Bugs singles; namely the 5 track Table Matters EP (1980) and the Metamorphose single (1981).

Whilst tracks from these singles have appeared on compilations before, this is the first time they are being presented in their entirety. This means the first re-issue of the spoof industrial rockabilly track Tin and the vocal version of Make Customer Matter. The tracks have been digitally re-mastered from virgin un-played copies of the two discs.

If side 1 displays Storm Bugs's infamous post punk DIY sound with much use of scratched vinyl, disemboweled radios and home made electronics, side 2 of the LP contained tracks made exclusively with the unique british synthesizer the VCS3. The VCS3 has a matrix pin patch bay in which any module can be connected to any other module, resulting in complex feedback loops and unexpected modulations. The VCS3 tracks which include Hodge, Slip Slap and Hiemal (And She Blew) are all taken from original Snatch Tapes cassette releases. This is the first time most have appeared on vinyl, and of course this means the full heavy weight VOD vinyl we have come to know and love.

VOD 44 Storm Bugs "Supplementary Benefit" Lp
Side 1
Cash Wash: 1.41
Eat Good Beans: 1:59
Make Customers Matter: 2.09
Window Shopping: 2:06
Our Main Objective: 4.44
Car Situations: 3:20
Tin: 2.54
Aboulia 19: 1:06

Side 2
Hodge: 6:41
Slip Slap: 1:36
Hiemal ( And She Blew): 4.51
He Rose Up Again: 3:08
Slow Along the Wire: 1.24
Blackheath Episode: 4.44