Author: Alasdair

[Book And Album Reviews] Week 1

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The week’s book: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Bobby Henderson

The Question: Will Bobby Henderson’s ID spoof sustain a whole book?

The Answer: Just about, but it’s a good thing it’s not any longer – the new material is indeed as funny as the site, but it’s essentially just playing on the same theme, rather than anything new. This was a gift, so it’s a little hard to assess if it was worth the money, but honestly, I’ve got enough entertainment out of pastafarianism as a whole to think that Henderson deserves some financial recompense for it. If you like venganza.org, you’ll be entertained by the book.

This week’s music: The Power of Pussy by Bongwater

I got one of the tracks off this from a friend in a compliation CD a year or two back, and loved it, since it sounded like very little else I’d ever heard, so when Emusic recommended them at me, I thought I’d grab an album’s worth. On the strength of it, I’ll be getting more.

I suppose you’d have to call this psychedelia, but I don’t like the term. This is bitter, sleazy, nasty stuff, collaging together spoken word, laid back guitars, samples and more normal singing, as they talk about porn and sexuality and exploitation. You might have heard their classic “Folk Song” before, a long bitter rant about well, almost everything. Like I say, they sound like very little else that I can think of, and they’re fairly clever. This is more than enough recommendation for me.

Daughter and Father

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Daughter and Father

Another portrait of Orla, with her Dad in the background. I’ll try and get out and about with the camera at the weekend, so I can stop posting baby photos… :)

I was interested to discover that the previous shot looked markedly different on my work screen to what either of my home monitors made it look like, which is unusual, because I keep one set at close-to-print colours, and the other set at a more or less neutral “screen” set up. And it occurs to me that I have *no* idea what it would look like on your average CRT screen…

Festive Spirit

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Festive Spirit

Happy New Year folks. This is the first of two (or possibly three) portraits of my little cousin Orla that I took at my family’s Christmas celebrations. I thought I’d put this one up now, while the holiday period is still in recent memory, as it’s the most obviously seasonal of the three.

I hadn’t met Orla before, but I was impressed to find that at slightly over one year old, she’s already the life and soul of the party (and delighted to pose for the camera), and in keeping with the spirit of the season, was delighted to share her toys with absolutely everyone, so I wanted at least one portrait of her that was very clearly festive, which I think I got here…

See You Next Year

Posted on by Alasdair

Heading out the door shortly for New Years. Happy New Year to those of you I won’t see this evening, which is probably quite a number. May each of you have the 2007 you hope for.

13 Resolutions

Posted on by Alasdair

I don’t usually do New Year’s Resolutions – if I want to change something, I’ll do it whenever, but this year, I’ve let a few things slide, and I really ought to make more of an effort, so I’ll use the same arbitrary day that everyone else does to make the start of my attempted changes.

  1. Go to the gym three or four times a week. (I’m aiming for four in the hope of achieving three. Two is bare minimum acceptable, in a really busy week.)
  2. Put at least 104 photos on-line. (2 a week, but I’m now used to the idea that I go through periods of one-a-day versus extended stretches of nothing.)
  3. Make a serious effort to sell some prints.
  4. Read one new book a week, and write a short review of it.
  5. Listen to one new album a week, and write a short review of it. (The emusic subscription should come in handy.)
  6. See at least two films a month in the cinema. Reviews optional.
  7. Go to at least one art exhibition a month. Reviews optional.
  8. Drink less alcohol. (Scheduled parties/special occaisions aside, when the rules are suspended, I won’t be drinking at all in Jan and Feb, and will be cutting back to a limit of three single whiskies or equivalent, while out for the rest of the year.)
  9. Eat more healthily. I have been extremely rubbish at this, this year.
  10. More socialising. I have not seen enough of many of my friends this year.
  11. Clear my debts.
  12. Make a serious attempt to organise an exhibition, preferably to include other people’s work as well as my own. (May be for 2008, but I should have at least have a date and location for one by the end of the year.)
  13. Develop and release at least one useful website-related tool to the public. (I think this is least likely, purely on the basis of time constraints, but I’d like to have a go.)

Practicality

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I’d like to take a moment to talk about the practical applications of Art, just to establish that Art is relevant to everyone, and not some load of effete rubbish for an intellectual few.

Architecture isn’t something that immediately springs to mind when someone says “Art”, yet it’s probably the form or art that most of us have most daily interaction with, since it’s the art form that creates the spaces we live in.

But on the other hand, it’s also the one to which it is hardest to apply the working definition I opted for in my last entry – that Art requires that the creator be expressing a thought they have had about the world. It’s not impossible. Jump Studios for example, created a fascinating space for the new Red Bull office in London this year. I’m not sure how it would feel to work there, done out as it is in heavy blues and stark whites, but it’s certainly interesting. It’s other major unusual feature is that the building incorporates slides as a way of moving between floors in the office.

Which leads me, of course, to “Test Site” Carsten Höller’s current exhibition at the Tate Modern. Holler’s body of work combines architecture, sculpture and other disciplines to ask questions about the way we interact with the space around us. It’s a notion that’s increasingly relevant today, as we start to move from an industrial economy to an information economy. Suddenly, we no longer need to have our use of space dictated by the practicalities of using machines. There are exceptions as, for example, major internet companies are forced to locate their server farms in places where they can obtain the bandwidth and electrical supply they need, but for the most part, we are increasingly free of the need to work in warehouses, or even dedicated office space.

And so it becomes increasingly relevant to ask how we can make use of space in such a manner as to enhance our daily lives, not just from a functional point of view, but also as a means to create moments of pleasure in our day to day life. This is the question currently facing artists and architects, and having been to experience “Test Site” myself, I have to say, Höller and Jump are probably on to something.

What I Did On My Holidays

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Mostly, I took pictures of small children.

I recall seeing Grumpy Old Men do a christmas special a few years back (back before John Peel died, anyway) in which someone lamented the way that what you ask someone how their Christmas was, they always answer, at best, “alright”. Those that have had miserable chirstmases may be more downbeat still, but that, for such a hotly anticpated season, everyone always seems to have had a Christmas that fell slightly flat. Well, not me.

I had a bloody marvellous Christmas. I honestly don’t know when I’ve enjoyed one as much. No internet, no TV (although we did play on a Wii for a bit on Boxing Day evening), no eating till I burst or drinking myself into a stupor. Just a few days away with my family, the whole time spent enjoying each other’s company. All those cliches of what Christmas should be about: that’s exactly what we had. And it was fantastic.

My sympathies to those of you who have spent your christmas in the arena of the unwell, of which their seem to be rather a number of you.

And so to the next big thing: Lacking anything better to do, I’m going to Slimeshite for New Year. Am I likely to see anyone there?

And Done

Posted on by Alasdair

And Done

You’ll have to forgive me – I’m drunk, so this is likely to be less than coherent. This is a texture piece – a shot that is, one one level, trying to capture both the mood of my Christmas, and on another, a technical experiment in capturing texture with a very narrow depth of field. I’d love to know how well you think it worked – what you can infer about my holiday from this shot alone…