The Random Anarchic Triptych Generator update.

I'm pleased to announce that The Random Anarchic Triptych Generator (random batch version 1.0.1) will be shown at the Anti Design Festival 18 - 26 Sept.

Version 2.1 (expanded and unending) will be shown in the Parfitt Gallery, Croydon Higher Education College 13 - 24 Sept. as part of the staff show The Other Side Of ...

The Random Anarchic Triptych Generator

The Random Anarchic Triptych Generator: A digital piece consisting of a range of non-commercial confrontational banal reflective images that question the nature of visual communication and it's (non commercial) purpose(s).

One 1440 x 1080 landscape portrait flatscreen HD monitor + one Mac running the script and image folder that generates a different triptych every ten seconds.

Soon to be displayed at The Parfitt Gallery, Croydon and other venues tbc.

On a damp Saturday night in Croydon, disciples, voyeurs and confused bystanders bare witness to The Pre New kicking their way out of an embryonic slumber. Fragments of Earl Brutus and World of Twist rebuild themselves like that mercury man with the scary eyes in Terminator 2 and set about destroying and reconfirming every held belief about the power of rock and roll to satisfy and confuse. They're not a covers band but when they set about playing their combined back catalogue/s it sounds the same but completely different. The two guitarists (Pre and New¿) bring a new dimension to the cut and shut sound and Shinya plays the bass quite like nothing I've seen or heard before. New song Cathedral City is punk rock glam rock fine art boogie with lynchpin Jamie Fry extolling the virtues (the horror) of living in suburban shitholes, wearing his Sunday best suit and freshly buzz sawn head, smirking like a pissed uncle at a wedding looking for a set-to.

There's art rock, glam rock, punk rock and those that try too hard. And then there's The Pre-New who just get it. God help anyone who tries it on with 'em at Glastonbury...

Systems CD/DVD sold out

digital download version available soon.

Systems for sale.

Systems out of Chance CD/DVD release now available on Boomkat. New collaboration underway and it too has a wonderful system underpinning process and concept. More soon...

http://boomkat.com/cds/305666-joe-evans-craig-burston-systems-out-of-chance

Pictures of flames.

Three toy cars. Nostalgia for the future and the myth of yesterday.

Mini#1 (middle)
Brand: Matchbox ["Superfast"]
Car: Mini Ha-Ha
Colour: Pillar box red
Year: 1975
Manufacturer: Lesney Products

Description: Big hot rod wheels at the rear, a huge airplane engine sticking out of the bonnet, roundels on the doors and a big headed chap in a flying helmet sticking out of the cut-a-way roof. And those blue opaque windows. A minor detail in some respects are the four exhaust pipes. As a kid I thought this was incredibly daft but brilliant.

Notes: When I started reading Custom Car monthly as an eleven year old (until our newsagent grassed up the mag to my mum who then saw the centrespreads and all of a sudden my subscription stopped (Ken at the Town Crier I will never forgive you)) I couldn't quite believe that some people (usually Americans or men from towns in Lancashire) actually owned cars that looked not at all dissimilar to my Mini Ha-Ha. I must point out that the Mini Ha-Ha in this photograph isn't the one that I owned as a child but another that I fair begged off a mature student as I tutoring at the time. He'd asked me to critique his work in progress (a scale model of the Enigma machine) at his home because it was too big to drag into college. His house had its far share of toys (mostly toy trains) but I spotted the Mini Ha-Ha and I just blurted out that I would like to buy it. Out of all my toy cars as a kid, that was the one that resonated the most. Its ridiculousness; the aesthetic echoes of childrens animated tele programme The Wacky Races or Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines (commonly known in the playground as Catch the Pigeon) and not dissimilar to the ones you'd draw with huge wheels and engine blocks that towered out of the bonnet. Matchbox got this one spot on and when Richard the student said I could have it with good grace and no payment required, I didn't quite know what to do. I reflected upon my rather over enthusiastic request, but could hardly turn him down. I didn't bother with fake platitudes - "no, honestly I couldn't, it's very decent of you, but no, you keep it" - just in case he called my bluff.

Mini#2 (bottom)
Brand: Hot Wheels
Car: Morris Mini
Colour: Metallic banana yellow
Year: 2000
Manufacturer: Mattel, Inc.

Description: Base colour complimented with ruby red windows, roll cage, sporty alloys on same size wheels, a rather more streamlined engine block peeping out and a flame job, or as my nipper called it, "pictures of fire" on the doors and bonnet.

Notes: This Mini came into the house as part of my on-going quest to buy Hot Wheels for my two young sons with the hardly unforgivable M.O. that I was too old for toy cars by the time the more radical Hot Wheels were available in Britain (or at least where I bought toys from anyway). Mattel who made them took the whole Matchbox Superfast thing and doubled it, trebled it, re-wrote the rule book and appeared to release more and more fantastical cars every time you walked past the toy shop or newsagents. Matchbox flirted with hot-rod and dragster culture but Hot Wheels were it. As a teenager fantasizing about driving for real, the Hot Wheels that I was too old to play with were exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to drive.

Now as a dad of young kids, Hot Wheels come into the house on an irregular basis and they don't half move down the lime green loop the loop track. And they catch the light beautifully. And come in a million colours and shapes. And the wheels spin as perfectly as miniature toy car wheels ever will. They are stupid, beautiful and I am ashamed to say, rather addictive. But they're not kept in boxes, they're played with... (although I did buy three Adam West-era 1960s Batman Batmobiles - one for my eldest nipper, one for a friend and one to keep in its packet - a one off homage to the car collector). The yellow Hot Wheels Mini is great; beautifully made and fun but looking at it side by side with the Mini Ha-Ha, but it's almost a little too tasteful, too considered, the Mini Ha-Ha is positively stupid. Good stupid.

Mini#3 (top)
Brand: Matchbox
Car: Austin Mini Cooper 1964
Colour: British Racing Green
Year: 2008
Manufacturer: Mattel, Inc.

Description: British Racing Green body complimented with white roof and most charming of all are the split windows on its two doors. This Mini looks like a Mini looked in the 1960s.

Now, as a kid in the 70s, the funnier the Matchbox car the more I wanted it. Ones that looked remotely like things on the road didn't do it for me. I didn't want social realism in my toy cars I wanted fantasy! Train sets, Dinky replicas of trucks and buses, all of that stuff, not for me. So when I went a bit giddy at the sight of this Mini a month or two back, it threw me. I can't tell if it's trying to be a bit Italian Job in its appearance with normal slim tyres, the white roof and the shade of green, or whether it's all a bit Sunday night tele, a bit 'Heartbeat'. But I do really like it. It's like [re/]discovering a singer songwriter having spent months consuming ridiculous levels of abstract machine music. A bit safe, but necessary, if only to clear your head, like opening the driver's window and letting some fresh air in. The thing is, its the one Mini out of the three that most resembles 'the real thing', it has an air of authenticity about it, but an authenticity that pre-dates me by a good half a decade or more. It wasn't packaged in Olde Time Packaging, just a normal Matchbox blister pack along with all the others. I've since found a 1961 Jaguar, a '68 Citroen DS in an odd mainland European shade of green and a 1970 red Volkswagen camper van. If I was the kind of man who compartmentalises objects I'd have a weird Venn diagram thing going on in my head with the three Minis in one bubble and the green one overlapping with the Matchbox classic replicas in the other.

I have never owned a Mini.

Cheap coffee is better than no coffee. Possibly.

At the end of a corridor there used to be a coffee and tea vending machine. It was pretty awful coffee (option 14 for me, white, medium, no sugar) but any port in a storm if you were too busy to nip out and buy an overpriced cup of frothy totem. I went to use the machine yesterday but it had gone. Where to and why I do not know. It appears to have been replaced by a locked cupboard. No-one seems to know who the cupboard belongs to or what is in it but it doesn't serve coffee.

As innocent as the summer days were long.

My dad used to be a policeman and when I was growing up in the 1970s, we moved around a lot. We were always within fairly close reach of extended family, but half a dozen house moves before you turn sixteen is fairly rare, not to say interesting if a little disorientating. For two or three years before either me or my sister were old enough for school, we moved to a village called Wetley Rocks and lived in a house that could be defined as a police substation. It had a cell but I don't recall anyone ever being put there. Occasionally me and my sister would play in it but most of the time you almost forgot it was part of the house. As well as the cell with its unbelievably heavy door painted regulation grey with the spy hole that I was too small to see through, was a fire red siren. We were told that it wasn't a toy and we weren't to play with it but one day, one innocuous long summer afternoon with not much to do, we thought we'd try and turn the handle to see what happened. My big sister and I joined forces, and just about got it to turn a few turns. As it got going it started to make a noise, that noise, that low, buzzy hum of a noise that I learned later was the sound of the four minute warning. The sound was amazing, the undulating pitch, the wah-wah that was sending out a clear signal to anyone within earshot that things were afoot. We were told never to play with it again - I think some people got a little scared at the sound.

One object that I have taken with me throughout my own moves up and down the country, is a copy of the Police Manual of Home Defence. Presumably, my dad was given a copy of this restricted document on the proviso that should the bombs fall that he'd need to know what to do; civil unrest, radiation doses, disposing of the dead, shock waves, radio codes and chains of command. Information charts outlined damage levels:

"A nuclear explosion in the megaton range creates a huge white-heat fireball which lasts for about 20 seconds and gives off tremendous heat. The heat is so intense that it can kill people in the open up to several miles away. It could also burn exposed skin much further away. Striking through unprotected windows it could set houses alight many miles away."

Through my teen years it made for morbidly thrilling reading with school mates but quite how I managed to take ownership of the booklet I'm not entirely sure. Maybe my dad forgot I had it, maybe he'd even forgotten that he'd shown it to me in the first place but it's still in pristine condition, produced by Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Pure typographic functionality on the outside mirrors the blunt realities on the inside. The word "restricted" printed on the front cover still makes feel a little uneasy about having the thing in my possession.

Nowadays when I go home to visit my folks and there's half a reason for a detour past the substation I make sure I take it but it doesn't look like a substation anymore; it's been modified, normalized, neutralized. Now it just looks like a house.

Have you written your thank you letters yet?

So, the exhibition of the audiovisual collaboration, Systems out of Chance, is down. Dismantling the exhibition after a creative journey that began over the best part of eighteen months ago felt akin to pulling down the Christmas decorations. A new year, then. The super sharp portrait monitors are back in their boxes, the six speakers playing three pieces of music simultaneously (and for keeping them in time with the imagery with not a fag paper between themselves or the visual triptych - thank you Mick the Mac man) are packed away, the ltd edition DVDs are ready to be sold* (thanks screen print Ben - you're a star) and the 16 page booklets** are ready to be dished out to anyone polite/daft/interested enough to ask me about the whole thing... (big thanks also to Sam Gathercole for the Six Chapters on Systems out of Chance), thanks to Parfitt Gallery curator Michael Hall for your experience, guidance, patience, and bone dry sense of humour and anyone else who chipped in. My day job boss would call it a team effort and it would be churlish of me to disagree. Thanks to those that attended the private view and of course, thanks to composer Joe - I went into the gallery for one last listen today and it sounded wonderful.

* either/and/or **, contact me.

What's Play To Your Strengths in latin?

This evening on University Challenge contestants were asked to translate the literal meaning of the mottos of three football clubs currently in the Premiership. It's a pity that the question masters didn't pick Stoke City's motto - Vis Unita Fortior (trans. United Strength Is Stronger) - that continues to have a relevance in an area determined to hold onto old fashioned values (a good thing in the main) in a post-everything society.

Stoke-on-Trent did manage to get a mention on another Paxman vehicle, Newsnight, with regard to the decline of the pottery industry. An article with the broad purpose of asking 'where next for Britain'? showed us a few arial photographs of duel carriageways and call centres, built on land formerly occupied by world famous pottery firms. The news reporter made a suggestion that something as radical as the canals that wind their way through the city needs to happen again, something physical that makes people think and act differently, shifting ways of being, bringing new economic methods and hope. Copying a way that has worked for another part of the country may not be the answer, but Stoke-on-Trent and its surrounding area needs people brave and brazen enough to try new things.

Away from economic turmoil, there's one thing that has happened in the last eighteen months that has reminded people that Stoke does still exist and that is the promotion back to the top division for its biggest professional football club, Stoke City.

Particularly curious has been the way that Stoke have got under the skin of the footballing inner circle since promotion in May '08. I always thought that everyone knew some teams played more direct than others and that playing the top teams at their own game upon promotion rarely pay dividends but what I didn't realise that the Premiership in-crowd (commentators, reporters et all) wanted a new whipping boy, but they chose the wrong one. With a pragmatic attitude towards tactics and principles (and aesthetics but I'll save that for another time), manager Tony Pulis gave purists and idealists ammunition to dismiss the team (if not the club) as being in possession of vulgar ideals and tactics with the deployment of Rory Delap. Rory's virtually secured a place in the starting eleven based largely (though not solely) upon his quite unbelievable ability to launch the ball from a throw in towards the opposition goal. Watching opposing players desperately trying to not give away a throw in is great fun, which has once or twice resulted in corner kicks - the acceptable face of dead ball set pieces - being sacrificed instead. Rory's long, fast and accurate throw ins are both a fantastic spectacle and function better than the average corner kick any day of the week. You do what you have to do what you need to do to succeed, right? And to hell with those that sneer.

Rory Delap triptych © Ralp Kidson 2010. Stoke-on-Trent is north of Birmingham and to the south of Manchester and the north west of England.

I'm a fan of Ralph Kidson

Sad Animal. Giant Clam. Envelope & Stick. Two To Beam Up. Captain Dolphin. And now Animal Job Centre. Ralph has been producing small press comics (some really small) for roughly thirteen or fourteen years is it? A mutual friend sent me one of Ralph's early comics and I was so impressed with the bone dry wit, the humanity and the rubbish-not-rubbish drawings that I had to send him a letter (a letter! I didn't have 56k at home at that point) which said, almost word for word "dear Ralph, I love your work but could you confirm for me whether your use of hand drawn frames are some kind of statement or are you lazily fannying around?" I was overjoyed when I received the next comic some months later to find that he had printed my letter with the reply "lazily fannying around". I was relieved because I would hate to think that Ralph's way of working is anything other than straight up funny comic book writing and drawing.

Ralph doesn't do irony - when a clam swears at a squid or an envelope gives a stick the silent treatment it's because it's what they do, as we do, as we all do. Ralph has managed to avoid in-jokes, games and knowing nods to the side of the stage. His work is a bit sweary in places - there was the time when a commissioned strip of his wasn't used in an overseas indie comic due to its explicit content, well, as explicit as 'badly' drawn animals can be - and when I asked him about, whether he was disappointed, frankly, he didn't give a monkeys and not in a pretending-to-not-give-a-monkeys way, he was really non-plussed. Just y'know, "...another pint?", a bit like, some people don't get it, then fair do's.

The blurb on the back of his other recent release - Doctor's Waiting Room - says "ooh look, Ive made a wuvvly, fwuffly ickle dickle mini-comic, aaah... hand made itty bitty frou-frou inky-dinky wittle comic, bless... maybe I should go to craft fairs and sell them in a wickle hand made basket, all in different colour covers, wouldn't that be darling. Have them next to the till in poncy fucking brighton gift shops that smell of incense and hand-made frigging soap. Ooh yes, that'd be wuvvly duvvly... actually I might do that..."

I've resisted the temptation to compare Ralph's work to that of more in/famous published souls of recent years but to cut to the chase, can someone who works for a grown up publishing house and distribution empire get it sorted that all of his back catalogue is put together in one great big compendium with a range of greetings cards, animated shorts on E4 and t-shirts please. Everyone should have Ralph Kidson's work in their lives as well as their soap baskets. Ta very much.

all images © ralph kidson 2010
Animal Job Centre and Doctor's Waiting Room are both available to buy from Ralph c/o 3 Langridges Close, Newick, E.Sussex, BN8 4LZ