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Location:SELondon
Friday, 15 July 2011
now, where were we ...
it's been a few months but rather a lot has happened as will become clear as soon as I've had a pot of tea for one and a slice of cheese on toast. See you shortly.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, 9 September 2010
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 ...
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
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.
Friday, 11 June 2010
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...
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...
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
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...
Thursday, 13 May 2010
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.
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.
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.
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.
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