By the Bubbling Blueberries of Mount Bulbous

Quivering Trout
By the Simpering Smile of King Charles the Rotund
By the Curdled Lambs of Crystal Valley
Twiddle m'boobies and call me Ruby
Severed Salmon
Knock me on the Head and Call me Fido
We will Fight them. In the Kitchen.

Split Geog

Geodraw

Thinking about geological drawings and diagrams. Escaping the text book diagrams -

and thinking about maintaining a very touchable, textured (I suppose, earthy) surface.  Which shapes, colours and patterns can represent formation without becoming just decorative, at the expense of demonstrating information?  These images i made last year are finding a balance between diagram and picture (?).  Not automatically converting everything into a straight line and regulated pattern gives more sense of scale .. the hand drawn lines/ shapes imply something real and fathomable.

FALLING

Drawings trying to work out a falling figure. As Alice falls down the rabbit hole, as she slides down, as time passes by, her limbs will flail in positions that seem impossible. They are logged as though being tracked by a long exposure camera. Finding the form and catching her fall quickly and intuitively then slowing down on certain parts of her, capturing her still, and in detail for a moment, as if time is slowing down.

Getting Inside: Beyond a photograph

Getting as close to something as possible. Getting closer than is possible. Trying to get inside. Exploring the inside.
Conversations recently have been trying to work out what is fascinating within an image when you first see it, and how there is always something curious about getting further within something, zooming through a cross section. What lies beneath the surface? Whether an image penetrates what is usually the un-penetrable and reveals what really would be festering underneath, or indulges in a made-up inner-psyche, there is so much that can be pulled to the surface. Illustrations are not limited by the same parameters of an object, or a person, that a photograph is. In the work of Hans Bellmer "the transparency of his figures allows us to obtain angles, see forms, and note anatomy that, otherwise, would be beyond the reach of our normal vision." (Visionary Revue) We are able to enter the body. Nothing is hidden form us. All potential can be explored. We can access the content in a ferociously, even explicitly intimate way.

"Beauty should be convulsive, or not at all" - André Breton

























Hans Bellmer - Drawing.

And -



















Jennifer Crouch - (The Jenist Empire) from a series of images included in the publication and exhibition Pending in the Intermediate Lake


Linework can describe a whole person, a whole relationship, a whole situation inside and out. It is possible to demolish the barriers separating the interior and exterior , the real and the unreal. Crime scene (?) illustrations offer an interesting view on a situation. Boundaries vanish, and every angle of every element of every 'thing' can shown on one plane, to get an informed perspective of a scene.


























Drawings by forensic illustrator , Tatjana, as she recovered from post traumatic stress disorder just outside of Berlin.

Lost or Gained in Translation?

It is incredible when a translation can carry so faithfully the original intent of an author.  In a piece of prose like Octavio Paz's 'Eagle or Sun?' the language is so tantalisingly crucial:  it cannot simply be about a word for word transcription.

One passage, translated from Spanish to English reads:

Jadeo, viscoso aleteo.  Bueco, voceo, clamoreo por el descampado.  Vaya malachanza.  Esta vez te vacio la panza, te tuerzo, te retuerzo, te volteo y voltibocabajeo, te rompo el pico, te refriego el hocico, te arrranco el pito, te hundo el esternon.  Broncabroncabron. 

I flap, gooey, I flutter, I dive, I cry, I sigh for space.  Joke unjoke.  I pummel your plexus, I twist you, retwist you, I whirl you and twirl you, facedownfalling, I smash your pout.  I flatten your snout, I smack your back, I crack your croak.  Jokeyjokeyjoke.

(translated by Eliot Weinberger)

I underestimate the job, and the power of a translator.  In his book "The Following Story", Cees Nootboom (as the narrator, Herman Mussert, who wakes up one night in a foreign city and recalls his life up to this moment) talks about his favourite student in the Latin class he teaches in Amsterdam.  He remembers her translations as the most enjoyable ones to read because "she would sometimes add details entirely of her own invention".   She would bring her character as "she entered the very soul of the language".   It is interesting to think about the individual interpretation of a piece of text when translating it.  I had never really considered the grey area between languages, especially when veering an ancient language into the modern world.   How much can it be upturned, examined and played with?

In music - rescoring can add such different weight to a piece.  In the mid 1950s Benjamin Britten made a visit to Indonesia, (fueling his growing interest in the music from the far east)  and on his return transcribed Balinese gamelan music for Colin Mcphee on solo piano.  Without the energy and percussive jarring of the gamelan orchestra, the immensely celebratory music becomes so poignant.  The notes are the same but the two pieces could not be more different.  One is so alive, you can almost feel the rhythm.  In the other, the piano resonates from a lonely room. (Both are beautiful.)  What can be said about relocating music that has been specifically written, or more so is the outcome of living within a certain culture, in a certain environment, at a certain time?  It is amazing to realise the elasticity, the versatility of what is essentially a series of notes.

Gambangan - Dancers of Bali: Gamelan of Peliatan

Gambangan - Benjamin Britten, Colin Mcphee : Britten and the Far East

The Impossible is Possible.

I recently saw Christopher Dell give a lecture which examined his concept of a 'musical approach to conceptualising space'.  Within it he talked about diagrams as a means of exploring the impossible.  Notating an idea visually forces it to exist and become an option.  It remains open to negotiation (it must be changeable) but gives life to what was previously just a floating idea.  It is a form of structure.  It functionalises.  It lends shape. It can contextualise an idea so that it sits in a world we find familiar.   A graphic score visually represents a soundscape.  It can describe in an instance something that up until that moment has not been heard.

Graphic notation by Cornelius Cardew.

What if Alice falling down the rabbit hole could be understood and visualised through a diagram?

Composition

"It is the essence of composition that everything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is connected with it.

Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in the arts of mankind, of the Providential government of the world.[245] It is an exhibition, in the order given to notes, or colours, or forms, of the advantage of perfect fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a well-composed air, no note, however short or low, can be spared, but the least is as necessary as the greatest: no note, however prolonged, is tedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration; no note, however high, is tyrannous; the others prepare for and are benefited by, its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered, the others prepare for, and sympathise with, its humility: and the result is, that each and every note has a value in the position assigned to it, which by itself, it never possessed, and of which by separation from the others, it would instantly be deprived."

From John Ruskin's The Elements of Drawing

Numbers in the Dark

ITALO CALVINO – THE FLASH

It happened one day, at a crossroads, in the middle of a crowd, people coming and going.  I stopped, blinked: suddenly I understood nothing. Nothing, nothing about anything: I did not understand the reasons for things or for people, it was all senseless, absurd.  And I started to laugh.

         

What I found strange at the time was that I'd never realised before.  That up until then I had accepted everything: traffic lights, cars, posters, uniforms, monuments, things completely detached from any sense of the world, accepted them as if there were some necessity, some chain of cause and effect that bound them together.

      

Then the laugh died in my throat, I blushed, ashamed.  I waved to get people's attention and "Stop a moment!" I shouted, "there is something wrong! Everything is wrong! We are doing the absurdest things. This cannot be the right way. Where can it end?"

        

People stopped around me, sized me up, curious. I stood there in the middle of them, waving my arms, desparate to explain myself, to have them share the flash of insight that had suddenly enlightened me: and I said nothing. I said nothing because the moment I had raised my arms and opened my mouth, my great revelation had been as it were swallowed up again and the words had come out any old how, on impulse.

        

"So?" people asked, "what do you mean? Everything is in its place. All is as it should be. Everything is a result of something else. Everything fits in with everything else. We can't see anything absurd or wrong!"

      

And I stood there, lost, because as I saw it now everything had fallen into place again and everything seemed natural, traffic lights, monuments, uniforms, towerblocks, tramlines, beggards, processions; yet this did not calm me, it tormented me.       

"I'm sorry," I answered. "Perhaps it was I who was wrong.  It seemed that way. But everything is fine.  I'm sorry," and I made off amid their angry glares.

Yet, even now, every time (often) that I find I don't understand something, then, instincitively, I am filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.  

Photocopy

Dribbling down a hill.

Walking alongside the long of the lake to the shop
Talking alongside the pong of the man in the shop

Hastings
Greenwich
Caspar David Friedrich

LONG SHADOW

Someone's got a tin for me

Light Protector

As we adventured through  Camberwell, Jennifer Crouch and I stumbled across a small dark room with a light projector.

We have big plans for this.

And this

Bad Minton Beating

There are such... particular acoustics in the badminton court.  Everything echos.   It sounds so empty, but so loud.  And chaotic.  I wanted to control the sounds.  Thank you Yoshi, for your help in creating the idea for AMPLIFIED BADMINTON.   

I made some simple contact microphones by soldering piezo transducers to audio cable.   That audio cable could then be put through an amp.  

Rosie Eveleigh and I worked together to create ('Bad Beats'  'Band Minton')  We made sponge absorbers for the mics and attached them to badminton rackets so that when the shuttlocock made contact, it would create loud amplified 'beats'...  In the quest for more interesting sounds we ran the audio cable through garage band.  From here we could apply effects so that the sounds created when the shuttlecock hit the racket could be distorted, echoed and delayed.  We could make music while playing badminton!   This video was fairly early on in our attempts to make music.   It only shows the sounds amplified, not modulated.  It is when the cable ran through the computer that it got really interesting. 

Banished to a smaller room for our 'live performance', we still managed to create some interesting and evocative sounds alongside some keyboard accompaniment (thank you to Charlie Cameron and Jack Latham).  Unfortunately there is no video evidence.

What are those interesting projections on the wall?  They are some kaleidoscopic films that Rosie and I made. 

(Sound is not mandatory)

MIRROR ЯOЯЯIM (Put Your Head In My Box)

Another collaboration with Rosie Eveleigh - the construction of a mirrored box in which you can see to infinity - a simple design using mirrored perspex.  By adding water, another reflective surface is created, one which can be wobbled and distorted.  In hindsight it appears as a maquette for what we would have ideally built on a grand scale inside the swimming pool at Camberwell Leisure centre...