inthewindowrunning

the work is hung for Art Language Location (ALL) in the window of the Land Economy building in Silver Street in Cambridge.

freecoffeenablesthinking

a busy day in Cambridge - starting out at the wonderful Maxwell Centre - cycling through the city one enters the site through boardwalks next to one of the many cafes - this one overlooks the landscape - it opens up to the what the future looks like - to a world of energy - I move through to spaces which enabling thinking - free coffee - cool social areas where people meet and talk - surrounded by good design. Then after a great meeting and checking out my work in the show into boundless space I leap - the exhibition of work created as part of the centres opening alongside the Nano project. Then it was off to check out some spaces for Art Language Location  (ALL) where I hope to site work in non-art spaces within Cambridge. Popped into see lines of thought - a great little exhibition in the Cambridge University Library https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/ it has some excellent examples from their collection of key moments of knowledge. I also went to the Whipple Museum http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/ a space I had never visited which has some fantastical objects which verge on the bizarre. Finally a private view at the Darsham cafe https://www.darshamnurseries.co.uk/ so not a cafe - a great place to feel good and taste good food. They hosted the opening of PhotoEast http://photoeast.co.uk/ showing a set of Rodchenko's photographs - beautiful and challenging.

foldedtime

    

in around 1989ish I worked with the poet Gary Boswell 
http://www.poetrysoc.com/content/archives/places/recycle/ in an Assessment Centre for young offenders in Lincolnshire creating words and/in books - I learnt so much in that residency - in the car on our journey to the facility we talked about many things - one being that in the very far future there would be a layer of material within the earth created from plastic very much akin to how coal was created - we were just thinking about this within the context of creative writing not really from an ecological standpoint - this idea appears to be all the rage as a topic - generation anthropocene is now on the agenda. this is a stunning read - http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever - truly apocalyptical doom ridden - a must

two extraordinary films - both exploring the structure of film making itself Victoria - a 2 hour single take tour de force of planning http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2016/03/can-film-work-single-unbroken-shot-victoria-shows-it-can and Mr Nobody - a fractured multiple narrative love story http://www.magpictures.com/mrnobody/ both are quite wonderful in their own way.

I am 'sort of' in this show http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/events/maxwell/

- well not really - more of a sideline of entertainment to the wonderful Gustav
Metzer, Fischli/Weiss and Hito Steyerl. I have on display some of the vast archive of objects along with one of the films I made as part of the Nano^Art project . 

obsessiveeverything

I'm sure that enjoying Danger 5 is incredibly dubious but it really is quite wonderfully bizarre -  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1807165/ check out the clips on YouTube or binge on Netflix for a truly knowing experience and finally the deeply disturbing and superbly paranoid mr robot is a must for all conspiracy theorists. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4158110/  
meanwhile working on sound for the videos - picking up on some previous work - sound enables rethinking the visuals - bringing a mechanical 'something' to the work that I feel will be part of possible futures - some links to videos with the sound attached.....

https://youtu.be/ZTlybK_ghns

http://youtu.be/Kv7lQjHzAFw

https://youtu.be/ioQsgZ0F-rA

movingnanomoving

working on a series of new moving images - the nano project is turning into a film project at the moment - both from the creation of gifs in Photoshop and also animation through sketch-up.

thecraftskillsofscience

more moving surfaces for the nano project - thinking about movement and scale - also some more 'draft ideas' around art science differences - all up for discussion - babies don't do science - can one just start doing science without knowledge? art starts with the individual - science informed by lots of others. business and commerce pushes from the end - companies and galleries support what the work becomes and where it goes - this then starts to define what is researched or made and eventually defines the research. the idea of truth - looking for answers - that there is an answer or answers out there - making art as a way of making sense of the world - people use science to do - to eventually enable them to do things - the idea of skill and craft - knowledge of how to do things, making - the craft skills of art and science have parallels - separate from the idea of thinking - this enables them to make although art can exist without this can science? -  there is a wider audience for the outcomes of what can be made from science but do scientists have an audience other than themselves when making? - to enable them to think and deduct? - language - art is concerned with creating an individual, personal language  - does science have the opportunity for a personal language - or is it all a universal language? is all the science within a particular field the same? art starts with knowledge which informs thinking and looking which leads to making - science starts with the knowledge of many which informs thinking which leads to making which creates knowledge to be used in some way

movingmachines

initial moving images from the Nano project - some of the films created within the Google sketchbook software and others developed by a more circuitous route via screen shots, Photoshop into gifs

patterngenerating

after setting up a framework in the studio to enable pattern making through layering - I've been working on creating a series of images that have their starting point in the labs - thinking about the idea of order and disorder - the image of science - what it looks like - starting with tessellation and just the idea of looking - creating images that require looking! a kind of 'what is that?' - I've started to take out all colour and working with grey images although there was a moment of refracted light in some of the imagery and so this is an aspect I'm keeping for the moment and possibly working with, although there is an element of Christmas decoration about it that's a little worrying.

I've been developing images that are turned into gifs - next they could be used as surfaces on shapes animated through folding. The structures need to be virtual to explore the 2D/3D real/digital issues.

newwaysofthinking

Assessments are all over and all is well - the postgraduate exhibition at Camberwell for the Book Art MA will be excellent – there is some stunning work and the show looks good if I say so myself. It’s full of challenging, contemporary anarchic work. Every year I am stunned by the inventive ways the students explore the idea of the book, its properties and the very bookness of the book and this year is no exception, in fact there are some stunning examples where genuinely new ideas are explored.

Working on my thoughts for what I want from the experience of working with scientists at The Cambridge Nanoscience and Nanotechnology doctoral training centre (NanoDTC) over the summer. I think as ever when collaboration is on the table the obvious thing is the sharing of methodology, access to new ways of thinking and new materials but really for me it’s to be surprised and challenged – to not know – to be a little lost and maybe fail a little if not gloriously. We shall see.

Working with RAW and Lavish at latitude this year – looking at recycling, rethinking, re purposing and up-cycling abandoned materials – it will be fun – and then there’s the festival itself – the 10^th anniversary – I’ve attended all of them and there have been some awesome moments – for me its become a little dull with very few things on the ‘i-must-get-to-see-that’ list but maybe something will catch my eye (maybe the LADA sessions on Friday night) – it was interesting to go on site and stand where the sunrise arena will be before its built – the glade it sits in is so sweet – somebody had a great vision when they thought of transforming the space.