useofabook

uses of a book #20 - using their weight  to help glued card to stick together - the card will form the bases for work to show at the upcoming station show. The actual work that will sit on the spinning platforms is evolving as I use 'found' materials within the studio. Some of the papers have been 'waiting' to be used for over 35 years!

Revisiting past episodes of Star Trek Next Generation has been an eye opener; the speed of the editing, the camera angles and once I got over the very angry tone of how orders are giving I've become obsessed with Wesley Crusher's knitwear - maybe something to introduce into presentations next year at NUA.

meanwhile films have been varied - Just Like Heaven - sweet and light, Ava - we have been here before, Coup 53 - staggeringly disturbing. The BBC's A Suitable Boy addressed obliquely some wider issues, it looked good but was a little like The Crown in tone

foldingmusic

I've spent the week mainly working on a new suite of folded structures for the show at the station in Saxmundham. The pieces are based on a range of ideas but the focus is materiality and that the pieces look good as 3D sculptural structures. During all this folding I've been playing a lot of tracks as a result of listening to and then researching Lisa Tarbuck's playlist. She has a fantastically eclectic interest but her taste is always impeccable, especially Reggae and old school Soul and RnB. - some tracks to start with

Marie Laforêt - Et Si Je T'aime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFeoX4NNdJM

Nuyorican Soul - It's Alright, I Feel It (feat. Jocelyn Brown)

I DO - Pull It

The Box Tops - The Letter

Johnny Restivo - The Shape I'm In

Boozoo Bajou & Tony Joe White - Keep Going

Don Convay - Everything I Do Goin' Be Funky

Peaches & Herb - Shake Your Groove Thing

The Delfonics - Ready Or Not Here I Come

Resonators - Sweet Love Affair

meanwhile some films - American Pickle - the tonal shifts within the film are a challenge - unsure about where the humour is aimed at although I did laugh. Summerland - was very clean but had some interesting ideas and indeed acting within it. Project Power - oh dear, although maybe it wasn't that bad.....was it? The Puzzle - a calm yet surprisingly stirring film, the underlying currents are very powerful.

itsthattimeofyear

In academic life it's that time of year - submissions, assessments, final show planning and

some tense but excitable students full of expectation and some looking for the time machine to go back and do work that they didn't manage the first time around (due to planning issues) - it's going to be a good one.

meanwhile - making for ALL in Cambridge progresses - with new objects made and filmed.
Looking at ideas of text and pattern generation.

As well as consuming the final episodes of Girls - harrowing but redemptive and Better
Call Saul - just so sad I've been checking out a few films that I'd missed the
first time around - the all consuming Margaret being the most moving http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466893/ - there are many commenting on the thing that is youtube but maybe the most astute/disturbing/angry is h3h3 https://www.youtube.com/user/h3h3Productions

finally check out the film about the sculptor Lawrence Edwards - beautiful

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 . 

bondingspace

playing with the properties of heat bonding on a range of materials to create a collection of sculptural bookworks - tools for the hand - reflecting on the images and films is a way of listening to what your eyes tell them. Wading through some terrible films recently after such a wonderful array of Oscar nominations but Ashby is a winner with Mickey Rourke giving a mesmerising performance and Macbeth where the mist is a main character with the stunning cinematography overshadowing the whole thing. late to the party but enjoying the cringe inducing girls - fabulous.

evolvingcapework

working on the cape images for the next nano cape film - a busy week of teaching presentations at Camberwell include http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/finishedness-0712-12 - http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/context-audience-understanding- -2013 - http://www.slideshare.net/l.bicknell/context-audience-understanding2014 meanwhile a weekend of watching films - Terrence Malick's - Knight of Cups - the first 15 mins....oh dear - then after a much needed realignment and 'settling in' it evolved into a wonderful soulless meditation of drifting damaged people - everything you hate about it is the point of it. 45 Years - studied loss - stillness whilst shuffling around Norfolk. Diary of a Teenage Girl - a sad, creepy search for life's meaning - so wrong but beautifully constructed. Spotlight - a dark period in the history of the Catholic Church! the latest work for OCA is going well with an evening spent exploring context and developing relationships to making and audiences and at NUA assessments are ongoing.

holeswithintheargument

busy working on two strands of work today - first lazer cutting more fabric for the cape photo shoot next week - this time cutting with the pattern in mind - scaling up and also leaving the designs 'holey' - taking into consideration and thinking about the light and shadows I've been working with over the past weeks at the Castle Museum.  second - developing the raw filming into 'something'.  not quite sure what they are or what they are for but excited to be playing with ideas around multiple dialogues through duality - old and new, light and shadow, heavy and light, Islam and Christianity even. 
two tales from and of America - two really excellent films - but for very different reasons - Brooklyn - the emergence of something wonderful, of a burgeoning beautiful possibility http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381111/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 and Sicario - of bloated madness, a country seemingly at war with everything, even itself. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3397884/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

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anotherdaybehindinagoodway

another day at the castle in Norwich - I'm really enjoying being a part of the build your own exhibition. being in the space before and after the museum opens is like entering another world - like you've been given the keys to a parallel world. I presented the work I'd undertaken with Cambridge University Nano technology department which was liberating in that I had previously only shown it to a knowing audience so its presentation to the general public initiated new strands of research through wonderful conversations. I also created a number of finished segments of films that I had to started work on during the Summer. These explore the role of light, of seeing, scale, pattern and shadow. Whilst playing with the range of pre-prepared materials that I had lazer cut with Penrose tessellations and combining them with an app on the iphone I made a discovery that led to a site specific digital work that I am really pleased with.

meanwhile my final session with year 3 students at NUA utilised the glorious oblique strategies cards by the brain that is eno - one of the best sessions this year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies  - - they were a great filter to explore work - excellent. two film recommendations -  the wonderful and quite beautiful Carol, it's such a still film with most of the acting taking place behind the eyes and then there's the use of textiles, colour and pattern which are gorgeous and symbolically meaningful. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2402927/?ref_=nv_sr_1 and then if you think you're having trouble getting stuff done with the odd few stumbling blocks as well as being very very funny The Martian is the Don of problem solving movies - everything is possible and it will be okay. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/