Cull The Elderly

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T13:02:00.002+10:30

Greg Eason

2011-10-25T13:40:00.000+10:30

Greg Eason's drawings are beautiful and detailed, but it's his sense of composition, framing, negative space and tone that make his pieces special. These little images here don't do them justice, go to his portfolio site and look at them properly.

Poor Edward

2011-10-18T23:34:00.001+10:30

Edward Mordrake was reportedly a 19th century heir to an English peerage that was born with a second face on the back of his head. Removal of the face was impossible without killing him. The story goes that the face could not speak, but its eyes would follow people's faces and its mouth could tremble and whimper. Edward said the face would talk to him in the night and torment him, and apparently when he would cry the face would sneer or smile. Eventually it grew too much and Edward killed himself by putting a bullet between the eyes of his 'devil-twin.' Edward left behind a letter requesting that the ‘demon face’ be destroyed before his burial, ‘lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave.’

In some versions of the story the face is that of a girl, such as Tom Waits' retelling go the story in the song Poor Edward from his record Alice – where he twists it a little and uses it to express the themes of love, lust, romantic obsession and destruction that permeate the entire record. It's one of my favourites of his, although it's not the sort of thing you throw on the stereo on a lazy Sunday morning. He has a new record coming out soon. !

Below is a picture of a wax rendering of Edward made long after his demise. Its accuracy is dubious. The interwebs would have you believe this is a photo of Edward himself, but do a little digging and you soon find that no such photo exists. The entire story is somewhat dubious. Parasitic twins are definitely real, but the twin and the host are always the same sex, and the fact that there is precious little literature about this case from the time of the events, combined with the fantastical nature of the story, would lead one to believe that the facts have become distorted and exaggerated over time in the service of a good yarn. Not that I'm complaining.

2011-09-21T13:45:00.000+09:30

by n9ve.it

Punctuation humour

2011-09-20T14:04:00.001+09:30

via Unlikely Words Tumbling

Cults – "Go Outside"

2011-08-08T19:40:00.003+09:30

Here's the new video for "Go Outside", by the band Cults. The Cults record has been one of my favourites of the year. Some nice sunny melodies, with lovely echoey spacious production, and then a serious, unnerving undercurrent in some of the lyrics throughout. Some of the lyrics are actually quite menacing in the way they talk about power dynamics and sinister themes in such a naive, sunny way. They have also spliced in recording of speeches from actual cult members/leaders throughout the record, although not in a way that is invasive or jarring. it just slides into the mix, you might not even notice it. I think that's what i like about the record. You can just slip it on and listen to the sunny carefree melodies, or you can listen harder and discover the hidden darker themes. I like that.

In this clip, the two band members insert themselves into archival footage of the Jonestown cult. A friend emailed me this and wondered if I thought it was inappropriate to use footage from such a tragic incident in a music video. For the reasons I've stated above, I can understand why he might have thought this. It's just a sunny pop song! But when you take it in context of their other music, their subject material, and, well, their name, I think there's definitely artistic merit. And the video doesn't use any overly dramatic or sensational images. It's all quite tastefully done, and I think it culminates in a fantastic video.

Lady in the radiator

2011-08-08T19:39:00.000+09:30

Mac 'n' Cheese

2011-08-03T13:53:00.002+09:30

This animated short was completed by four students from the School of Arts of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Very impressive. I especially enjoyed the painterly quality of the character design and the sound design is awesome through headphones.

Put it in the pizza.

2011-07-31T23:23:00.001+09:30

Slow-mo Olsen twin culinary funk. I find this strangely hypnotic.

Snail porn

2011-07-31T23:21:00.001+09:30

Watch this in fullscreen.

The world is where we live

2011-07-31T23:10:00.002+09:30

Perfect. Impeccable craft. My favourite detail is the way the colours of the human mother and child scene are the inverse of the colours in the orangutang mother and child (orange background, green humans vs green background, orange apes).

Patricia Piccinini

2011-07-31T22:08:00.012+09:30

Nick Mitzevic has done a fantastic job as the new(ish) director of the Art Gallery of South Australia. When he was appointed, he stressed that he wanted to bring the gallery back to its glory days by aggressively pursuing major exhibitions and pieces that would attract people back to the gallery. That has culminated in the Saatchi exhibition, which opened this weekend, and is the biggest exhibition of artworks on loan from the Saatchi gallery ever in the southern hemisphere. It is getting some serious exposure, with large articles in our shitty local newspaper (not easy to get covered in that unless you're a footballer) and some large billboards around town. Seriously impressive stuff.

However, this wasn't the first big splash that AGSA made. In my eyes, that came with the acquisition of Patricia Piccinini's piece "Big Mother"

Big Mother

Anyway, Big Mother was added to AGSA's permanent collection with much fanfare. Big banners outside the gallery, that sort of thing. A good start for the new director.

A couple of months ago, however, came a much bigger exhibition of Piccinini's work. This was a large exhibition, and it was fucking fantastic. Perhaps the best exhibition I've ever seen at the gallery.

Piccinini is an Aussie artist who creates hyperrealistic sculptures, that predominantly feature themes of mankind's relationship to animals (including meditations on genetic engineering, our social culture of excluding ourselves from the animal kingdom, and plain old Cronenberg-style body horror). Her pieces can be simultaneously horrifying and sad. And her craft is impeccable. You really have to see her work in the flesh to appreciate the amount of detail. Think Ron Mueck, but with crazy animal human hybrids. It's amazing stuff, and right up my alley.

The Young Family

Undivided

The Embrace

Furthermore, the marketing push was noticeable. There was posters and Adshel's everywhere, and there were even representatives from the gallery in Rundle Mall (our main shopping precinct) with banners and some of Piccinini's smaller works for people to view while the shopped on a Friday night to try and drum up interest. This might not sound like much, but for Adelaide that's a big promo push. It was great to see the museum not only host a large exhibition of a prominent contemporary artist (which is the sort of thing people would normally have to travel to Melbourne to see), but also actively trying to court the public.

And it seemed to work! I don't have any hard numbers, but I talked with a number of people who saw the exhibition who had not visited the gallery in years, and when I took a visit there were several people who had brought their kids. And their kids were loving it! That's just something you don't usually see at AGSA.

So there's that and now the Saatchi exhibit. The Art Gallery of South Australia is exciting again! Hopefully this is a sign of how things will be for the foreseeable future.

Edit – So I did a little digging, and it turns out this was the most successful contemporary exhibition is the gallery's history. Weekend attendances passed 23,000, and the gallery extended its hours so more people could see it. Brilliant. The source of this info? That shitty local newspaper I mentioned before...

The Illusionist

2011-07-27T21:55:00.003+09:30

It has been a long time since I've updated this, and I'll make up for that with a long post soon, but for now I'm just putting up the trailer for The Illusionist, which is screening at the Mercury Cinema this weekend for a short run as part of the Jacques Tati festival. It's based on a Tati screenplay and is directed by Sylvain Chomet who also made Les Triplettes de Belleville. Looking forward to it.

Mercury is also in the middle of their Bill Murray festival, so I'm hoping to pick up on of these shirts too (if there are any left)

2011-06-28T21:17:00.002+09:30

Kolchoz

2011-05-19T23:52:00.003+09:30

I don't know a thing about Kolchoz except he or she is supremely talented. Got that complex simplicity thing down pat. Or is that simple complexity?

Russian cannibal arrested

2011-05-19T23:27:00.001+09:30

Man crucifies self.

2011-05-19T23:24:00.000+09:30

2011-04-08T13:33:00.002+09:30

I love watching master craftsmen work. Beautiful typography.

Art!

2011-03-21T19:45:00.002+10:30

Got 75 minutes spare? Like listening to artists talk about their craft? Then this movie is for you.

Explaining the Japan nuclear situation

2011-03-20T11:21:00.003+10:30

A cartoon made to explain the Japanese nuclear situation to children.

On a more serious note, please donate to the relief efforts in Japan. Here is a link to Red Cross Australia's relief fund.

A Hole In The Head

2011-03-09T19:55:00.002+10:30

Trepanation is the practice of drilling a hole in a person's skull. It was done in medieval times for medical reasons (let the demons out, that sort of thing), and it has been practiced in tribal cultures for centuries. But there are people out there in Western first-world society who are getting it done too, in order to "increase their consciousness". It's kind of a third-eye sort of thing. They say it increases blood flow to the brain.

Obviously, this isn't something that's covered by health care, so the surgeries are done at home, either by a friend, or the patient operates on themselves.

I only just stumbled upon this recently and definitely want to find out more about it. I'm not planning on getting it done, for the record. I just find this sort of thing intriguing.

Below is a clip from a documentary called "A Hole In The Head", which is about this topic. It includes numerous interviews with people who have undergone the procedure. The first minute or so of the video below is a bit graphic, so you might want to skip it if you're a bit squeamish.

Stop The Violence

2011-03-08T20:00:00.003+10:30

For his recent exchibition "Stop The Violence", Francois Robert has created a series of type and symbols created entirely from human bones. You can order a free copy of the book at his website (while they have stock)

2011-02-10T13:29:00.000+10:30

Who needs money when we got feathers?

2011-02-02T21:35:00.004+10:30

I'm not sure if I've posted about Kate McGwire before. It's possible. Love her work. Very simple ideas, executed beautifully. Or, alternatively, complex ideas and themes executed in a deceptively simple way. More likely the latter actually. Lots of variations on a theme. Lots of refinements along the way. If I was British I'd say it was "smashing", but I'm not, so I won't. I showed her stuff to a friend once and she thought it was creepy and horrible. I don't understand that at all, I think it's beautiful. Some people. Click the link! Look at more of her work!

Kristine Moran

2011-02-02T21:14:00.005+10:30

Kristine Moran's work is stunning. I don't really need to say anything, either it will resonate with you or it won't. Just look at the pictures and then click on the link to see more if it grabs you like it grabbed me.

Side note: The second image with the bright blue "background" reminds me a lot of the Bitches Brew cover. Right? Yep.

and speaking of beautifully illustrated type...

2011-02-02T20:58:00.004+10:30

Wayne White does this sort of thing quite well. He buys cheap prints from thrift stores and then paints over the top, inserting his typography into the scene. I'd say it's "seamless", but it's big distorted 3D type sitting in pleasant, banal landscapes, so no, it's not seamless. There are definite seams. But the type just sort of fits in. His work first came to my attention years ago when I first started listening to the music of Lambchop. White has done quite a few record covers for them, including the above "Nixon" painting.

Speaking of Steve Martin not being funny

2011-02-02T20:54:00.002+10:30

Funny film. Unfunny scene. But in a good way.

Darren Booth

2011-02-02T20:34:00.004+10:30

You've probably seen the work of Darren Booth on the cover of Steve Martin's latest book. The one that isn't funny and turned a group of people at the YMCA against Steve Martin because comedians MUST BE FUNNY ALL THE TIME. Anyway, what do you think of the cover? I love it. So simple and stark, with beautiful colours, and I love that aesthetic of very precise type characters rendered in an imprecise way.

Booth does this stuff pretty well. It's kind of his thing. Figures.

Shinohara Ai

2011-02-02T20:04:00.004+10:30

Beautiful paintings by Shinohara Ai. They're quite precious ,and of a very particular aesthetic of flowers and schoolgirls and forest animals etc. which is something that I don't usually like. But these don't turn me off, for some reason. I can't quite put my finger on it. Tone? Colour palette? Not sure. I particularly like the piñata schoolgirl. Because I like guts, I guess.

Soviet work safety posters

2011-02-02T19:28:00.005+10:30

Spotted the Soviet posters for work safety over at Laughing Squid. I love how blunt these are.

Last year, whilst staying in Singapore for a while, we were travelling quite a lot by train. On the trains they show a video about what to do if you see a suspicious package. Standard thing: a suspicious looking guy in a hat leaves a bag behind on a crowded train. What should you do!? Is it a bomb? Usually, this video would end with the passengers letting a security guard know, and everyone goes home safe and happy and unexploded. But the Singapore version ended with everyone looking at the package, and then the train going into a tunnel and EXPLODING! Consequences. They're a bitch.

These posters remind me of that.

We'll miss you, Winston

2010-12-30T20:27:00.002+10:30

Nature is terrifying

2010-11-21T21:59:00.001+10:30

Nature is beautiful

2010-11-21T21:58:00.001+10:30

2010-11-21T21:42:00.004+10:30

Teagan White has designed this poster combining two of my favourite things: typography and anatomical drawings. Based on a quote from Alan Fletcher's brilliant book "The Art of Looking Sideways".

Check out her portfolio site, there's some good stuff.

Putting the team on his back

2010-11-21T17:16:00.001+10:30

Genetics in action

2010-11-17T20:18:00.000+10:30

2010-11-17T20:17:00.001+10:30

Nicolai Howalt

2010-11-14T11:38:00.003+10:30

In 2004 I went to a design conference in Melbourne called AGIdeas. It's a great event, highly recommended. There was a speaker named Jeff Busby, who is an Australian photographer, who had just released a book of photos he'd taken of car-crashes. It was really good, but being the poor university student I was at the time,who had just spent most of his cash on a plane ticket, accommodation and booze booze booze (Newcastle Brown Ale, I believe. That was a great idea...), I couldn't afford more than one book by a speaker that year, and instead I picked up a book about propaganda posters in the Croat/Serbian war (which is a brilliant book, by the way).

Why do I bring this up? Because Nicolai Howalt also takes photos of car crashes, and it caught my eye. Check out some more of his work here. It's good stuff. Abstract and beautiful, but sinister when you consider the subject matter. Would look great as large-scale prints, especially the yellow on below. That's it, short and sweet.

2010-11-07T17:03:00.000+10:30

Blondin Makes An Omlette

2010-11-06T13:51:00.003+10:30

by Gareth Liddiard.

Sorry for all The Drones/Liddiard posts in a row. It's just I'm going to see Liddiard solo in a few days and I'm a bit excited (also, drunk). Definitely my favourite songwriter nowadays.

Edit: The show was fantastic. Very intense performer when he's singing, charming guy when he's not. Many references to Adelaide's "City of Corpses" tag (Adelaide has been host to some of the most disturbing murders in Australian history, which somewhat goes hand in hand with Liddiard's songwriting). A fun night.

"Jezebel" by The Drones

2010-11-06T13:26:00.003+10:30

“Jezebel’s the cow that ate nuclear fallout in Northern Queensland, near where I was born... They did heaps of nuclear tests in Australia – in South Australia and off the North West Shelf in the ocean. All up in the Southern Hemisphere in one year, I think 1962 or 1963, they let off sixty atomic and hydrogen bombs. Then the wind blew across the northwest to the northeast. It rained and the cows ate this grass that’d been polluted with all this fallout. Yet at about the same time they were pushing kids to drink more milk to help the dairy industry. So kids were drinking all this shit and the CSIRO were using bones from autopsies of kids who died of unnatural causes. They were grinding them up and testing for levels of strontium 90 and iodine...

...It was going to have a different name that was more hysterical – but I figured, fuck it, name it after a cow.”
Gareth Liddiard

Quote taken from this brilliant interview on Mess & Noise

Sixteen Straws

2010-11-06T13:24:00.001+10:30

"To avoid damnation by suicide, groups of Catholic convicts would draw straws. The long and the short straw decided the deceased and his killer. The killer could then repent. The group would assume responsibility and be sentenced to death."

The Twin Fawns

2010-10-19T23:12:00.006+10:30

The Twin Fawns, by Peregrine Honig

“I came upon twin fawns in the display case of a mom and pop toy and science store in kansas city, missouri. it took me two years to win the trust of the shop owner and save the money to buy them. a taxidermist spotted a dead deer by the side of the road. he stopped to properly dispose of the body and realized she was pregnant. he opened her and found near full-term twin fawns, he removed and preserved them.
Deer rarely have twins and the taxidermist retained the uterine gesture of their bodies. i built them a vitrine with a light blue base. their prematurity exaggerates the delicacy of an incredibly sweet thing. the points of their hooves, the length of their lashes, the spots of their hides, nose to small nose in an ur-cartoonish realism … viewers’ eyes trick them into believing the fawns are breathing. the tragedy of beauty is its transience.
The twins live forever in their own demise. they are sleeping beauties. they have been muses since i first saw them.
We dress death in lilies and bronze the names of our dead sons on walls. we erect altars of toys and hold candlelight vigils to express hope. my twin fawns sleep endlessly on their baby blue block in my studio. the twins never opened their eyes yet their wondrous fatality evokes an acceptable alternative to death.”

via Who Killed Bambi.

LOLA DUPRÉ

2010-10-04T21:36:00.004+10:30

Lola Dupre's work is entirely made from paper and scissors. As near as I can tell she prints out hundreds of copies of the same image and cuts them up, before reconfiguring the image, rearranging and distorting the image in the process. It's kind of like an analogue version of photoshop, or a way of creating characatures with photography. It reminds me of the illustrations of the characters that appeared over the credits of the old British sitcom "Yes, Minister".

I don't want to sell her work short though, there's a good amount of range there. Some of the stuff is more sinister, some of much more fragmented and deconstructed, some is quite abstract. And her blog (which you can view here) lists her work in order as it is created, which means you can thematic and aesthetic progression from piece to piece, which is something I love to see. I wish more portfolio websites did that. Really good stuff.

In a modern age

2010-09-19T21:47:00.006+09:30

Lovely video by Danny Cooke about signwriter David A. Smith, who specialises in cut and embossed glass. I love watching things like this, seeing the craft that goes into an object or product. There's a real anachronistic quality about David and the video, like he's operating in another time, keeping an old craft alive. There seems to be a rash of similar videos popping up, usually focusing on people who take a decidedly old-world or hand-made approach to their craft. I'm thinking of stuff like this video Cool Hunting made about the Mast Brothers, who are chocolatiers:

Lovely stuff. And the Mast brothers have tremendous red beards, so I feel a natural kinship with them. Maybe one day they can join Ginger Voltron.

It's great seeing people who have so much obvious passion for the process behind their product. These are people who have decided to go against the prevailing wisdom and refuse to modernise, because they feel it would rob their products of their soul. Well, that's me putting words in their mouth, but it seems about right, yeah? It seems like we're being pulled between slick technology and old-world romanticism. People are still looking for objects that are crafted, and have a human touch. Which would explain why everyone I know with an iPhone has a toy-camera filter application.

"...and if you gaze into the abyss"

2010-08-25T22:53:00.001+09:30

"...the abyss gazes into you."

Alphabet Monogram

2010-08-25T19:52:00.001+09:30

This monogram incorporates all 26 letters in the English alphabet. Fancy pants.

Images leaked from the new Human Centipede spinoff/sequel

2010-08-25T19:40:00.002+09:30

Doesn't look as gross as the original.

Caaaaaaaaarp

2010-08-08T15:15:00.003+09:30

EMBED-Spiderman Style Baseball Catch - Watch more free videos

I hate baseball. But I love me some Hiroshima Carp! Amazing catch.

See also: Hiroshima's baseball team is called the Carp

The Pale Blue Dot

2010-08-08T00:22:00.002+09:30

Accumulonimbus

2010-08-07T22:14:00.002+09:30

Abstract stop motion hotness.

Schaffas 2

2010-08-01T21:50:00.004+09:30

Schaffas 2 is coming up!

Edit: It's here! And what a smashing night it was. Smashing. Packed full of people, brilliant work, and there was even a couple of minor bidding wars on some of the pieces. Drama. Photos of all the creatures are up on the website. Check out all the amazing Schaffas submitted by people who are so talented they make me sick: Schaffas 2

The Screamdance boys should be proud.

David Altmejd

2010-07-31T13:48:00.004+09:30

Various works. Various incredible works. More here.

Wanderland

2010-07-31T13:37:00.000+09:30

Music by Hermanos Inglesos feat. MeMe.

Directed by Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys.

Design: Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys
Art Direction: Kristof Luyckx
Editing: Stijn Deconinck & Kristof Luyckx
Animation: Michèle Vanparys, Michélé De Feudis, Dries Bastiaensen & Kristof Luyckx.

Cycles

2010-07-31T13:30:00.002+09:30

Cyriak, have my retarded babies...

People & Places

2010-07-19T20:54:00.002+09:30

Beautifully dreamy photo series by Jasper James. So simple, but very evocative.

Kenichi Yokono

2010-07-05T19:58:00.003+09:30

Tokyo-based artist Kenichi Yokono has some crazy elaborate wood block prints on his portfolio site. Hope you like red.

Brendan Flanagan

2010-07-05T19:24:00.004+09:30

Brendan Flanagan uses lots and lots of paint and a pale, muted colour-scheme in his paintings. Cool stuff.

Pink Elephants on Parade

2010-06-23T23:40:00.006+09:30

Dumbo is my favourite old Disney cartoon. Loved the dramatic beginning, with the train going up the hill and workmen assembling the big top in the rain, and especially loved watching Dumbo swoop down on the clowns shooting peanuts at them with his trunk when I was young. It was very cathartic. I also loved the jive-talking blackbirds. I always assumed they were a relic of a different time, something you would never see on screen nowadays, but the I saw the "ghetto" robots in Transformers 2. At least the blackbirds were likeable...

Another scene I doubt you would see in a kids' cartoon nowadays is the Pink Elephants on Parade dream sequence. In this scene, Dumbo accidentally gets drunk and he begins to hallucinate dancing pink elephants. It's a very cool song and a cool scene.

Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of introducing Ritxi Ostáriz’s newest animation, which pays homage to that scene, but with a cool Mexican Day of the Dead visual style. It's the second part of his ¡Viva Calaca! project ( see the first part here) It entertained me. He always does good work and this is no exception.

Letterheads

2010-06-12T21:09:00.003+09:30

I'm working on a corporate branding job at work at the moment, which of course involves creating new letterheads. As part of my research, I stumbled upon these old letterheads (from Letterheady). Awesome stuff. My favourite of the ones above is definitely the Green Bay Packers one. So simple and understated. I can't imagine it being that way now, what with the sorry state of design in the sports world (see this. And also this.)

Favela Painting Project

2010-06-12T20:33:00.004+09:30

Bobby over at Kitsune Noir has a great post about the Favela Painting Project, in which two Dutch designers painted all of the buildings in an urban area of Brazil. Pretty amazing stuff. I really wish that this sort of thing was part of the culture here in Australia. One of the things I noticed in my visits to Singapore was that even though there are a lot of repetitive identical apartment blocks in the residential areas, they often incorporated brightly coloured balconies. So you might have five identical concrete buildings, each one bathed in a different colour. It turned something drab and imposing into something colourful and celebratory. Not quite on the level of the Favela Painting buildings though, those are really something else.

Willy Verginer

2010-06-08T22:27:00.006+09:30

Loving these carved sculptures by Willy Verginer at the moment. Really lovely stuff that uses the qualities of the medium to its best advantage, and some beautiful sparing use of colour.

If you have a look at the portfolio site and have a look through the various collections you can definitely see a real progression in terms of technique, themes and style, which I love seeing.

2010-06-05T01:44:00.003+09:30

WKRG.com

AP raw video feed of oil-covered birds on East Grand Terre Isle, Louisiana
Found via The Constant Siege.

I owned these shoes when I was young

2010-05-02T22:30:00.003+09:30

...and I wore them until they fell apart. Shaqnosis! Loved them dearly. This is what trawling for new basketball kicks on eBay does, gets me all nostalgic...

RGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGB

2010-04-29T20:58:00.004+09:30

For Milan Design Week, Carnovsky have created a series of wallpapers that react to different coloured lights, called RGB.

Don't watch this if you're epileptic

2010-04-29T20:53:00.001+09:30

If you're not, turn down the lights and turn up the volume and push your nose right up the screen.

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsibl

2010-04-29T20:48:00.004+09:30

Valerie Solanas, from the SCUM Manifesto.

Summer of Love

2010-04-26T22:36:00.003+09:30

"Summer of Love" illustrative series by Hong Kong-born, Brooklyn-based Saiman Chow

OH EM GEE

2010-04-08T22:03:00.001+09:30

By their powers combined...

For the record, Min bought the Ellen one, and it's awful.

Ron Mueck

2010-04-08T21:44:00.004+09:30

I spent the Easter weekend over in Melbourne. Fun fun fun. Lots of eating and drinking. Especially drinking. The highlight of it all was Ron Mueck's exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Surprisingly, photography was allowed, so I've posted a few photos below. No flash, so they're a little fuzzy.

The works were stunning. I love how he's created these hard/solid works that have a real sense of frailty and vulnerability. The really have a lot of life. His use of scale emphasises these facets. I also love how he his works interact with the audience, especially the wild man, who sits naked on a chair, looking supremely uncomfortable while everyone around him snaps photos. Viewing the pieces amongst people feels like it's the missing component of the work. It's pretty incredible stuff.

More info about Ron Mueck and the exhibition on the NGV site here.

"Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real."

2010-04-01T09:28:00.003+10:30

Iris Murdoch

2010-03-25T19:52:00.001+10:30

Johnny Cash (Flipping the Bird), San Quentin Prison, 1969
Photo by Jim Marshall, who died today at age 74.

One of my very favourite photos.

Media Association #4

2010-03-24T22:51:00.017+10:30

Untitled photograph, unknown photographer

>>>>>

Anti-Vice Campaign series, Zhang Haiying

Oil on canvas

>>>>>

Gao Brothers sculpture

(Sorry, I can't find the name of this anywhere. Can anyone help?)

>>>>>

Battle Royale, dir. Kinji Fukasaku (and starring the brilliant Takeshi Kitano)

>>>>>

Metal On Metal music video. Song by Bastard, published by Skint Records.

Video directed by Matt Devine of The Glue Society.

>>>>>

Wimbledon opening title sequence. Title sequence created by Kyle Cooper. The film itself was directed by Richard Loncraine. It's not very good. But the titles are.

>>>>>

Bat Out of Hell, photo by Tom Jenkins. I'm not sure where this was first published.

>>>>>

Virgin and Child (1888) by William Adolphe Bouguereau,

oil on canvas

Plastic Bag

2010-03-24T13:02:00.003+10:30

A short film by Ramin Bahrani which follows a plastic bag (voiced by Werner fucking Herzog!) as it struggles with its immortality.

Massive

2010-03-23T20:16:00.003+10:30

Massive Attack played here on Sunday and the show was suitable, uh, massive. Good crowd, incredible sound, and a stunning light show. The light display really set the tone and created a dark and paranoid sort of mood (within reason) that worked brilliantly with the music, and the themes were focused on the media, war, "terror" those sorts of things. The best display went with my favourite song of theirs (Inertia Creeps), where they scrolled headlines from the local news in the background. From what I've seen on YouTube, the display is new in every city they play, with new headlines. I wonder if someone input the headlines in before the show, or if it set up to randomly pull headlines from local news sites on the fly.

Another song displayed and contrasted the yearly wages of important social work position or goods and servcies in third world countries with the expense account items of the average UK politician. Eg. $10 for the weekly food budget of a third world family vs. $200 for new toilet seats. Of course, notably absent from this list was the $120 that a ticket to a Massive Attack concert costs...Worth every cent though.

Martina Topley Bird and Horace Andy were both there on vocals and did a wonderful job. I didn't know Horace Andy would be there on the night, so that was pretty exciting. Topley Bird also had the job of playing solo as support, and gradually won the crowd over, and she was nice enough to sign and chat with with us at the merch stand after the show.

Video of their setup for Inertia Creeps from another performance is below:

Bad idea

2010-03-20T23:41:00.000+10:30

Or baddest idea?

The Big Death

2010-03-15T21:41:00.005+10:30

The Adelaide Festival of Arts has just wound up here, and it has been a fun few weeks. As always there was too much stuff I wanted to see. There's just not enough time (or money) to see it all, when you also factor in the Adelaide Fringe festival, along with the general social atmosphere around town, which inevitably leads to going out a few nights a week for drinks with friends. And if you want to go to Womadelaide too? Well there's even less time for the other stuff! Spoiled for choice.

Anyway, in my mind there were two big events at this year's festival I wanted to see. One was Mahler's 8th Symphony. You can read about it on Wikipedia, I won't go into the details. Suffice to say, it's nicknamed the Symphony of a Thousand and requires an impressive number of musicians to play, so I definitely wanted to see it just for that spectacle. And it was certainly a spectacle. Not mind-blowing, but I'm glad I went.

The second thing I wanted to see what the production of Ligeti's only opera Le Grand Macabre, which was being promoted as the "centrepiece" of the Festival, the big production. So I wanted to see it. Not because I'm a fan of the music. I'd never heard it before, and the people I know who have knowledge about such things said it's a difficult bit of music for a novice. But this particular production looked really promising from a production design point of view.

The centrepiece of the set is obviously the enormous figure that took up the entire stage. The performers walked upon her, climber into her, deconstructed her (exposing bodily organs) and emerged from her. She is rotated, lit up, and projected upon. The projections were really impressive. At one point she rotated whilst the projection exposed her skeleton and it was pretty seamless. It definitely gave the illusion of her skin becoming transparent, rather than it being projected on top of her. It certainly make the popular Northern Lights light installation look a bit drab.

The opera itself was entertaining. It dragged in parts, but I find every opera I've been to does. As well as (almost) every musical. Sometimes a feeling doesn't need a song to go with it, you know? But the performances were lively, the story was fun and in the end it was the most impressive production i've seen out of the last two festivals. It's about mortality, death, sex, bodily fluids, apocalypse, hypocrisy, fate, all that good stuff. It builds an epic story on these grand concepts, and then laughs at the pretension of it all. It's an opera that is mocking every other opera, in a way. The moral is basically that we're all going to die, but don't dwell too much on it all, make sure you have a good time while you're alive. A fitting sentiment for the festival season.

James Jean

2010-03-15T21:27:00.005+10:30

For some people, a finished piece is all that matters. It doesn't matter what you went through to get there, the result is the thing. Me? I love seeing the work put in behind the scenes to complete a project. Seeing someone's thought process and the hard yards they put in (or didn't as the case may be) drives home how much value a final piece really has, whether it be an amazing sculpture, or a fashion shoot, or a piece of writing, or even just the retouching of a car for an advertisement. And if there is very little background work, if the piece was just created from an obscene bout of inspiration, well that's even more amazing.

James Jean doesn't seem like the sort of fellow who has those bolts of genius lightning strike. He works hard to create his amazing pieces. And luckily for you and I, he scans and presents his sketchbooks on his site and they are incredible. The amount of skill, patience and craft he puts into his works is self-evident, but these really drive it home. And they prove that the best way to get good is by working really, really hard. And that's a satisfying thought. Some excerpts below:

I love that his sketchbooks (and his finished pieces) are arranged chronologically, so you can see his progression over the years.

Of course, his final pieces are wonderful as well (sorry for all the "gushing" adjectives in this post, but it really is great stuff).

Kindling installation, 2008

Go to his site if you haven't already and have a browse, you won't be sorry.

Malice in Wonderland

2010-03-15T13:26:00.002+10:30

You can choose to watch another uninspired Tim Burton film where he adapts an old story and makes it "creepy" and adds curly bits to everything and stars his wife and Johnny Depp. You can also choose to watch this:

Potato salad

2010-03-15T13:15:00.000+10:30

Oh my

2010-03-12T14:54:00.001+10:30

Announcer should have definitely said "boom-shaka-laka".

2010-03-11T23:14:00.005+10:30

Alvin Purple was a racy sitcom in Australia in the 70's.
Found via Re:collection, an brilliant archive of Australian graphic design from the 1960's to the 1980's.

2010-03-11T23:08:00.003+10:30

Kumi Yamahita
City View (2003)
Light, Aluminium, Shadow

More work by Kumi here.

And stay out

2010-03-09T00:28:00.002+10:30

This year has been a good one for gigs in tiny Adelaide. So far this year I've been lucky enough to see Neko Case, the Dirty Three, Amanda Palmer, Lupe Fiasco and Pavement (!) so far this year. Coming up is Massive Attack, Spoon, The Mountain Goats, maybe Vampire Weekend, and more I'm sure. That might not be so impressive if you live in Melbourne, but for Adelaide it's pretty fantastic. For the record, they've all been great shows, especially Lupe Fiasco, Neko Case and the Dirty Three.

Pavement's reunion show was on Saturday. Good show. One of my very favourite bands, never thought I'd ever see them live. Not nearly as messy as I'd been lead to believe it would be. The crowd was a little too polite though. When someone in the band hands you a shaker and point a microphone at you, you shake it. It's not hard. Loosen up, people.

But, what's with the obligatory encore? This is my pet peeve about going to shows. The band finishes, they leave the stage. We cheer for a while. Some feet stamping. The band comes back out and plays two more songs, maybe three. Like clockwork. As if there was any doubt there would be an encore after Pavement's set, a roadie came out and tuned one of the guitars as soon as they left the stage. Way to keep us in suspense.

Why not just play three more songs in your set? I'm not against encores, just the tediousobligatory ones tacked on the end of every single set. Save the encores for when you have a REALLY good crowd. Make the actual encores a real treat.

/end rant

RIP Mark Linkous

2010-03-07T19:36:00.003+10:30

Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse has apparently committed suicide. I spent all of Friday listening to It's A Wonderful Life while I worked, which is a beautiful record. Sad news.

Logorama

2010-02-28T21:05:00.002+10:30

Logorama is a short film about a police chase/stadoff made entirely out of animated corporate logos. Clever.

Second verse, same as the first

2010-02-11T00:52:00.004+10:30

I think this was my first post on this blog, but the video was taken down, so I'm re-posting it because I never get tired of watching it. Stunning high speed video of a lightning strike.

And more!

And even more!

That last one seems crazy, with the lightning seeming going UP from the ground into the clouds, but apparently that's what it does. It seems slow in the video, but keep in mind it was filmed at 7,200 frames per second (standard video moves at 24fps).

More videos (and explanations of what exactly is going on) as Wired

Dazzle camouflage

2010-02-07T20:34:00.002+10:30

"Dazzle camouflage did not conceal the ship but made it difficult for the enemy to estimate its type, size, speed and heading. The idea was to disrupt the visual rangefinders used for naval artillery. Its purpose was confusion rather than concealment.[1] An observer would find it difficult to know exactly whether the stern or the bow is in view; and it would be equally difficult to estimate whether the observed vessel is moving towards or away from the observer's position."
source: Wikipedia

2010-02-06T23:32:00.006+10:30

"Writing is an occupation in which you must constantly prove you have talent to people who have none of their own."

---

Jules Renard

Exercise videos reinforce unrealistic body images

2010-02-02T13:48:00.000+10:30

Generic Avatar Review Post Title

2010-02-01T22:11:00.003+10:30

Enjoying this guy's reviews, even if he over-plays the whole "I murder women" thing. That kind of ruins it. But when he's not screwing that up, his film 101 analysis of films is pretty funny, and it's nice to see this sort of thing on the web when so often it's someone screaming "THIS FILM RULEZ/SUXXX". It's a nice change to see someone doing long-format reviews and getting into analysis about character motivations, themes and film-making choices.

I pretty much agreed with this review of Avatar. Seems like everyone I've talked to about it loved it. It left me feeling a bit hollow. I enjoyed watching it, and there is something interesting about watching a manipulative film and knowing youj are ebing manipulated but not being able to help it anyway. But in the end, there wasn't much left to chew on, except their questionabIe decision to have the tribal race played by an all African American cast. I know, I know, story-telling archetypes yadda yadda yadda. It was still a poor decision. Rather than discussing the themes of the film, we just wound up debating the morality of the casting/art direction choices.

It was still fun. I never want to see it again. But it sure was pretty.

Vanishing Point

2010-01-30T01:07:00.003+10:30

Vanishing Point from Bonsajo on Vimeo.

by Bonsajo.
Music by cubesato.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a place I can buy this song?

The iPad

2010-01-29T00:00:00.004+10:30

Apple launched their iPad today. I work at a design studio that is primarily focused on website and web technologies, so it was a big topic of discussion today. Plus we're all geeks. Everyone else is giving their thoughts, so I thought I would also add my thoughts. Thought. Thoughts.

So, it does look like a big iPod Touch, doesn't it?

The name. Sounds like a female sanitary product. Call me childish, but it does. Jonathan Ive's little spiel in the introductory video even makes it sound like one. "I don't have to change myself to fit the product, it fits me." Look out for the new Mac Pros in the next couple of months, with 27 cores and wings to prevent leakage.

No camera. Seems silly. This device seems like it would be brilliant for Skype or iChat video conferencing. I've had times where our whole family is talking to a relative overseas on Skype, and you either crowd around the screen, or you pass the laptop from one person to another, usually almost dropping it in the process. Handing someone the iPad would be so much easier.

The demo for the iWork apps was the thing that caught my attention. Everyone is focused on the specs, the actual machine itself. But it's the applications that are going to make this an incredible device, that begins to bridge the gap between the multitouch iPhone and the desktop environment. The standard apps like Address Book and email etc. were nice, but nothing mind-blowing. Keynote, Pages and Numbers, however, show what it's capable of in skillful developers' hands.

It's the first genuine step away from the mouse as an input device. It's taking a layer of abstraction away from the UI. Tapping a link on a website is much more intuitive than clicking on a piece of soap-shaped plastic on a desk that makes a cursor move on the screen. It might not seem that way, since everyone is so used to the mouse control system. We're conditioned to use computers that way. But on a base level, it is so much more intuitive. I bet that some developers will come up with a few applications that will blow everyone away by really taking advantage of the unique input method combined with the screen real estate. Obviously that interface won't work for everything, and this device certainly isn't supposed to be all things to all people. It's the iPad native apps that leverage its featuure-set that will make this a worthwhile device.

Ultimately, I see this device as a first step towards new ways of users interacting with content and information that will be built upon in the future. So the device itself might struggle for a while and fall short, but it's setting the gears in motion.

Interestingly, while it has taken a level of abstraction away from the interface, it has added a layer of abstraction in terms of how the file system works, in that it is entirely hidden away from the user. You don't put files in folders. You don't access files by knowing their location and opening them. You open the application, and there are your documents required for working, within the app. Where within the file-system are they stored when you save them? Who knows. The applications do all the work. The user doesn't need to know where their photos are stored, or their text files or anything like that. I think this is the future of casual computing, removing the file-system from the equation for the user and simplifying it all. One less thing for people to deal with.

People are complaining about the bezel, the lack of Flash and the lack of USB ports and multitasking.

The complaints about the bezel are silly, you need a bezel to be able to hold the thing without touching or covering the screen. You can't palm it like an iPhone, you have to wrap your fingers around it. So the bezel is a necessary design decision.

The lack of Flash is a political move, I think. Apple doesn't like Flash because it is a proprietary technology it can't control. It's at the mercy of Adobe as to how Flash performs on its products, and that's bad in Apple's eyes. I think they're really pushing for HTML5 and h.265 (or whatever the number is) to be the new standard for video on the web (and when you're talking Flash, most of the time that means video), because those are open standards that aren't owned by anyone. This is a fair stance, I believe. Open standards and technologies allow anyone to tinker with it and build upon it and be on a level playing field. The catch is that there's a hell of a lot of Flash content out there. I see this as growing pains towards a better web environment. Flash will fall, open standards will become the norm. In the meantime we'll have a lot of annoyances like this. Hopefully.

The lack of USB ports? I'm with you on that one. It would be great to be able to transfer images from my camera straight to the device without having a buy an adapter, or go through the unnecessary step of adding them to iPhoto, then sycing them through iTunes. Or allowing me to print my photos by simply plugging in a printer. At least give me a second dock connector so I can sit it in to charge in landscape format. One the upside, support for Bluetooth keyboard is very welcome.

Lack of multitasking? I'm with you on that one too. For most apps it's no problem, but it would be great to be able to run Spotify in the background or listen to your Last.fm playlists whilst working on a Keynote presentation. Stuck with iTunes, I guess. My guess is that finding a way to handle it elegantly is the biggest problem. Hopefully this is something they may add in with a software update down the line.

So that's my 2c. Nothing new or groundbreaking, just felt like getting it all down. I'll be interested to read this again in 5 years time and see if I was on target with anything at all. And if you got this far, congratulations. I promise I'll have a less wordy post next time.

Pay the writer

2010-01-18T18:54:00.001+10:30

I'm not such a huge fan of Harlan Ellison's work, but he sure is an entertaining speaker.

Doctors need to bring back this look

2010-01-18T09:02:00.003+10:30

I would definitely finish my prescriptions if they were signed by that guy.

Gum Wall, Seattle

2010-01-17T13:08:00.004+10:30

According to Noisy Decent Graphics, Gun Wall is the second most germ-ridden tourist attraction in the world (after the Blarney Stone),

Four wheels good, two wheels better

2010-01-12T23:40:00.003+10:30

I recently bought a bike and have been riding to and from work. I'm only about 10 or 15 minutes away so it seemed like the logical thing to do, rather than relying on the (frequently packed) pubic transport service. I'm really enjoying it so far. It wakes you up in the morning and it's good stress relief after the more difficult days. Plus, I guess I'm getting fitter. probably. I do miss zoning out to the music on my earphones in the morning (that was valuable podcast/audiobook time), but it's a small price to pay.

Anyway, I'm taking my bike in to be tuned tomorrow. I might see if they'll let me swap it for one of these bikes from Republic Bike. They allow you to customise a fixed bike design by choosing the colour of each component. I had a play on their customisation program on their site and came up with what I would order. What do you think?

Speaking of bright colours...

2010-01-11T23:57:00.003+10:30

...these pieces by Aussie fashion designer Josh Groot are the figurative shit. The black and white half-tone suit jacket is doing funny things to my eyes. They're just the thing for the thin, stern woman in your life.

Sunglasses required.

2010-01-11T23:34:00.004+10:30

These images are from Tokyo's Senzoku Kaguen College of Music. Specifically, they're from a building ironically named The Black Hole (or Black Hall, depending on who you ask) and was designed by Terada Design & Architects. The colours are blowing me away. Not the place you want to be the morning after a big night... It shows how you don't need outlandish structural designs to make an impact. Not when you have an outlandish colour palette to make up for it. All it's missing is a beige feature wall.

The unreal colours over each surface plane remind of some of the (sadly defunct) Designers' Republic's work for Warp from years and years ago, which was architectural shots over which they had laid bright planes of colour. This is a bit more full on than that. My next trip to Japan is going to be a little more Tokyo focused than the last two, so it's definitely on my list of places to check out whilst there.

2010-01-07T18:43:00.002+10:30

"We’ve made pieces of conflicting information more accessible than any other point in time. Unfortunately, we’ve mistaken cynicism as the tool we need to cope with this conflict of information. It seems much more healthy to me to accept that two pieces of contradicting information can both some how be true."
- Frank Chimero

Frank is a very talented illustrator. I've alwyas found his musings very helpful.