Good mood

Today I am in a ridiculously good mood. Despite stepping outside my house, walking up the street and being completely drenched by a bus driving past. Seems I am in an untouchable state of strange bliss today.

So I just wanted to share some images with you that inspire me / make me happy.

 an incredible house melting into the ground

 This

 Jill Orr. Live Artist. She makes very visually striking work. Beautiful.

 Romeo Castelluci. I have a thing for burning pianos

 This is one of my favourite images of all time.

 I have a collection of images of houses under/in water. When they were doing the snowy mountains hydro scheme they had to move the town of Jindabyne up the hill so they could make a dam. They left some of the houses there and flooded the area. When the water is low you can still see some old stone steps near the island in the middle of lake Jindabyne. I find the thought of a submerged town eerie and incredibly beautiful.

 hehe

Graffiti for a special someone and everyone simultaneously 

 Mr. Alister

mmmmmmm

 Beautiful composition. Very pleasing

 Alison Mosshart is a babe

Bill Henson. He is incredible. I think subconsciously he is what inspires me to work with so much darkness in shows. Be specific with colour and focus. 

Early morning starts with my cat. This is her mid yawn.

Abandoned buildings. Grandeur slowly turning to dust.  

Miss Tess Mallett. Remember this. 

"Tattoos on your body like a road map of everywhere you'd been" Ani Difranco.

Longplayer - a 1000 year long musical composition

I was tumbling through the interwebs looking for information on Artangel, an arts commissioning body in the UK and found this artwork. It's called Longplayer. A composition that started on 31st December 1999 and will play through until the last moment of 2999. Then it will begin again from the start. What struck me most about this artwork is the hope, for want of a better word, that is imbued within it. To think that the world will still exist in 2999 to keep playing this composition.

For me this conjures visions of a post-apocalyptic world, human life long since gone and across a vast desert you hear this machine tick into the last bar of it's song at the final moment of 2999. There is a moment of eerie silence. And then it resumes. Tracking back and playing music that was heard in 1999 by people that once inhabited the earth.

Strange.

So this artwork is eerie, hopeful and beautiful all at the same time.

Here is the link to it.

http://longplayer.org/what/overview.php

thanks.

Inspiration

I'm currently in the throws of my confirmation write up. A 100 page document of pure joy. It is due on the 29th of April. I do not see as much as a breath until it is in. Then I present on May 12th, the onto developing my Scratch work for La Boite. In the meantime I've been keeping my creative bones sane by looking at this amazing website called 'the fox is black' and I found this amazing artist called Myeongbeom Kim. He is an South Korean / American artist that creates beautiful works.

Check these out:

The fox is black site can be found here: http://thefoxisblack.com

And more info on this amazing artist can be found on his website http://www.myeongbeomkim.com/index.html   He also does amazing things like sculpt chairs into / out of trees and fill school corridors with leaves. All the artworks are visually striking and have this gorgeous friction of man made and natural.

Practice

These are some photos from my PhD practice that I ran last Saturday. It was a experiential piece that asked a person to take off their shoes, don a key around their neck and walk into the space with no other guidance than the clues placed around. I was interested in how I could cue and spark memories and recall in the audient and the emotions that were conjured through this performance form. The results were very interesting. I am currently in the process of transcribing participant feedback. Thank you to all who were involved. 

 

Would you share this with me?

I found this on someones tumblr that I follow:

 6 things that you miss
1. Having loving parents in my life
2. All my friends, who don’t live in Manchester
3. The sea
4. A cat in the house
5. Humanity and common sense in some people
6. 8 hours sleep per night

And I loved it. I am currently attempting to come up with 1000 ways to say that you miss someone. This is being concocted with the lovely lucas stibbard.

In the meantime?

6 things that I miss
1. Waking up to birds, sky, dirt, grass and the smell of the bush every morning.
2. Having enough time in my life to totally indulge in the people I love.
3. The ocean.
4. Having a garden to meander in.
5. Riding my horse. Feeling that complete sense of freedom as you gallop through the bush.
6. The Never Never river, the Promised Lands - The place where I grew up. 

What 6 things do you miss?

the woman in the supermarket

I had a beautiful exchange with the woman working at a supermarket check out today.

I put my wallet on the counter and she complimented it. I said thank you and then explained where it came from. She then told me she used to do leather work. I got excited as I also work with leather. I then watched years drop away from her face and her eyes sparkled. She told me that when she was 15 she made a wallet for her grandmother. On it she stitched icons that represented her grandmother and her life. She then lashed the sides of the wallet. As she told me of this she illustrated the whole making process with her hands, smiling. Then she gave it to her grandmother. Her grandmother was cautious of banks and her pension payout so she took out an amount every week and placed it in this wallet and placed it in her drawer. When her Grandmother passed away she got the wallet back in absolute pristine condition. A much prized possession. She left enough money in the bank account for her own funeral.

I have a theory that I make people want to tell me things. I don't know what it is but a lot of the time within a couple minutes i'll know some strange facts about a stranger, have a memory of theirs or have discussed their views on life and whether they are happy where they are. This is one of the things I do enjoy about myself - I seem to encourage confidence.

I would not trade this for anything. 

i think it is

a) form - open, sensorial, a similar openness to music in that there are no 'fixed associations' (Langer, Form and Feeling)

--> this form opens up associations and an emotive engagement

--> which gives the audience a certain experience and this experience differs according to memories and emotions activated in the audient.

So according to this theory, changing the form changes the engagement. But i guess that is always the case.

Hmmm.

essentially I am interested in the 'best' form to illicit memories and feelings aligned with similar notions of feeling and music and langer purports.

Ahhhh research. How mad your drive me with your quicksilver nature and your shape shifting appearance.

And all the sitting still is getting to me.