Solstice

It's misty and still in my part of England, and the sun's lowest position in the sky can only be a notional observation.

I'm moving delicately, not because of any physical trauma, but my mind feels cold and still. I often feel this way at the end of term, and wish to withdraw into my den. This year, other things, a sad cocktail of the existential and practical, worry me. Cheers.

Today being the Winter Solstice, it's the day of A Day in the Life, a group photo project on Flickr. Somebody (bows) suggested this day as The Day, and it looks like the idea's taken off. There are close on 400 participants. Last time there were 5.

I recorded the actual moment of the solstice in a typical English High Street. My set of photos throughout the day is there for you to see.

It's quiet at work, and there is a shambolic feel to the office. I think about what photos to take, and my workload over the holidays, but mostly about events elsewhere.

Entering the zone

If you buy me enough drinks, I'll tell you how theoretical phsyics (which I've never done any of, really) is more like poetry writing (again, no experience) than you might think. It's not about the symbolic manipulations, the technique, it's the feeling you get as you put the pieces together. It could be like the feeling a chess master or indeed a martial arts master has when engaged in their art.

Deep in the comments of The Numerist Fallacy (an argument of the are-computers-real-art type from Grand Text Auto) you see:

“When I’m writing poetry, it feels like the center of my thinking is in a particular place, and when I’m writing code the center of my thinking feels in the same kind of place.”

Yeah! Everybody gets to this place now and again - artists, physicists, players, fighters - the ultimate creative space where the tools at hand disappear from the problem leaving only the mind to grasp the world, and change it.

Banana Guard

Way back in August, I thought of a neato idea that I didn't tell hardly any body about at the time: a special case for your banana, to preserve it from the slings and bumps of being outrageously chucked around in a rucksack. I dicussed it at length with Mrs DW -- make it, she said, that's a really good idea that people will pay money for. After all, who wants a bashed banana?

Baa! Na-ner, now somebody else has gone and done it first! I'll never be a soft-fruit carrying case tycoon now! To show there's no hard feelings, here's a Link.

Clearing

A cold morning start. My dreams were like Lem plots, and my sleep was not sufficient to slough off a week of screen-staring. Today, we’re going to Mike Sigman’s Internal Strength workshop, of which more on Repulsive Monkey in due course. The sun glances through a shivering beech hedge, much lightened by Autumn wind and rain.

I feed the cats with nutritious lumps of who knows what ocean fish. Some for you and – move out of the way dear thing – some for you. Poor things, they would starve without me. Wander into the next room for my camera (good light always makes me reach for it these days).

There’s a dark shape on the floor.

This is probably the worst feline murder yet. Apart from that blackbird a couple of years ago. That was the worst. The body has got a fat tail (it’s not a mouse, and rhymes with cat, fat, and mat), it’s been half chewed, and two spots of blood bear witness to a struggle. Plainly, the taste wasn’t to the victor's liking as, going back to the kitchen to get undertaking tools, I see there are vomited portions of it on various kitchen surfaces. How did I miss all that two minutes ago?

The body goes into a handy bit of cardboard packaging, and I collect the, um, bits (is that a little rodent foot?) into another bit of cardboard.



By now the culprit and his brother – it’s hard to tell which one, and they both have form – are probably curled up on the still-warm bed.

Picture169_25Oct04

Picture169_25Oct04
Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

My London gig was this morning only, so I'm given a few rounds of the concourse in roof-filtered sun before clattering back to Surrey. I peck idly at what catches my eye, like these fellows. There's hardly anywhere to sit at the station now, so I'm surprised they bother. The third of this group flapped off. Maybe his spirit is taken up by the bum-proof steel bollard/Brancusi thing.

Autumn walk

A wonderful walk today. Shining light glittered amongst the half-fallen leaves, damp but not soggy underfoot. We collected chestnuts, wondered at the edibility of mushrooms and were friendly to all sorts of animals. Winkworth Arboretum was heaving, but worth the effort. They are re-configuring the lakes there, and one of them will be getting a new job as a wetland -- this seems to be the "in" eco-system. Spectacular leaves/fungi etc filed to Flickr: try my munstead, winkworth and fungi tags.

Disrupt on of pat e ns

A disruption of a perfect pattern is more beautiful than absolute regularity, so they say.

So when I'm immersed in a work (on the train, I squint at words in my palm, on my Palm), I should be grateful for any intensification of the work. How ironic that the author himself should break the spell of literary virtual reality.

Gahh, he's spoiled it, now I know they're Moscow-bound before too long, probably in search of the mysterious Auteur behind The Footage.

Good book this (*), really fine writing. Somewhat Amis-like (you know I like Amis, like). So many levels of realising that the author has expressed a feeling, a context or a syndrome exactly as you were about to articulate it yourself, only in a more surprising way.

Not as good as the film. Until they make the film, that is, which then won't be as good as the book.

* : Pattern Recogntion, William Gibson.

Shadowplay

Shadowplay
Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

No Photos allowed in the exhibtion. And NO TOUCHING! A bit peeving, especially as some of the exhibits clearly desired to be experimented with.

There were plenty of peepholes and lenses to look through though. Eyes, Lies and Illusions would fascinate anyone on Flickr. Magic lanterns, zoetropes and peep shows were the virtual reality, home theatre and new media of the centuries past. Nothing new at all.

A superb collection and fascinating stuff for any physics gadget art-freak.

Eyes, Lie & Illusions

Ann Veronica Janssens, Scrub Colour II, 2002, Light and Colour Projection. Courtesy Schipper & Krome, Berlin (Installation view, 2002) © the artist 2004

... exhibition combines more than a thousand instruments, images and devices drawn from the remarkable collection of the German experimental film-maker Werner Nekes with major works by internationally renowned contemporary artists showing how optical phenomena continue to fascinate ...

This Exhibition, at the Hayward Gallery, looks right up my street.

Actually, it is almost up my street, give or take a train or two! Let's go!

Breakfast

Implementation - update

The end is near ... can you feel it? near

New angles on the wheel

The London Eye Millenium Wheel Whatever Youcallit is clearly going to be filling pixels forever. Flickr user cjm has found some nice new angles.

Direction

Cartier-Bresson (1908 - 2004) eventually abandoned photography for painting and drawing. Was he exhausted, or had he exhausted the medium? A conservative by today's lights, he would compose carefully (eschewing cropping) and would probably abhor creative abuse of the technology. His subjects were wide ranging but a deep humanism, and connection with the many people in the photos, runs through the work.

Reading his obits, and getting feedback from friends on Flickr makes me consider where I am, and what my criteria might be.

I have no fixed ideas, but, for me, a successful image is one which sustains interest for a range of people. I occasionally arrive at an interesting image, but by and large they might be thought of as cold and uninvolved with people.

Am I a two-dimensionalist? An abstract painter with a camera? A scientific specimen illustrator and documenter of mere optical phenomena?

I resolve:

- to take more photos, and more types of photos.

- to diversify my subjects, and look out for signs of obsession with "just" texture.

I promise not to stop abusing the technology when I feel like it.

You will be informed of the results in due course.

Swiffer

Now, this may have significance to some of you. Apparently there's a lot that can be done with a swiffer, when the usual crowd's away.

swiffer Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

Ar y traeth

æˆ‘å¾ˆé«˜å…´ï¼Œä½ å‘¢ï¼Ÿ

I like this a lot, how about you? (Testing character support from Flickr to Blogger)

Dappleroot Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

Smart Art Stickers

There's some crazy cutting out here, some good work with a fat pen, but not much literary content. Finding a site that's badly maintained as this (I bet not one organisation thinks they own this particular post) and yet amenable to public reading -- I had to stop traffic to take this -- is a key challenge to the, ahem, delivery phase of any future Stick-Lit.

Waterloo Sticker Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

Guildford festival

Do you ever follow directions ...

Subway Action Originally uploaded by here.

... without knowing where they will take you?

kNOck kaNOCK

Vivacious visitor Originally uploaded by Drift Words.

Maaathewww!

Words on cloth.

hi tech slavery Originally uploaded by boogah.

Hold them up to see.

I was here ...

daibutsu Originally uploaded by consumptive.

... but not as well dressed as this.

i like this sort of thing.

Shadowman Originally uploaded by Chooka.

flip er skip a flikr

frisbee golf

sara disc golf 1 Originally uploaded by SnowSara.

The season is surely upon us now. This image of the world's finest sport has drifted into my part of the world, through that curious thing, flickr. I have no idea who SnowSara is.

disparate

I've finally linked all my blogs to each other, and explicitly descibed the themes where I've felt it necessary. Not here of course. I'm not sure about keeping separate hats on, but it seems more immediately practical to run multiple personalities with Blogger, than to mess around with installing a solution that supports categories.

smouldering

I don't always agree with Jonathan James, but he's always interesting. That's what I pay him for I suppose. He's spot on here, on the aftermath of the Leyton fire, apart from one thing "the Dantean wastes of Hackney Marshes" ???

Was it art?

Fire destroys art warehouse in London, many works feared to be gone, but nobody really knows what, or isn't saying. Chances are you've breathed in some of the art-molecules by now. I'm in agreement with Brian Sewell on this one:

Guardian:

Today a painful task will begin in Leyton, east London: picking through the remains of a devastating fire which destroyed a huge warehouse containing priceless works of art. Many of the lost works are from the collection of Charles Saatchi. It is thought that they may include Jake and Dinos Chapman's Hell.

Tracey Emin's famous Everyone I Have Ever Slept With may be another: the tent appliqued with the names of her past lovers was the star of the famous Royal Academy Sensation! exhibition and to many became emblematic of the endeavours of a generation of young British artists. "I don't know what specific pieces have been lost," Mr Saatchi said yesterday. "So far it has been a day of many rumours."

BBC:

Momart's clients include the National Gallery, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Buckingham Palace, and the destroyed warehouse made up 5 to 10% of the company's storage capacity.

Brian Sewell, the London Evening Standard's art critic, told BBC News 24 that the blaze "had the makings of an appalling tragedy for the history of contemporary art".

The Big Smoker has some reportage on this incident too:

The best report of the whole incident, however, comes from The Telegraph (and you won't find us saying that very often).

Under the headline The night Hell was consumed by flames The Telegraph actually talks to the Chapman Brothers and manges to get some typically Chapmanesque quotes from the pair:

"We will just make it again. It's only art."
"I suspect it will in fact have gone up in value if it has been burnt to death."And on Emin's tent being destroyed: "That would be nice."

But what's nice about the Telegraph's article is they dare to tell us that there were works in the warehouse apart from those belonging to Saatchi!

crazy pc aesthetics

Gasp at another case-modder's madness, tracked at Gizmodo. This time its post-holocaust incinerated rebel chic.

Er, beige?

the curious incidence of the book of the dog-type

It really shouldn't surprise me that the same book comes at me from three directions at once -- some comments in a minute. After all, the worlds of personal recommendation, distributed book groups and blogs are all structured in obedience to the same large network rules. Such considerations, more than any flawed metaphors involving bees, ants or even caterpillars (c.f. Jean Henri Fabre) show that acknowledgement (of fame if you fancy) like wealth, flows to the already acknowledged. Not exclusively, even the most obscure nodes retain some links. I'r pant rhed y dŵr (Welsh: the water runs to the stream). The link-landscape gives a power-law distribution of link density, with the already famous (the book I mentioned, Alicia Keys CDs, Slashdot) getting more so all the time.

I didn't think it would be like this. I distinctly remember, aghast at the music charts as a teen, thinking that if only the record companies weren't pushing their top 10 crap at us then my friends and I would be able to listen to what we wanted (this was when the High Street was the market). Then in the Nineties, the same train of thought -- pushed along by the Internet! Hurrah: what better way than an autonomous network of like-minded punters recommending and identifying valuable works, so distributing glory all around! But now, faced with a wall of pink noise, it seems that I want the powerful pushers even more, just to stir up the little-linked-to sediment of the stream from time to time. Otherwise all we'll get is Bridget Jones and Lovely Bones. As long as the sediment-stirrers are not from marketing.

Okay, here's the bit about the dog book. This lovely work has totally blitzed the book charts here in the UK. A price war certainly helped (and one point most supermarkets were offering it at less than four pounds! Anyone else remember the NBA?). It's also the Book Crossing UK forum topic right now.

Back to the incident of the dog in the book-time. You've read the reviews I suppose, and probably the book by now, so I won't bother with any precis as such.

Make sure you check the UK Amazon reviews -- the US ones plaster the cake in excessive icing sugar and largely the misconstrue the local social conditions.

Is this book about the two cultures in microcosm? Christopher is a supreme technician in an intuitive world. Ahh lovely. Don't forget though, that he has real problems. He's not just a "different" boy. He groans involuntarily, blacks out, has violent outbursts, can't face getting on the Tube train, and wets himself. He's 15. Somehow though, he finds expression in logic and mathematics. But this isn't just something he finds solace in, it is what he does, what he is.

Look at that Amazon.com review again: Jackie Gropman "The appendix of math problems will intrigue math lovers, and even those who don't like the subject will be infected by Christopher's enthusiasm for prime numbers and his logical, mathematical method of decision making."

This seems to miss the point -- the bi-cultural gap all over again? Furthermore (and making no apology for pedantry) it's not "problems", it's a single proof. There's really no such thing as a maths lover, any more than a breathing lover or a walking lover. And the mathematics is not optional for Peter, it is the only natural language he has. Siobhan, his teacher/mentor, being of the other culture but able to see across the gap, recommends that he put it in the appendix.

Here is writer/producer James Schamus and director Ang Lee on the expressive role of the combat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

JS: in this film, the acting, the drama has a kind of martial arts choreography to it. It has that kind of grandness and scale. And the martial arts themselves are a kind of dance and very abstract art: motion, editing, movement, image.

AL: through the martial arts you express how you feel instead of just beating someone up. There is a dramatic quality to it.

JS: the people are expressing where they are, their ambiguities and ambibalences, the conflicts they feel. In most of the fights in this movie, the people can't fully fight, because emotionally they are torn. So, the fighting is a way of thinking and feeling and relating.

AL: [the two main characters] have to repress their desires. That's what counts in their business and in their lifestyle. It's a quality of how they look at themselves. Perhaps they only express themselves fully when they fight.

It's the same here. Just as if you were to close your eyes during the combat in Crouching Tiger you would not "get it", all of these pictures and puzzles in curious incident... are integral to the work. You have to read, not just look at, Peter's A-level examination answer, if you want to understand his character fully. The English text that ends the book is in fact a false ending (seemingly coming into the author's own voice "I have written a book and I can do anything") but the proof that Peter gives is the real ending. The structure and style of the mathematical work is expressive of Peter's own self.

Look how controlled and fluid it is. Look at the emphasis of the demonstration of the final inequalities: it is not equal. Not equal. Not equal. There is force in his poetry. Look at the impressive size of the coefficients he chooses to use to exemplify his point. No simple 3-4-5 triangle for him. And the final flourish: QED. I have shown what was to be demonstrated. I have power.

I love the way that graphs, equations and charts are integral to this book, especially given how popular it is. There's a growing amount of literature now that escapes the divide of letter and image. Perhaps, thanks to the laser printer, Gutenberg's revolution is over: Art and letters and numbers together again, at last. In places on the web text/image integration is already flourishing. In-text images are everywhere in books too now, and not just symbolic glyphs devised by the typesetter, like a nice leaping swordfish popped into the chapter numbers of a deluxe edition of a Hemingway. The exact image placed by the author (or authors) in the text now constitutes part of the work. Look at David Eggars' You Shall Know Our Velocity. His diagrams and scans are not schematic or notional graphical quotations. These are exactly what Eggars wants you to see and think about.

new word !

This is a really shiney one, but it's all twisted:

"unsimulated"

However will they unimprove the language next? Non-uncoincidentally, it feels like 1984 all over again, which can only be double plus ungood.

Three Random Pieces

Recipe: take Three Random Texts of Kindness. Add a drop of Connectivity. Shake it All About. See What emerges.

1. Waiting for a train, I see a book. It has been left there by another. Like blogs, Geocaching and phoning the wrong number deliberately (generic link), this behaviour employs serendipity in a purposeful way. Planning to release the book soon, I see that the requirements for the release site are quite particular. Into a place with no footfall and the flow is lost. There's slim chance of survival in a place, like a London tube station whose cleaners are vigilant for much worse leavings, where the flow is a torrent or where sanitation policies forbid any strange additions. The middle-sized stream is best, where there are interesting people, amongst the muggles coming and going at all times, who are not too busy to stop and think. University toilets seem the obvious choice, but too obvious. A certain degree of don't-care-what-happens is needed.


2. Hey! I found a widget that will randomise Powerpoint. Ideal for language learning! The class seem appreciative enough of my efforts. Hopefully they will add to the pile of words, for all to share and enjoy.


3. It reminds me of sticker literature. For those waiting for Brit Stick Lit 0.1 (an apparently random selection of sticky micro-texts), be assured that the project is not forgotten. We hope to have something to share soon. The requirements for sites are simular to the book-freeing areas, and just the same insouciance is mandatory.

Turner prize

The Tate gallery's Turner Prize is always a bit of a giggle, isn't it? Invariably, the entrants are the subject of: ridicule, fame, wealth, adulation and finally grudging respect (let's auction off an old Tracey Emin for our school shall we, now that she's A Nartist? Oh! now she's bunged us some cash, sweet!).

This year's crop is a bit serious. Official site here, announcing shortlist, and Grauniad commentage, plus photos.

mirror mirror

Because I have no desire to clog up this affectedly useless strand of thought with anything remotely utilitarian, I've started a new outlet down the road. You might see me behind the counter wearing long trousers and a tie. Here it's more like cut-offs and festival T-shirt, maybe a beret.

kitty

            O      I
           am     my 
          own    way
         of being in
         view and yet
         invisible at
         once Hearing 
          everything
          you see I
          see all of 
         whatever you 
        can have heard
       even inside the 
      deep silences of
     black silhouettes
    like these images
   of furry surfaces
  darkly playing cat
 and mouse with your
doubts about whether
other minds can ever
be drawn from hiding
and made to be heard
in inferred language
 I can speak only in
  your voice Are you
   done with my shadow
    That thread of dark
     word
      can
     all
    run
    out
     now
      and
       end
        our
      tale


John Hollander. Kitty, Black domestic shorthair

webeeblog

1st time I've noticed Auntie referring to a weblog in an article about something other than weblogs. Usually, BBC sidebar links are blue-chip entities.

is_it_art (eye++)

A garden in Edinburgh has won an art prize. Rather intermediate in scale (much larger than a Chelsea Flower show piece, smaller than a Capability Brown) this cuddly space -- uh oh, Teletubbies! -- reminds my eye of a user-friendly Spiral Jetty.

round corners, ooeee.

So, Blogger has been rebranded (more "amiable" apparently). The template selection has mushroomed, most with the near-obligatory round corners and dot-grid backgrounds. Are round corners the new bevelled edges? It's not all eye-candy, things *are* now more organised behind the curtain.

I've mashed up Repulsive Monkey with "565" by Douglas Bowman. The template change has lost my sidebar links, haloscan comments and other tweaks: monkey has some housework to do (those gifs suck, sorry don't communicate my brand, for a start). So you can expect drift words to drift unchanged for now.

Brancusi vs USA

Listen to this R3 docu-drama and decide yourself whether art is futile, or utile.

US customs threatened a 40% tax on an import of a Brancusi bronze "L'Oiseau", which leaning to ultimate abstraction, was not believed to be a Bird, and therefore could be a mystery utensil, and thereby taxable.

I'll see you in court!

all together then

Another resonance to some psuedo-mathematical work of mine, this time in this mass of gymnasts (seen in the excellent Ratchet Up).

Again, note how some some directions of view are filled, and others appear sparse. In sampling the scene from a fixed point we can see things that literally are not there.

The exhibition that goes with this is about commun(al/ist) physical exercise regimes. These days we are each on our own in that regard (mass consumption is what we are disciplined for, no?). As it happens I'm metaphorically on a mountain path somewhere, moving backwards, looking forward.

snifflle

Pollen Forecast: The oak tree pollen season has now started from the Midlands south, it affects approximately 20% of hay fever suffers. The birch tree pollen season is in decline in the south but highs are still likely in the north. However, showery weather will keep counts remaining low to moderate. The outlook for Friday is similar.

Thankfully, I'm immune. But an oak (quercus robur ) is parked above my car, which, with the rain, makes for some diverting effects.

   

bikes (magic) now with added reconfiguration!

I love this wi-fi-ed piper's magic bike!

is it art? yet again.

David. Plays with balls. He's asleep. Not to everyone's taste, I admit.



Johan abhors beige. He's up all night doing this I expect. Confused?

sticky lit

Jill: You could write the first British sticker novel.

Matt: I could. Part 1 is going well, thanks to the miracle of the anthological method (verbal collage). A reviewer is needed. Any offers?

Sample Stickers:

• The structural confusion of The Pillow Book is generally regarded as its main stylistic weakness; yet surely part of its charm lies precisely in its rather bizarre, haphazard arrangement in which a list of 'awkward things', for example, is followed by an account of the Emperor's return from the shrine, after which comes a totally unrelated incident about the Chancellor that occurred a year or two earlier and then a short, lyrical description of the dew on a clear Autumn morning.


• A similar case is 'Rule Britannia'. The correct second line of the chorus is 'Britannia, rule the waves.' It is frequently, though not quite universally, sung as ‘Britannia rules the waves’. Here the insistently hissing ‘s’ of the meme is aided by an additional factor. The intended meaning of the poet was presumably imperative (Brittania, go out and rule the waves!) or possibly subjunctive (let Britannia rule the waves). But it is superficially easier to understand the sentences as indicative (Britannia, as a matter of fact, does rule the waves).


• I spent little time at home now, so I was unable to be a detailed witness to the Great Love in the same account-keeping way as before. I did notice that Eva’s absorption in the particulars of Dad's life had waned. They saw fewer Satyajit Ray films now, and went less to Indian restaurants; Eva gave up learning Urdu and listening to Sitar music at breakfast. She had a new interest; she was launching a huge campaign. Eva was planning her assault on London.


• Things have changed, things have remained the same, over the past 10 years. London's pub aura, that's certainly intensified, the smoke and the builders' sand and dust, the toilet tang, the streets like a terrible carpet. No doubt there' ll be surprises when I start to look around, but I always felt I knew where England was heading. America was the one he wanted to watch...


• It was raining heavily outside and the streets, glassy and shiny, were largely deserted as I spent down Great Darkgate Street to the hospital. My heart was racing and my mouth dry with fear; the news that ________ was dead meant nothing, but the revelation that _________ and _______ had been lovers was a pile-driver to the heart. At the hospital I parked as close as I could get to the main door, stepped out and walked across through the driving rain to the garishly lit entrance.
  

Malvern Hills Photos

Great Malvern to End Hill

      

Worcestershire Beacon

      

Observing the Three Counties

      

Lunch fortifies

     

To the Obelisk

      

One last hill

    

Chase End.