'Strange days and some flowers' exhibition

Today Sarah visited Lancaster and we checked out some exhibitions.
The newly refirbished Storey Gallery had the exhibition 'Strange Days and Some Flowers'.

Around the installations and paintings, there was another installation by Graham Hudson, made from 'steel tubes and clip structure' aka scaffolding! It was pretty cool actually. As we walked around, the composition kept changing, with all the different squares and rectangles it reminded me of Piet Mondrians paintings. It also gave nice backgrounds for the other installations.


There were some really nice pictures by Dan Baldwin. I liked how bright and chaotic they were and the use of mixed media. This one was my favourite.
Dan Baldwin - Love in the garden, 2008.


Dan Baldwin - We End Up Meat, 2008. This had a knife stuck to it.


Dan Baldwin - We All Start With Pure Heart, 2008.


Dan Baldwin - Halloween, 2008. close up of it.


Don Brown - Yoko XVII, 2006. This looked like a sheet over a statue but the sheet shape was the statue, it was like a scary ghost! but cool.


Don Brown - Yoko XXI, 2008. This looked really nice white with shadows, and against the white background too.


Jock Mooney - Discontinued, 2009. This was another of my favourites in this exhibition, it was even cooler close up, with all the detail of all the figurines, so bright and random!


John Stark - The Apiary, 2008. This painting was beautiful close up, especially the clouds.


Laura Ford - Boystory 1, 2001. There were a few of these, they were a bit scary, this was my fave of them though.


Next we went to The Book Room, which is a little independant book shop with art on the walls. The current exhibition was "Manchester 89 - 92", by Richard Davis. "A collection of portraits taken in that city during the years between 1989 - 1992 & involves Musicians, Comedians, Poets & Writers. The following are all featured in this exhibition: Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Lemn Sissay, John Thomson, Caroline Aherne, Linda Smith, New Order, John Hegley, Frank Sidebottom, Jon Ronson, Dave Gorman, John Cooper Clarke."

It was hard to take photos in there because it was dark and also the photos had glass infront. They were mainly in black and white, but some were brightly coloured. This one came out ok:


The shop also had a really cool ceiling covered with book pages, it looked so cool:


I had a nice day and really enjoyed the 'Strange Days and Some Flowers' exhibition, there are some exhibitions i visit and think hmm yeah it was ok and there were some good bits but i really enjoyed this whole exhibition. Also it had a cool title. just like this blog entry does now :)

Nice M&S Cod packaging

I went to M&S to get some cod, when I opened the packet and took the fish out I was pleasently surprised by the packaging, on the back of the label on the bottom which shows through the clear packet behind the fish it had newspaper print design on it! So cute! Like in a real chip shop.. well a retro one now because they aren't allowed to use it anymore because of ink.
I thought it was a nice idea for fish packaging anyway.

RAW DEAL! Arnie film!

I was very excited yesterday to notice there was gonna be a Schwarzenegger film on that night which I hadn't seen - woo! I'm a fan of action films, Jean-Claude Van Damme is my fave, I have a big stack of his dvds, then my next fav is Arnie, I don't actually own any of his films though.

Anyway this film on last night was called "Raw Deal" from 1986 (HA! 80's ones are the funniest!). "It's the story of an FBI agent who wants to get revenge against a Mafia organization, and sends a former FBI agent (now small-town sherriff) played by Schwarzenegger to destroy the organization from the inside."


The poster is pretty cool, i like the
SCHWARZENEGGER
SCHWARZENEGGER
SCHWARZENEGGER
SCHWARZENEGGER
SCHWARZENEGGER
SCHWARZENEGGER
in the background fading towards the bottom.


It actually wasn't as good as i'd hoped..:( It did have cool 80's action movie music, and a few lame/awesome Arnie one liners (e.g Don't drink and bake) but it had the potential to be funnier. The fighting scenes were ok but there could have been more of them, there were quite a lot of guns, sometimes when there are gun fights i just start day dreaming, they usually bore me, i much prefer plain old fighting. I got a bit of a feeling of de ja vu because he wears a leather jacket and is quite unanimated like the Terminator..

My favourite scene was in the last half hour of the film, he went to some quarry and rode around in his car shooting loadsssssssa people, to the sound track of Rolling Stones - Satisfaction! HA! Pretty random and awesome. I found a clip of it, skip to about 0.45. Before that it's just him packing his guns and putting his jacket on, so ye if you wanna see his bulging muscles watch from the start:



Whilst writing this entry i'm half watching the 1988 film "My step mother is an alien" on ch5. the Alien has a hat like Guinan! Deffo must have been the fashion in space in the late 1980s.

NORTH EARTH! Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art - Edinburgh day trip

A few weeks ago(i've been too lazy to blog, i started this post weeks ago and didn't finish..til now) i went on a day trip to Edinburgh! I had never been to Scotland before, we got free tickets so that was pretty cool. I was excited at the fact that it was the most Northerly place i'd been on Earth, so i kept referring to it as North Earth, it's a pretty cool name, i think it will catch on. I felt higher up the Earth whilst there, amazing huh.

I was surprised when i got there at how it looked, it wasn't what i expected, i don't know what exactly i was expecting, maybe something along the lines of Scotland in the film Doomsday? haha! There was lots of nice decorative architecture and statues, it reminded me of somewhere like Germany/Switzerland etc although i haven't been to either of those. The castle was cool, it was on top of a big rocky hill, it looked very dramatic, like in films with evil whoever living in it and terrorizing the whole city.
I took quite a lot of photos of lots of random things, here are a few, and there are more on my flickr:



Whilst there i visited the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
When we walked into the gallery the first sculpture we were greeted with was MASSIVE, it was called 'Vulcan'!! but as in the Roman god of fire not as in the green blooded aliens..tsk. It was taller than 2 floors, it looked like a big tin man kinda thing.. but not, and definitely no sign of pointy ears haha.
You weren't allowed to take photos in there but i jotted down some pieces i found interesting, i've found images of them online:

Paolozzi - Vulcan, 1999:



Edith Rimmington - The Decoy, 1948: This seemed interesting, strange and delicate.


Magritte - La Representation, 1937: I thought this was really unusual and liked that the frame followed the image's shape.



F.E McWilliam - Kneeling Woman, 1947. I thought this was just cool and uncanny.



John Bellany - Lapdog, 1973: Again.. just a bit weird and interesting and i like the brush strokes.



Francesca Woodman - Untitled 1975 - 1980: I've seen some of her work before and liked it so it was interesting to see it in a gallery, i liked these pieced which she had given to her boyfriend and had notes on them.



Vija Celmins - Night Sky #19, 1998: This artist had very delicate woodcuts, and the ones of stars and space attracted me at first, they were very nice up close especially.



Vija Celmins - Ocean Surface Woodcut, 1992:



Damien Hirst - Away From The Flock, 1994: This was cool to look at close up, to see the tics in its fur and its fur sticking out as if floating in space.



I'm glad i visited the gallery but there have been lots more galleries/exhibitions i've enjoyed much more than this one.

Can robots be artists?

I went to see Terminator Salvation on Wednesday, I REALLY enjoyed it. It was very loud, had loads of explosions, and machines EVERYWHERE! Very exciting ALL the way through, and quite scary, It was only a 12a but.. I am a total wimp. Terminators just scare me..it's the future!

(Incase you have been asleep for the past 25 years, the concept of the Terminator films is that in the near future super computers will have become so intelligent they no longer need humans and will be able to self create and manufacture themselves etc. In Terminator the supercomputer which started it all was built by Skynet, when it became self-aware, humans got scared at its power and tryed to shut it down and failed. The machines started a war against all humans to try and eliminate them to protect it's existance. It began creating super strong autonomous robot soldiers - Terminators.)



There are quite a lot of scenes within Skynet base which is cool because it was all designed soley by machines [YES I KNOW IT'S NOT REAL] well actually designed by art directors/set directors or whoever of the film but anyway it got me thinking. If machines did take over the world, what would architecture and design be like? This is what the art/set directors would of had to think about, it interests me too.
You would think the machines would go for pure functionality and maximum efficiency, that sounds logical right. There were scenes in the 'Terminator factory' assembly line areas which look probably right, kinda dark and dirty etc. I like that there are wires kinda hanging down and no 'Warning! Hard hats and goggles must be worn in this area' signs etc haha.



And even though its quite simple and probably meant to be all just for function it all looks really cool. I often wanna make things far too complicated, maybe I should take some tips, simplicity. Thats what everyone always says isn't it 'back to basics'.



As well as the assembly line, there were also scenes in more bright areas of Skynet base such as:


I realise why visuals of 'the future' in films/TV don't usually veer too much off the idea we are use to because we don't know what it will really be like and so they stick to the norm so we recognise it and the art/set directors will have been aware of this and playing to this such as bright, clean, clinical looking, futuristic rooms. But would robots and machines 'care' about paint on the walls etc like in these images?

You would think machines would find chrome wall plating fine or whatever, why waste time and energy with paint and wall coverings afterall, so it's more aesthetically pleasing? The machines became self aware, what else did they become are of, beauty?



Maybe painted walls have other advantages, stop the glare of just chrome walls? keep the place a bit warmer? White/grey wall covering makes the place a bit brighter so the machines can view things more efficiently? Those are the only logical reasons I can come up with off the top of my head.
White/grey walls and fixtures may not seem very adventurous but still the colour is a decision which had to be made. Maybe it was just at the top of the list of colour options? ha! Maybe i'm looking into this too deeply. No i'm not, details matter.
Maybe white/grey pigment is easiest to get hold of/create? It may be easier for them to recycle metal and just melt things down, things wouldn't be perfect and white then though. I think the whole place would be really patchy coloured looking, all sorts of colours!

But of course this all could have been built before the machines took over and the design decisions were made by humans.. doubtful though.

Can the machines understand design and make aesthetic decisions? They would have access to so much information from all over, the internet etc, so sure they can study design I suppose and maybe try and follow design rules just like if you programme something and give it instructions and certain perameters to work within but I don't think they could actually be creative.
Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is an android and creates art, anyone can, but his decisions in art are based on his study of a long history of art from lots of cultures.
They could maybe think through endless possibilities of design decisions but how could they judge what is aesthetically best.
How can humans actually? No one is right, it's all relative to different peoples opinions. There is no right and wrong, or is there? Some say it's a science, maybe it can be learnt by robots.

It still may be hard for them to apply their design knowledge to new situations, I think they would struggle, I don't think Skynet base would look so nice. They may try and create Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen-bots but will fail. Maybe they will capture designers and keep them as slaves in a cage. We joke that designers are the last thing people need in a recession but we may be the only valuable thing to machines in the future, so hey designers that may be our fate, slaves for robots...



Once the machines had reached their objective to wipe out all humans, then what would they do? Take up watercolours like retired people do when they have more time on their hands. It is possible!

If i hang upside down, will my nails grow faster?

I was just about to complain at my (self-induced) short nails, and tell myself to stop biting them, then i thought this up.


It is a gross thing nail biting, i have a green post-it note on my wall saying

SHAUNA, STOP BITING YOUR NAILS!!! x

from me, its stuck on the wall behind my laptop (amongst the many many colourful post-it notes stuck in that area) so i see it everyday, and hopefully i will subconsciously get the message. It's been there months. It's not worked. YET.
So this is the new plan, hanging upside down in caves.. or anywhere. The caves part is just for dramatic visual effect, stalag tights and bats are more interesting than lampshades. Well the lampshades in this house anyway. which i think are all plain and made from paper and are torn.

Squashed Mystery Rodent

I was on the way to uni and the bus stopped in traffic, out of the window i noticed a squashed mystery rodent (i hope it was a rodent and not a cat, i don't think it was a cat, it really was squashed out of all recognition), it made me sad anyway. And i thought about it for the rest of the day, as it was on my mind, and as a mark of respect for the mystery rodent, i made this picture.


It's not macabre, (well if it is, thats just life) its like a gravestone, to mark the memory of this mystery rodent.
I have no idea what the rodent looked like, but it possibly looked like the rodent ghost i have drawn floating to rodent heaven. Yes i am aware it looks a bit like a duck billed platypus without a bill. And no it's not a peanut with arms, legs and teeth.

R.I.P Squashed Mystery Rodent :'(

Dirty little secret...

Q U E S T I O N M A R K S .

I really like question marks, they are aesthetically pleasing to me. It is a shame they get ignored so much. Yes people write and/or type them but they are rarely talked of! They are like a dirty little secret.
I know in some places when people are saying something that is a question and would have a question mark at the end if it were written down, their voice goes higher at the end, but it's just not good enough.
I sometimes say the say then say the question mark at the end, it's much nicer :)
such as, What do you think about this matter question mark.

:)

?

p.s oh yes the same applies to exclamation marks too! see, i almost forgot it then, this is what happens, poor question and exclamation marks, i bet they cry at night. Same with some other punctuation, but i don't care as much about them, coz i'm mean like that!