20 Data

Art colleges require staff to tell them why their art is any good. Institutions are only interested in work as an infographic, not prepared to get into the murky worlds of virtually everything art is about. No longer I don’t know what it is but I like it. Context is king. Well of course. 

Can we separate out the art and the life of the artist? Probably not. Do we still have to identify the component parts? Trudging around large blockbuster shows in our national galleries, slow processions of weary humans eventually ignore the paintings and read the cards only. My friend Jim P is adamant audiences should have to pass an exam before getting in. 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-stunning-early-infographics-and-maps-of-the-1800s

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/18/is-fake-data-the-real-deal-when-training-algorithms?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

21 Islands

No man is a… (no no, don’t say it) 

On an island our world is smaller and we feel bigger. I think that’s the basis of it. It is all over art, literature, film, and is supremely romantic. There is a short story by DH Lawrence The Man who Loved Islands that spoofs a chapter in his friend Compton Mackenzie’s life. Compton fell out with him over it. A sad tale of a failed utopia.

I have been on some islands https://youtu.be/dVccOqWjJto 

and https://porty.net/st-kilda 

… and discovered that this music was thought to have been composed by Marion Morrison a few years after the Napoleonic wars in the 1820s. She met a young man - a ‘laird of Islay’ - who visited St Kilda and promised to return the following summer to marry her. Sadly, when he eventually appeared on his fancy yacht in Village Bay, impressively decked out with fake armour, she and the villagers ran away thinking it was a press gang. He sailed home a bachelor.

Fun fact Marion Morrison was John Wayne’s real name. And that suggests a whole ‘nother island story. I made a short film in 2017 inspired by John Ford film The Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Sort of.

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

The Man Who Loved Islands

In Space

22 Ersatz

What a great word. A cousin to quotidian. Both slightly magical sounding but opaque in meaning. Matter-of-fact stuff as metaphor is a useful perspective in process. 

There is some playing with scale… here and here

I have mentioned The Singing Ringing Tree before. Made in a big sound stage at Babelsberg Studios in old East Berlin, it was (unusually for a children’s movie at the time) given a similar budget to a grown-up film. All kinds of things stood for something else. A stand-out prop being that the frozen water in the pond of the giant fish was actually lard. A higher melting point under arc-light.

After WW2, the French government introduced needlework kits to encourage cottage industry self-help. It took off. I bought one of these magic curtains on Ebay, which are able to transform any living room into a rural idyll. 

Rural idylls are what we want, we can even do a short course on it

Although there are rumblings…

https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/tesco-fake-farm-brands-called-out-as-farmers-come-forward

23 Spirit

Genius loci is the intangible quality of a material place, perceived both physically and spiritually. It reveals itself through visible tangible and perceivable non-material features. Having quoted that, it’s interesting to note that archaeologists don’t like it. But we do, don’t we.

I don’t watch horror movies as a rule, although I did get a simple and impressive scare once in a 360° headset when someone crept up behind me. I might try to recreate that for this text afterwards. I don’t have the ley-line bug either. I have had some extraordinary and unexplainable sensations in a few places however. One in the courtyard (sahn) of the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, and another (twice!) much closer to home outside Rosslyn Chapel, famous for the Knights Templar and a scene in The Da Vinci Code. Definitely something. Not sure if it was a crusader flashback. Hope not.

I was out taking photographs yesterday of a strange chimney in the middle of a copse of trees I often see from the 44 bus. Usually in grey overcast light, it always seems significant. Sadly it was a sunny day, I will have to go back. The pic does have a sense of magic. Although I did Google it later and found out it was a vent called a stinkpipe.

Studio Morison https://vimeo.com/52501604

Maaloula https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGofwGl-faM

24 Competition

Eyes on the prize. History is written by the victors. I want your wife.

You’re not getting her! One of my wife’s many attractions is her (apparent) lack of ego, and reluctance to compete. It is something I am learning from her… although I’m not there yet. A psychology major and devotee of Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis, this approach to life has been a constant in all the time I have known her, and it still impresses.

Bruce Mau says… 26. DON’T ENTER AWARDS COMPETITIONS.

Just don’t. It’s not good for you. https://brucemaustudio.com/projects/an-incomplete-manifesto-for-growth/

Ambition is a different thing. I currently run a large postgraduate course at Edinburgh College of Art. Every semester myself and colleagues review hundreds of applications to get on MA. The portfolios seem to be getting much better. It is relatively subjective. They just want in. About a month ago I suggested to a student that she should watch a film I had just discovered in its entirety, in a good print, on Youtube. The Red Balloon. Well, it may be coincidence, and the whole world is watching the same things of course, but an application popped in three weeks later extolling the virtues of this very movie. I’m guessing social media. Yes, the portfolios are getting better at high speed now. Soon they may not need to do the course.

It has always amazed me, and taking the RA and Scottish RSA Summer shows as an example, that if art can be anything, how come it looks like that? Or is this more coincidence?

https://catrionawindle.weebly.com/

https://www.lifehack.org/325964/8-reasons-why-people-without-heart-compete-are-more-motivated-life

Pace it https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/13/vote-now-painted-snail-and-shipworm-vie-for-mollusc-of-the-year-title-aoe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Now let’s see if you can get three arrows in the middle like I didn't, and 100 points for the balloon…