Durham Lumiere festival 2011

Sadly I didn't manage to actually see witness the Lumiere Festival in Durham, i was one weekend too lat.e However after been told of the beautiful things that had gone on by my brother, I checked it out on the internet. Incredible illustration by projection artist Ross Ashton covered Durham Cathedral. It was imagery drawn from the Lindesfarne Gospels and inside the cathedral itself.

But it wasn't just the Cathedral that was illuminated, all over Durham there were light instillations beaming far and wide through the darkness of the small city by many different artists.

Walter Hood lit up the entire forest that runs alongside the River Wear.
Verity Quinne and bethan Maddocks created banners inspired by Durhams mining industry illuminating Durhams history in neon light.

In contrast there are installations that illuminate the present. I love this idea of a group from Belgium to visualise the communication and information passed across Durham when electromagnetic waves are transmitted. Through infrared rays, Binary Waves capture the information and turn it into a light, sound and colour displayed on fourty panels in a wave determined by the mirco-events.

These are just a few of 35 light installations displayed all around Durham.
Check out their website to see them all. I'm just so impressed by the range of ideas and innovative visuals that lit up the skies. I'm certainly not missing that next year.

http://www.lumieredurham.co.uk/programme/installations/les-voyageurs-(the-travellers)/

more synesthesia-i can't get enough

I've already blogged a bit on synesthesia but to continue this interest, here is a video my friend steffan linked to me, a beautiful and fantastically imaginative way of trying to reproduce/explain/show synesthesia-almost a contradictory task to do using all our senses. I would love to know what a person with severe synesthesia thinks of it, could they totally relate to it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHnnGHgeyC0

Alvin Diec

I have never been much of a poster designer myself, I can't say it comes very naturally to me, however after completing my first poster design brief, my avoidance of poster design went out the window. Poster analysis is great. It's the same as dissecting a painting and I found it fascinating. Suddenly this world of alignment and typography is becoming addictive. I am quite a fan of this graphic designers work-Alvin Diec. I found him on a great blog called bumbumbum. Here are my favourite pieces of his work. His simplicity and careful placement of form and type are so beautiful and perfect, I feel the same emotions towards them that I do when looking at a delicate piece of ceramics.

HERE-----http://bumbumbum.me/2011/08/22/alvin-diec-poster-design/  is the link to Alvin Diec on bumbumbum

HERE-----http://www.alvindiec.com/indexhibit/ is a link to Diec's website.

Bubblesssssss

I took these pictures a while back on Southbank. A man and women were entertaining the masses with huge bubble nets. I got a few snapshots. When I rediscovered them today I did a bit of cropping and  hey presto. I think they are quite beautiful.

Can't get enough of London

Had a very happy snappy day in London at the weekend. Beautiful light, and the crisp air was beautiful. 

Synesthesia

Here is a blog entry on Booooom that really excited me today. 


http://www.booooooom.com/2011/11/11/synesthesia-a-union-of-the-senses/#more-32123



 A group called 'Yours Truly are setting up a project called Synesthesia. Synesthesia is a a neurological condition that produces the rare ability to experience separate senses simultaneously, the difference between imagery and sound are not easily identified. Artist Yuri Suzuki has been featured in the project because of her work making physical objects and installation reconnect back to their physical origins. Her piece featured on this booooom post I find most interesting is her links of drawing to sound. This small box below emits different sounds depending on the colouration on the page around it. 

I did my own experimentation last year on my art class with abstract drawing to music. The correlation of doodle interpretation to different genres was really. 


These markings were were the most commonly drawn when visually describing...

Ambient

 

Classical 

Jazz

Rock

So much scope for exploration here.

Tatlin's Tower at the Royal Academy

Even through a tiny slither of the grande entrance of the Royal Academy I recognized Tatlin's tower, despite the fact that to my knowledge it was a monument of the past that shouldn't exist, especially not in London where there hasn't been a communist revolution. Well not just yet. I studied it briefly years ago, yet even now, my immediate recognition is definitely a compliment to the incredible tower, not my memory.

In fact it wasn't Tatlins tower. It was a replica of what Tatlin wanted his tower to be, 1:40 of the planned size. Tatlin’s monument to the 3rd International would have been a symbol to the revolution, to a new century of progression and. the brotherhood of communism. Every aspect of it’s being symbolic of future change. An incredible feat of engineering is what now stands in the courtyard of the Royal Academy. A steel replica created from two of Tatlin's drawings, completed by Chris Milan and Jeremy Dixon at the Royal Acadamy. It is a fraction of what Talin wanted and does not even revolve but the remarkable feat of its construction just proves the impractical dreams of Tatlin and his contemporaries. 

However after I went to a talk on Saturday 12th November at the Royal Academy with Lutz Becker and Kate Goodwin, Drue Heinz Curator of Architecture on the construction of the monument, I don’t think Tatlin ever intended to try and make the tower full scale. Becker and Goodwin talked about the construction and the remarkable nature of the tower in depth, it’s whole concept and the imagination of the structure is fascinating. Perhaps Tatlin’s intention was never to build it full scale, perhaps he already knew it wasn’t possible, but he planted an exciting seed of a better new life in everybody's mind. It was a goal they would strive towards for future generations to complete. In addition, the fact that the this monument is near impossible to realize, yet even now, there is such a obsession for this construction, whether you are communist or not, proves the power it holds.

This montage by Chris Milan sums it up for me, the scale was almost unimaginable until I saw this. The monstrosity looks totally ridiculous yet strangely appealing..

Beautiful maps

I came across this lovely map at the Vintage stall on Southbank for £5. There is a lot of crap on those tables but in amongst it are some jewels. This map of the New Forest and Isle of Wight is from around the 1880s. I was attracted to it because of the interesting content, (I love to read maps), but mostly the textiles and design. Being 'disected and mounted on cloth', its lovely to handle, not awkward and crumply like modern paper maps. No noisy paper scrunching, no battle to refold it correctly, in which normally I loose. It is pleasant to feel, the strays of cotton and all, and lovely to look at. I like the typography because it is very clear, concise and charming. There is a strange mixture of colours and papers but it's biggest negative is the fact it misses by house by just a couple of miles. Bit annoying.

All this nakedness!

So I showed my flatmate Gabi my previous post of the kissing album covers that I posted not too long ago. For Gabi, the Washed out album cover reminded her a lot of the iconic photograph taken of Kate Moss and Johnny Depp when they were dating. This is undoubtably an extremely loving and sexual, but in no way a dirty photo. It's beautiful.

It also reminded me of Manet's painting of a prostitute-Olympia painted in 1863. This subject and style of painting was radical for it's time. Confrontational and shocking in subject, it caused uproar, and was condemned as vulgar and immoral. Through this painting Manet not only questioned painting subject; only goddesses were painted naked during this time, not 'imperfect' women, but he also confronts societies attitude towards prostitution, it was rife but never talked about. He highlights this taboo using stark lighting, Olympia's confrontational stare and and her 'imperfect' naked form.

What a long way we've come...

halloween

This is pretty amazing i think. Not so sure about the music but the visual is very satisfying! Film by Devin Graham, music written by Stephen Anderson.

One afternoon for Berlin

I had one afternoon to explore Berlin, We raced around the city exploring all the top sights like the Reichstag, and Brandenburg Gate. We took Europe's fastest elevator up Panoramaounkt in Potsdamer square. I played the absolute tourist and was totally taken in my the beautiful lights in Potsdamer Place as it grew dark.
Even though the architecture is incredibly dominating and defensive and unfriendly, I just love the chunky shapes, especially from above looking at the flat rooftops and jigsaw of grouped buildings.

The Messe Berlin

As the locals and any visiter will comment, Berlin's most obvious characteristic is its scale. Everything is monumental and spacious in Berlin, the roads are wide and the buildings huge. For a visiter it takes a while to understand how long it takes to get places compared to London or Paris. The Messe Berlin, my place of work for three days, is a prime example of this. The security guard told me it takes fortyfive minutes to walk around half of it.
It's an uninspiring yet interesting building. A venue for temporary conferences, shows and exhibitions, it was very plain and clinical, chunky and severe.

Routes Airport conference

I went to Berlin at the weekend to hand out magazines at Routes, an annual international airline conference. I can't say i'm interested in planes or airlines, I read one article from 'Airline Business Daily' magazine I handed out. However the actual conference was fascinating. Airports from all around the world set up a very glamorous stands full of beautiful air stewards and freebies, from pens and badges to massages, cocktails and alcoholic shots. The architecture, design and advertising of the different stands was very telling.

Vegas surprised me...pretty poor representation, a flashing badge was the best you got there.

Changi airport. Pretty but always empty and had to compete with Prague next door.

Prague Airport, hub of the airshow, perhaps because of the free wee, massages, beer and DJ..fun but tacky.

 Prague airport- 'where everything takes off'- horrible structure, horrible advertising but free bottle of indistinguishable spirit.

Just the contrasts between all the different stands crammed together in huge halls was bizarre, a fun experience.

There was only one piece of advertising that I actually thought was any good and it was here at the OMA airport stand. It's clever an visually interesting.