This lovely Ira Glass quote has been floating around the Internet of late. Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, [...]
In two weeks time, at this very time, I’ll be unveiling, or at least formally presenting, my third of the Dead Space exhibition. I’ve got the idea which I like to think I’ve added some depth to, I’ve got most of the kit I need to run it and on Tuesday I move into the [...]
Back from the Easter break and I had a couple of specific tasks to do in the basement. The first was to test the 1:8 VGA splitters I’d gotten from a Chinese eBay seller for £18 each. They’d arrived in the post this morning and looked the business but I’d only be sure once all [...]
Thursday saw me finally getting my hands on some huge sheets of cardboard, carrying it through Digbeth, pausing for a cuppa at We Are Birmingham (which, if you’re not aware, has all my market stock on sale), blundering through central Brum and down into the Library basement. It was time to make things. While I [...]
With the deadline creeping up (three weeks til the opening!) and the sun shining, I thought it might be sensible to start making the work that will go on these monitor-based contraptions. I’ve decided to base most of the pieces around the library, looking at the pedestrian flow of the city. Here’s the first triptych [...]
When I said “200 monitors” back whenever it was Claire and I came up with the idea for this exhibition or show or whatever you call it, it was a number picked out of the air for an notion that hadn’t been tested theoretically, let alone practically. So I’ve been curious to see what the [...]
Today I took my old G4 Mac into the library. On the bus. Which as anyone who’s lucky enough to have owned one of these will know is quite the feat. When Apple put handles on this thing they didn’t mean for it to be carried down the road by them. Computers were made out [...]
I’ve been in the library basement again today, testing 40-odd monitors that Claire delivered. Given their filthy state, fresh from a recycling plant, surprisingly few were broken with just a couple showing no signs of life at all. I quite enjoy scrawling “dead” across the front, like I’m working in CRT triage in the great [...]
Today was my first day in the Central Library basement and the first time I’d had a chance see if notions I’ve been pondering this last month would actually work. The main delivery of 80 monitors, sourced from a basement of an IT department somewhere in Birmingham, is on Friday so the pile that greeted [...]
If you pop over and read this on the website you’ll notice I’ve had a switcharoo. Nothing major, just pared things back a bit to give me some space to experiment. I spent most of 2010 selling my work at markets. It was good and I learned a lot, but over Christmas, when one might [...]