Chris Hathwayâs train bus was delayed so he checked out the exhibition and made this lovely panorama of Lucyâs work and my holes. Click for bigger. I particularly like how it uses the scaffolding on the right, as well as how itâs delightfully imperfect in the joins, cubist style. Good eye, sir.
According to Birmingham City Councilâs Things To Do page there are two highlights of note at the libraries at the moment, and Iâm one of them. Thanks BCC web-person-who-is-probably-Simon for the mention!
Iâm rather taken with ASCIImeo, a little toy which converts videos hosted on Vimeo into ASCII art on the fly. I particularly like what it does to my TTV sequences. Hereâs a the single-panel walk up New St. While the static panels have a certain quality it works best in motion as the walking people [...]
Area Magazine is a free pocket culture guide to Birmingham and the West Mids. You can pick it up in the usual cool and groovy haunts or read it online. Big thanks to Kerry and Dave for the article!
Claire had suggested that, rather than print invites for the launch, we put out a postcard to commemorate the installation and I thought thatâd be nice. Rather than the images on the monitors she wanted a photo of The Contraption in all its cardboard and gaffer-tape glory. The problem was I was finding it incredibly [...]
On Friday afternoon I went into town to do another shoot for the Dead Space installation, intending to have the piece installed on Saturday. It didnât quite work out like that. Rather than shoot from a fixed point I thought Iâd try moving through the city this time, walking from the Rotunda up New St, [...]
Today I was back in the space with my working head on, fixing stuff that had collapsed and installing a new sequence on half the monitors. First I set to work building struts to take the weight of the cardboard. It seemed with the heat of that room (not helped by the updraft from the [...]
Itâs nice when people let you know theyâve checked out your work, even if they use the opportunity to inform you itâs falling down. Thanks Steve. Thanks Nikki. When I popped in on Saturday a couple of other tubes had fallen, which I quickly patched up, so this wasnât a surprise. Gaffer tape is great [...]
Iâm a little drunk but cogent enough to point you towards some photos by Fiona of the final piece, and a video of my talk put to the animation thatâs currently on show. Update: Karenâs uploaded loads of photos of the building process which are most amusing in places. Update 2: Mattâs photos. More to [...]
This morning I spent a bit of time at home plotting and pondering the next couple of days. Iâd gotten permission to stay late in the library (which closes at 8) so there wasnât an urgency to get in. Plus the stuff I was planning to do today didnât need any assistance. Originally I was [...]
Not much to report today other than to thank Liz, James and Karen, along with Matt again, for their help. Today was mostly spent cutting cardboard into long tubes and I very nearly got them all done. Just a couple more to do first thing tomorrow and all the pieces are in place. Which is [...]
Milestones reached today: Computers are all ready. Antonio applied his hackery knowledge to the old PCs weâd acquired (Thanks to Jon Bounds and the Ikon Gallery for donations, and everyone else who offered) and after a couple of hours had them running the Puredyne Linux operating system off CDs with the movie files on a [...]
Weâre into the final stretch. By Thursday afternoon I need to have 32 cardboard cones fitting perfectly between 32 monitors and 32 holes in the window. This involved measuring the distance, slicing cardboard in quadrilaterals of varying sizes and sticking them together with gaffer tape. If you think this is the sort of thing youâd [...]
As I said in the last post, I had to make some compromises on Friday but after theyâd been sorted I mentally signed off my final plan. This is it. Nothing will change now. Hereâs my diagram. And hereâs what I did to the window. The idea is cardboard cowls will connect the monitors to [...]
Yesterday I had a flurry of emails in my inbox cc-ing me into a conversation between the various folks involved in making this thing happen and the chap in charge of making sure the electricity supply to the library isnât b0rked beyond recognition by my work. Heâd some some sums and consulted with the electrician [...]
Next Thursday, May 12th, my exhibition at the Library opens. Thereâll be an event, to which all are welcome, which will start at 6.00pm with glasses of wine and time for “networking”, or as I prefer to call it, “chatting about stuff”. That will go on for half an hour after which there will be [...]
Yesterday Antonio and I moved 37 monitors and related gubbins from the upper basement in the middle of the Central Library (approximately underneath the Weatherspoonâs pub) up to the first floor, through the lending library and down to the space beneath the business centre where Iâll be constructing my… thingy… over the next 8 days. [...]
This evening I popped into the mac on my way home to catch a bit of Little Sister‘s free gig. This Tuesday Tunes is something the mac started running last year and itâs a neat idea, putting on local musicians in the courtyard. In fact itâs where I first saw Little Sister play. Hereâs a [...]