Art Pete Pete Ashton is (becoming) an artist
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Koyaanisqatsi Average Pixels
After the IMG_4228 experiments I was pointed by Hannah to Jason Salavon’s work, reducing frames of a movie down to 1 pixel and displaying them in sequence. It’s similar in ways to the movie barcodes but visually closer to my final piece. So I thought I’d give it a go. I’d recently gotten around to [...]
IMG_4228 Average Pixel Canvas
After the last post I was going to leave this for a day or so but I couldn’t help having a go. The natural next step for me, having gathered a bunch of photos together, was to pixelate them in some manner. I tried a basic 12×12 but it didn’t do much other than create [...]
IMG 4228 Flickr Dump
After slicing through YouTube using the filename IMG_4228 I thought I’d try the same with Flickr. As you might expect there are a lot more items on Flickr that haven’t been renamed from that machine-generated filename, 30,118 at the time of writing with 4 or 5 being added each day. My plan was to download [...]
IMG 4228 Desktop Players
This is a work in progress. Other itterations of this project may emerge in time. I recently uploaded a video to YouTube straight from my camera. The filename was “IMG_4228.mov” and I didn’t change it immediately. By the time I did the suggested videos in the sidebar included a significant number titled IMG 4228. I [...]
Pixel Hunt
I’ve been experimenting recently with cropping tiny details from photographs and blowing them up to A3 dimensions. It’s still a work in progress as I haven’t actually had any A3 prints made (that will be the proof) but I’m pleased with the process so far. A couple of days ago I saw a non-fox hunt [...]
Laptop Scratch
My Macbook battery gave up the ghost this weekend so I ordered a new one. On replacing it I noticed all the scratches caused by four years of constant use on a wide variety of surfaces. I thought it might be interesting to record them for posterity and investigate them further so I scanned the [...]
Undertow
A video from 2010 which was done as a test but which I think holds up well. Using my old TTV contraption I tracked a sailboat as it moved across Edgbaston Reservoir taking 2-3 photos every second. Next I layered them in photoshop and matched the horizons. Saving each layer as an image I then [...]
Bees Under The House
A short film from last year when we discovered a nest of relatively endangered bumble bees were nesting under our floorboard. They came and went through a airbrick which I positioned a video camera in front of. While the bees are pleasing I’m also interested in the fixed unblinking gaze and the ambient suburban sounds.
Pixel Dawn
An accident that is more interesting for the reasons I find it interesting that in itself. Occurred during the process of making this.
H Lucier
A few things have been coming my way recently, feeding into my notions of art and aesthetics. The principle one was the GLI.TC/H festival my friend Antonio Roberts curated in Birmingham last month where I did the video/photography stuff. I’m still processing the details and wouldn’t want to make any pronouncements, but there’s the seed [...]
TTV sale at People Shop this Christmas
I’m selling off my small framed TTV prints at The People Shop in Kings Heath this Christmas. Previously £15 each they’re now £10 which, a saving of 33.333%. People have the core range shown above plus loads more I made on a whim - eighty five 5″ frames in total, each print signed in silver [...]
In Parks
The other day James at Stan’s Cafe posted something about parks, noting there were 500 of them in Birmingham. The council website says 600 though this includes “public open spaces” which, as Emma pointed out, means patches like this. View Larger Map I was quite taken by the number, which is large and yet still [...]
The Experimental Camera Club
Update: There’s a wiki page from Fizzpop for people to register an interest in the Experimental stuff and seekrit talks have begun on the beginners stuff. It’s all go! So the TTV workshop with Fizzpop didn’t happen. One person signed up and we needed at least 10 to break even. I’ve thought long and hard [...]
FizzPop TTV workshop in September
In June I ran a series of workshops for the Cadbury College AS Level Photography class. These went rather well and pushed me towards running one with Birmingham’s emerging hackerspace FizzPop. We have a venue, have settled on a price and a date and are now taking bookings. Yay! The 3 hour workshop will take [...]
Mostly dancing to jazz
I was once again grateful to be asked to record the Mostly Jazz Festival in Moseley after producing last year’s grid. Sadly a tedious chesty thing kept me away for most of it though I did manage a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon. Determined to give them something I rattled off a few sequences [...]
TTV Workshop at Cadbury College
I was recently asked by Julie Swinsco, the Photography tutor at Cadbury College, Birmingham, to come in and talk to the AS Photography students at the end of their year. Getting an artist in to give a different perspective than the teachers is something they try and do for every subject in the art/crafts department [...]
TTV Workshop - the photos
I ran three workshops at Cadbury College this week where the AS Photography students built a TTV contraption and took photos. In this post I want to show them off and share a small selection of my favourites. Here’s all of them in one big grid. Click on it to see them at a reasonably [...]
Takedown Time
The problem with putting paid work on hold last month was I had to do a fair amount of paid work this month, which is fine but it did distract me from the last couple of weeks of the installation, and already it’s time for it to go. It’s been an interesting experience, all told. [...]
The perils of public art
If you’re not careful someone will stick a toilet in front of it. Pic courtesy of Steve. The piece comes down next week. Look for an update soon.
Cartier-Bresson in his own words
Caught this the other night and found it most inspirational. Which is not too surprising as Cartier-Bresson is one of those “masters” people tell you about. He’s particularly interesting because he’s something of a street photographer who really plays with the rules of photography and composition and it was fascinating to hear he considered himself [...]
Nice pano, Chris
Chris Hathway’s train bus was delayed so he checked out the exhibition and made this lovely panorama of Lucy’s work and my holes. Click for bigger. I particularly like how it uses the scaffolding on the right, as well as how it’s delightfully imperfect in the joins, cubist style. Good eye, sir.
One of two things to do
According to Birmingham City Council’s Things To Do page there are two highlights of note at the libraries at the moment, and I’m one of them. Thanks BCC web-person-who-is-probably-Simon for the mention!
ASCII videos
I’m 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. Here’s 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 [...]
Feature in Area Magazine
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!