The patron saint of Eurodance

Found art: author unknown but fond of Eiffel 65.

Leonardo da Vinci on originality

From an essay by Joseph Bronowski on Leonardo in The Penguin Book Of The Renaissance, quoting a passage in one of his notebooks.

'The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the work of others as his standard; but if he will apply himself to learn from the objects of nature he will produce good results. This we see was the case with the painters who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each other, and from age to age their art steadily declined... it is safer to go direct to the works of nature than to those who have imitated from her originals with great determination and thereby to accquire a bad method, for he who has access to the fountain does not go to the water-pot.'

I'm not sure I'd subscribe to as thorough-going a naturalism, but I agree with him on the limits of mere imitation of other artists.

"Look at me, I'm Joseph B..."

FULL OF CON-CEP-TUAL-ITY!

Hugo Awards: a quick canter through the visual arts pt 1

By way of light relief after all those novel reviews, I powered through the visual arts categories in the Hugo's over the weekend. They don't seem to have been in the literary and political crossfire quite as much as the rest of the shortlist, so here is the first part of a quick look before heading back to the books.

Best Professional Artist

Big thanks to Geeky Library, who have kindly provided links to all the nominated artists and their portfolios here.

A confession: I am not the world's biggest fan of realistic figurative art in fantasy and SF. Too much of it tends towards the technically proficient but otherwise uninteresting. I prefer my genre art to have something of the surreal or the sublime about it. 

There's a longer piece buried in that statement taking in early twentieth century modern art and the awesomeness of paperback SF covers from the 60's and 70's, with a side order of the male gaze problem. But it would be long, intermittently grumpy, and probably besides the point for now.

At any rate, the artist nominated who best approximated my preferences on the shortlist (especially with her wonderful Beneath The Surface) was last year's winner Julie Dillon. The other nominees - with one exception - were all the right side of competent but personally didn't do anything for me.

The exception - Carter Reid's Zombie Nation webcomic - presented an apples and oranges problem. Its art was acceptable for the format, but just wasn't on the same level as the other contenders in this category who, after all, do book and magazine illustrations for a living. So I'm going to chalk this one up to a category error by the voting slate campaigns and move on.

Speaking of the slates - it's worth noting in passing here that Julie Dillon was the only non-slate nominee in this category. As it happens, I also felt that she was the best. I have some thoughts on this, but not enough data, so I'll hold off on the pontification until I've gone back to the books.

Best Fan Artist

Again, examples of all artists' work at Geeky Library.

This category was something of an anomaly, as it was completely untouched by the voting slates. I liked best Spring Schoenhuth's steampunk and SF-nal jewelry. But an honourable mention goes to Ninni Aalto's rabbits.

Wednesday in a pink dress

Eugène Amaury Duval - Portrait d'Isaure Chassériau (from the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Rennes)

This was our favourite piece of art in the whole museum - a fantastic feeling of poise, intelligence and control radiating from it.

Augmented reality videos and notes

"Sight" – short film by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo

As good a fictional illustration of far-flung augmented reality as any - the supplementing of what you see by data or visual effect and the potential for the 'gamification' of everyday life. Their take on the 'creep' factor of AR is less about the potential for the de facto alteration of reality, more the availability of your personal information to other individuals (although presumably we'd get a lot more sophisticated about privacy too)

And here's a 3D public digital sculpture tour in Brighton using AR

 

 ...and something similar with a dinosaur exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada

Digital street art: Interesting less for the practice (woo! we can virtually doodle on buildings! thank you vodka corporation!) and more for the principle of decoration/transformation of the real.

A writing idea - Thresholds

One of the standout points from the Doctorow/Stross collaboration Rapture of the Nerds is that the Internet, and therefore the post-singularity Cloud, is not an aesthetically pleasing place to be.

Think about it - what proportion of websites are genuinely well designed, let alone works of art? Think of the distractions of adverts, pop ups, animations? Have MMORPG's, or Second Life, contributed any more than beautifully drawn kitsch?

Augmented reality - adding visuals (but also data and sound) through a phone, tablet, or some time soon just glasses - provides more artistically interesting possibilities.

While at the moment, the augmented reality (AR) industry seem to be talking about everyday overlays, displaying useful data when you need it, its the artistic applications that leap out at me.

What if you could create a space (or spaces) which were a combination of AR, real-life art installation and performance space? The vision of one or more collaborators? Artists, programmers, dramaturges, pyschologists all coming together to create a space which offered a singular vision or cracked mirror to supplement or ... perhaps ultimately replace 'real' life?

The visions of the interwar surrealism made a reality? Life as cabaret? Quasi deranged theme-parking? Perhaps.

Link it to gaming (whether MMO or LARP) and you have the potential for a second tier of collaboration through alternative personae. Living the steampunk dream 24-7, anyone?

At the moment I'm calling these spaces 'thresholds', as the participant passes from a subliminal space (beyond the point at which all these AR cues are invisible) into a superliminal space where the imaginary is manifest.

Will I get any writing out of this? Will it do for my NaNoWriMo attempt? Only one way to find out...

A final piece of wisdom from The Event

From the Lombard Method exhibition, a piece of philosophy I can get behind.

Who's for continuing adventures?

I went to The Event and all they gave me was a toffee hammer

Here is a photo-report from The Event, the annual collaborative art festival in a 1,000 temporary and permanent exhibition spaces around Digbeth.

During The Event over the past fortnight the area temporarily became so hip, when I checked into my local cafe on Foursquare someone else was actually there.

First - Guerilla Gastronomy - a mysterious box found to contain ...


































... all the necessary ingredients for strawberries and cream with meringue. Note safety goggles - only try Guerilla Gastronomy under Art Supervision.

Thanks to Art, I am now also the proud owner of a meringue-smashin' toffee hammer; another life victory realised.

Here are my faves from the rest of the art tour I undertook with my esteemed colleague - at least those of which I could take a half decent photograph.

A most excellent piece of art (Ben Rowe/Laura Skinner)




















Retro on several levels

Stephen Cornford's wall of vintage tape-recorders making like a steam train (if they'd have made the tuneful crackle of a Spectrum game loading then it'd be some kind of creepy nostalgia trap and I've have never left)















And finally

For those who wondered what Birmingham Central Library will look after The Apocalypse, we now have an answer. James Fowkes, your diorama could only be more awesome if you had monkeys or zombies in it. Or zombie monkeys.

Best (only?) comic about the Venerable Bede ever!

What better way to start off my new blog than with this Bede comic, courtesy of John Allison, author of the mighty Bad Machinery and Scary Go Round. Howay!