Saturday, August 23, 2008

SP08 (part 1)

for the first time, the semi-permanent design conference was held over two days this year. and that really is too much to talk about in one post, so i'm going to break it up into two with a third part that talks about my personal response.

the day launched with marion bantjes from canada - one of the best speakers first up. she presented really well and showed us some lovely work. her trademark style is lots of curvy lines.

she was followed by design by pidgeon from australia. this was real solid work by david pidgeon with some nice ideas. the session wasn't hugely rivetting from an entertainment point of view and included a lot of discussion about the australian pavillion at the venice benninal.

after lunch it was joel gethin lewis and i was tremendously excited about hearing him after he spoke on behalf of uva last year. this welsh kid is an absolute genius - and i think i might mean that literally. having told us about the work he did with uva for massive attack and the interactive regent street christmas lights, he went on to tell us about his new projects involving utlising open source software in visual art and media. some other things about lewis: he got a job as a game interactivity tester when he was 14, worked for ibm when he was 17, and has a science degree and a fine arts degree.

then it was collider from australia with designer andrew van der westhuyzen presenting. this was fairly well presented and i particularly enjoyed discussion about the work they did for the mtv australia awards which including a very cool photo shoot using high speed cameras.

after afternoon tea we heard from the wilderness and it was blimin' nice to hear some nz voices. this was co-presented by a guy named kelvin who i once had coffee with to talk about an alternative christian arts magazine idea (which as far as i know never eventuated). so it's interesting to see that he's become one of nz's finest designers.

and the day was rounded out by toxi (aka karsten schmidt). this session was a real mind-bender. schmidt does all his design by source code. so instead of drawing something in illustrator or photoshop he writes computer code that draws the object by itself. he is big on creating randomised elements. he was adament that we should all go out and learn how to program so that we could get on that wave. it was also a very philosophical talk and i'm going to put him in the genius catagory too, and maybe even the mad scientist sub-catagory. while it's unlikely that many of the designers there will go out and start creating the way he does, it was nice to have the framework of our brains stretched.

and there was morning and evening - the first day. i'll review day two in the next post.

some images (in order of appearance):

Thursday, August 21, 2008

jamie strange let loose in the wild

i'm still procrastinating about posting about the things i was going to post about. but other interesting things keep coming up.

i should have mentioned that we finally finished work on the album art for jamie strange's album - he's had some copies printed up and is unleashing it on the music world as we speak.

i think he has achieved something pretty cool with this album - he's showed incredible determination in seeing the project to this point and deserves plaudits for this. i should be focussing on his work with the album, but instead i'm going to get all egotistical about it and point out my own appearances on the album. apart from working on the album artwork with my esteemed colleague mr roland bart ebbing, i also have a couple of tasty vocal appearances.

jamie gave his album to hamilton student radio station max fm and they have added three of his tracks to their playlist - two of those tracks have me on them... a brief punk vocal on 'rockstar clone' (currently max fm's most requested song) and some spoken word on 'screaming without words'. you can visit the playlist page here. but because it will change one day i've immortalised the moment here (click on it to make it bigger):

and because i know you're anxious to know what words i speak on 'screaming without words', here is a transcript (i wrote them especially for the song):

All the time I thought you knew, compressed by this distorted voice
My silent world drowned out by the city's long low hum, and groans that words can't express
The sound of traffic with our conscious minds
My stream of conscious thought against my subconscious thought
I wrestle with this dark angel morning through night
'Til night fades and is carried away by dawn
All the time I thought you knew, all the time I thought
And here it all begins to fade away
I'm screaming without words to say

i'll post some images from the jamie strange artwork in a later post...

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

guitar hero

i've got a billion little things in mind that i want to post about - for one thing i got back from the semi permanent design conference on monday, and i want to review that. and i've come across some more star wars stuff. and more cool stuff. and i've got loads of movie stills. i guess i'm just going to have to try and post stuff more regularly.

but instead of posting about any of those things, i'd like to draw your attention to a particularly nice piece of music/video from my friend mark laurent who is a particularly fine guitarist...

here it is now:

Sunday, August 03, 2008

movie still 2

here's the second installment of 'movie still'. this time a little bit of kubrick magic, and no matter what anyone says about space odyssey 2001 it is undoubtedly a stunning film visually. i got so lost in the visuals that i only remembered to capture a few frames - but virtually every shot in that film could be captured - especially once the film moves beyond the annoying apeman opening scenes. my favourite shot is the last one below...