Radio Arcadia
A ramble. Which is how it all started.
A walk through the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Adam Hoyle coding me a sound engine for a client, having a studio in the garden, these elements all conjoined in my creating Radio Arcadia a couple of years back…
An audio tape of birdsong from the Wiltshire garden of Digital One’s chairman has been used as the test transmission for various digital radio stations since it’s recording in the spring of 1992.
When it was last taken off air three years ago, the broadcaster was surprised to find it had dedicated listeners voicing complaint.
Radio Arcadia is my gift to all office and cubicle workers. Play gently. Escape.
For those of you without speakers it boils down to me tweaking Adam’s audio engine to generate an endless stream of British bird song.
Skip to the summer, news reaches Adam and I that radio birdsong has finally been taken off the air (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8076381.stm), Adam asks if I would mind if he, in return, tweaked the code back, and ported it to the iPhone.
Which he does, asks me for a logo, and sends it into Apple for approval. Apple vet every application for inclusion in the iTunes store. We get a reply.
Subject: BirdSongFM 1.0: Application Submission Feedback
Dear Mr.Hoyle,
We’ve reviewed your application BirdSongFM and we have determined that this application contains minimal user functionality and will not be appropriate for the App Store.
So it appears that if it hasn’t got a slider it’s no good. Dear Mr Mondrian, perhaps if the viewer were given a felt tip…
I particularly like Apple’s next line in the reply, “If you would like to share it with friends and family, we recommend …” Thanks Apple, I’m sure my mother will be very proud of me too.
So it seems that the iPhone is a closed platform. Adam is muttering about adding a tweet intensity control, but I for one think it may have ended for the best since I really hate the icon I drew, and publish it here to chastise myself for so fucking cute. Should have stuck to my guns too and called it Radio Arcadia.
Oh, and I learnt through the power of Google that Iggy sings “radio burning up above” and not radio birdland, although I kind of prefer my misheard version.
Christmasses
London, October 2009
Sometimes you can reel off a load of shots only to find it’s the initial test image that has it all…
Carlo Mollino
I feel I’ve come to the party too late. And what a fantastic party it would have been. Until June there has been an exhibition of Carlo Mollino’s work here in London. And I found at about him last weekend.
Chatting at the lab about lo-fi erotica with fellow rock Holgist Brian from www.letthemeatcoal.com, waiting for our clip tests to develop, he asks if I like the work of Mr Mollino. Ignorance. Google to the rescue.
Carlo Mollino is a well renowned furniture designer and architect, noted for his lavish interiors with attention to handcrafted detail, as well as respected photographer. But beyond that he lived a life with an sybaritic exuberance that reads like a Scott Fitzgerald playboy.
Here’s a quick round-up of his endevours aside from the above: winning the 24-hour race at La Mans is a car of his own design; writing a book on his own techniques for downhill skiing; aviator and engineer of airplane parts; publishing a thesis on photography, using extensive retouching techniques to match the photographic reality to his mind’s fantasy. He wrote…
Everything is allowed, imagination is always saved
He had built an elaborate room to die in and hence be carried on into the afterlife, other sources suggest he was an occultist, drug user and sex addict but these have only ‘internet substantiation’ so far. But the icing on the tiered cake for me is, when the executors of his will started clearing his house they uncovered hundreds of erotic polaroids and photographs shot over twenty years.
The polaroids must have given him a freedom to pursue this private pastime as the imagery gets bolder. He hired local Turin prostitutes to pose in meticulously posed scenarios, using new models for each shot. Their beauty and pathos I think emerge from the fact that although this were clandestine and risque, he was not capturing them as pornography to masturbate over, nor as trophy photos of conquests; they were shot intended as erotic art if just for his personal audience of one. The non-professional models bring a voluptuousness and honesty that only heightens his aspirations.
Carlo Mollino, quite a card.
Further reading:
www.postmedia.net/06/mollino.htm
www.designboom.com/world/mollino/photos/index.html
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023355/
ambushstudio.blogspot.com/2009/06/carlo-mollino.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Mollino
www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/6374/carlo-mollino-interiors-at-sebastian-and-barquet-london.html
www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/fashion/04iht-design4.html
www.colectiva.tv/wordpress/lang/en-us/las-polaroids-de-carlo-mollinocarlo-mollinos-polaroids/
All polaroids shot by Carlo Mollino
Barbed Wire Love
Blasted by your booby traps
I felt the blow in both knee-caps
Your eyes did shine
Your lips were fine
And the device in you pants was out of sight
All you give me is barbed wire love
All caught up in barbed wire love
Tangled up in barbed wire love
Throw my leg over barbed wire love
Barbed wire love snags my jeans
Fantastic.
Thirty years a go Stiff Little Fingers released ‘Inflammable Material’, featuring their incendiary paean to teenage lust ‘Barbed Wire Love’: a raw marriage of punk and doo-wop.
Both musical movements share another legacy, that of prolific reproduction. Punk with it’s do-it-yourself aesthetic and a fan base centred around live gigs with direct contact to the groups, spawned for a short while a huge number of record releases. Anyone who saved enough money from their Saturday job could put out a record. And with Geoff Travis deciding to form Rough Trade to wrest control of distribution away from the majors anyone had a chance too.
But independent record production has an unsung birth, in the vocal harmony groups of the 40s and 50s, a genre which became popularised as Doo-Wop. Across America in black neighbourhoods groups of friends would gather and vocal harmonise together. With no musical instruments and need for overdubs or mixing levels these groups found it simple to to pitch up at a recording studio, complete their song in a single take, and purchase a pressing of perhaps a hundred records. It is estimate that over it’s 25 year span Doo-Wop gave birth to 30,000 songs. Shaaa-bop!
The 70s saw a revival in vocal harmonies (Manhattan Transfer anyone?) and Stiff Little Fingers ripped the pastiche apart from the inside and hurled it into present. Their blue print lay dormant for thirty years till Glasvegas picked up the mantle.
Punk was largely posturing and the main players sang of revolution but it was SLF coming up from the streets of belfast who gave anger of revolt it’s true voice. Buy the album from www.slf.com and listen to the righteous paint-blistering anger of Suspect Device. And then there is their finest moment…
People occasionally cover a Bob Marley song, and usually with a ‘why bother’ result. To equal Saint Bob is something, but to better him…? SLF take Rita Marley’s ‘Johnny Was’ and transpose the senseless shooting of the protagonist from the electoral violence of Jamaica’s Kingston to the occupation and civil war in Northern Ireland. Shedding along the way any pretense of authenticity of reggae and playing it out it a white heat of guitar noise. Still, when Jake Burns rasps “a single shot shot rings out in the Belfast night” the hairs on my neck stand on end, thirty years on.
Is it that good? Buy the album and see for yourself.
Vaudeville Ruin portrait
‘Vaudeville Ruin’
Fire eater. Burlesque performer. Hula Queen.
London, October 2009
3 days of Lomoporno
The internet is both a blessing and a curse. But you knew that. Whilst allowing the easy publication of ideas and work that would never reach us in the mainstream media it offers one major drawback: it’s a little too easy to get lost in it’s flows and eddies when you should be working.
Lomoporno is a new venture from www.flashglamtrash.com, one of the destinations I stop off out to see what’s new in the world. A world where diamonds in the gutter come wrapped in suspiciously stained flyers from Studio 54 perhaps. Not always not safe for work.
Not sure they would want to be called nice people, so I shall just say those people at Lomoporno published a selection of my photographs. And now I discover it’s going off line because The Lomographic Society object to the site’s name. How often do you type ‘porno’ by accident instead of ‘graphy’? I understand protecting a brand but I find it a touch ironic given rule 10 at www.lomography.com/about/the-ten-golden-rules.
No hard feelings, and you might like to know The Photographers Gallery sells Holgas at £25, same price as eBay.
Handbag at BAC
I will not be dancing as part of Geraldine Pilgrim’s “Handbag” this Monday evening at Battersea Arts Centre. Do come along and not shake a leg. It’s rather uplifting and joyous.
In an empty ballroom a caretaker sweeps away the remnants of a previous event. A woman enters the space and puts down her handbag. A beat begins, a mirror ball turns and the sound of a classic dance track fills the air…
A witty and wistful performance that, in a few delirious moments, succinctly makes the point that no woman needs a man when she has got her handbag in tow. Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Tickets and information at www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/event.php?id=619
Vaudeville Ruin
Today I learnt that like clowns who paint their faces on egg shells to register their unique look, burlesque performers are known and identified by their costumes.
(Untitled)
The above is from the trailer for ‘(Untitled)’, a new comedy directed by Jonathan Parker (who I have never heard of before) set in the world of modern art.
I had a genuine laugh out loud moment when I saw the label. Then I thought why hadn’t I thought of that. Pure brilliance.
If it has just one other joke as good then the price of admission is money well spent. (The title doesn’t count).
The Glamour
I have just finished ‘The Glamour’ by Christopher Priest. An author who for me only came to light after becoming curious having seen his novel ‘The Prestige’ adapted as a film.
He is woefully unknown, sharing many similar traits with early to mid period Ballard, perhaps it is use of science fiction motifs that have held back wider fame. Even after a hit film he still languishes in obscurity.
His novels could also been seen as having parallels with the canon of John Fowles, residing as they do in the use of literary devices. Words within words, worlds within worlds.
May I recommend in particular ‘The Affirmation’, a beautifully sculpted work that still resonates with me long after finishing. (Much of his oeuvre remains out of print so with some reluctance I recommend buying second hand from Amazon). If you can, it’s best to buy The Glamour without reading any reviews as knowing what said glamour is may spoil some of your enjoyment.
I have been touched by The Glamour.
Black Swan Crow
Black Swan Crow, an autumnal infestation of The Jungian Woods, part of an ongoing series
Mythical creatures venn diagram
Given my fascination with all things metaphorical that can be found lurking in the shadows of The Jungian Wood, I am much taken with this venn diagram of mythical creatures from Jim Unwin’s Flickr stream. See it BIG.
I feel a Manticore coming on.
Parry, portrait
Parry. Carpenter. Artisan. Noisenik
London, September 2009
My original portrait failed so I asked for a re-sit. He threw a shape and now I can’t decide which to go with…
Bottle of wine
This is quite old now but I didn’t catch it until a couple of weeks a go. I really like it.
(And it answers that nagging question: what would Belle and Sebastian sound like if Liam Gallagher fronted them?)
It’s by Pigeon Horse Sex Tennis, you can download it for free from www.bottleofwine.org
Health warnings on airbrushed photos
A group of 50 politicians want a new law stating published images must have bold printed notice stating they have been digitally enhanced.
Campaigning MP Valerie Boyer, of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party, said the wording should read: “Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person’s physical appearance”.
Read the full article “French MPs want health warnings on airbrushed photographs” at The Telegraph.
We live in a world that has become so inured to enhanced images that a sub-industry has sprung up revealing the real life flaws of celebrities’ appearance. Whilst we are being presented more and more with unrealistic body images do we want to allow government the right to judge them? I am racking my brains for a pithy line about airbrushing out where we should draw the line…
Carpaccio Magazine photography feature
Edition 6 of Carpaccio Magazine – “The New Birth” issue is out featuring a spread of photographs from my Jungian Woods series. Thank you Carpaccio Magazine.
Carpaccio Magazine is a monthly online publication and a quarterly print publication created to promote the work of ‘uncooked’ artists: emerging but very tasty artists.
Bum Bum go for 2010
For the last week and a half I have been rehearsing secret acts at a secret location deep in London’s East End. The fantastic You Me Bum Bum Train were awarded a research and development fund from The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust to showcase a new production, with an eye to winning a grant for staging a major show in 2010.
Regardless of winning the new scenes feature some of the best experiences yet, so yesterday evening with trepidation but satisfaction at a job well done the cast retired to a nearby snooker club, awaiting news after the founders had given the judges a post-train presentation.
With news of the winner coming through by text within hours, the atmosphere in snooker hall went what I can only describe as “ape shit”. There were tears and hugging, high fives and air punching, there was roaring and screaming. So much so that I could still hear the cheering from two streets away after I left . No exaggeration. Bum Bum won by the way.
So keep your eyes peeled in 2010 for announcements of the next show. Yes it is that good, is it an oxymoron to say that I wished I had never seen it so that I could again feel the exhilaration of taking that first unknown ride?
Congratulations You Me Bum Bum Train, thank you the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust in your wise judgement, and most of all congratulations lucky you, as the ride is on for next year.
“What has been one of London’s more obtuse treasures looks set to become one of Great Britain’s proudest moments” – Dazed and Confused, June 2007
The longest way
Nothing beats doing a simple idea done well. Except doing a simple idea fantastically well.
More about Christoph Rehage at his site www.thelongestway.com.
My thanks to Party Nice for alerting me to this.
Vic Godard portrait
Vic Godard. Singer. Songwriter. Punk maverick. London, September 2009
On September 20th 1976 Vic Godard and his band Subway Sect played the 100 Club alongside the debut of Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Clash and Sex Pistols.
While the other groups that night became mainstream Vic Godard has charted a more esoteric career over the last 40 years, including a 40’s crooner inspired album and recording with such mavericks as Dennis Bovell, Weekend, Edwyn Collins and being the catalyst behind JoBoxers.
He also wrote one of my favourite songs.
Flood tide
Photo by Alison Baskerville
I missed it last time due to holidays, something I wont let happen again; it’s free, in a great setting and sounds fantastic. See you there.
Sat 12 September 2009
2pm – 4pm
London Bridge City Pier
Flood Tide, created by jazz trumpeter and composer John Eacott, is a unique open air musical performance generated by the movement of tidal water: a live sonification of tidal flow. A sensor placed in the Thames reads the river’s tidal movements which are then converted into musical notation and played live by an ensemble of 40 musicians. The piece will last for approximately two hours, and will include string and wind instruments, drums and voices.
Flood Tide is an ambient piece that aims to encourage a new kind of listening- the audience are invited to drift in and out of the music, listening for a while and then moving on, perhaps to return and hear how the piece has changed.
The Jungian Woods late summer
More archetypes from the The Jungian Woods, part of an ongoing series
Ewan Morrison interview at 3AM
Photo by Paul Harkin
3AM have an in-depth interview with Ewan Morrison where he is surprisingly candid about his formative years, aligns himself with Houellebecq, and discusses his new novel “Ménage” (I stopped reading here as I don’t want to risk spoilers).
But if you’re a fan of his you probably know about this already. I wonder sometimes about posting links to current news. But in case you don’t it’s worth reading.
Polaroid impossible
Don’t throw away your old Polaroid camera. One of the causalities of digitalisation was the quiet demise of instant Polaroid film, mourned by the group of remaining enthusiasts. Photographers who use instant film to check lighting set-ups can still use Fuji’s rival, but I’ve yet to hear about many converts from those who loved their Polaroids.
There is a quality to the muted blurred tones of the Polaroid that can render the mundane beautiful, instant faded glamour. And the can-you-see-what-it-is-yet factor. It’s discontinuement was celebrated by a group of artists and photographers who started leaving old Polaroids scattered around a deserted house, creating an unpublicised shrine for those who stumbled upon it. The Flickr group Polaroid House chronicles the project (you may need to become a Flickr member for free and join the group to see them).
Aside from it’s distinctive hues the film is a square format, and the Fuji stock isn’t so doesn’t fit in Polaroid cameras, of course. But salvation is about to come to the millions of up till now defunct camera owners: Florian Kaps is Polaroid Impossible.
Raising $2.6 million in capital Kaps started The Impossible Project and has brought the old factory with it’s machinery from Polaroid, along with the rights to say Polaroid compatible on the new film. And he plans to have the first film out for Christmas. The initial offering will black and white, appropriately mirroring of the history of photographic development. I love that he says of his potential customers…
They are seeking the analog adventure. Just opening a film packet — the smell alone has something sensual to it.
Monochrome probably isn’t going to excite the leagues of home pornographers but less exotic devotees will be delighted to learn they reminiscent of early photography and Kaps is quoted as saying “this will be part of their charm”, so the company doesn’t intend to modernise it’s films to resemble standard photos.
Colour film is to be rolled out some time in 2010 so don’t throw out your Polaroid (600 format) camera. Unlike old cameras which take outlawed mercury battery formats making replacements different, the film pack itself and not the camera contains the power source so they should still function including the flash. Maybe even hit eBay and snap one up before instant film impossible hits the shelves this Christmas and their value rockets up.
Click. Whirrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Chanson Brel
Twenty years later Nick Cave is about to have his second novel “The death of Bunny Munroe” published. A slacker you could say bar the fact of his output in-between.
The synapse wiring in my subconscious connects Cave with Brel. I’m sure St. Nick would approve. So consider that reason enough to post chanteur extraordinaire Jacques. The first clip has embedding disabled but no matter; take a few minutes out and watch it on Youtube full screen. You don’t even have to have the volume up to catch the emotions. The face of all humanity. Breathtaking.
Pursue the narrative by watching Bas Jan Ader cry.
There are translations of Brel’s songs on the site to view afterwards, but let his expression tell all before becoming distracted by subtitles.
And finally because it’s good to leave of where you started watch Nick Cave read excepts.
Capturing light
I asked him what film he used to get such tones in his photographs. How they looked as if they belonged to another era.
“Well,” he said, “you know about homeopathy? You know, those pills that retain some microscopic measure of the poison, maybe not even that. They say that you can build immunity by swallowing very low doses of a poison and slowly building up the dose. With these pills the toxin is so diluted that it doesn’t really exist. You can’t touch these pills before swallowing them otherwise you’ll taint their power. They call it the memory of water…”
“People scoff, but there’s quite a lot science doesn’t explain yet. Light for instance, they can tell you that it’s both a particle and a wave but they can’t tell why or how. They say light lives forever, traveling from one end of the universe to the other, dead stars still blinking at us in the sky.”
“Light is like those little sugar pills, the memory of light, those particles pick up a little of what’s around as they pass through, and as they travel on, the friction of history brushes it off with fresh stuff getting stuck to them all the while. If you stood on Pluto you could watch television from a week a go, all those programs incessantly chatting away to themselves across the luminiferous aether.”
“Now, what I do, and I shouldn’t be really be telling you this, is rummage through antique and junk shops looking for old cameras. Searching for something in particular mind you, not any old camera, and not some specific make or model. What I need to find is one with a good patina of dirt on it, dust and fluff all jammed in the crevices and dials. Shows me it hasn’t been opened up in along time. I clean them up well, never tempted to open up the back and take a peek inside. Cameras being light tight means all the dirt and grime is on the outside of the lens and they polish up sweet.”
“Until it’s time to load the film that is. I use any photographic stock, doesn’t matter. What is important, what really counts is the loading. I use my own blackout bag, squash all the air I can out of it, just to make sure. Then load the film in quick as I can. You see between the lens and the film is a little pocket of light, trapped there in the darkness of the bag. A little bubble of light from decades a go, sticky with all the moods and fashions and attitudes of way back then, and just enough of that old light gets pushed against the negative when the new rays come rushing through the aperture as I take the picture.”
“That,” he said “is my secret now don’t you go telling everyone…”
Taking versus making
Without a camera I should have been writing, instead I have been thinking about not having a camera, and what having one means in terms of art.
I came across this quote
why do we talk of ‘taking’ a photograph rather than ‘making’ a photograph
in the flickr stream of the-g-uk. In itself a good question, and the best answer I could give myself is a word that keeps appearing in these posts – intention. I had wanted to lead onto another quote I saw regarding the mild controversy and debate surrounding Esquire magazines ‘moto’, but I failed to bookmark the web page containing it and instead merely made a mental note, a much more fallible approach to documentation.
First the quote out-of-context and paraphrased
it depends on wether you think photography is merely the art of pressing the shutter at the right moment, or wether the photographer’s preparation and intent count for anything
That word again, intent, which divides snapshots from photographs: it isn’t the act of clicking at the correct time but in deciding that there should be a button press. In setting out to create the image the shutter release is simply one mechanical part along the path from mental concept, through stages of organisation and decision, leading to the resolution of a final image.
The photo that accompanies this post sits on the borderline for me, in that there was no intent to take it, but there was a deliberate act in taking the camera with me that day, in seeing the potential of the cropped or framed image. Abstract painters don’t have this issue, pigment can lead to more pigment that completes a painting, whereas authors can not apply words they like the sound of to create a narrative; photography sits betwixt the two. Charles Harbutt in his essay ‘I don’t take pictures; pictures take me’ says this
Photography is not art; it is something totally new in human experience, something people have not been able to do before the last century or so. Photography is not art because the basic impulse of the photographer is diametrically opposed to the basic impulse of the artist at least in one large respect. The artist tries to bring into existence something new that never had concrete existence before. The photographer tries to bring into existence something new that preserves something that already has concrete existence but will cease to exist in just that way in the next moment or day or year…
Before returning to motos, a more personal aside. In the last couple of years I have radically reworked my view on photography and instead of mocking what is seen as an oriental approach is taking snapshots, namely always having people in front of landmarks, I now mainly eschew the landscape photo and instead focus upon the person.
Harbutt’s quote works particularly well for landscape but could be recontextualised for portraiture, in that the photographer is not trying to capture how the sitter appeared at that moment but how it felt to be in their presence.
The portrait photographer’s skill lies not in capturing the magic moment, but in making the subject feel relaxed, comfortable enough that they act without preconception and in doing so reveal a part their un-staged self.
Which would be a good way of looking at motos, a horrible compoundment of motion and photo. Debate arose surrounding the use of a RedOne video camera by Chase Davis when he shot a cover for Esquire magazine. In essence he filmed Megan Fox and then ran the footage through video editing software and chose a frame as the final ‘photograph’, thus by-passing the ‘decisive moment’ that marks a great photographer. Up till now at least.
The camera is just a tool, a stage, that sits between the interaction of the photographer and photographee. (And the possibility of motos in a world of plasma screens opens up new aesthetics, moving us one step closer to Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age).
But tools are decisions and therefore integral to the creative process, here’s two quotes from the sidebar of tokyocamerastyle.com, a blog documenting urbanites and their vintage cameras
I don’t think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day
William Eggleston
If you want to change your photographs, you need to change cameras. Changing cameras means that your photographs will change. A really good camera has something I suppose you might describe as its own distinctive aura.
Nobuyoshi Araki
