hammerhead rabbits

Archive for July, 2008

Four letter words: Processing diagram

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Moshe sent me this a couple of months ago and I liked it then but I’m increasingly wondering if I shouldn’t bear it in mind for how my finished piece may or may not pan out. This is partially because of all of these scientific diagrams I’ve been looking at. They seem to offer a framework which things can be dropped into. One, potentially, to experiment with.

Four letter words diagram

Scientific Illustrations

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

My friend Dave sent me a few links in response to my plea for diagrams of the universe as understood by physicists.

Here’s a link to a massive diagrammatic map of the known universe. Good for wrapping sandwiches when printed, bad for getting precise directions to Proxima Centauri. Weirdly beautiful, though.

The Universe Adventure. I haven’t had chance to read this yet so shan’t say anything about it. Has some very useful looking illustrations of Ptolemy and Copernicus’ understanding(s) of the Solar System.

The fate and history of the universe. Big words.

He also directed me to the old Royal Society lectures from 1993, by Frank Close. That’s how I’d heard of him for yesterday’s post. Here’s the link for the first of the lectures on You Tube.

I found this site called The geometry of the universe. It details key theories about the universe’s curvature.

Questionnaire, Draft 1

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

I’ve been working on a questionnaire. If anyone has anything to say about it, I’d be most grateful for their thoughts.

1. When you hear the word all, do any vague impressions immediately flood your mind? ie – all of the known universe. Or all of the hairs on someone’s head.
2. At a rough estimate, how often do you think you say the word all on any given day?
3. When using the word all, how often do you use it in a completely logical manner?
   How often do you use it as a rough figure of speech? ie – ‘I eat jam sandwiches all the time’. Surely ‘quite frequently’ would be more accurate.
4. What is the opposite of all?
5. Does all imply either wholeness, completeness, both or neither of these things?
6. Where is all’s centre?
7. If you had to leave it all behind, what would you take with you?
8. Can you name three pop songs with all in the lyric or title? What is being expressed by them?
9. The universe is mind-spanglingly big. However, there is, I’m told, evidence suggesting that the universe is not infinite and in fact is flat (At least that’s one theory that’s done the rounds). Now clearly I don’t expect anyone to have too much to say about crazy physics but I do have a question: When you consider what might (or might not!) be beyond the finite universe, how do you feel?
10. Do you think whatever is or isn’t beyond the universe is part of all?
    in other words, do you think this unknown is nothing, or nothingness, and if so, is that nothing part of all?

Nuclear Physicist Frank Close talking about nothing as a concept.

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAy9bGIuXR0

End of year show and questionnaire

Friday, July 11th, 2008

Okay, I really need to talk a bit about my reaction to the end of year show. Not so much what I thought of the work, but more a reaction to the show as a whole. I don’t like private views. I never find they’re the best time to look at work. I also feel uncomfortable at university shows because there’s so much work there. It’s difficult to look at any of it because there’s just so much to take in.

It reminded me of one of the key things that I really like about digital art. It can easily be web based. I find this very attractive. People can look at it in their own time. The kind of things I’m dealing with need time. I need to find a way of walking people through a thought process.
Galleries don’t have the space to do that. This comes with issues though. The way I’d been thinking was fairly definitely gallery based, with the idea of having everything layered in various media. So, that’s another ball that’s up in the air. Good.

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Flash experiments

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

I’ve just spent a happy hour or three watching the tennis and knocking these new experiments together.
The squares are a continuation of the experiments with the butter and the ice. I’m thinking about units, boundaries and that kind of thing. I think I need to write quite a long post explaining what I mean in some depth if I’m going to start using words.

This one’s also very much in progress. I’m thinking a much more developed version of it could work as some kind of punctuation in my final piece. One thing I’m curious about with it is the fact that at the very start you have all of the alphabet layered on top of itself forming this very dense block. It reminds me of my old chum Derrida and his thoughts about the trace. That’s what English looks like when it’s all stacked up. It makes no sense. But that’s what we have to choose from. It’s almost like Michelangelo’s block of marble before he sculpted David. It makes no sense before someone picks bits out and forms them into words, but the potential of it is always infinite. Bit like the Big Bang, in a deeply non-scientific analogy kind of way. And now we have a situation where the language is still expanding and bits of it are changing and getting re-purposed, much like the wider universe. Anyway, ’tis late, fair reader, I must go to bed before I slip in to another rant.

PS – Sorry I just realised these two shouldn’t really be on the screen together at the same time as they’re a bit much to take in at once. If you can see them both, make your browser window smaller.

Immersion

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I’ve been reading Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray. She talks a lot about immersion in films and stories. She describes immersion as a trance and the primary key to creating this trance is understanding the existence of the ‘fourth wall’ between audience and performer. She describes watching Peter Pan as a child and clapping Tinkerbell back to life. She was utterly enraptured by the whole thing and was desperate to see Tinkerbell resurrected. The spell was broken the next time she watched it when her parents sat behind her laughing at her innocent wonderment. The fourth wall was broken. She was reminded that this was ‘just a film’. I think immersion is an emotional invitation, perhaps before it’s an intellectual one.

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ice

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

i should have refrozen it. i should have filmed the water coming out of the tap. i should have filmed the rain. but enough. more about all of this later.

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Butter

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008