P-A-T-H

Our non-dictatic (if you don't own a bike, it's ok. If you're lazy, it's also ok) information design archi-cycle kit project exhibition thing went well. We had fun. It looked like this.

Disinformation's sound installation-cum-wilderness nightmare on in the basement was so good, it scared everybody. I found it quite soothing, until my brother somehow developed night vision and did that "saved your life" thing. Which is only allowed on cliff edges, or boats. Later that week, suffering self-inflicted temporary blindness and trying to work a toy accordian onstage, I refused to join in with a chant that went something like "I am not afraid of the dark." I am honest like that.

Kubrick archives in Elephant and Castle.

This is what I get for not finding the time to read the Sunday newspapers til Saturday morning.

I've been admiring some choice vintage Kubrick posters in the library. I did wonder every now and again why the obvious theme, but oh well there are other things to be thinking about in libraries. One idea was that they were slowly phasing out the Tom Eckersley-monopolisation.

But no! Exclaimation marks abound; the cross-referencing, awe-inspiring great-great archive (thats scripts, props, letters, books, photographs and hopefully stationary) is moving from Childwick, and will be housed in a centre from next summer. In Elephant and Castle.

I first realised the full breadth of the collection in an article last year. Kubrick designed his own boxes, liked typefaces, listening to BBC radio plays, and marked crazy fan letters "F-C"

He had a knack for writing letters, on the rare occasion the fans got a response:
"Your letter of 4th May was overwhelming. What can I say in reply? Sincerely, Stanley Kubrick."

Regarding Stanley, Christiane Kubrick put it quite well: 'He didn't hoard, he just didn't throw anything away.' I might use this tack the next time someone bothers me.

Visual Complexity.

A (beyond great) resource of visual representations of complex networks. Wow.


Estimated Budget Chart.


Halotype Blocks.


Protein-protein interaction modelling.


Mark Lombardi's Scandal


Fight Density.


Kryptasthesie.

the 38.

It's the last week of the 38. This makes me glum and sentimental. I'm making every personal route possible bypass Angel. It's worth it. Nothing quite like sitting in the cove/back seat of a routemaster.

The Guardian's Ian Sinclair, can romanticise for me, in a review of The Bus We Loved: London's Affair with the Routemaster:

There is something seductive in top-deck travel, that old stagecoach experience without the full-on weather. The single-decker bendy bus will never capture our hearts, despite its laudable attempt to revive free transport. It's like surfing an avalanche, hanging on while the street moves away from you. This Mercedes version of a mutated centipede is concertina-bellied; everybody stands, everybody trembles.

So, when the 73 died, there was a great hullabaloo. Check the bus full of stories for details. I'm wondering whether anybody's mapping passenger routes or writing 38 word stories commemorating the days leading up to October 28th. Any which way, the logo can not pass unmentioned:

For a truly uplifting experience.

Working in Covent Garden has its perks (no pun intended). You get to guinea pig the deluge of free publications (I don't mind hallucinating on a Sunday afternoon courtesy of toxic fodder). There's other free stuff too, good things, like jelly beans.

The other day 2 heavily made-up ladies, a vision of orange and pink, blasted the area. Stomping around the almost-pedestrianised roads in their stilettos, they tossed their propaganda at any female entering their line of path.

Then they came in the shop and handed my colleagues sachets of their new product, 'bust enhancing cream'. Um. Hmm.

Maybe I turned my head for too long, but this product confuses me. I found a pile of discarded Heat magazines on my road yesterday, so I picked one up to read. It was funny. I guess this is funny too.

Well, the design's kind of funny. Validification via French subheadings will never fail to amuse me (check creme raffermissante pour le buste). Missing in the online blurb, but admitted on the freebie: "Use morning and night for at least 28 days for maximum results."

The concept behind this isn't shocking. Neither is the fact that people will spend money on it. I am not under any pretence that these things don't matter to lots of people. People can do what they want with their time. It's the marketing strategy that annoys me. Who decided to be so blase about pointless female insecurity, bathe it in pink and retail it on the modern high street? It's insulting, and a scary prospect when logisticising the hoardes of girls with disposable incomes swarming around.

I will be on my way to feeling alright with this when another independent contemporary cosmetics company hand out fancy penis enlarging creams in Stussy and Carhartt, no questions asked.

Practise.

'Air' mobile

Each week, an hour of my life is handed over to "Personal and Professional Development". This can come in many guises. One time I was in the vicinity of the lecture hall and caught a tutor beatboxing, splicing together barry white and the woes of Japanese art students (Quote: "My tutor, he don't know me!") This flamboyantly titled lecture series would essentially be more effective in the format of a very long and minimal powerpoint presentation. Repeated weekly, more a mantra than a sentence: "When you leave university you're going to have to get a job."

Luckily, I decided to make the most of my tuition fees yesterday, and heard James Goggin talk. He solves problems well, and makes things that work. It was reassuring. Without knowing it, I've been admiring his work for a while, so linking up the tate's shifting identity with Alison Turnbull's Spring Snow via Momus' Otto Spooky was fun. (He didn't tell us that he's changing the Wire's looks though.)


Ikea boxes stacked in a golden section formation.

But really, it was great putting a name to the Colour palettes film. It's composed of screen-shots, taken from each transitory step in Photoshop's 'Only Web Colors' palette. It's beautiful.

John Peel bike ride

Southwark cyclists are meeting tomorrow at the Southwark Needle (9 am) and Liverpool St Station (9:40 am):

"It's John Peel Day today, the first anniversary of his death. There's music all over in memory. But we're simply riding to visit his grave. It's a gentle 26 miles from Manningtree station to Great Finborough in lovely deepest Suffolk. We'll pace the ride for whoever turns up (within reason!) and stop for coffee etc as necessary. Pub lunch. Afterwards, the nearest station for London is only 3 miles away. Or there's Manningtree.

One Trains, the Liverpool Street/East of England train provider, know we're coming, and are ready."

Noto/Sakamoto/Feldman/Xenakis.

Who needs hot water (new mantra) when there's alva noto + ryuichi sakamoto. They somehow managed to coax me into a snowflake-configurated cotton wool cloud. Or something similarly soothing. Nice contrast with Rolf Hind's performance of Morton Feldman's Palais de Mari the other afternoon.

Feldman's concise droplet-clusters of notes insinuate form, as if traced from memory. They are untouched contours, not lacking a physical dimension, just inherently unknowable. As if each shape was glimsped at from afar, and in that moment infinitely understood. Replicated tenderly, a relief rubbing thereafter. Inflicting a similar stillness, and exerting a similar self restraint, Nicolai and Sakamoto hold back the very thing Feldman wishes to hold onto. They don't let us touch the dendrites for too long.





+ Sakamoto and Nicolai's set up.

++ Rolf Hind's piano.

From my seat I could see the string movements reflected in the piano lid. Mists, in all its stochastic, arborescenced glory, is complex for the fingers. And also beautiful.

I'll never underestimate the role of the page-turner either. In the ladies' afterwards (seriously, it's where everything happens) I heard said person exclaim "Never again! If I had seen the score before I'd never have agreed to it!" Wow.

Xenakis' work does that to people. Quote: "Yes. You have to punish, yes. The gods have to punish."

More on him later.

Whitechapel Road.

Whitechapel Road market is a multi-sensory overload. Kaleidoscopic sounds, smells and colours wrestle for attention. It's messy and full of great bargains (like the toy guitar with additional animal noises I once found). This place makes walking in straight lines an almost spiritual challenge. Maybe Tower Hamlets council think that all this can get a bit much, to the point where basic, nay universal pictography does not compute:



Not sure how great that picture comes out, but the words green man are actually written in green. What? This piece of signage straddles the horrifyingly condescending nature of bureaucrats and their unknowing comic genius quite uneasily.

Sounds Like Drawing.

Beth Campbell, Joseph Grigely, Conor Kelly, Kaffe Matthews, Tom Marioni, Terry Nauheim, Carsten Nicolai, Robin Rhode and Steve Roden.

Next week is cycle-heavy. We'll have maps at the foundry, (and I just found out that) Kaffe Matthews will have maps at the Drawing Room. (These places are close, there's no excuse).

Matthews has made: a symphony for radios and bicycles. Replacing notes written on a musical staff are drawings on a neighbourhood map: providing various itineraries for visitors to follow on bikes, the artist broadcasts an electronic composition over a live radio signal. Cycling around the streets with radios receiving the broadcast, participants become performers and passers-by become accidental audience members.

Hers is pretty much the next step of our idea. I wonder if our routes cross paths. It's quite exciting.

Earplugs.

Ever find yourself struggling with various pieces of Adobe software in the early hours of the morn? I do. These things seem to help the minutes float into hours: (provided someone, somewhere is wi-fi friendly, and the party outside ain't too throbbin')

Olias Nil's "Onset" (that's 500 bicycle bells.)

Ommm on You Are Hear.

Radio 4's Today on Turkish talks.

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

And some Oliver Hacke.

Friday: the day of police crackdown.

I was tempted to join in with Critical Mass last Friday, as I knew I'd be in Waterloo at the appropriate time. Unfortunately, my wheels got stolen that very morning. The hoardes of bikes outside the NFT felt like they were taunting me, sticking around a little longer than they should. Now I realise I'm not paranoid:



It says:

Critical Mass Cycle Demonstrations

Organisers of public processions are required by law to notify police at least 6 days before the event occurs of the date, time, proposed route and name and address of an organiser. Failure to do so makes the event unlawful.

Demonstrations within a designated area around Parliament must also be notified, and anyone taking part in an unauthorised demonstration commits an offence.

Police can impose conditions on processions, demonstrations and other assemblies, and participants render themselves liable to arrest if they fail to comply with those conditions.

These cycle protests are not lawful because no organiser has provided police with the necessary notification. Your participation in this event could render you liable to prosecution. Police policy in facilitating these events is currently under review.

If you intend to organise a future similar event please refer to the Metropolitan Police website, www.met.police.uk for details. It is preferable for all parties if a lawful event can be safely facilitated, rather than the Police having to enforce legislation.

Superintendent Gomm,
New Scotland Yard


So, no Critical Mass for anybody until October 28th.

The ambiguities of Gomm's words are stifling. What exactly is the designated area around Parliament? Problems: CM is not a protest, and is not organised by a singular body, per se. The Larger implications this letter has for any relatively spontaneous group activity (involving bikes or no - see the pushbike architecture treasure hunt below) let alone established, notionally inherited traditions such as CM, is quite terrifying.

Maybe they're just in need of a hot date. I checked out the Public Order Branch of the Met's website, and they've only got one event scheduled for the whole of October. And the details they refer to above, are a set of phone numbers.

Back to Friday: and interestingly, the police then proceeded to foil another of my night's plans. Grr.

Resonance October Schedule.

It's a new season (been in denial but it really is autumn now) and the website's currently slightly flawed, hence the forum post-cum-schedule.

There's some new shows in there! Just listened to Carol Finer on Sound Out (16:45-17:00). She used to play in the Scratch Orchestra, with Brian Eno amongst others. Now she makes collages and teaches at Camberwell.

In the first performance since her son's wedding, she played a pretty bluegrassy song on her 5-string banjo. Then she played an improvised piece on a banjolin (a cross between a banjo and a mandolin). Apparently, next week there'll be field recordings. What a perfect Adobe soundtrack. Kind of makes up for Dan Wilson-less airwaves.

the Pushbike Architecture Treasure Hunt.

The Push-bike Architectural Treasure Hunt is about stopping, searching and appreciating buildings overlooked in our daily routines from a roadside perspective.

Come down to the Foundry between the 18th and 23rd of October in groups or individually. Bring your bikes. Cycle safe. Have fun!

Nearest Tube - Old Street

Opening event October 18

7 - 11pm

The Perry Bible Fellowship.

By Nicholas Gurewitch. In the G2 every week. It's great:







Still not sure about new typeface or masthead though. I'm sure I'll get there soon. Don't mind the size.

Just miss everything about the Review's front cover. Thoughts haven't translated into action: my consumption hasn't waned. Au contraire: I have been guiltily snared by Posy Simmond's comic-strip-soap Tamara Drewe. I don't have a tv, I think I'm allowed.