D'log

“Gi’us a job-ette!”: ‘Twas nearly June,and the shy crooningof the work-experience ladswas heard in the land.’ I paraphrase (the Song of Soloman, I think). Every year it happens. First-year A-level students suddenly realise it’s nearly June; and their work-experience week is set for July. Their tutors told the lads (it’s always lads) before Easter to […]

Digital Pockets:Remember last weekend’s Koan-to-Flash work? It’s just an alpha but I’ve decided that I’ll develop it into a full artist’s submission to the Digital Pocket Gallery call-for-work, to meet their new 1st August deadline (extended from 1st May). ‘Why, oh why?’:Someone asked me a week or so ago; “Why are you so parochial about […]

Pie & pint:An excellent steak & ale pie, pints of caffeine, and conversation about (among other things) meeting Derrida and making off with his lecture notes. It must have been an evening out in the company of art photographer Mark Wood. We were at The Railway Inn, Longport, in Stoke-on-Trent. The Inn’s under new management […]

G&G again:An excellent Gilbert & George interview in the Daily Telegraph (Tues 28th; free registration required), in which they talk about their childhood and a lot more for the first time. Less snide than the one in The Observer, and far better than the one in this month’s iD. Doddy Did it:Back in January D’log […]

Growth of the Creative Class:A chart showing the ‘The Growth of the Creative Class in America, 1900-1999’. It’s part of a comprehensive May 2002 special section in the Austin American-Statesman. The new book that’s driving this coverage is The Rise Of The Creative Class, due out in June in the USA (the author’s ideas discussed […]

Goose, golden eggs, butcher’s slab:The creative class’s collective nose senses a town that’s relatively cheap, not too big or impersonal, has a decent location, nice ‘real’ buildings, ‘real’ experiences. Gradually, then in increasing numbers, we colonise it. We help make it live and work. Then what happens? The property developers and the leisure industry moves […]

A word in your shell-like:Number 7 in the 2002 Digital Art Awards gallery. Digital design & usability research:John Knight of BIAD‘s User-Lab (whose recent seminar I was very sorry not to be able to get to, despite a kind invite & free ticket) writes to tell me that the third issue of Research Issues in […]

Sitcom Studies:A fascinating free series of in-depth studies from Oxford’s SIRC, on a variety of neglected social problems. Such as Tea, DIY, Horseracing, Boozy Punch-ups, Smells, Fiftysomething women, and White Van Man. Put them all together and you’d have a classic British sitcom. Some new creative photobloggers:Green Gabbro, Adam’s Addled Mind, girlrepair, declik, & Shoot […]

City of Puncture:Sadly, there won’t be a Birmingham Carnival this year. The City Council had to stump up £200,000 last year to bail it out, and has refused to give the same amount yet again. The City Council told the carnival committee in early March that they had to find a sponsor. They didn’t, so […]

Eyesturm&drang:The Register reports that major online art retailer eyestorm has gone bust. How on earth did that happen? They had “a turnover of approx. $2.5m, growing at 30 per cent per annum”, and that in a booming online art market? It smells like the venture-capital suits who bankrolled eyestorm now want to cash out. It’s […]

Sleeping Dogs:“Even coalhole covers can be interesting, if you know how to use your eyes” said John Betjeman, speaking of how his deaf father taught him the art of visual acuity. And do you know, he was right. This mini-gallery is part of the weblog Sleeping Dogs Lies.

Amazing MX:My friend Pete got me a copy of Macromedia Flash MX today (thanks, Pete!). Among many other things to do with web animation, it now does video for in-page playback. MX’s Spark codec washed some of the colour out of my test video-clip (I’ll spare you 14-seconds of curious moo-cows), but it gave a […]

Culture, flowering:Beautifully composed and lit flower photos gallery. Albeit marred by a couple of slugs; two examples of dreadfully cliched ‘trace edges’ Photoshop pery. The gallery’s from Edge magazine. No, that’s not the computer-game designer’s magazine of the same name, but a very ‘l33t techie-lectuals mag. Although actually both are in much the same game […]

Here’s one I made earlier:Biometric security devices? Pah! Bring on the jelly babies. CD anti-copy technology? Pah! Bring on the sticky-backed plastic. Phat chat:Over in the East Midlands (why does everything ‘digital-art’ seem to be happening over in Nottingham these days?) they’re having a month-long chinwag about ‘The WHY and HOW of Digital Art’. The […]

Card sharp:Have you ever gone “AAARgghHHH!” when you realised you had accidently erased some pictures from your digital camera ‘s SmartMedia card? Well, this Windows freeware claims it will recover deleted images from cards. Why Birmingham needs a robust graduate-retention scheme:Some interesting statistics from Birmingham’s Economic Information Centre have got me thinking. In 1961 less […]

Midlands talent, the new crop:A couple of new ‘under construction’ web-sites for forthcoming Midlands art & design graduate shows: DEDUCE (2002 UCE/BIAD grad show site) & Ideas As Big As Your Head (2002 Coventry University grad show site). The sites should be ready in a few days. The Staffordshire University main Art & Design show […]

Swanning around:There’s a swan’s nest near to my local off-road cycle-path. On a patch of green grass, looking like some four-foot easter basket and topped with a sleeping white swan. Today I cycled past and it was empty; I sadly assumed that it had been built in the wrong place and the birds had been […]

There’s money in it:Taiwan has announced it will follow the Singapore development model; and a major part of this will be “focussing on the huge potential of cultural, creative and design industries” for the first time. They’re set to spend £54 billion on a six-year Plan. I imagine they hope to supply China with creative […]