Archive for June, 2006

The art of Eno

I missed an Eno interview last month. He talked about his generative paintings… “England has much more of a class structure in its art world than any other country,” Eno continues. “I’m a pop musician, so I don’t deserve a place in a proper gallery. I show in Italy, Japan, France, Germany, everywhere, and nobody […]

Flash v9.0.1 final

Shockwave Flash v9.0.1 final has just been released (1.9mb). Adobe is also said to be developing a new eBook product that is standards-compliant, and based on Flash 9. I’m someone who has Flash turned off with-extreme-prejudice in IE. But I do have it on my Firefox install, for those few times when it seems worth […]

Leamington Spa’s main gallery not yet ready for nude paintings – maybe next century…

Dear old Leamington Spa, always a hotbed of middle-class values vs. youthful radicalism in the 1980s for some strange reason (its legacy to the nation in that regard being lots of burned-out Class War-ites, Matthew Fuller, and a handful of ALF nutters). Nothing much changes, it seems: “Nude Pictures Banned By Gallery”.

Childhood spaces 2

(large version, 140kb) A follow-up to the recent Childhood spaces 1.

Picasso & Lump

The Toronto Star carries a profile of Picasso’s photographer, David Douglas Duncan, on the occasion of the publication of a new book of photos of Picasso.

Small Mercias

The Institute of Directors is said to have called for the West Midlands to be re-named… as Birmingham. Or ‘Birmingham Something’. Which is presumably why a few people are starting to talk of ‘Birmingham Sandwell’, on the assumption that ‘Sandwell’ is the naff ‘low-hanging fruit’ name that no-one will miss. But I can’t quite see […]

Floating

(large version, 140kb)

Shhhh…

Simon Elvins has taken the government’s initial “noise data” and applied it to a map of London in order to pinpoint the quietest places. Wouldn’t it be great to see this sort of map animated over time, so you could see how the map changes hour-by-hour? And then integrate the 24-hour noise map with location-aware […]

‘Old paradigm’ thinking

In the rush for ‘proper broadband’ video, IPTV and suchlike, are we not forgetting something? The potentially profoundly hypertext nature of the web? What about the possibilities for delivering a richly interactive multimedia exploration? And I don’t mean computer games or clunky ‘e-learning’ packages, I mean the emotionally-engaging interactive form that was so painstakingly brought […]

Wimp takes on the world

Say hello to Microsoft’s .jpg killer, the somewhat unfortunately-named .wmp format, now in version 1.0. Unfortunate because the .wmp file extension will presumably be pronounced as “wimp”.

When librarians attack

According to the BJoP, a recent BAPLA survey claimed that commercial unauthorised reproduction of photographs and illustrations cost £4.2m in lost revenues. Most of that will probably be the stock library pictures of BAPLA members. But if a freelance artist or photographer feels compelled to act, then a fee of £30 will initiate a Small […]

Eruption

Six images by photographer Salvatore Arancio, of the tenuous flowers that have seeded on cooled volcanic lava.

Talking Cities

Talking Cities one-off magazine is available now. It’s part of a German symposium, Talking cities: the micropolitics of urban space.

Blog2newspaper

Recently I blogged about newspapers running blog summaries in their pages, and also my idea of a turnkey online rights clearance mechanism. Now I find that Scoopt has just announced a service that goes some way toward combining the two, in the form of a seamless “buy a post” button at the bottom of your […]

Flow

(large version, 150kb)

Lesson in economics

Hmm… interesting. teacherspayteachers.com is an “open marketplace for original educational material” Amazon for teacher lesson-plans. Quality-control? There’s a built-in feedback and ratings system, and a “free taster” that’s intended to lead to a purchase. Cheating? Quite possibly. It’s rather empty at present. It has nothing in ‘Art’ at either school or university level, and what […]

Metroland

An interesting part-time opportunity in London: visiting lecturers are required for a postgraduate course in managing the creative industries.

12,000

Cool, the server statistics show that the newly-turbocharged D’log seems to be heading for around 12,000 ‘unique visitors’, for June 2006. And that’s without Google indexing the ‘long tail’ of 1000+ older blog posts, or even the monthly archive pages. At present, Google only regularly indexes the D’log front page, for some unknown reason. Hopefully […]

Path to the Olympics

Bill Morris (not to be confused with the TGWU trades-union ex-leader) has been appointed the Culture, Ceremonies and Education Director for the 2012 London Olympics. He’s a major BBC radio and TV producer, in charge of covering major national events (Live 8, among others). There seems to be a distinct tendency toward music in his […]

On the summit

The Scotsman reports today on a “closed-door, by invitation only” arts summit in Scotland, which hopes to put the Scottish arts world back on friendly terms once again. Meanwhile, there are plans to close the Scottish film development agency, Scottish Screen.