A peek at the interior design of Richard Branson’s ‘SpaceshipTwo’ spacecraft. Concept video here.
Archive for September, 2006
Unbounded Freedom
The British Council has just published a new business-friendly guide to the Creative Commons, Unbounded Freedom (PDF, 750kb). However, as The Register reports, not all professional creatives are happy with the report’s utopian tone.
Screen beam
Screen resolutions that are currently being used by computer-savvy net users… 1280×1024 – 41.41% Widescreen/Higher than 1024×768 – 32.73% 1024×768 – 24.23% Source: F2S survey. This means that a single large landscape-oriented image in a photographer’s gallery should be at least 850px in width. And probably 1200px if your intended audience is other creative people, […]
Finger, out
Richard Morrison celebrates the new sense of initiative that’s overhauled the Barbican arts centre in London… “Should we be surprised that the best-run and most critically acclaimed arts centre in Britain receives not a penny from the Arts Council? Should we be astounded that, without the benefit of a single directive from the Government’s culture […]
Storm
(large version, 100kb)A huge thunderstorm rumbled across the valley this morning.
JPG 06
The new JPG photography magazine is out. The sixth issue has the theme of mistakes and their role in the creative process.
Established & Sons
Business Week profiles Established & Sons, highly successful British designers of high-end furniture… “The industry isn’t looking to speed up, but they’re really missing a trick,” Willis says bluntly. “It’s pretty basic: If you launch something, people should be able to get hold of it as soon as possible. And you shouldn’t have to spend […]
Fashion police
The Telegraph sees Tessa Jowell’s nanny-ish comments about “stick thin models” as a distraction from the lack of support for the British fashion industry… “Jowell’s job, on the eve of London Fashion Week, was to champion the event to the top of her bent, not to turn it into one of those periodic New Labour […]
The Public Garden
An interesting upcoming conference — The Public Garden: the Effect of Art and Regeneration in Shaping Green and Public Spaces. It’ll be held in London — although sadly not in a big tent on one of the London commons — on the 18th October 06.
VoIP in the Midlands
24 Sep 2006 at 08:42
David Haden
Birmingham, Regeneration, Techie
Comments Off on VoIP in the Midlands
British Telecom has announced some key details of the roll-out of a new VoIP telephony system in the West Midlands. From January 2008 our cities and major towns should start to have BT net connections that are up to three times faster than at present. For most people, that will presumably mean a speed of […]
Grow your own ship
Grow your own ship. Ready for rigging and cabin furnishings in just 200 years.
Funding digital comics
22 Sep 2006 at 15:43
David Haden
Artist(s), Comic art, Creative industries
Comments Off on Funding digital comics
MIT media professor Henry Jenkins interviews Todd Allen, the author of a book on the business of comics. An interesting interview, but neither of them seem to have entered the fairly crucial scanning/bittorrent factor into their calculations.
Immaterial World
The L.A. Times profiles a new exhibition of photography, “Immaterial World” at The Stephen Cohen Gallery. It’s a show consisting of 45 examples of early ‘spirit photography’, which… “…surveys photography’s use as a chronicler of the supernatural, as a vehicle for attempts to make visible forces, spirits and memories.” Accompanying, in the ‘viewing room’, is […]
Institute of Creative Technology
21 Sep 2006 at 09:38
David Haden
Birmingham, Creative industries, Gaming, Robotics, Teaching, Techie
Comments Off on Institute of Creative Technology
The new Institute of Creative Technology launched yesterday, at Leicester in the English Midlands. It aims to break down the barriers between the arts and sciences. I’d have loved to have heard about this in advance — but it seems the press release was only sent out on the 18th Sept, and they weren’t even […]
GameCity
GameCity, a week-long ‘festival of interactive games’, to be held in the English city of Nottingham at the end of October 06.
The borders of kitsch
An interesting discovery on the Welsh Marches, to the west of Birmingham. The Andrew Logan Museum now has a new companion museum nearby, the Museum of British Popular Culture. If you plan to go, note that it closes for the winter at the end of November.
Clamping culture
16 Sep 2006 at 08:47
David Haden
Artist(s), Arts cuts, Creative industries
Comments Off on Clamping culture
Bizzare — the end of car-clamping seems set to impact on municipal culture. Camden Council in London, for instance, are predicting a consequent “freeze on recruitment to libraries and salary-savings in sports, arts and tourism” due to the loss of £3m a year from the fines generated by car-clamping.
‘The groans of academe’
The Telegraph reports on a ministerial threat to effectively dismantle the British university system. It seems that universities are potentially being set up as the ‘fall guy’ for the failure of the New Labour project to overhaul the secondary-school (age 11-16) system and to get to grips with A-levels (age 16-18). One quote rather feebly […]
Collecting Contemporary
15 Sep 2006 at 08:06
David Haden
Artist(s), Creative industries, Reading
Comments Off on Collecting Contemporary
Collecting Contemporary is a new 300-page book of interviews with major collectors of art, along with dealers, consultants, auctioneers, and museum curators. Surprisingly, no artists are interviewed. Also odd is that the publisher Taschen (never noted for their prudery) have decided that the British version must have a disreetly boring matt-black cover, while the USA […]
Working Life
Working Life is a newly-launched online photographic exhibition, documenting the British working-class at work. There are also many more galleries of such photography over at the Side Gallery.