Granny Buttons reports on the Eastside Masterplan vs. Fred Grove news story. In which, after four years, Birmingham planners finally to give up on their plan to turf an old-aged pensioner out of his canalside cottage.
Archive for January, 2007
Eastside Masterplan vs. Fred Grove
30 Jan 2007 at 17:59
David Haden
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Adobe Lightroom v1.0 preview
30 Jan 2007 at 09:59
David Haden
Creative software, Photographers
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American Photo magazine writes up a hands-on preview of the forthcoming Adobe Lightroom v.1.0 software for photographers.
Ochevidec
A strange and voluminous photoblog, www.ochevidec.net (not safe for work), that gives us a glimpse into the wierdness and decay of contemporary post-Soviet nations, and also a look at what it seems to find most interesting about the west (glamourous female models, and gleaming sports cars seem to loom large in the Russian? imagination). They […]
Second eBay?
Could eBay be planning to buy out [tag]Second Life[/tag]? It’d make sense, since: eBay are one of the few companies in the world who have the techies and expertise to efficiently run and expand the required heavy-duty infrastructure; they’d remove the Linden as a potential future competitor to Paypal; and they’d gain a booming and […]
The new neighbours, same as the old neighbours
30 Jan 2007 at 09:18
David Haden
Birmingham, Creative industries, Regeneration
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A little over 150 miles from Birmingham International Airport (about ‘three hours from taxi-to-taxi, as the EasyJet flies’) is Dublin. The capital of the small nation of Ireland, which is now the sixth wealthiest country in the world according to new figures on personal incomes. On a per-head income basis, the Irish now beat Britain, […]
The Stirrer
Courtesy of Granny Buttons, I’ve only just discovered the brilliant The Stirrer. Imagine that the satirical magazine Private Eye had fallen on hard times, relocated to offices in the Black Country (that’s just West of Birmingham), and started to cover local matters. That’s The Stirrer.
Technorati test post
Technorati Profile. They’ve finally let me onto Technorati! You may be seeing Technorati tags appearing here in future, at the foot of more interesting/longer posts. It looks like I’ll be using the [tag]SimpleTags[/tag] WordPress plug-in. D’log is zooming towards 24,000+ unique visitors for Jan 07, so it’ll be interesting to see how much further Technorati […]
The Lowdown on Lowbrow
A 48-minute indie documentary about the West Coast end of the lowbrow art spectrum. The Lowdown on Lowbrow (Fountain Prods./Marcus Rogers, 48 mins) covers lowbrow/pop-surrealism and street art on the West Coast of the USA from the 1930s to the present, and has a trailer here. It’s already been premiered on Bravo in the USA, […]
G&G II
The Daily Telegraph bags the second Gilbert & George interview prior to their retrospective.
No more French art-house?
29 Jan 2007 at 09:08
David Haden
Creative industries, Entertainment
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Well, whatever next? Now even the French can no longer stomach their own bleak and angst-ridden art-house cinema… “So great has the [ French ] public’s aversion to art-house cinema become that one distributor has warned that the very French species of the cinéphile [ ‘art house cinema’ fan ]… is becoming extinct. France’s 2006 […]
Elin Neumann
Square landscape paintings, in the style of Turner, by contemporary Danish artist Elin Neumann.
Gilbert & George interview
The Observer newspaper nips in quick, with the first long Gilbert & George interview prior to their massive retrospective… “George’s theory is that homophobia is still alive and well, even in the supposedly liberal and bohemian art world. ‘There’s a lot of closet gay bashing,’ he says. ‘There are journalists who attack us without saying […]
Derelict forests
The return of E.M. Forster’s ‘wild greenwood’? “More than half the forests in England are now in effect derelict, experts at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology claim. … David Bellamy, the botanist and TV presenter, attributed the decline in the quality of woodland to the reduction in the number of gamekeepers and gillies […]
Calcata, Italy
The New York Crimes profiles the colony of artists in Calcata, Italy. As the demographics of places like Italy evolve, I daresay we can expect to see more such communities springing up in the radically under-populated (but dirt-cheap, sunny, and broadband-enabled) areas of Europe. The current puny tax-breaks for artists, being mooted in Scotland (£125 […]
Rachel Bullock
These works by Rachel Bullock look interesting. They’re actually chalk & charcoal, but seem very photographic in their qualities. An old exhibition is here, her 2002 Bordersongs series is here, and there’s a preview of a 1998 exhibition here.
What’s Left? review
I’ve just finished reading Nick Cohen’s new book What’s Left?. My short review is here (PDF, 15kb). The book-launch event is in about ten days.
Der Spiegel’s North Korea slideshow
The German Der Spiegel magazine has a slide-show of images from French photographer Philippe Chancel, who managed to get onto a ‘cultural’ visit to North Korea. This is what a communist slave state looks like, on the sterile surface. Behind the silent facade, between 1.5 and 3.5 million people have died in slave camps, famines […]
“Intellectuals; go to the countryside!”
dott 07 — can designers jettison their obsession with designer bollocks, and actually design things that help local communities do real (or even un-real) things in the gritty North-East of England? dott07 launches in April with Mapping the Necklace… “Can you roam a park which doesn’t, as such, really exist? Can you investigate compelling experiences […]
Drool, drool, drool
Drool, drool, drool… “The new OQO 02 … is 14 centimeters wide, 8 centimeters high, and 3 centimeters thick — small enough to toss in a purse or a large pocket. It weighs 1lb. Yet it’s a full Windows Vista-capable computer, with a 1.5-gigahertz processor, an 800-by-480-pixel touch screen, a slide-out keyboard, and three kinds […]
Brad Knipstein
A series of 12 astrological polaroids by Brad Knipstein, that are at an interesting mid-way point between shadow-boxes, photograms and polaroids.