Archive for November, 2010

Sonic plants for Eastside

Hopefully the new Eastside Park (eta Summer 2012) will come with lots of innovative opportunities for artists, beyond the usual inoffensive municipal sculptures. Might I suggest a small “sonic shed” be included in the plans, devoted to giving artists-in-residence the tools and the workbench needed to regularly ‘plant’ sets of ambient/micro ‘sonic artworks’ around the […]

Contemporary cigarette cases

The law of unintended consequences. Make cigarette packs more and more off-putting, and thus provoke the return of the elegant cigarette-case — in either faux-antique reproduction, or new designs…

Eastside Park by summer 2012

Birmingham Central reports that… “Planners have approved the redesigned Eastside City Park and the new science garden fronting Thinktank […] Work on the park will begin in May 2011 ready for a grand opening in July 2012” High-speed rail lines might carve through the south-west bits of the park (and the proposed new BIAD campus) […]

Digital audiences : engagement with arts and culture online

MTM London’s new report: Digital audiences : engagement with arts and culture online (Nov 2010).

Moon triptych

Tony Ray-Jones exhibition

Tony Ray-Jones’ old school — Christ’s Hospital, in West Sussex — is offering a rare chance to see an exhibition of his prints (29th Nov 2010 – 9th Dec 2010).

Re-wilding

Lucas Foglia, Re-Wilding — a photo series of those trying to live self-sufficient lifestyles in the south-eastern USA.

Shadow Catchers

Camera-less photography, on now at the V&A in London, in the form of the exhibition by a new book… Cover of the book: Adam Fuss, Butterfly Daguerreotype — from the series ‘My Ghost’ (2001).

Fay Godwin exhibition

A celebratory exhibition to mark the 25th anniversary of Fay Godwin‘s seminal book Land, which was a silent but effective voice in the fledgling UK environmental movement of the mid 1980s. The exhibition is at the National Media Museum, Bradford, until 27th March 2011.

Hidden Park

Hidden Park… “… it’s a [mobile, GPS-based] computer game that gets the kids off the couch and playing outdoors. The application uses all the features of the iPhone to lead children into a fantasy world of trolls, fairies and tree genies – right in their local park! […] you can set up a version of […]

The Office

Why work often can’t be done at the office. Who knew?

Dust busting

Inspired by The Register’s gallery of dust horrors, I’ve de-dusted the inside of my PC. Above: Creative Commons pic from RandyWombat.

Toy boats

A lifetime’s collection of over 2,500 old pictures of people with toy sail boats.

Games for Learning 2009-2010

Engage Catalogue of Games for Learning 2009-2010 (PDF link, 26Mb). 33 serious and commercial games that can be used for learning.

Boilerpipe

Boilerpipe. It does what the Instapaper service and the Readability bookmarklet do — tries to strip away the sidebars, ads and all other clutter from around a long article or a blog’s front page, to leave the core article(s). Useful when you’re abroad and using a slow public computer on which you’re not allowed to […]

UK indie comics manifesto

A manifesto for UK indie comics in 2010. Pretty agreeable stuff. Picture by Garen Ewing (who is entirely unconnected to the manifesto).

Lost Pilot

Stoke-on-Trent, historically one of the richest and most musically active parts of the West Midlands — and left off the list for the British Library / Arts Council’s new local music portal/archive. It’s not on the long-list either. Nor is Staffordshire. Search box? Er, no. Plonk. (Yet it does list Leicester on the front-page menu, […]

Media Sector Business Drivers in 2020

Just published. Giesecke, R. & Immonen, S. (2010). Media Sector Business Drivers in 2020. It’s a Kindle-unfriendly double-column PDF, but the Adobe Reader “save as text…” function handles it fairly well.

Arcade Barn

The Arcade Barn is a vintage videogame museum of coin-operated cabinets. Its rather far away from the Midlands — in Exeter, Devonshire — but it’s great that such a museum is even happening in the UK. It’s apparently been featured in a recent issue of Retro Gamer. All proceeds go toward keeping the cabinets running, […]

Light Night

20 photos from tonight’s Light Night events in Stoke-on-Trent.