Cuttlefish Blog
I bought a little Chinese shortwave radio last week and by tuning in to a fax broadcast on 2618KHz last night and holding my iPhone near it while running an app called HF Fax I was able to receive this weather map. I was quite impressed. Radio has always fascinated me. Despite knowing broadly how it works (I have a radio license which I took an exam for ages ago), I still consider it to be basically magic.
All radio frequencies exist in the same place simultaneously, their waves travel around our world almost instantly and we can't see or touch them. Yet we not only managed to not only discover them in the first place, but are able to control them in such a way that within decades of discovery their use became essential to the modern world.
For a while I've been thinking about a project that would look to visualise the radio spectrum around you in a creative way - letting you see, hear and 'feel' the waves around you. Making the invisible, visible. I'll report back when I've made some progress.
I've been interested in the ideas and writings of Gregory Bateson for a while. He was a pioneering systems thinker who contributed to many disciplines from anthropology, through cybernetics to cognitive science and semiotics (although I imagine he wouldn't think of these as different "disciplines" as such).
In this film, named "An Ecology of Mind" after one of Gregory Bateson's best known books, Bateson's daughter Nora presents a portrait of the man and his work. It contains many interviews with people influenced by his ideas, plus plenty of archive footage of Gregory Bateson from his lectures, as well as home movies. Fritjof Capra, who I have spent time with at Schumacher College, makes a number of insightful contributions.
It makes for fascinating viewing. It certainly helps you understand what Gregory Bateson's ideas were about, but just as interesting is the backdrop of his relationship with daughter Nora Bateson. She clearly adored him, although he was aged 64 at the time of her birth and died when she was only 12.
Gregory Bateson's writings can be hard to make sense of (at least by me!) and this film makes for a great introduction to his work. The film is currently on tour around the UK, although I purchased it from Amazon in Germany. See www.anecologyofmind.com for more information.
I watched Stephan Harding's Animate Earth film last night. For those unfamiliar with Stephan and his work, he is the resident ecologist at Schumacher College in Totnes and is a highly inspirational and engaging expert on Gaia Theory and ecological thinking. I've attended a number of his talks whilst at the college and this film does a great job of capturing his enthusiasm and knowledge on the subject.
In the film he presents many of the ideas that can be found in his book of the same name. He introduces the nature of the ecological crisis we are currently experiencing, discusses Goethe's approach to science (which is very much the basis for his teaching at Schumacher), explains Gaia Theory and illustrates it all with a detailed look at the long-term carbon cycle (albeit without the amusing personifications of the elements involved that I have heard him use before!).
The film is an impassioned plea for a more holistic view of the world around us in order to come up with long-term solutions to ecological problems. It's a film that needs to be seen and I encourage you to try and see it.
See www.animateearth.com for more information about the film. You can find the book on Amazon here or simply search for "Animate Earth".
Derby QUAD are running an interesting programme of digital arts events at the moment. v.01 was launched tonight with the opening of an exhibition of interactive artworks which runs for a week. There will also be workshops, demonstrations and talks over the coming week. More information can be found at the website here. I've popped a few pictures from the launch event on my Flickr page.
I attended a very interesting lecture by Eduardo Kac on Tuesday evening at the Royal College of Art. He was talking about the life and work of Brazillian-based artist Waldemar Cordeiro. Cordeiro was born in 1925 and died in 1973, and in his relatively short life worked in many creative fields, being particularly known for his work with the Concrete Art movement in Brazil.
He was also a pioneering computer artist, spending the last five years of his life producing computer-based artworks using the technology available at the time - dot-matrix printers and plotters.
Eduardo's talk was very engaging, demonstrating a high degree of knowledge of the subject, but also a clear admiration of the artist. Eduardo Kac is known for his artworks that use technology and biology in new ways - perhaps most famously in the creation of a fluorescent rabbit called Alba that contained a jellyfish gene (the ethics of doing this are clearly a major part of the piece).
The talk was organised by the Computer Arts Society.
On Friday we had the first public sharing of the The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diva at Curve. A good-sized audience saw Carol Leeming perform part of the script with multimedia elements supporting.
The three-sreen stage set worked well and Sally's video and Andy's lighting looked great. There are certainly plenty of areas where we can improve the synchronisation between the performance and the visuals, but feedback was very good and we are happy with progress so far.
The first complete performance of the production will be at Curve in June, with the installation at Phoenix Square being scheduled for November. Pictures of work in progress can be found here on Flickr.
Limbo is a project by artist Simon Faithfull. Using a custom iPhone app created by Cuttlefish, Simon is able to create drawings on his phone and upload them to the internet. Subscribers can then view the drawings on a website or via a specially-created iPhone app.
Recently Cuttlefish updated the viewer app to include extra features, such as comments, and added a new Limbo Lite app to the iOS store that allows you to view Simon's artworks for free on your iPhone (the full Limbo app is available for £1.49 and gives extra features such as alerts when you are near the location of a drawing).
Limbo is proving to be a very successful project. It's also been listed as a highlight of 2011 by arts website Culture 24 (see http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/art371254).
To download the new Limbo apps simply search the iPhone App Store for "Simon Faithfull". To browse the artworks on the web visit the Limbo web site at http://limbo.simonfaithfull.org/.
On the 13th and 14th January Phoenix Square hosted the Max For Users Convention. Local news agency Citizen's Eye were in attendance and filmed some great interviews with attendees, speakers and exhibitors. I've produced a playlist of their videos at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6ACF01A1BAA40586.
You can also watch them on your iPhone via the Citizen's Eye iPhone app. You'll find this on Apple App Store by searching for "Citizen's Eye".
Friday 13th January saw saw the latest Interact Live event at The Interact Gallery, Fabrika in Leicester. A good sized audience was treated to an exhibition of interactive artworks in the upstairs gallery and live music downstairs.
The artwork on display included Jackie Calderwood's "Colour Chords", Sean Clark's "Memory Mirror", Lee Scott's "Laser Harp", Craig Clarke's "Simaesthesia", Honest Dave's "Bath Time" and Stuart Smith and Mike Gatt's "Sound Tree".
Music was provided by ASMO, Fortran, Protofuse and Wife Divorces Man Accused of Hotel Leap, with visual provided on the night by Blend.
It was a very good night. I'm particularly happy with the art/live mix of these events. The next one will probably be organised in the Spring. Join my e-mail list or follow my social networks to be told when it will happen.
See http://www.seanclark.me.uk/interactlive2.html for pictures, videos and audio recordings from the night.
The "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diva" project has been under conceptual development for a while now, but it is now starting to move in to the production stages. Based around a narrative developed by Carol Leeming, it will involve a performance at Curve in the summer and an installation at Phoenix Square in the autumn. More information about the project can be found on my website.
