Thumb Plays

In Chicago in 2003, Peter Flesch, goots and an audiowizard sat me down, Clockwork Orange style, and made me watch this video whilst pipetting salt-water into my drying, crying eyes.

It's the video for Coopie N Me by Shorty, and I'm so glad it's on YouTube. It's really worth watching. I just wish I could put my finger on why it's as funny as it is.

Issue 3 of infLect is up, with work by Sandy Baldwin, David Clark, Mary Flanagan, Lewis LaCook and John Sparrow, and a link to mez’s blog.

Take a look at http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect/

Hello, I'm a Mac

Turn the e-pages

I've been a bit frustrated by lack of access to a decent printer, and so a piece I had been working on periodically since January has gone pretty slowly and has never really taken shape in a way where I could test it out. It's a piece which draws on and subverts diagrammatical structure to imply associations, hiearchies and relationships across a page which is split down the middle.

With a binding on the outside in mind, the reader would then turn each left and/or right page outwards, revealing a text beneath which interacts with its opposititonal counterpart. Subsequently the work is one in which letters and broken words and phrases sit on their own or contaminate others, occasionally being completed when a certain combination of left and right is made.

Anyway, I suddenly thought the other day that this would work really well in a hypertext setting as well as in print, and in fact, producing an online version is kind of an ideal and economical way of testing out the piece.

I've put the piece as it currently stands on my web site. Your browser windo should automatically resize to accommodate the graphics. You shouldn't need to, but you might need to resize the window... click on each image on the left or right to cycle through that side.

Click image to check it out:

Go Runway

Today sees the first airing of the third season of Bravo's Project Runway (yes, that is the most cluttered site ever, but rest assured the designers are probably rather well-dressed).

I have a few hopeful predictions for the season and the producers are clever enough with how they deliver the content to pretty much ensure I won't be disappointed. I am hoping for a villain everyone loves to hate, and from the commercials, it looks like there will be some double-dealing divas ready to make some great television. Season 2 saw Santino Rice making the final, and upsetting most of the other competitors in the process on a weekly basis. It wasn't all black and white though, and Rice, although often appearing to be the arrogant loud mouth, also often seemed pretty reasonable. Certainly I felt that his designs were often the most exciting, although I appreciated the comments which were made about his needing to control the skill he had to better meet the criteria of the challenges. However, I did feel that all of the feedback - which he heeded at the final show - was then used against him. He was criticised for not being flamboyant enough, when this was precisely why he had fallen short on other challenges...

Daniel V's designs were also excellent, particularly in the final episode for Fashion Week. Although Chloe's designs were excellent, I felt that she lacked the consistency of Daniel V, and also needed the break this win would have caused much less than Daniel, who was eager to learn and who, unlike Chloe, had no business of his own. Chloe also tended to complain about the prospect of high-profile, high-pressure design in business, which further made me think that Daniel, rather than her, should have won.

Anyway, my limited exposure to Season 1 suggested that it too was full to the brim with nutjobs teetering between genius and psychosis; and one of the show's assets is the frequent possibility of some genuine bitch-slapping between sequined sisters.

I'm also expecting a fair share of scandal. This season promises us that someone will be ejected, presumably in the non-"Auf Wiedersehen" fashion. I can only guess at what will be severe enough to warrant this, and I'm guessing it will be a design RIP-OFF, with one designer stealing another's design... we'll see...

Characters are rarely two-dimensional in this show. The first season had Austin Scarlett, a transvestite who looked like a woman from an early 80s coffee commercial (you know, the ones where a man is invited back for coffee and they really do sit and drink coffee [this is interspersed with montages of pouring coffee beans and steaming brown brew]). Season 2 made up for its lack of out and out aesthetic oddness with some mentally troubled characters, and hopefully season 3 will form a happy medium of the two.

I'll be checking back in with some comments as the season progresses, but I guarantee you it will be nothing compared to the outstanding FOURFOUR blog, whose coverage of the second season was nothing short of obsessive and perfect. Check back there regularly for very thorough and media-rich commentary...

J

New web site look

I finally got round to spending some much needed time on the look and feel of my web site. Finally being able to get to a scanner, it now looks much more how I planned. It's not quite finished - there are a few sections to go up before the bulk is ready - but it's up and I'm pleased...

Take a look here: http://www.textosterone.co.uk

The context of the line