Pom: The Pom

Pom. One of my few interests.

For those of you who do not know who Pom is, I would recommmend you read older posts of mine but if that is too taxing, then purely look in the windows of a Toni & Guy. You'll see her there.

It has been months since I first noticed her in an advert in Time Out for having your hair cut by a student at Toni & Guy, then again ever since, as her face and hair have been on posters all over the country in the windows of said salon.

But the true importance of her role, as a model, for T&G is that she has now lent her name to a hair style, the one, believe it or not, that she models in the poster. The Pom, it is called, and here is a description:

The cut is a fusion of 20's flapper girls, the Eton crop, Closh hats create a combination of retro silhouettes, inspired by the iconic model Twiggy and actresses Mia Farrow and Julie Andrews. The Pom represents short hair as a graphic, yet elegantly feminine alternative.
The colour was inspired by a rich palette of reds including shades of strawberry, ruby, rose and fizzy-sorbet to inject an element of humour and cheekiness.
The result- a real statement colour!

I have in my possession artifact, a relic, of times past - a poster to slotted into a security barrier at the Wood Green Woolworths. I hope that I might get one of the Toni & Guy posters as they take them down. This is a hint to anyone who might be able to get me one, to get me one.

R B Grange

"the final five will reveal the secret of the opera house"

I hope so.

Has anyone else seen A4 size pieces of plastic attached to lamp post, baring the legend 'OPERA HOUSE'. I have, I've seen those.

Does anyone know what it means? I've seen lots in Wood Green and some in Central. No images exist on Flickr, and Google is nonethewiser (new word)

Any help on this matter will be appreciated,

R B Grange

On why my work is doing this

I was reading a popular listing magazine this morning and noticed that the V&A are having a Babylonian exhibition on at their house. I shall definitely be going to see that, and if I don’t, you can kick me.

The thing that drew my attention to the advert was an image of the Tower of Babel. This got me thinking – is my work more about Babel than it is about Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International?

Well let’s take the two myths. Babel was made by human endeavour to… what? Rival god? To make a name for the builders themselves? Whatever the reasoning behind its being built, the Christian Old Testament god did not like it; so, as to halt the production of the tower he gave every individual his own language, so that there would be confusion. In some other accounts (outside of the King James), the god sends a might wind to destroy the tower, but in KJV it is merely through incoherence that production stops. Obviously the moral of the story is that objects and time and labour should only be spent catering to the vanity of the one true god as apposed to anything or anyone else. The tower remained only partially built.

MTTTI is a better story. The tower designed by Tatlin was to be huge structure, dwarfing the Eiffle Tower, and standing for the power and might of the Soviet Union. Of course, it was not built, due to the lack of steel and the more pragmatic problems that faced the CCCP, those of housing shortages and what not. But the tower, in its absence, gives us a melancholy glimpse to what could have been. The antagonist in this story is not a strong and vengeful character, but a context, a situation that causes the project to the miscarried, instead of being given a life only to have it taken.

When considering Tatlin’s endeavour we are not left with ruins or the loathing of an anthropomorphic destructive force, we are left the a blueprint still, a model upon which we can build.

R B Grange

News

For any of you who like him, or care, you'll be pleased to hear that Mark Leckey won this year's Turner Prize.


Here is an image of him drinking a drink.

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F L lick R er

Yeah. I've started taking images off flickr and drawing them. So far I have done this two of Albert Speer's proposed buildings in Berlin, but Im getting images of failed things. I surpose it's just an examination of dramatic irony, or would be, if I included people in my work.

I've got three pictures of Emley Moor Mast after it fell in 1969, and one of Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik walking through the rumble of a house in Lebanon.

When I typed "We Failed" into the Flickr search, one of the first (of 15,738) images was this, by artist Damien James

http://www.flickr.com/photos/damienjames/2267693533/

It's something overtly figurative that I actually like.

R B Grange

'sert'

THE INDIVIDUAL IN DEEP SPACE AND WHAT HE FOUND THERE.

Chapter 0.0 : Black Sea – life with walls in a vacuum.

PART ONE : THE SHIP’S CAPTAIN, MORAL DECISIONS WITHOUT A CONTEXT

Chapter 1.1 : Who we are – humanity and representations of humanity.

Let us start by finding out exactly who we are dealing with in bsg and tng. By this I mean where the charaters in the fleet and on the enterprise, respectively, fit in relationship to the human race at large, within their respective contexts.
After the attack on bgs’s Twelve Colonies, the President’s aid Billy estimates there to be about 50,298 individuals (souls) who have survived. This figure is revised by the end of the episode (1.1) to 47,973. This statistic is vitally important to understanding the whole premise of BSG and how the actions of the individual are the crux of the show. This number is not representative of humanity, it is humanity. All of these people’s histories have come to this point in time, to this number of individuals to act out an enclosed narrative.

Chapter 1.2 : The Prime directive and the President – limitations on the moral self.

A good point of access to start analysing the moral dilemmas in which Picard and Adama are placed is to look at their governing rules. In the Star Trek series Picard must always remember the Prime Directive:

“No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet. No references to space or the fact that there are other worlds or civilizations”


Chapter 1.3 : “Yours is the Bridge Number 1” – Saul Tigh and Will Riker.


PART TWO : THE OTHER IN DEEP SPACE

Chapter 2.1 : The Void Mirror – the context of deep space

Chapter 2.2 : Loving the alien – projections of the self into deep space.

Chapter 2.3 : Going Home – from subjective context, to objective.

R B Grange

Job 41, 29 "...he laugheth at the shaking of a spear."

Macbeth is ridiculous.

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Back to me

In a far too, or un, expected turn, my work has full embraced the barbaric constraint of anthropomorphism. I've got onto the using some animals mentioned in the Old Testament. The ZIZ, the LEVIATHAN and the BEHEMOTH.

These huge or dangerous beasts never existed. People have used the description of the BEHE (below) to show that god made all animals, because it sort of sounds like an elephant; before anyone, with the use of written script outside of Africa, had seen an elephant. More recently some say it is the description of a dinosaur. Well, it's not. The bible says it ate grass, and at the time of the sauropods (things like Brachiosaurs et la) there was no grass.

Something in the description of the beast has only just struck me. That there is the application of intent to this animal, intent through god. "his Maker can draw His sword". Through the conscious mind of god, this animal can turn against you and kill you, if God so wishes.

Weird.

Book of Job, Chapter 40.

15 Behold now the behemoth that I have made with you; he eats grass like cattle.
16 Behold now his strength is in his loins and his power is in the navel of his belly.
17 His tail hardens like a cedar; the sinews of his tendons are knit together.
18 His limbs are as strong as copper, his bones as a load of iron.
19 His is the first of God's ways; [only] his Maker can draw His sword [against him].
20 For the mountains bear food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there.
21 Does he lie under the shadows, in the covert of the reeds and the swamp?
22 Do the shadows cover him as his shadow? Do the willows of the brook surround him?
23 Behold, he plunders the river, and [he] does not harden; he trusts that he will draw the Jordan into his mouth.
24 With His eyes He will take him; with snares He will puncture his nostrils.

R B Grange

See you last Tuesday, part 1

Last Tuesday Chris and I visited Oxford. We had booked tickets to see a debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox about whether or not "Science Has Buried God".

Our train from Paddington left at about half ten and we spent a few minutes in our chosen seats until Chris got restless and wanted to move to a table. In being unable to find one we just sat down. The journey was uneventful enough with most of the time and our attention being taken up by drawing in my sketchbook.

At Oxford station we made it our mission to find a restaurant where we might take Dim Sum. This could have taken ages, but it turns out there's a bit of a China Town area near the station, so we just went into one of those places. We, like the tourists we are, asked for a knife and fork. Not that I can't use chopsticks, but I've never picked up a whole spring roll with them. They obliged with the western cutlery and topped up our teapot twice. Things were fine, until we came to the pudding. A cuboid of sponge cake, 200mm by 150mm by 250mm, not something that I could imaging tackling with chopsticks, nor something that a knifiefork would do much good on. Chris was all for asking the waitress how to eat it, but I overruled and asked for it to be put in a box.

We left the resturant, after a minor confusion over the phrase "We're ok, thank you.", and headed for the Natural Science Museum (or the Pitt Rivers as Becky incorrectly calls it). Before entering we went to the university playing fields to eat our cake. We found a nice bench facing out onto a rugby pitch with a large dark bush behind it. Our arses had just about touch then seat when a little man with black hair and a carrier bag came round the bush.
"You alright?" he said.
This was not the 'y'lright' of the tow-path, where, when passing people, it's quite nice to register their existence. This was a real question, not a salutation.
"We're fine thank you." I replied with some force.
"Oh, ok." and then he walked off.
The same thought had gone through mine and Chris's minds; that this was a gay bench, for gays, so that they might cruise for sex and be gay with each other. We ripped our cake in half and ate it, discussing if the guy might have though that his luck was in with the discovery of two lads, or that he might think that we'd pulled each other and he's got there moments too late.

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WREK

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Where

In looking for my Young Persons' rail card (don't worry I've found it) I came cross the instructions for my raptor.

I know how to put it together, possibly blind folded, but there is more information of the sheet of paper than that. I have gained a postcode.

TA7 9DR

The people who import the packs are based here. (Below is an image from Google Maps)



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Seeing Gilbert & George in Muswell Hill

After finishing a lovely coffee in Feast in Muswell Hill Gilbert & George walked passed the window of the cafe. I, of course, upped and left and followed them. They both crossed the road to the Odeon and Organic Supermarket, then the taller of the pair went to look at a sign as the other crossed with us to the side of the road with the church. There he stood looking back across the road. I tried to acknowledge the shorter (Gilbert) with a "you'alright" but was greeted with only a vacant stare. I then walked with Katherine to the bus stop for the 43, where the pair met up with each other again, and got on the approaching bus, paying their way with OAP cards.

I like my life.

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Replicators

In the manner of Rocky Gervais saying his website name (rickygervais.com) I will sometimes say "obviously" after describing what I am doing within my work.

"Yeah, I'm just manually digitizing a raptor skellington of mine, so I can project fractured images onto it. Obviously"

My obviously is used to highlight the seemingly bizarre nature of my practice (to those outside my artistic community) but also to make it become something normal, accepted and, well, obvious. But it goes further than that. My soon to be realised skellingtons are there to solve a problem, or more accurately, there to help my process of questioning.

So why dinosaurs. To put is very simply, they are cool. From watching Jurassic Park as a child, asking Mum and Dad to read me "The Dinosaur Book" (a legendary phrase in the Grange household), playing with model toys, all these things told me that dinosaurs are cool. The important words are "are" and "cool". If something is cool, then it is a meme that works. Hair cuts are memes, sometimes they fall from favour, but the ones that have made it into photographs might be rediscovered and will live again.

The genes that made dinosaurs what they were have gone, "and nature selected them for extinction", but purely by change some skeletons lay in silt, and were preserved. later they were replaced by sediment and became rock themselves. Then we found them. And we, humans, do not deal only in genetics, but memetics. As genes dinosaurs died, as memes they still live.

Jurassic Park would never have had the any interest from anyone if dinosaurs had not been such strong memes. Hammond knew people would want to see these animals because they have such a strong cultural resonance.

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Bollocks

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Dangerous Practise

I'm in the library trying to print out some images, like last year. Very simply grabbing them from the internet and dropping them in Word. Enlarging them, then printing them off on A3.

In trying to print this image from Foundation



but it is too large a file for the printer to comprehend. That's weird.

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Subject

Had an immensely productive day at college today featuring me doing all manner of stuff and actually caring about what I was doing. Gone are the days of me passing myself off as being too cool for school; I'm settling down to some real work. But I've a problem, a bugbear - which goes by the name of Subject Matter.

In making objects onto which things shall be placed I have, I think, brought the passive screen out of its slumber, and placed it away from the picture plain of the wall. But what I am to project? What is urgent? What needs to be said upon these pelvises?

My easy option is to say what I know; impart my wealth of knowledge and hope that that tells me something, or leads me somewhere. My interests are, I think, engaging and diverse enough to sustain peoples' interest. I'll spew. Everything I can think of I'll put onto these objects. All sound and fury, from a candle in a lantern; from a battery in a torch, burning alkaline splayed lasers across the image of an image of an fossil of a man.

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Skellingtons

I was just thinking as I walked up from Wood Green, that dinosaurs are like an unexpected present. Not they themselves, but their fossilised remains, are a gifted from nature without any intent.

Pure happenstance makes a fossil. The correct place where an animal died; usually a riverbank prone to rising water levels, where the carcass can be consumed by micro-organisms whilst the bones are covered by layers of silt. Then as the bones decay they are gradually replaced by sediment under pressure, to be locked away until some great convulsion of the earth, or maybe stumbled upon by some mammalian biped.

My work, now erring into these animals’ thighbones and pelvises, is starting to centre on an almost character-like creature of the Iguanodon. A beast surrounded, in its first rediscovery, by legend and revelation, it has now become one of many well known prehistoric animals.

Last weeks trip to the Natural History Museum provided me with several sketches of fossils, but there is something lacking in their exhibition. It seems to erroneously cater for children, but the exhibits are looking old and outdated, and the shop has no wooden skellingtons. Most ridiculous, or the thing that is ridiculous and its ridiculousness most interesting to me, is the Iguanodon posed comfortably on two legs; we now conclude it to have walked on all fours, but used its forearms for some manual work. I like this because of the original ideas of the body of this animal as shown in the sculptures at Crystal Palace (spit on the floor); which are just massive chunky iguanas, with thumbs on their noses.

Anyways, that’s me done.

R B Grange

18 minute window

Right, this is getting stupid now. I've tried on three seperate occasions to up load a video to YouTube of me reviewing Dawn Gets Her Man, and failed everytime.

I'm able to posted things here because I can have another window open to check if the internet is working. But for YouTube there are no such fail safe points. The video could have seconds to go before completion and then cut out.

Pardon the strangely existential nature of this next sentiment, but the internet has stopped working since I started writing this post. And now it's back again.

(five minutes later)

I'm in the hall now in a blanket trying to post this.

R B Grange.

Do You Realize??

Walked in to Wood Green to have a talk with the fellow I met last week. His name was John, he was not the light. Instead of going straightaway to the Christian stand outside the library I went to HMV and purchased Full Metal Jacket and Gladiator. I then went on to W H Smiths and purchased a present for Becky, then to the Communist stand.

You'll be happy to hear, Chris, that one of the communists liked my wearing of the A badge and wondered where she could get one. I've been given quite a bit of literature on their cause and given them my e-mail address and recommended to the lady with whom I was speaking to read some Ayn Rand. She name a note of the name.

I then walked (always companied by Hayley) to Oxfam and Morrisons, then back to the Christian stall. I was told by some woman that John had to go to a meeting, so I asked her if she could tell him that I had been back. It turns out that he is a priest or pastor. Anyways, I took a copy of John's Gospel, (not this guy John, or John the Baptist) to make notes in. The communists gave me a paper about real stuff, wanted to discuss things and laughed and smiled.

R B Grange

RBG 2.0, The RockStar Medical Student.

Just finished a sporadically busy six hour shift at the pub. It featured a vomiting dog, the rudest couple and a woman (who said she was a therapist, but I wonder...), who thought that I'd do well in whatever profession I chose. She started by saying I looked like I'd be a drummer in a band and what I was obviously very rock and roll. Yeah.

A similar misinterpretation of me happen at a birthday party I attended a few years back. Some woman told me and my brother that she was good at guessing what degrees people were doing. A bit of an arrogant statement, especially so, considering that she placed me on a medical degree and Michael studying physics.

"Social and Political Sciences" he said.
"Oh well, I got that it was a science." she said.
It's a humanity.

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Hat

I've got my ethical hat on today. Which isn't true, I wear all my hats at all times, some of my shoulder some on my sleave. The idea what sometimes you're on a scientific mood, or artistic temperament is bollocks to me. I am all things at all times, to all people, but it doesn't seem like the rest of everybody is.

I've been looking online for clothes which have little or no (if that's possible) impact on the amount of carbon being unlocked from the earth, and at the same time not using sweatshop labour. It's hard. American Apparel, one of my favourite shops, does well on this and I would recommend anyone to buy one of their t-shirts from the Sustainable range.



But most companies seem to think that people want to show off about their "green credentials". Having pictures of trees on their shirts and whatnot. This puts me in mind of the South Park episode Smug, where everyone gets hybrid cars and instead of smog being produced an atmosphere of smug chokes everyone.

I just want to live like I live without harming the environment, which is something I can easily do. Granted, it will mean changes in business, but I am a great believer in people doing the right thing and if you don't like the way things are done, you can shop elsewhere.

R B Grange

ZOMBIE STRIPPERS

Internet is back at our house, so if anyone needs it come round. It hasn't been easy though and Becky needs to get a new piece of kit for her PC so the wireless works on it. But this situation couldn't have been avoided. The annoyance of having to send a week internetless and then three days with a nonworking connection, then an hour on the phone to India trying to explain that I have a Mac with Office on it (why I needed to do that I have no idea), then to have Becky shell out on hardware that she wouldn't need if we still had the old HomeHub (which by the by is housed in a draw if Charlie or somebody wants to use it in their work). That's my rant done, now on to the most productive week in ages.

I finished reading Flatland, read Ayn Rand's Anthem and have started reading a book some of you may have heard of called something like "The Origin of Species". This last book is amazing. I'm only two chapters in (after reading the introduction and preface, something I never usually do), but this is a brilliant book. This probably comes from how easy it is to read, Darwin's writing still is simple and expressive, placing, so far, ideas of domestic breeding in a language that even I can understand. Granted this book was publish for general realse and not as a paper, but this man is engaging it the full. I read some out to Becky in the studios and only lost the meaning of a sentence once.

I've also been reading John's gospel because a chap in Wood Green told me I should. Now I've read it before, but he told me I had to keep reading it. If you don't get the joke the first time it's hard for it to be funny ever again. I think this chap exprects me to have an epiphany whilst reading it, I don't know how. Then again this man isn't he best judge of things - He thought that there were no earthquakes before man committed a 'sin', that everything just (emphasis on the just) sprang out of nothing and that bees didn't used to sting people (I know they didn't, they used to be ant like things with a bite). I also had to explain what steam was to him, so I have little hope of him ever seeing past anthropomorphism.

I also watched "Zombie Strippers" at the Prince Charles Cinema. It was amazing.

R B Grange

Wallpaper

Another day and I am without, so I'm in the pub. I'm starting to enjoy this way of life. Gold is quite an unreactive metal but it is it's rarity that gives it its true value.

As followers of my online activites will be aware, I have had a massive change in aesthetic of the late. This started with using a uniform grey within my work encompassing the YouTube channel and Blog space. I like mid-tone greys and think them far too underrated in visuals. Black is too much and swamps and dwarfs other colours. The same with white. But I have of late (but wherefore I know not) taken to placing more visuals around the place. Behind my heading here, and as a background on my channel. For the most part it's wallpaper, but that is your context. Wilde said something about Americans being violent because of their horrid wallpaper, and I now endeavor to make my internet home a nice one.

R B Grange

What would Picard do?

I'm the pub, obviously. This being because of a lack of internet at our house. It should be up and running again in a week's time, an inconvenience that I could so very easily have done without. But begrudging situations will not change them, so I'm making the most of my worldly experience and come to the pub.

It is the hub of all of life, the Public House. Births, Marriages and Deaths. Sort of; people work to kill themselves there (but have a good time in the process), there are wedding receptions, (not in my pub, but in some larger ones) and Becky said that Andy found a possible dead fetus in the toilets once, but that might not be true.

I don't want you to think that I've come to the pub to use in the internet in order just ot tell you that I am doing it. This post is really to share part of the essay I am writing at the moment. Without Wireless yesterday morning I was able to write one-thousand words one Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek; The Next Generation (Gods save Ronald D. Moore). There's some of it, all spelling mistakes are to be corrected.

PRESENT
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica (BSG) can be seen as an alternative depiction of the present. Granted their techonology is more advanced in creating robots and faster-than-light travel, but the characters still react to situations as we would now, their zeitguiest is our spirit. To understand this better let us place it along side another of Ronald D. Moore reimagined series, Star Trek; The Next Generation. To a layman the two series may seem similar; “people in spaceships”, but this is far from the case, in BSG the remnants of the human race are forced to leave their colonies after a nuclear attack. Only fifty thousand people survive, the characters in the series are not part of humanity, they are humanity. The Next Generation has a much more pleasant back story. After making first contact with alien life hundreds of years before, the world is now a utopian society; no wars, no religion, no money, people “invest in themselves”. The people of Next Gen are not us, they have got past the hang-ups of our time and explore space with a moral high-ground. It is often mentioned to other races, like the Ferengi, that “we were once like you”, in there love of making a profit. In BSG there is money, the black market, a seemingly stringent class system stemming from place of birth, terrorism, insurgency, civil war, election rigging, “all the follies of human conceit” as Carl Sagan put it whilst describing the photograph taken my Voyager of Earth. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise is Neicheze Ubermansch, he makes a great hero, but his character is to be aspired for. Admiral William Adama of the Battlestar Galactica lies to his crew, plots to assassinate a superior officer (…), and yet he is more or less taken to be a good-guy.
By placing the human race outside of its usual context but keeping the ‘old ways’, as it were, Moore creates a platform for reassessing how we behave, what our drive is, and whether or not we are right to presume we are right. BSG does not come up with answers. You will not have learned a lesson by the end of an episode, but instead be left with choices and dissions that are otbe made. Many critics have said that BSG has been the only fiction yet produced that tackles the Iraq war in a mature and discursive way and I agree.

There's me in Berlin


R B Grange

Feets

Just calculated my Carbon Footprint at http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

It's a bit of a rubbish site; not at all 2.0. But it did give me an idea about how much nature I'm wasting.

2.499 tonnes. That's well below the national average of 9.8 tonnes and just over half of the global average of 4 tonnes. But it's still too much. I should really be getting it down to 2 tonnes at most. I've worked out that in purchasing a bike I can cut out my bus journeys and probably half my tube taking my print to 2.305 (approx). But if I down on restauranting and cinemaing I could get it down to 1.805.

Wish me luck.

R B Grange

Are these tonnes metric or imperial? Or is that a stupid question because of the spelling?

Sliver

I've been reading the novel Flatland by Edwin A Abbott for the past half an hour and I love it.

Those of you who know me will be aware of my complete lack of commitment when it comes to reading novels. After racking my brain a few days back I was able to remember the last fiction I had read, 2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke (obviously); a book I received for Christmas, I think, from Becky, and only wanted it read because I enjoy the film so much. My hesitation towards staring a new novel comes from the initial choice of which one to read. I don't want to waste my time with some pulp; although that is usually what I want from a film, the two media - although both time based - are used to vastly different ways. There is an allotted amount of time for the film, but not one for a book, the imperative must come from the reader and not the constant plod of the second-hand.

Flatland was a concept first told to Chris in explaining a topic I'll call "What we can know". I later found the brilliant Carl Sagan demonstrate Flatland on a YouTube clip of his documentary Cosmos. A world of two dimensions, or at least of two dimensional conscious beings, where one encounters a three dimensional being.

This is that:



The Tesseract is an object I've used in my work before, but in reading the opening few chapters of the novel my mind has turned to the idea of slivers. A slice which allows a glimpse. A depiction which is highly personal or highly useful for a certain circumstance, but one which does not embrace the whole idea. The Bias of Context. With this comes what Dawkins calls the Middle World in which we live. We see the parts of the light specturm that are useful to see, or hear the frequency of sounds that, yet gain, have a beneficial nature to us. But I want to see and hear the slices missing from plate of existence and for that I need Operationalist tools. Fun.

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RB Genome

BBBBBGBBRBGBBGGBGRBRBBRGBRRGBBGBGGBRGGBGGGGGRGRBGRGGRRRBBRBGRBRRGBRGGRGRRRBRRGRRR

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Jokes

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Branching

I'm trying to branch out in the content I put up on the internet. I enjoy talking to and at people and have started doing very small 'undepth' reviews of programmes on the BBCiPlayer. I've also revamped (or devamped) my YouTube channel and started drawing seriously again.



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Test Case

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Suddenly This Over View

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Yesturday

I had quite an interesting day yesterday, or two days ago, if I don't get this out until after twelve.

The think that sticks out the most was the fiasco at Morrison's. A woman who had purchased a bulk of several seperately items that all came in multipacks was paying by card. I too opt for this means of payment, as i like it is a, in the long run, speedier way of paying. That being said I do not have a 'grown-up' card, as people put it, but that is another topic. This woman who was directly in front of me in the cue, had in her company a boy, a girl and a young woman, all of whom helped her pack into the plastic bags needlessly provided, as she placed her card in the reader.

There was, of course, an error. Her card, for some reason, did not work. Unpeturbed by this she took another card out of her wallet, this was an orange card, this also did not work. The cashier, then told the woman that there was a faulty, and the cashier was told by the woman that there was not a problem. Now I don't like that sort of attitiude. You place your trust in the objects and people around. I have no idea how my debit card works, but, in the majority of cases, it does; now did this customer know more about the workings of the card and the till that the cashier? Would she being able to tell the cashier how she knew there was nothing wrong with the card?

Anyhow the three young people who run Morrison's were sent for. The guy, the short girl with curly black hair and the brown haired girl, and they came over to examine the problem. Becky, who had already paid for her shopping came over, but not before a jar of beetroot had been dropped next to me and clear up within minutes without leaving a stain. a new till was opened to process me and the other people in my cue, but first they tried to deal with the card woman, who still protested that her card did work. It did not and I decided to purchase my goods at another till.

I watched The Wicker Man and Jaws, the latter viewed in my new room on deck-chairs with Becky and Marcus.

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Stockholm

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Book

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Plug

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Change of plan.

I like the photos from my Foundation, but don't think that they are appropriate on my Flickr account. so I'm putting all the ones from there onto here.

There's only space for 200 pictures of my Flickr, which I think works well for my practice. I can use these images whereever I go. They are by no means finite as a resource, but the number available at one time is.

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MSB

I've been reading Maria's blog.

Out of her's, Giles's and Randle's it's the most comprehensive.

http://thenastyshow.blogspot.com/

R B Grange

Foundation

I'm back in Yorkshire at the moment and have been deleting some old photographs from my home user area. Most of these are very poor images from my foundation course at LCAD. A selection of the remaining pictures can be found on my Flickr account, and a video of something has been put up on my YouTube.


R B Grange

"Someone who holds back the truth causes trouble, but one who openly criticizes works for peace."

The above quote is from the christian bible. Proverbs, Chapter 10, Verse 10, of the Good News Bible (to be specific).

It puts me in mind of the scientists and philosophers of the past who did not want their belief in a god to be questioned. They did not look to disprove anything, but through their observations, picked holes in their faith.

In particular I think of Darwin. He had no motive to want to question a world designed by Yahweh and yet through merely seeing allowed him such insight into how things came about that he had to tell.

"Someone who holds back the truth causes trouble, but one who openly criticizes works for peace."

Of course Darwin's discovery was just that, a discovery, something that you or I might have seen if he had not. And would we have had the conviction to tell people?

R B Grange

ALPAl

how do you?

How does one place oneself in mythologized histories, fictionalised depictions of the present and projections of the future.

The placement of the self, as a very loose idea, is fractured and commonly misunderstood. It is not the same as anthropomorphism, but works along similar lines of understanding. Where anthropomorphism seeks to gift objects with human characteristics, dwarfing them to the limits of the human form and mind; placement allows the viewer to leave themselves and look back at how they might behave in a wider context. The individual’s character is not left behind, but cited directly in an alien object.
This method of viewing is a highly personal one and demands that the viewer seek to understand themselves in front of and within the piece.
In answering the above question (or a very similar one), I shall draw on my knowledge of the Science-Fiction genre, using texts that glimpse pasts, presents and futures; that could be, are not and never were. Most prominent in my investigation shall be the character of Deckard, the protagonist in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and his highly different depiction in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner. Deckard is human, therefore one would expect people to empathise with him and his job of killing dangerous androids; but this is not the case – Deckard is a murderer, an anti-hero who must take life. Questions arise here of who we are cheering for, who we believe to be morally right. Bladerunner is set in a dystopian future, therefore we can conclude that the ‘changing moral zeitgeist’, as Dawkins would have it, has moved on, the ideas of right and wrong have changed. How does one seek to cite oneself here?
The Futurists Edward Wadsworth and Wyndham Lewis, along with the conceptual-architects of Archigram provide a more visual and theoretical prompt to a projected future, one which provides us with an object based context – are these ideas to be aspired for, or left as ideals? Do they say more about the times in which they were made than the times they may well depict, or does it go further than that? Do projects of the future tell us about a context’s past?
Orwell’s 1984 contains the lovely quotation: ‘he who controls the present control the future, he who controls the future controls the past’. My concern with the idea of the past shall mainly centre on the fictitious Aryan Race, an ideal for the future being projected back into history.
A fictionalised present seems to be my main stumbling block, as of yet I understand this as a distorted present, an uncanny one where things slightly err away from the real. The work of Rachel Whiteread and Cindy Sherman lend themselves to investigation of the personal as universal and the ‘playing with known forms’ to disorientate or question the viewer’s viewing.

Done

Viv asked me to meet with him in his studio space for this interview. This seemed logical as his many catalogues and books are kept there and his little niche has a nice communal atmosphere to it. But his reasoning for talking within his working space goes further than its convenience.
The place, not the context, in which Viv works is one of the greatest influences on his practice. Context for him seems to be too large and set a thing to work with;
“I’m really affected by the environment I work in, who I’m with, small things that might have happened to me. I’m affect by that very moment, that’s where my interest lies.”
In less capable hands this method of working could end up as a skittish mess of tired and overdone themes, but Viv deals aptly with the amount of freedom that his practice allows him.
“I’ve always though that an artist is someone who works without context or reference and a critic is someone who works with.”
Viv is at ease within his space, two white walls and a white fall. For means of exhibition the studio floor is re-painted grey every year, but I’m sure something of Viv’s highly active work will remain. The small space has been constantly changing throughout the year, gaining and losing semi-permanent frames and anchorages. These have been made from such varied materials as wood, parcel-tape, and paper to name three; but none of these have worked as add-ons or backdrops, within Viv’s more recent work there is less of a distinction between body and surround – something he is quick to note,
“There used to be some form of camouflage in my work… but in moving away from this I am able to loose the body to a better effect in the objects around it…there is no presidency of one object.”
Figures are used throughout Viv’s work and I mention to him the idea of the personal being universal. “I see myself as a prop.” he says and I take this to mean not only as a figure in the work, but as a practitioner as well. He uses himself, his skills and the material with which he works as symbiotic aids. He seems like the kind of artist who would be able to surprise himself, to learn from merely doing. This comes across when he talks about a recent foray of his.
Several large wooden frames were constructed in his space to make a corridor like shape in which one was able to move. On each of the frames was placed a mesh of tape in a random grid. Viv then walked naked through the passage collecting layers of tape on his body has he went.
Now the wrapping of the body is nothing new in his work, but the rediscovery of it is, to my mind, key to Viv’s practice. There is a beautiful production still of some work of his from maybe a year ago, where someone is wrapping the artist. He is stood as someone else applies a long coloured bandage to him. Only part of Viv’s head can be seen, a sideways glance as he looses his individuality to become a body. But this new form of wrapping, this active, striding wrapping finishes with a similar ‘end’ but is so vastly different in its production to him being stationary and passive that one engages wholly with the process and not the outcome.
“(the process) is so ambiguous and so many questions are raised from it that any point can be taken and displayed in its own right.”
Recently Viv has taken to using a more low-fi and immediate approach to capturing his work. Where once he would have used a photography studio to tweak and redo ‘images’ he now carries a digital camera with him and reacts to the photographs he takes and not the ones he would like to have taken. I ask him if this is in preparation for the future, for surviving outside of the institution.
“oh yes, if I make work in a place where I’ve never work before, I want to be able to almost leave it there and take my reaction away from it.”
Viv’s initial fresh aesthetic and constant self-discovery are where my love of his work lies. There is nothing turgid or over done and any thematic message is never blatant. The work is not trying to say something merely trying to say.

R B Grange

You're here already

R B Grange

WHITEREAD TWO

W’s and h’s practices share similarities of process. Not the process of making – cast and carving, as I have already said are almost binary opposites – but have sudden realisation have influenced their work. For Hepworth is was the ‘discovery’ of the hole, this breaking through to make an object of the space within the work, that after its first occurrence in Hepworth’s oeuvre remained a constant until her sudden death in 1975. The pierced for become for Hepworth a signature but not a bain or albatross. The freedom of modernist sculpture allowed her to explore her own work, not revisiting existing pieces, but looking again at how it was she came to work in the way she did. The carved form was not, by Hepworth’s own omission, not her’s – she did not work her tools against the grain, but merely moved them where the rock or woood would let her. The hole then, was something that would have naturally come about.
W’s equivalent hole would obviously be the cast of negative space, which too came about in the sudden and suprising way. What comedians might call the ‘pull-back-and-reveal’ happen for W with her first architectural piece Ghost…

R B Grange

WHITEREAD ONE

This is a some writing for an essay, it is not good yet.

Whiteread, as any artist with a sculptural practice working in the twentieth century fits awkwardly into the ideas of modernism that lasted throughout that time. Modernism and its massive duality gives us a glimpse into the two fasets of the artist as a practitioner. The first; the individual pursuit – that an artist’s endevour within their own work is paramount to their understanding of art history and the context in which they find themselves. The second is material based and posses the question of worthiness.

If we cite W’s practice along side Brancusi (1876-1957) and Hepworth (1903-1975) this fracturing of modernism becomes apparent. One might argue that W’s work is post-modern and therefore very different in reaction from hepworth to Brancusi, but to my understand post-modernism is very much part of modernism.

Brancusi’s influence of hepworth is best seen in the manipulation of materials. Figuratiy Western sculpture at the end of 1800s was a process of casting. Figures would be made in clay and a cast made from them, the artwork being a bronze stationary figure. These strong static shapes were played with by Rodin capturing the motion from one position to another, but the process remained as solid as ever. Carving was the preserve of sculptors in marble, an adusoiuus process that left no room for mistake and had not been seen in contempory sculture for hundreds of years.

R B Grange

“… to actively work… ”

Ideas surrounding the citation of the self in a work and an interest in concepts of empathy have lead to my present practice – the investigation into an experience shared by two individuals completely separate from one another who then somehow collide.

This is aptly expressed in a line from the Alan Bennett play The History Boys:

“… The best moments in reading are when you come across something--a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is along dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours… “

The objects I make, though now highly visual are grounded in this philosophical, maybe even emotional connection. This is played out through the use of quotation and reference. I would hope in viewing a piece of my work, be it written, performed or visual, that the viewer were to place themselves within the work, look to see what they know of the references used, do they indeed know any, or do they have a great amount of knowledge to something similar.

The citation of the self and the object in a wider cultural context is blatantly used on my YouTube channel. There; one is recommended to explore the ‘surround’ – the videos of other people favourited by me and the videos that YouTube believes to be similar in the sidebar and to use the site as a starting point, to actively work to better understand ones context.

A misquote can be more interesting than a quote because it reveals to you something about the context in which it is being used.

My practice relies heavily on the work of others. I write about my pears and take great pride in being asked to help them with their work. My practice uses blatant and obscure reference and quotation to build up a grammar and language of memes. All the images and quotes I use are my influence. One might ask how it is possible to make new work steeped in someone else’s visual form. But I would like to believe that through my mere use of the work something has changed, something has changed in this new work and the original. But I would not say that I knew what the change or influence is. This is where my practice takes on a role of investigation through experimentation; What is a quotation, what does it mean to quote? I do not look at find an answer, but to better understand the question.

“… Derek says it's always good to end a paper with a quote… “ (American History X)

To engage go to:

rbgrange.blogspot.com

youtube.com/RBGrange20x8

flickr.com/photos/25237425@N06/


R B Grange

"... obviously..."

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A MAN, HOW NOBLE IN REASON, HOW INFINITE IN FACULTIES, IN FORM AND MOVING HOW EXPRESS AND ADMIRABLE, IN ACTION HOW LIKE AN ANGEL, IN APPREHENSION HOW LIKE A GOD: THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD, THE PARAGON OF ANIMALS! AND YET TO ME WHAT IS THIS QUINTESSENCE OF DUST? MAN DELIGHTS NOT ME – NOR WOMAN NEITHER, THOUGH BY YOUR SMILING YOU SEEM TO SAY SO.

BLIND:
WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A MAN. HOW NOBLE IN REASON, HOW EXPRESS AND ABRIBALE, HOW LIKE AN ANGEL IN ACTION HOW LIE AND ANGEL, IN APPREHENSION HOW LIKE A GOTHE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. THE PARAGON OF ANIMALSD. AND YET TO ME WHAT IS THIS QUEUNINTESSENCE OF DUST? MAN DELIGHTS NOT ME. NOR WOMAN NOETHER, BUT BY YOUR SMILING YOU SEEM TO SAY SO.

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS A MAN, HOW NOBLE IN REASON, HOW INFINITE IN FACULTIES, IN FORM AND MOVING HOW EXPRESS AND ADMIRABLE, IN ACTION HOW LIKE AN ANGEL, IN APPREHENSION HOW LIKE A GOD: THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD, THE PARAGON OF ANIMALS! AND YET TO ME WHAT IS THIS QUINTESSENCE OF DUST? MAN DELIGHTS NOT ME – NOR WOMAN NEITHER, THOUGH BY YOUR SMILING YOU SEEM TO SAY SO.

"... you've supposed to come down here..."

None of these are ready yet of course but will open with the basic you’re about to take. And the other will one online six or twelve months after that; – we spared no.

And we can charge anything we want; two-thousand a day ten-thousand a day and people will it. Then there’s the; now I can personally…

Donald, Donald; was not built only to for the everyone in the has the to these.

Sure they will… (what) we’ll have a day or something.

Ha har, yes.

Gee, the lack of before that’s being here, m, me.

Well thank you Doctor Malcolm, but I think things are a little bit different to what you and I had.

Yeah I know; they’re a lot.

Now wait a second – we haven’t even seen yet (I)

Now Donald, Donald – let him talk, there’s no reason, no no, I want to hear every viewpoint, I really do.

H’, yeah; don’t you see the, er John, in what you’re doing here; is the most the ever seen. But you it like a whose his.

It’s hardly appropriate to start (hurling)

(Just let me say something) If I may, em, I’ll tell you the with the that you’re, that you’re, using here; ah, it didn’t require any to it. You know, you what had done and you. You didn’t the for yourselves so you don’t take any for it. You stood on the shoulders of er, to something as as you could; and before you even what you had, you it and it and it on a plastic. And now you’re it, you wanna it, well…

I don’t think you’re giving us our due. Our have done things which has.

Yeah, yeah, but your were so with weather or not they, they if they.

! are on the verge of, if I were… no, if I were to a of on this. You wouldn’t have

No, hold on. This isn’t some that was by or the, er had their shot and them for.

… I simply don’t understand this. Especially from a. I mean; how can we in the of and not?

Oh what’s so great about; it’s a,., that what it. What you call– I call the of the.

Well the question is how can you anything about an; and therefore how could you you can it.
You have in this building that are; you them because they, but these are that will, if necessary.

Doctor Grant. If there’s one person here who can what …

The has so and were all to. I don’t want to to any but look; and–by - - of have just been into the. How can have the slightest what to.

I don’t believe it. Ha… I don’t believe it. You’re to come down here and me against these and the only one I’ve got on my side is the.

Thank you

Well – they’re here.

"... then there's the merchandise... "

Hammond: None of these attractions are ready yet of course but the park will open with the basic tour you’re about to take. And the other rides will come online six or twelve months after that; absolutely spectacular designs – we spared no expense.

Gennaro: And we can charge anything we want; two-thousand a day ten-thousand a day and people will pay it. Then there’s the merchandise; now I can personally…

Hammond: Donald, Donald; this park was not built only to cater for the super-rich, everyone in the world has the right to enjoy these animals.

Gennaro: Sure they will… (what) we’ll have a coupon day or something.

Hammond: Ha har, yes.

Malcolm: Gee, the lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here, m, staggers me.

Gennaro: Well thank you Doctor Malcolm, but I think things are a little bit different to what you and I had feared.

Malcolm Yeah I know; they’re a lot worse.

Gennaro: Now wait a second – we haven’t even seen the park yet (I feel)

Hammond: Now Donald, Donald – let him talk, there’s no reason, no no, I want to hear every viewpoint, I really do.

Malcolm: H’, yeah; don’t you see the danger, er John, inherent in what you’re doing here; genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen. But you wield it like a kid whose found his dad’s gun.

Gennaro: It’s hardly appropriate to start (hurling)

Malcolm: (Just let me say something) If I may, em, I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re, that you’re, using here; ah, it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses er, to accomplish something as fast as you could; and before you even knew what you had, you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox. And now you’re selling it, you wanna sell it, well…

Hammond: I don’t think you’re giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which no one has ever done before.

Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Hammond: Condors! Condors are on the verge of extinction, if I were… no, if I were to create a flock of condors on this island. You wouldn’t have anything to say.

Malcolm: No, hold on. This isn’t some species that was obliterated by deforestation or the building of a dam, dinosaurs er had their shot and nature selected them for extinction.

Hammond: … I simply don’t understand this Luddite attitude. Especially from a scientist. I mean; how can we stand in the light of discovery and not act?

Malcolm: Oh what’s so great about discovery; it’s a violent, penetrative act., that scars what it explores. What you call discovery – I call the rape of the natural world.

Sattler: Well the question is how can you know anything about an extinct eco system; and therefore how could you assume you can control it.
You have plants in this building that are poisonous; you pick them because they look good, but these are aggressive living things who don’t know what century they’re in and will defend themselves, violently if necessary.

Hammond: Doctor Grant. If there’s one person here who can appreciate what I’m trying to do…

Grant: The world has changed so radically and we’re all running to catch up. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions but look; dinosaurs and man – two species separated by sixty-five-million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we have the slightest idea what to expect.

Hammond: I don’t believe it. Ha… I don’t believe it. You’re supposed to come down here and defend me against these characters and the only one I’ve got on my side is the blood sucking lawyer.

Gennaro: Thank you

Hammond: Well – they’re here.

Williams (for Viv) - 500 word extract

... and set a thing to work with;
“I’m really affected by the environment I work in, who I’m with, small things that might have happened to me. I’m affect by that very moment, that’s where my interest lies.”
In less capable hands this method of working could end up as a skittish mess of tired and overdone themes, but Viv deals aptly with the amount of freedom that his practice allows him.
“I’ve always though that an artist is someone who works without context or reference and a critic is someone who works with.”
Viv is at ease with in work space which at the moment is is two white walls and a white fall. The studio floor is re-painted grey every year, but I’m sure something of Viv’s highly active work will remain. The small space has been constantly changing throughout the year, gaining and losing semi-permanent frames and backdrops. These have been made from such varied materials as wood, parcel-tape, and paper to name three; but none of these have worked as add-ons or backdrops, within Viv’s later work there is less of a distinction between body and surround – something he is quick to note,
“There used to be some form of camouflage in my work… but in moving away from this I am able to loose the body to a better effect in the objects around it…there is no presidency of one object.”
Figures are used throughout Viv’s work and I touch on the idea of the personal being universal. “I see myself as a prop.” he says and I take this to mean not only as a figure in the work, but as a practitioner as well. He uses himself, his skills and the material with which he works as symbiotic aids. He seems like the kind of artist who would be able to surprise himself, to learn from merely doing. His comes across when he talks about a recent foray of his.
Several large wooden frames were constructed in his space to make a corridor like shape in which one was able to move. On each of the frames was placed a mesh of tape in a random grid. Viv then walked naked through the passage collecting lays of tape on his body has he went.
Now the wrapping of the body is nothing new in his work, but the rediscover of it is, to my mind, key to Viv practice. There is a beautiful production still of some work of his from maybe a year ago, where someone is wrapping the artist. He is stood still as someone else applies a long coloured bandage to him. Only part of Viv’s head can be seen, a sideways glance as he looses his individuality to become a body. This new form of wrapping, this active, striding wrapping finishes with a similar ‘end’ but is so vastly different in its production to him being stationary and passive that one engages wholly with the process and not...

Displaced Air (for Amy)

Action without consequence seems like an interesting concept, a lot of writing could be done on it, a lot of writing has been done on it. But what makes for an interesting concept also makes for a boring universe. Imagine that, something happens, and then nothing happens in reaction to it. Boring. If it were the nineteen nineties I might write something here about a butterfly flapping its wings and you would all be impressed, but I don’t think that that’s going to work now, so I’ll cut to the chase. There is some air missing from this box. The box below this writing. The air once occupied the box in the passive sort of way nitrogen and oxygen does, but was then displaced. You place anything anywhere and it knocks the air out of that space. I think, if memory serves, that the air displaced air from the box amounts to the tune of a child’s jumpsuit, a green t-shirt and some silk like cloth – I might be wrong. This air flooded out the box in the same way water did out of Archimedes bath two hundred years before God stepped into a river. So what has happened to the air? It left is cuboid to find a home elsewhere; it might be in another box, or trapped in a radiator or in the lung of someone famous, but I’m sure it’s doing alright. Some kind of reaction to help someone. Or not.

R B Grange

Some image

R B Grange

"...that a man's name is his fate."

This a translation I've been working on of Walter Benjamin's On Language As Such and the Language of Man

Everything has a system, a language that might be read; but not necessarily understood. Every facet of life, science and comprehension has a language. We understand these languages within our own context, our understanding remains particular to the human race. All inherent understanding within one’s self and exterior objects is organised in the brain as a language. Because we cannot leave the context of humanity we understand everything through language. Exterior objects do not speak, obviously, but they are comprehended by humans in language. We cannot imagine a complete lack of consciousness, so we continue to inflict meaning of action and intent onto objects with none. To understand an exterior object we would have to create some form of exterior consciousness and even then language would still be employed to understand it, even if no language had been used to understand itself.

This text itself is a form of language that will obviously be understood by someone’s reading of it. The single words express themselves, bar any punnage, and them reveal more within their context.

Creativity through language does note escape its bonds of grammar; but grammar itself may transcend language and be applied to other endeavours, such as science, mathematics, and art. This means that English does not have words for ‘everything’ but has the ability – the system, by which things might be understood; but again - in language. Spoken and written language is therefore a mean that exists separately from a true understanding. Anything expressed in language is not the true form itself, but the best we have for the moment. The thing is not the word.

The understanding of exterior object through language, its name and that meaning, becomes bunk when we consider that these are merely held ideas that have the majority of people believing in them. If a man did not behave as one would expect, then one would question whether calling him a man was correct; when surely it should be more productive to attribute his behaviour to the word, so that the meaning changes to a progressively more accurate description. But this would not happen – people place more importance on their perceived understanding, than on encountering things afresh.

What does language communicate? It communicates the perceived idea of something already existent. Language can only function with an assumed knowledge; if this is absent it is nigh impossible to communicate. The signifier is not the signified, nor is the signified the signifier. Thought works similarly to language but is freer, not relying on an exterior consciousness with shared experience of perceptions. Do not be fooled by the idea that we think in words, gew articulate in words, we think in thoughts. The names we give to objects relate to how ewe use or have used them, as language has eveolved as a means of passing on information we cannot help but relate the world back to ourselves. (…)

R B Grange

(0,0)

In a recent interview I conducted with Viv he mentioned how any point of the process of his practice could be exhibited. A production still from a video, a drawing or re-edited image, or a more sculptrual piece - all these have the capability to stand alone as objects.

This has influenced me to make more of a visual approach to my own work. I have started creating what I have called SpaceStations and Crafts, blocky collections of images placed around a point of origin (0,0). I can easily make these on Word and take a screen dump of them, then post them on my Flickr account. I can then delete the Word file and keep the image, as an image - something I can come back to without the influence of how it was made.

All this stems from my want to engage, to try and reach out to people - this, for me, comes from points of reference, little third objects that are neither one person nor another, but are able to link people.

Viv has also talked about how, even though his work is a fluid process, he acknowledges all the steps he takes to image production and the production itself as seperate and immidately usable tools. He has taken to using a small digital camera (not digital LSR) to quickly grab his work so that it might be freshly seen.

R B Grange

Birl Interrupted

There's a line, or phrase that goes "Life would be nothing without interruptions", or something like that. Digory expresses the sentiment in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. With this in mind I have positioned myself in the main living area.

Sod that; Libby's just come in and asked me if I want to go to the canteen.

R B Grange

YT

This evening I found a function on my laptop which shall probably became as valuable a tool to my practice as my webcam. It seems that my MacBook downloads film trailers for me. I don't remember filling in anything about whether I wanted this or not, but it happens.

As a growing YouTube user most of my 'watching' is done there at the moment. I do watch Doctor Who on the telly and Battlestar Galactica on DVD, but my main source of visual engagement comes from YT (no one calls it that). Hayley, Clare and Libby went to a talk by Douglas Gordon last night and the site was mentioned. The drift of visual intake has gone from the cinema, to the television, to the internet - was the consensus. But do not be fooled - YouTube is not a passive site - it is not there to be watched, you cannot "turn on, tune in, drop out'. You can hardly even sit back when on the site.

I am making lots of work now

R B Grange

Check-out ma YouTube Channel

R B Grange

"Check-out ma blog."

My Blog in bibliography, Harvard Style.

GRANGE, R B. 2007. "...and what Hamlet may say with irony, I say with conviction". March 5 2008. R B Grange - A very simple look into the art world as viewed by R B Grange. [Accessed March 29 2008]. < http://rbgrange.blogspot.com/2008/03/and-what-hamlet-may-say-with-irony-i.htlm >

R B Grange

"...don't tell me not to reference my songs within my songs."

The title of this post comes from Backstabber, a song by The Dresden Dolls. I think this line one of the loveliest in the modern hymnal. It's up there with "I used to fly like Peter Pan", "...but gravity always wins." and of course "Walking like giant canes, ah! With my x-ray eyes I strip you naked."

I think it must have been on Call My Bluff, or some such programme where they said a word which meant a lyric referring to another song in the artist's canon. This use of self reference puts me in two minds. For one I approve of the humour involved in the artists self doubt or reaffirming of old ideals, but I can also see how this might prove an alienating force; where people with more knowledge claim to have a greater understanding of the piece.

My own work (some of which you may wish to see or hear at www.youtube.com/RBGrange20x8) is not a finite process and makes reference to all manner of oddments, but I do not wish people to engage with it in order to understand me, but to understand themselves and where they fit. I might repeat myself in my work but I would never assume that people are aware or unaware of it. At the same time I do want to know what people think of it, or how they think they fit into it, this presence is probably the most useful component of my work. Me being there and other people doing the same.

R B Grange

find out more at www.youtube.com/RBGrange20x8

No dialogue.

The link to my YouTube Channel has changed; or more accurately, I have a new YouTube Channel. This is the presentational platform for the objects I find my self making. So far two videos are up but more are in the offing.

Out of all the websites I have ever affiliated myself with, my faith to YouTube remains the strongest. It has replaced television for me as I can delve at my leisure. Although leisure is an inaccurate word; YouTube is not a passive experience, you cannot kick back and let it wash over you, it is active and demands discourse.

TheRoyalChannel, the channel of the Royals (believe it or no), chooses not the part take in this discourse. Now I approve of Prince Charles's attitude towards the enviornment and have favourited one of this videos on my channel; but to disable the comments boxes and make it impossible to make video responces it not playing the game.

YouTube allows a free vote, a voice for people making videos and comments who have no money behind them. Discourse is the key part of the whole system. If you want your voice to be heard, without having to pay for it, you have to leave yourself open to being shot down in flames (and childish taunts)

R B Grange

"...you did. Ten years from now."

Giles asked me if I'd ever considered writing a manifesto. I wrote one last year but seem to have gone against it somewhat of late.

For the moment I don't want to write one, but below is segment from Star Trek: First Contact. Cochran's lines are unattributed. I hope you enjoy it

Riker: Because at 11 o'clock an alien ship will start passing through this solar system

Alien, you mean Extra Terrestrials, more bad guys.

Troi: Good guys. They're on a survey mission, they have no interest in earth. Too primitive

Oh.

Riker: Doctor, tommorrow morning when they detect the warp signature from your ship and realize that humans have discovered how to travel faster than light, they decide to alter their course and make first contact with earth, right here

Here?

Geordie: Er, actually, over there

Riker: It is one of the pivotal moments in human history doctor. You get to make first contact with an alien race, and after you do, everything begins to change

Geordie: Your theories on warp drive allow fleets of star ships to be built and man kind starts to explore the galaxy

Troi: It unites humanity in a way no one thought possible when they realize they are not alone in the universe. Poverty, disease, war, they'll all be gone within the next fifty years

Riker: But unless you make that warp flight before 11 fifteen tomorrow morning, none of it will happen

And you people, you're all astronauts, on some kind of star trek?

R B Grange

"...we'll have a coupon day or something."

JT thinks it's a good idea for me to recreate the meal scene in Jurassic Park (1993) and to use that as a basis for my work in quotation and reference. This comes from my intense love of said scene and the influence it has had on the way that I talk and adeal with subjects.

I plan to take two main vistas or approaches to this; one being the rewriting of the script in quotations, the other being to use the existing script as a set grammatical system into which other concepts and subjects might be placed.

At the same time as this I will also continue my work on the Picard/Withnail conundrum and also my translation of Walter Benjamin.

I would hope that I can maintain this work ethic for the rest of my practise. I was talking with Chris last night about our neo-modernity; he got himself quite het up about the constant cynicism that is common place within the everyday living and running of the country. He sighted politicians, comedians, journalists and the everyman as suffering from this. We established that doubt was necessary but not cynicism or sarcasm.

R B Grange

"...and what Hamlet may say with irony, I say with conviction"

Can a quotation that has been originally said in jest or tongue in cheek, be then used in ernest? Or does the initial context of the utterance constantly govern its meaning?

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties. In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god. The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals."

This is something that Picard believes that man can become, where as Hamlet believes this all to be a myth, an idea that everyone has of the human race's self-importance. Maybe it is that Hamlet's tragic nature come about through a blindness of how good things could be in the future; which brings into question why he would want to kill his uncle, the new king. If Hamlet has lost all hope in humanity then killing his uncle accomplishes only one thing - revenge, and his drinking of the poisoned cup means nothing to him as he sees himself as (...quintessence of) dust.

Picard is not at all tragic, indeed he seems to taken on (as all the humans sometimes do in Star Trek) the role of Nietzsche's Ubermensch.

That's all for today.

R B Grange

April is the cruelest month.

It's March and that means a new direction for my blog.

Over the last few weeks my work has become more and more discursive; so much so that I have found a need to cement some aspects of it in the real and borrowed. I find comfort in quotations, they are vastly open to interpretation but grounded to something very set, a script, a play, a novel, the annotations of a speech. Through March I shall use my blog to make known some important quotations, or my ideas and thoughts on the process of quote and referencing.

I'm starting with something I have already mentioned on this site; the full scene from the Office, series one, in which Brent rips into Betjeman's 'Slough'

'er well this is somemat that's always wound me up. This is the poem Slough by Sir John Betjeman, now - he's probably never been there is in life. right. "Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough It isn't fit for humans now," right, i don't think you solve town planning problems with dropping bombs all over the place, so he's embarrassed himself there. Next, er "There isn't grass to graze a cow," good, we've got one of the biggest dairies in the south-east down the road so we don't need a cow "Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens Those air-conditioned, bright canteens," good, I like to see what I'm eating "Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans Tinned minds, tinned br" oh he's having a go at tinned fruit now, which... I think if we're being bombed, we'd be in the air raid shelter loving some tinned fruit, so, you know, laughing at him. "It's not their fault they do not know The birdsong from the radio, It's not their fault they often go To Maidenhead" there's nothing wrong with Maidenhead, no... Maidstone's a shithole, but Maidenhead's a lovely town, so, nah "And talk of sports and makes of cars In various bogus Tudor bars And daren't look up and see the stars But belch instead." y'know, what? He's never burped. erm, a "In labour-saving homes, with care Their wives frizz out peroxide hair And dry it in synthetic air And paint their nails." they wanna look nice, what's his problem, dunn he like girls? (I'm not) y'know. And and look, look at the index, oh; he's having a go at Croydon, Westgate-On-Sea, I've never been to there, er, Leamington - now I've been to a conference in Leamingtion, and it's a lovely spa town, especially compared to Coventry, down the road, which proves my point; you don't sort out a town by extensive bombing. So, y'know. And they made him a Knight of the Realm. Over rated.

R B Grange

Tig

I'm involved in a game of Tag. I can only speaking for myself, but when I used to play this kind of game in the playground we called it Tig; then again when my brother broke his arm he had it put in a pot and a bun is a little cake.

Sorry if the people who I have tagged don't want to play.


Five Facts:

I don't like jam because my parents used to hide foul tasting travel sickness sweets in spoonsful of it.

I'm either a little deaf or I don't listen to people.

I only own one piece of clothing that has a hood, and it's a parka.

I don't think my hands match up to the rest of my body.

The R in my name stands for Richard and the B for Bernard.


Five Blogs:

http://alvobaert.blogspot.com/
The blog of Alvo Baert; she draws, I think she only has one hand.

http://tncva.wordpress.com/2007/
Tennessee ConserVOLiance blog. Some sort of Christian-right-wing-US blog; I found them when I typed in 'God is dead' on google.

http://onelesscar.blogspot.com/
One Less Car; I can't remember how I found this blog but I really enjoy it. Big A.

http://genderqueerview.blogspot.com/
Nice blog what I found.

http://www.hayleydixon.blogspot.com/
Hal Dix.


1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Set down by someone else

Have read 40 pages of The Color Purple. It's depressing; people fighting, getting beaten, getting married to people they don't like.

I have never had to suffer any hardship like that, and anytime when something has happened to me which has been unpleasant or upsetting I've made into a joke straight away. People perceive this as a coping mechanism but I don't think it is, I quite genuinely find my life a humourous topic - it's bizarre in many places and always manages to trip me up when I'm not expecting it.

This post may seem strangely personal so far, but it's not. I am starting to discover that a lot of the personal is universal. The human condition is something that we all suffer from. We may have different symptoms or aliments but it is the same for us all.

The statement about the lion speaking and us not understanding it has been playing on my mind. Granted the lion's points of reference would be wholly different to ours but his ability to speak would not. We are all able to talk about language because it is something we all use; if we were only to speak to the lion about speaking, then we might have a good and intelligible conversation.

There is a univerality to language, every human has an innate capacity to learn a language and use that language. Coinciousness, speech and writing are amazing gifts, but not from some higher being or what not, they come from our context, our circumstance; they are a product of evolution and are therefore destined to change.

The exterior engagement with another human is the closest we come to leaving ourselves, or at least extending ones own consciousness. There is a line in the History Boys that goes like this:

'The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by some else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and takes yours.'

This is a comfort, but with my inherently sci-fi mind it is also a danger. Language and cognitive thought need not exist only for humans; if a machine passes the Turing Test then we will have a universality of language that does not just belong to humans. Although that might well be a good thing.

R B Grange