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
31/10/2008
27/10/2008
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.
R B Grange
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.
R B Grange
26/10/2008
20/10/2008
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)
R B Grange
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)
R B Grange
19/10/2008
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.
R B Grange
I like my life.
R B Grange
11/10/2008
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.
R B Grange
"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.
R B Grange
01/10/2008
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