I’ve been working on a soundtrack I’m installing next week. It’s been hard work and quite intense. Today I came across this diary from someone who makes me feel like a complete lazybones and a real technical lightweight. I suppose that’s a problem with the web; you can always find someone harder-core than yourself.
online diary
Archive for the 'Art' Category
Wowser! Here’s a page with a great… well I don’t know if you’d call it an optical illusion or not. I suppose that’s what it is.
Motion Induced Blindness
Warning, this site contains images. I just wish I’d thought of it.
XXXX GALUMPIA ADULT XXXX
Even as I write this BBC engineers are hard at work trying to find out what is wrong with the Greenwich Time Signal. The GTS is played in the seconds leading up to the top of the hour, ever hour on the World Service, less frequently on other BBC stations. Today someone noticed that it sounded a bit odd. Further listening confirmed that it was roughly a semitone lower than it should be. Nobody knows how long this has been going on for, nor what caused it, nor if the problem is affecting domestic radio as well as the World Service. One thing is sure; it will be fixed as quickly as possible. Listen now, before it is, and you’ll be hearing something unique.
Update (Wed 13 April):
Here’s a recording of World Service GTS last week - old_gts.mp3
And here’s what it sounded like yesterday - new_gts.mp3
(Many thanks to Mike Campbell)
I just finished re-reading my favourite book, Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. I first read it at school, at about the same time that I read my other favourite novel, Peter Carey’s Bliss. Put those two books together and you’ve got a map of about half my teenage character. I won’t try and explain Riddley Walker; you can find a fairly good essay about it on a science fiction website called graphesthesia, although it really isn’t science fiction. One of the things that’s interesting about the book is that it’s written in a made up language. It’s not like A Clockwork Orange but it’s a similar idea. Reading it this time I was amazed at how similar the language is to the way in which some people write nowadays. It doesn’t take a nuclear catastrophe, just a combination of text messaging, poor education and the wide availability of computers.
Chalker Marchman the 1stman of the digging he wer talking to a nothing looking witey bloak dint look no moren 10 years old. It wernt the shortness of him I aint a tall man my self but this 1 he lookit like his dad pult out too soon when they ben making him. Witey hair and pinky eyes nor you cudnt see his eye brows they were that lite.
And here’s an extract from an email from a friend. Spot the difference.
I no some people take a gap year between college and uni? what about the idear of a gap year between school and college cause its free 2 go 2 college tell u r 19 so if i took a gap yr and tryed 2 get a job and if i couldnt i went bck 2 college a yr later I would be 17 so even if i did a 2 year cource it would still be free and i would be able 2 get some experiance in theatre and re-take any exams I need 4 the course i wanna do cause GCSE retakes are only a yr long as appose to two years.
Comic publisher Drawn & Quarterly are republishing a book by one of my favourite comic artists, Julie Doucet. Unfortunately their printer has thrown away some of the film of the book and the original artwork was sold, a while ago, to ME! So they emailed me and asked me if they could have a scan of it. Do you think I could get away with scanning it and then changing it a bit, maybe put my face on one of the characters? Would that be a bad thing to do?
I’m doing a theatre soundtrack for a show in Stuttgart this summer. The artistic director of the festival, Marie Zimmermann, has written a brilliant little essay about theatre on the festival website. The closer I get to this show the more excited I get about doing it.
Oh baby, am I a nerd or what? I love this site. It asks you a series of questions about what the letters in a font look like and then tries to identify it for you. There are questions like What angle are the ends of the upper-case ‘C’ or What shape is the dot under the question mark. It didn’t manage to identify the font used in the 1997 Saatchi “Sensation” exhibition guide and it took 27 questions to wrongly identify the typeface used in the index and headings of the Department of Transport 1979 driving guide as “Brazilia Seven”. Nevertheless the questions really make one think about the countless tiny differences that make up the identity of a font. OK, I need to get out more. Just let me see how it does with my John Bull printing set and then I promise I’ll go to bed.
This is a such a great idea, I’m appalled that this is the first time I’ve ever read about it.
You know how if you try a print a photo in black and white on your inket it always looks terrible? And that’s because the printer’s trying to create all the shades of black in your picture by making different sized dots of black ink. No matter how clever the software is you can always see this ‘dithering’, especially in mid tones.
So if you’re feeling keen you might make your picture into a duotone or even a quadtone in Photoshop. That uses the other coloured inks in the printer to make shades of not-quite-black which improves matters a bit if you don’t mind the picture being a bit brown or blue looking.
What Piezography does is take that quadtone idea a step further. You replace the coloured inks in your printer with three shades of grey ink. So now your printer can’t print in colour but it can produce stunning black and white prints. The pigment based inks are also long lasting; the manufacturers claim they will fade by a maximum of 5% in 100 years.
Unfortunately my printer is slightly too old to use this system but it’s got me thinking - why not mix up my own inks and do the same thing?
Here’s a site that deserves some attention, if only to correct its Brummie bias. A collection of photos and reviews of spectacular Christmas decorations created by private individuals on their houses and in their gardens. Since the site carries the logo of Birmingham City Council I’m afraid they may not accept submissions from anywhere else, which is a pity. Our London decorations are vastly more varied, imaginative and impressive.