Blurs

Strangers Amongst Strangers

The advent of decent mobile phone photography came at no better time. Accelerated by the mass interaction of easily accessible internet, this medium of capturing images became convenient and almost documentary-like in the way that it documents our lives.

Age of Loneliness

And so, it becomes much like a creative medium. Whereas an artist might capture subject matter through a good old Polaroid, along with the stylistic characteristics offered by such a tool, the mobile has come to be the convenient camera of choice.

Light of My World

Eileen Harris, in her blog Impressions of iPhoneography, uses the iPhone, one of the most widespread mobile photographic devices, and makes it her own. Alike to mottled oil paintings, the ambiguity and blurriness lends a quality that is little found in traditional photography. It is almost as if the randomness of the digital device makes the figure photographs one of a kind. Her photos also create a visual commentary of the urban environment and the relationship people have with it.

Surprise!2

So, sort of in sequel to the post about not quite taking a photo about some really creative wall tiles in a public toilet, here's a brief update: I still haven't returned to that wall to take a picture for the blog...

The upside is, I've found another toilet with interesting creative detail. And this time I insisted on taking a picture (much to the amusement of the bartenders). Two of my three friends had the courage to take some with me (you know who you are, coward).

On Vulcan Lane, one of the oldest streets in Auckland, used to live an old bar called Vulcan Bar (or something) upstairs in one of their cask-aged old buildings. When it shut down, Cassette, which prides itself as hip and youthfully interior designed sort of place, popped up in its place. Vibrantly textural, its quite a nice place if you like the endless door charges and house 'gigs'. But yes, their toilet door caught my attention last night.

A collation of photo negatives - an ethereal mosaic of moments - on display, colourful, but masked in shadows. The card that frames the slides are scrawled with an assortment of personal notes and labelling systems. The only unfortunate thing really is that it's a toilet door... your appreciation of them is cut short every time, mimicking the minuscule shards of time that is encased in every one of those thin films. That is, if you don't spend five minutes taking mobile pics of them.

Ferment

Fashion made from a scientifically derived process isn't something completely fresh off the mark, but fermenting your own fabric is an interesting concept and multi-layered in many ways. The notion suggested in the interview is that the designer, Suzanne Lee, is trying to convey science through fashion. And that is fashion in the sense that it becomes 'fashionable'.

Dreamy detailing can be achieved with that strange alienesque material, which is really quite brilliant considering it was previously alike to a piece of gelatin. Furthermore, the great attention to the process in this creative project strives towards the detail of the overall scheme; hydrophobia, and thickness and qualities of the material and how they translate into the final result of 'clothing'. Rigorous development such as this should bring forth a great deal of surprises. Possibly, all thanks to science.

Visit http://biocouture.posterous.com/ for more about Biocouture, the project, or read more at the New Scientist article. Yes, I am geeky and I love New Scientist. In a creative way.

Accomplice

Admittedly, I don't post much from the realm of theatre, mostly because I don't patronise the theatres so much after a few key disastrous 'performances'. But conceptually, I found something magnificent and it is something that really excites me - so much that I would even want to New York or where ever to experience it.

Accomplice is, by the definition of the makers, "part game, part theatre, part tour". Yes, I use British spelling.

So, from what I gather, you travel in this multifaceted tour/performance experience, and actually get to make use of the labyrinthine nature of foreign ground. Adventurous you might think! But no, it's all staged - actors placed at certain places involved you and guide you within this tour. Which is cool nonetheless. Tours are one of the most banal forms of travel I have ever had to struggle with. They make fresh views into well-worn speeches, scenery into a product. Accomplice is still this, but with a twist and the factor of guided involvement which, needless to say, is really what a travel spot needs sometimes.

And is this a moment of theatre's evolution. Street theatre but not quite. What you get to do in video games but in real life? Life is often said to be a performance, and cities are now the stage.

Imagine

Having read the fairly philosophical opinion piece, Reclaiming the Imagination by Timothy Williamson, the limitations to the power of imagination is cast into a critical light. Needless to say, imagination is one of the greatest sources of creativity and furthermore, it's delicate relationship with reality is something can be seen as something as something very Inception-like. What Williamson remarks on is how knowledge acts like the walls that contain our ability to imagine, and that without that boxing, it flows out of the realm of reality.

Is that why we need to soak up knowledge? Is our very limited knowledge (indeed, even with the internet merely a click away) the bounds of our creativity? Interestingly, the imagination is both a generator of stuff and a survival mechanism. Imagination fuels foresight and the response to different situations - whether or not that is a part of the creative process is something for you to probe personally.

To come on Creative Collision: photos of famous creatives, the likes of Warhol, Dali and Picasso. With a sprinkle of Marilyn Monroe.

Metastasis

Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis

An architect who led a double life as a composer. His music is based on math. It is about structure and the laws of the bigger picture (whatever those may be). The diagram is interesting, and presented on a video, the music has a direct link to the image that created the music. Interpretation is naked on the table. Sounds like something NZ Trio would play!

Bluebird

Deep within the depths of the architecture school, someone has created this bit of 'street art' in a place where you can only see it from one particular angle.

Fishing

Night Fishing with Cormorants from Betsy Kopmar on Vimeo.

Animation commonly acknowledges the reality; the transference of realistic film qualities to animation is a well trodden path (see extreme photrealism in The Third and The Seventh). When I came across Betsy Kopmar's animation and started watching it, I was entranced by the meditative abstractness of it, but was also wary of the four minute video length.

But there's something about it which intrigues and tickles the creative core of me. It is an animation which draws its pool of inspiration from the 17th Century Japanese screen painting by Kano Tanyu, "Night Fishing with Cormorants", and by the very stark and beautiful novel of Akira Yoshimura, "Shipwrecks". What I was more curious about was what another person would see in this expressive (for you to interpret this word) but tightly stylised subject matter. It's the psychologist's game of the ink blob - what do you see?

A good write up of methodology on Cinema 4Ds site about the artist's work.

Rush

Whilst in China, I went shopping along one of Guangzhou's most popular pedestrian shopping districts, Beijing Road. This road contains a load of history, most of which has been covered up by the sales, the landscaping, shops and infinite number of people. But I noticed something that reminded me of a post I did a while back about a preserved monk's cell.

At several spots along this rather long street, there are these 'windows' into the road's past condition. It shows the distinctive tiles and various bits and pieces like parts of foundations and people's doorstep. The fantastic thing about this is modern life rushes past all of this, comparing that which has time dramatically slowed down with the constant stream of present day society, which continually speeds up.

Life

Or life as we know it? What is really our way of living and how will it change? Creative minds have been at this one for eons, and clever, if a little gimicky, visual representations give the 'what ifs' a big restart. According to Matsura, the film maker who created the 3D film, it is about our built environment and how digital information can compile itself in layers around our daily life.

I think it looks best with 3D glasses... (too bad I don't have any).

This one's for you Second Lifers out there. You know who you are.

Watching