WAITING FOR SOMETHING VERY NICE TO HAPPEN

Materialism


If things aren't things
so much as happenings,
Or a confluence even
More complex,
Then there's no such thing
As sky, though sky
Is real, and we
Have not imagined it.
The everlasting
Never began.
Everything, then,
Is the direction everything
Moves in, seeming
Not to move.
I'm waiting
For something very
Nice to happen,
And then it happens:
Your long dark
Hair sweeps
Across my chest
Like sweeps of prairie
Rain. Loveliest
Of motion's possessions,
Hold me still.


-James Galvin, bringing me to my knees every time.

PENCIL ME IN

While Caroline creates a large number of stunning pencil and watercolour fashion-related illustrations, it is her multi-portraits which attract me the most. I'm inspired to get out my coloured pencils again - something I have not done in a while. It is much more difficult to get it right when working in colour, especially with pencil, which is much more indelible than you would think. A taupo plan, perhaps.

ANATOMISING


Brian Dettmer, to coin a term, 'anatomises' books. Carving into the text, he reveals inner hidden systems - drawing correlations through and outside the pages rather than simply across. I am perhaps a bit late in stumbling across his work - however it is still stunning. It is reminiscent of a project I saw at the Bartlett a few years ago which I will endeavour to find and post here.
Dettmer's work also reminds me of Isaac Salazar's Book Origami Series, see here via Design Folio.

GIACOMETTI VARIATIONS


John Baldessari's original project for the Prada foundation, Milan, is at once unexpected and familiar. Such a paradox is perhaps typical of a man who is particularly moved by the notion that 'you can think of chaos as just another kind of order,' and who believes, firmly, that 'art comes out of art'. The slender figures becomes Degasian in their cloth - the overlaying of reality onto the coldness of bronze bodies is a move which remains inescapably tender. 

THE GOLDEN AGE



THE GOLDEN AGE - The Simulation, by Paul Nicholls at the Bartlett. He writes:


THE GOLDEN AGE is a film which speculates on artificial intelligence within a simulated architecture.  It is concerned with technology, synthetic programmed spaces, and the temporality of our immediate conceived environment, physical or otherwise.
It is part of a wider project which looks at a ‘downloaded’ architecture, radically changing the consumerist lifestyle we are all used to.


The spaces in ‘The Simulation’ here are ‘constructed’ and ‘filmed’ in the synthetic digital space which becomes the site of limitless exploration. The film uses the book “The Diamond age” by Neil Stevenson, (in which the entire world has been consumed by nano technology), as a building point to more scientific and technological research into the current advancements and theories towards molecular nanotechnology, in particular ‘FOGLETS’ which are swarms of nanorobots that can take the shape of virtually anything.
 “Imagine a microscopic robot. It has a body about the size of a human cell and 12 arms sticking out in all directions. A bucketfull of such robots might form a ‘robot crystal’ by linking their arms up into a lattice structure. Now take a room, with people, furniture, and other objects in it — it’s still mostly empty air. Fill the air completely full of robots. The robots are called Foglets and the substance they form is Utility Fog, when a number of utility foglets hold hands with their neighbors, they form a reconfigurable array of ‘smart matter.’” Dr. J. Storrs Hall Research Fellow of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing.

The film questions what such a jump towards the technological singularity with such technologies would mean to the way in which we interact with our physical environment in the most fundamental of ways, even though it itself is based in the synthetic simulated space, where artificial intelligence is most likely to occur first.
The lines between the limitless model space and the physical space becomes blurred. The title “The Golden Age” denotes a period of primordial peace, harmony, stability and prosperity and is taken from Greek mythology which refers to the first age of man.


What an exciting project! I can't wait to see more.