It is easy to make people feel uncomfortable, use the familiar environments but make them somehow unfamiliar - like waking up at the wrong end of the bed. If the empty London of 28 Days Later was disconcerting then the Beirut-style-shell London of Children of Men is terrifying.

Read the rest of this entry »

Duncan ventures into the dangerous world of talking about art without having a clue…

I went to Yorkshire Sculpture Park about a week ago; before the relentless rain started. If you like bronze, abstract sculptures and sheep poo you'll love Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There were a few large sculptures outside that I really liked. They were all really tactlile but for some reason they all had signs warning to not touch them. It was pretty good to see practically everyone ignore the signs. I didn't manage to see all of the park but what I did see was amazing (nice sandwichs too).

The park has a few James Turrell installations. I couldn't decide if the three in the “Underground Gallery” were good Biology lessons or rubbish art installations but there was also a "skyscape" in an old deer shelter (pictured), which cheesy as it sounds was actually pretty cool and left a lot of people if saw necks after 20 minutes of staring up.

In general the Big Chill was pretty cool. It was definitely chilled but not particularly big. The Big Chill website says 'It's very difficult to sum up The Big Chill Festival in a few hundred words.' - but (since I don't have to maintain their marketing by pretending it is so cool it defies definition) I'll do just that. The Big Chill is a smaller imitation of Glastonbury but a bit less rock-y and more electronic and folky… Oh, and it's in a deer park. It's a lot cleaner than Leeds Festival but I suppose that isn't really too hard because the Big Chill isn't based in a land-fill. There is a club tent that holds 1,200 people. Unfortunately that means that people dont get back to their tents 'till 'late-o'clock so there is no atmosphere on the campsite and no one really talked to their neighbours (now I think about it that is probably why I heard of several people getting things stolen from their tents). Most of the campers were between 25 and 30, mainly in groups of friends but quite a few young families. Such a large majority were southerners that by the end of the weekend I almost caught myself saying "The Big Chiwl". The organisers had obviously made a big effort with the festival site so that people would respect it a bit more. There were lots of sculptures and art installations (including a video by Brian Eno, which gave me a head ache) around the arena.

This is official (because I say so) the most random spam comment I have recieved on my blog:

HELLO,
AM MARIA AND WOULD LIKE TO MAKE AN ENQUIRY OF 1000PCS OF BLANK WHITE T SHIRT,I WANT THEM SHIPP TO MY CHURCH IN GHANA AND PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE THEM INSTOCK.
ALSO LET ME KNOW THE PRICE PER T SHIRT,I WOULD LOOK FORWARD TO HEAR FROM YOU SOON.
REGARDS
MARIA

Unknown White Male‘ is a ‘real life story’ of a man with amniesia adjusting to the life that he’d forgotten. There was a load of controversy/hype about it when it was released in cinemas in 2005. Whether or not the eponymous ‘Unknown White Male’ really lost his memory the film was still a fake. I felt absolutely cheated by this over-egged public-school-boy project that masqueraded as (or at least was marketed as) an intelligent look at identity. I really don’t care whether ‘Doug’ lost his memory. The reason I don’t care is two fold: 1) He is boring 2) He is either a bad actor or a bad person.

It’s weird that I don’t care. The primary music program of the BBC has been cancelled and I don’t care? Two weeks ago I was happily watching Top of the Pop 2 before I realised it was actually just Top of the Pops but the producers were still showing archive footage of 70’s performances because they had nothing new worth playing.

Actually I didn’t mean it. I do care that Top of the Pops has been scrapped because hopefully it means that the BBC will be forced to start a new- and worth watching - music program (or programs) for TV.

Sheffield University World Mapper project has got all kinds of world maps showing population densities, toy imports/exports and tourism amoungst other things. It’s all pretty impressive and they have made a lot of the maps available for download as PDFs so you can print your own posters.

On a similar note I found (through a website called Visual Complexity) a Visual representation Coalition Casualties in Iraq.