Tale of How

Lina also showed is this AMAZING video :D it fills me with gleejoyeggs! The tale of How by the Blackheart Gang.

Lina Kusaite

Lina Kusaite who led our drawing workshop does lovely lovely drawings. Creepy and beautiful and illustrative and sort of melancholy. She kind of reminds me of Kiyoshi Nakashima.

Drawing Workshop with Lina Kusaite

Relaxed drawing at the workshop :) Nice to have the pressure eased. I am a small triangle hugging round spiky Stuart. I also had a dream I was washing a sheep with no legs. But it was ok, it had legs, they just hadn't popped through yet....

Arduino Workshop

Arduino workshop was a little confusing but quite fun. I understood enough to be interested but not enough to feel confident doing electronics alone. I want to understand whats happening a bit more and how it would be done without a computer. I'm thinking of my rotating lamps. I don't need a computer for that but I'd like to understand what I'm doing a little better. We got one more Arduino session tommorow but I think I'll get Electronics for Dummies or something and do that on my own time. Doing stuff with sensors (heat/light etc) is pretty interesting though...something to think about.

Do I just want to make things look pretty or do I want to do something more?

Mmmm Smart Yogurt

BT Technologies is intriguing. Researched predictions on what the future holds. Smart yoghurt eh? Not sure I understand but I like the image. Kaleidascopic flowers. Cyberwar. Embedded smells. Emotion detection (which sounds very intrusive to me). Video clothing. Things that caught my attention.

I always imagine a Brave New World type future. Been a while since I read it but when I did I know I felt like we were already on our way. Where everything is super efficient and shallow and emotionless. Fear.

Lots of drawing was done last week. All these sort of experimental drawing excerises. Looking at an object then drawing without looking. Visualising. Concentrating on each sense. Dancing and drawing with feet. It was like being allowed to play and not pressured. I feel kind of better for it. Aint drawn in a while.

N29

I <3 Layers

At present, the layers of reflection on background in my travel photos. Mmm.

More Travelling Photography

First Great Western train seat. Piccadilly Line tube train. W3 bus from Finsbury Park to Wood Green, by Alexandra Palace at night. Waiting in Wood Green for the 329.

Seduction: Sex in Art @ The Barbican

Araki

Duchamp

Egon Schiele

Hans Bellmer

Aubrey Beardsley

Shunga

Juliao Sarmento

Then the next day it was Seduction at the Barbican. A multitude of bizzare cocks :D cocks morphing into animals/object, flying around, changing scale. Yes.

I really liked the old stuff, roman pottery depicting sex etc. And Japanese Shunga prints. Indian paintings. There's so much detail. And landscape. And expression. Chinese ones were very landscapey and had poetry :)

Juliao Sarmento did big porn sillhouettes, which naturally interests me. I like sillhouettes. And sex. Pretend I've said something more intelligent. I can't think of anything. Shame.

I have discovered Aubrey Beardsley, an illustrator from 1872-1898. Lots of ink, contrasty black and white, detail and space. His drawings are beautiful and the next exhibition I'm excited to go to is Age of Enchantment at Dulwich Picture Gallery which involves much Beardsley. Mm even his name is excellent.

Hans Bellmer's etchings caught my eye, gorgeous fine twisting delicate lines forming bizarre scenes with surreal genitalia. Apparantly he is best known for dolls but that doesn't really interest me. I like these.

There are Klimt drawings there, I've always liked Klimt. And with him Egon Schiele who I've never paid much attention to before but I actually like his drawings. Intimate and raw. Next to that were etchings by Marcel Duchamp. Which I mention cuz I quite like them despite never liking his urinal rubbish. I find that sort of conceptual thing too pretentious. I like beautiful things. I guess I'm a simple person.

Erotos by Araki is repulsively compulsive. Photography. Really real, detailed and somehow beautiful as well as kind of disgusting. Close ups of hair and tongue and skin and suggestive foods and objects. Why is hair so disgusting? Hair and moisture. Ugh. I guess it's just so personal. It's strange to see it huge on a gallery wall.

Finally Heartbeat by Nan Goldin. A slideshow of photographs of couples, long term in love with families couples interacting and loving set to the sound of bjork. The music was lovely and it set a lovely mood. It was pleasant to sit listening and looking. I never usually bother with the films in galleries.

Sleeping and Dreaming

I found the energy to go out today :) to the Sleeping and Dreaming exhibition at the Wellcome Collection. Good stuff. I found myself knowing things already from my sleep research and felt clever. Yay! :)

I like Nils Klingers photography of movement during sleep, using a very very slow shutter speed. That's the bottom two pictures. See more here.

Also like the drawings of a dream. 'My Dream' by Sergei Pankejeff. A Freud patient who dreamed of wolves in a tree. Freud claimed this was to do with seeing his parents have sex and that he managed to cure 'the wolf man'. Apparantly he didn't cure him at all though. Says wiki.

I was intrigued by a print by Goya from Los Caprichos. Mmm creepy and old fashioned. That's the first image. I might get the book.

Discovered Mandrake roots are actually real...I though they were mythical plants...heh. What a fool :)

And I got pointed towards Kubla Khan by Coleridge. Which was apparantly written from a dream. Mmm description.

One of the information boards said something that interests me, apparantly recent research finds that individual sleeping conditions can bring not only loss of intimacy but can lead to serious sleeping disorders. (People didn't always have their own bed and special sleeping rooms) Aha! We aren't meant to sleep alone! I knew it :) I always found it very difficult to sleep before I was sleeping with Stu, and it's still difficult if he isn't there. Now there's apparantly scientific reasoning.

Ooh and I saw an advert for Fry's Pure Concentrated Cocoa from about 1880. It was a semi transparent print, of sleepy girl with eyes shut next to a tin of cocoa, but hold it to the light and it's a wide awake open eyed girl with a cup of cocoa :D That's kind of like what I've been working on, but cleverer.

On my way out I spotted interesting looking books in the shop. So I'm considering Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, Sleepfaring by Jim Horne and the exhibition book Sleeping and Dreaming. Saw a lovely kids book - Not a Box by Antoinette Portis :D about a rabbit playing in a box and pretending it's all sorts of things and definitely NOT a box :D

I actually left the house intending to buy a dress but I hated ALL the clothes. Stupid shopping. Yay Sleeping and Dreaming.

Travelling