delve magazine is currently accepting submissions for their upcoming issue on portraits. Delve explores
visual culture through experimentation in design, photography, illustration, and other related visual arts. contributing artists are encouraged to explore aspects of their chosen medium that fall outside of conventional or commercial applications.
The past issues of Delve are well worth a look. I particularly like the "H" edition.
The contemporary era, the Age of Terror is time of watching; we are exhorted to be watchful, we watch our backs, we watch out for strangers. When we are not watching out for ourselves, we watch others; perhaps on reality tv shows, where the contestants pretend that they don’t know we are watching them. Watching implies movement and time. It also implies nervousness, a lack of knowledge of what is going to happen. It is has none of the indulgent pleasure of gazing, it is more loaded than merely seeing. Watching is less confident than staring, more intent than glancing, more sustained than glimpsing.
We watch television, but we don’t watch the Internet which is, on the whole, fairly static (although we may occasionally loosen our grip on the mouse for long enough to watch an mpeg or quicktime). We use a combination of glancing and staring for this medium - our eyes sweep over the screen - a freefall of sight until something interests us enough to pause the plummet for a moment or two. As we are so busy being watchful and watching our watches (time is money on the internet) we want readily accessible information –cut-to-size and trimmed of fat. Lean news, lean stories. We want weblogs, but how do we know which weblogs we want, when there are currently estimated to be well-over a million of them? And as a Blogger, how do we get people to stop long enough on our blog to discover that our stories are amusing, our links are fresh, our insights are worthy of a more considered perusal?
Images can provide an effective means for stopping the freefall through the internet, a visual catch. They reward the viewer for having scrolled this far, suggesting there may be more of the same if scrolling continues.
The Good 1. asparagus. In season and cheap. 2. blood oranges. In season, not so cheap, but who cares? 3. Met the Age short story comp deadline. 4. currently broad daylight when I get up. 5. wrote 2500 words on my draft this weekend, plus had a good storyboarding session with La Spin.
The Not So Good 1. still three weeks before the first of the stone fruit hits the shops 2. getting tired of spending every weekend in front of the computer 3. getting sick of thinking about my paper, and fretting that it might not even be accepted 4. regardless of how much time is spent fretting and sitting in front of computer, end up feeling on Monday that not enough time was spent fretting, and sitting in front of computer 5. it's still bloody freezing in Melbourne.
I made the somewhat startling discovery yesterday that might sister (and flatmate), Petite and I both have a tin of Spanish Paprika on our desk at work. Then today, Le Docteur emailed me and said that he, too, had this same tin - not on his desk, but more sensibly placed in his kitchen. He also told me that the label - Los Novios means "the Betrothed." Le Doctuer also pointed out the uncanny similarity between the groom on the tin and Marcello Mastroianni.
I love Linkdup. There seems to be an endless supply of interesting links here- once you've looked through the latest links you can happily trawl through the archives for hours.
The only problem is that I sometimes get caught in a tardis-like situation, when Linkdup sends me to look at at site like mooch ( a flash site) which then sends me off looking at other sites. I like Mooch's interface- it is well designed, easy to navigate around and an attractive, muted colour scheme.
I read orneryboy by michael lalonde whenever he sends the update email (update emails are great for forgetful people like me. I particularly like this one. Vengeful, bitter ducks are the kind of thing that appeal to me.
Is it a blog? I'm not sure, but probably not. I'm guessing that Michael doesn't see it as one.
The idea of a t-shirt with a sloagan as being a "meat billboard" still makes me laugh, too.
Bolt City, however, is definitely a blog (although the blog component runs the risk of getting a little lost with all those interesting links and graphics in the above the fold section.)
28 cds in cases 2 computer screens 2 spindles of work back up cds 2 staplers A coffee cup A plunger A dictionary A drink bottle A video tape (J Nix's "Hello") An over-sized novelty pencil from Western Australia, blunt A model plane, made of metal* A small globe of the world* 4 plastic dinosaurs* A panda* 2 plastic ants (1 large, 1 small)* A plastic grasshopper* A jar of vegemite A notebook A dinosaur made from bluetak* 5 mini DV cam tapes A stack of manilla folders A roll of selotape A trial version of MX studio 2004 A rubber band Another spindle of back up CDs 3 pens A packet of panda stickers A fortune from a cookie that says "You are going to get some new clothes.* A pink highlighter pen A tin of Altoid mints A tin of Spanish paprika A plastic galah 2 paper clips 2 intrays
(* denotes items actually sitting on top of the computer screens)
I interviewed Melbourne animator (soon to be Sydney animator) Johnathan Nix, whose beautiful animation Hello has been showing at various local screenings around town this year. His website gives a taste of some of his work, including the film clip he did with Thomas Pullar for Machine Translations, Amnesia. Great stuff. The shots of his sketchbooks make me long to see the originals.
