You'll Never See a Dark Cloud Hanging Round Me

When it is cold outside and you're surrounded by a teetering pile of highlighted journal articles, strewn about books and three day old coffee cups there is nothing left to do except turn to cheesy cheesy music and dance around the house like a maniac. To that end here are some of my favourite dirty secret music loves.

Dancing around in the morning, coffee cup in hand

Rainy day song.

Ignore the christianity and just dance like a fool

Anywhere, anytime of the day, always.

Livin' in an 8 bit world

This week saw the thirtieth birthday of Pacman and to celebrate Google turned their logo into a playable version of the game. It was estimated that the time spent playing by bored workers around the world wasted 4.8 million hours of worktime equivalent to $120, 483, 80 of lost productivity.

In the spirit of 8-bit procrastination I came across this excellent short film 'Pixels' by the very talented Mr Patrick Jean.

and this, I couldn't resist.

and for Alex, some real chiptune

Enjoy.

Pro Cras Ti Nation.

The internet, oh boy the internet, all the places you'll go when you're trying to not do whatever it is you're meant to be doing.

Looking at things that are sort of not terribly exciting, but suddenly mesmerising. Like this

L'angoisse de la page blanche from dessert_first on Vimeo.

Wow.

And this

arrived at after watching Ice, Ice Baby and then Vanilla Ice AKA Robert Van Winkle apologise for all the shitty music he made.

And this, to top it all off and sum it all up

A Confrontation.

Right now I am doing lots of research into environmental art and I've come across something I just had to share.

In 1982 Agnes Denes, a Hungarian born, American land artist re-appropriated an abandoned block in New York City and used it to plant a field of wheat. Underneath the towers of the World Trade Centre, with the help of two assistants and a group of volunteers she cleaned up the city detritus, created an irrigation system and grew the wheat. She successfully created a pocket of countryside in the midst of one of the world's most urban environments.

Lady Liberty behind the field

In doing so, Denes reached that elusive moment in art: Creating an iconic and powerful image that became emblematic for a movement. The work is known as 'Wheatfield, Battery Park City - A confrontation.'

Agnes in her wheat field.

The work attempted to communicate messages regarding the management of resources and the scarcity of food in an ever more over populated world as well comment on the divisions of space that we have constructed in the modern age. I like the vibrancy of the work and the reclamation of apparently dead space. It draws attention to the potential of life in an environment that is often considered barren and unnatural. The wheat that she grew was given to the horses in the cavalry of the New York City Police. As well seeds from her crop travelled around the world in 'The International Show for the End of World Hunger.'

Harvest

The work was recreated in 2009 in conjunction with the Barbican show 'Radical Nature' on a disused railway line in Dalston, East London. This time it was accompanied by a mill and a bakery to turn the product of the work into bread to share. However, as Madeleine Bunting asks in her essay for the Royal Society of Arts, Art and Climate, the project was ambitious and possibly missed its mark. The project took place in a non-art space, yet still failed to reach widely beyond the scope of an art audience. Is it the prerogative of art in contemporary society to engage in community building? Bunting cites Tim Smit's project Big Lunch Project as more successful. Smit simply asks that neighbours sit down together to share food that they have grown and talk. This too, by encouraging home grown food, asks city dwellers to consider how the food that they have eaten comes about and to share that experience.

It is interesting to see how community participation and sustainability are being used as motifs in contemporary art. More to come.

The Post It Post

Post-It notes are pretty great.

The Products of My Coursework research

Interior Decoration Possibility?

8-Bit Design Genius

How I fear I'll end up by the end of this year.

Patterns

I think I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I really like patterns. I still remember being in kindergarden and getting piles of shapes and colours to rearrange. Maybe that's where it all started. Here are a few things that appeal to that same sense of aesthetic organisation and pleasure.

Andreas Gursky's Photography

Florence Broadhurst's Wallpaper

Michael Wolf's Hong Kong Architecture Series

Woah.

Hello, hello and hello. And sincerest apologies. So summer came and went. Autumn is here. How to explain the absence for a whole season? Um. Well mostly to blame is the lack of internet either in mine or Marco's life. I did it, I finally found a lovely little apartment and moved house. However, that resulted in a long fight with phone companies to get a line connected and thus only in the next couple of weeks will there be internet at my disposal to complement my hearty love of procrastination.

This isn't a real post, not just yet. I thought we'd just warm up with a little goat action.

Eagle vs. Mountain Goat.

Ouch.

Enjoy.