Wednesday 9 February 2011

The Emancipation of Pixel Man Poem

A Poem for Kids


He came out of a stuttering tv set,
And looked around to forge a way.

To make his pixels merge to one,
Then perhaps with the kids he could play.

His lonely heart had seen them,
From his vantage far away.

He sometimes thought he had dreamed them,
For him there was no night or day.

No one was about-it was quiet,
And it all looked very real and 3d.

So he started to think about how,
And what first to do and try to see.

He was small-the same size of a pencil,
Pixels fluttered from him like feathers.

What if the people don't notice- he worried,
As his mind slopped into a list of whethers.

He sat down and he worried and twittered,
And he even thought about going back home.

But amidst his head some happy thoughts cluttered,
As out here perhaps he would not be alone.

And then he heard a quite wonderful sound,
An arpedgio of laughter and glee.

"Oh dear-what will happen after,
The children i know see me?!'"

A girl and a boy ran into the room,
Bubbling giggles and expecting cartoons.

What they saw was a tiny, little man of dots,
And delighted they said with a boom:-

"How marvellous to meet you sir, we know you from in there- ,"
The boy pointed to the tele-set and picked him up with lots of care

The pixelman was happy- how nice they really are--
And that all happened ten years ago and its still going well so far.


Tuesday 8 February 2011

Google-eyed

I spent three years studying art, four including post grad infact, in an expensive game of Simon Says choreographed by the spectre of a middle-class conscience, acting out the same progression to higher education as prophesized by this camp as a necessary chunk of the staple diet for career success.  Labouring under the similiar false pretenses as must burden the soul of a thrice-married lady uttering her fourth round of wedding vows, I spent a quite significant segment of my life fertilizing a hitherto wanton brain with useful pellets about paintings.  A kind of painting-by-numbers of pounds my student overdraft could not take.

Over the same duration of time in which I could have had four kids, settled with the council upon a decent nest-egg and doused myself daily in the cheap lager my child benefit would have stretched to after expenses, I remitted to a course of perpetual self-flagellation:- spending as many nights awake wincing-out the statutory word-count on 'French Romantic Art' and other more ambiguous titles, as those spent by those Eskimos in Norther Siberia, who differentiate Night from Day by the arrival of the Annual Summer Equinox.

Pacing oneself through the Jamboree of student-life, sustained wholly on a pallette of carbohydrates, varying my culinary intake by differing tones of beige, (The interior of my digestive tract must have looked like the magnolia-painted lounge of a centrefold of Good Housekeeping), I tolerated an invisible number of future delinquents and criminals - as is statistically undeniable, all of which I embraced for the sake of my degree course. 
       Which, incidentally, was a course I would in any restaurant, send back to the kitchen for a re-heat - before asking the waiter under my breath if there were any jobs going.

I loook back on it as being like an awkward slow-dance with my future self.  There I am, my future selfs firmer grip around my waist, cajouling with it, that yes, this is a bit wierd but the lights will soon come on and it will be less mortifying.

All this, I did not forsake myself to, so that five years from the day I joined the queue in my Halls of Residence for the Middle Classes equivalent of National Service, some anonymous Peter Pan of a Man working for Google would be now benefitting financially from staying inside on the ABC computer during primary school play-breaks - to have invented a catastrophic, grossly misrepresentational, Google-ated version of a real-life visit to a Gallery or Museum.

Cyber geeks have their own innocuous notion of being 'Web Artists'.  There are myriad graphic designers and talented creative types who can merge an eye for aesthetica with an understanding of web-vernacular.  Some techies (cyber-trekkies) are veritable linguists of HTML code.  They vary in ability from the big online hackers to the online shelf-stackers, as muchg as I don't understand their wizardry, (Which it is, and my ineptitude is testified in this website here), I want them to remain penned within these defined boundaries and leave Artists in the true sense, well alone.

Only a tech-luvvie would recommend how cool it is to be able to see any work of art in a museum or a public gallery at the touch of a button on your computer.  However, the ramifications of encouraging people to look at a pixellated, digitally coloured photograph of a work of art as like a vitamin substitute for the real fruit, are massively negative. 
       Having worked as part of the 'Emporio Arts army', I can verify that the photos of works I took at a gallery to then upload online, had to be processed through various software to diminish its qualities and remove it yet further from it human authorship.  JPegs can reduce a work of IMPACT in the flesh to a digitally homogenised potato-print version of its former wonderful state, devouring the human verve from which it came.  Destroying evidence of the true colours made from light originally which is carefully recreated in galleries and evident to the artist whilst he/she is creating.



Slow Roast Pork and edible friends

You cannot taste a photo of a plate of Eggs Florentine from Jamie Olivers website, unfortunate as this might be.  Likewise, you cannot transcend into the world away from technology, other people and distracting nouns, to that space which the artist protagonist has evolved over thousands of years of paint-stained, torturous, eclesiastical training, as is possible when you are staring gormlessly at the piece in real life.  Things stop when you can connect to a work of art.  A further plus- no pop-up ad asking you if you fancy buying a bulk-load of dietary supplements appears.

As much as the art market has worked on a satellite economy, art-works should also stay rotating around, and apart from, our digital ozone layer.  Informing people about art in cyber-bites is truly, important.  But so too is informing of what art itself is in this sense.  To be able to enlarge a picture of John Martins, 'Great Day of His Wrath' online, is good.  It's great.  But as much as music artists revolted against free websharing of tracks for the sake of keeping the industry open for new talent and retaining some financial bracket around what they have made, so must the artists passed, have their legacies protected. 

Great Day of His Wrath, John Martin, 1851-1853

Article on why Google art project doesn't replace museums:
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36934/robert-mapplethorpe-archive-goes-to-la-why-the-google-art-project-doesnt-replace-museums-and-more-must-read-art-news/

What Nicky Serota reckoned:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/01/google-art-project-classic-works

True say:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/06/google-art-project-virtual-masterpieces

Monday 7 February 2011

Rimming around Old Street

Myself and a friend went out last weekend near Old Street and found ourselves as bit parts in the opposite of your conventional Western.  Definition: an Eastern.  (Perhaps directed by Clint Westwood). 

STAGE DIRECTIONS:
Saloon = Bar
Rodeo horse = Brightly-coloured bike
Cowboy boots = Brogues

I don't know when it happened, perhaps I slept through it, but some kind of natural disaster involving the Sun, a shitload of solar energy and an explosion occured in Shoreditch recently.  Thank God my eyes were shut at the time, unlike a vast proportion of eighteen to twenty-five year olds in the region, who have been left with irrevocable damage to their eyesight.  An error resulting in the obligatory wearing of protective, bullet-proof glass, NHS-style glasses.

Either that, or this tribe of yoot are just such ravers and night-owls that their sight-capacity has diminished to the point of no longer registering light over a wattage of 'Dim, Black or Neon.'  Maybe their ocular-muscles are over-strained from days spent pouring over Vice magazine.  Whatever, walking around with their heads on must be like being trapped inside a key-hole camera.


Yo man, you too should have gone to SpecRavers


There has got to be a reason for such outrageously shit eye-wear, really there must.  Because it is illegal in the UK for children to not be schooled up to the age of 16 years.  This will not likely be cut in the rest of the oncoming onslaught of by our coalition government, as it has stood generations in good stead to, on the whole, make informed judgements, educated guesses and use empirical reasoning.  From all of which, anyone would conclude that this 'look' is very silly indeed.

I don't know where it came from, or how long we will be safe from it, but I need someone to blame.  First point of call is, quite unimaginatively, the Good Lord Jesus Snr.  There is a reference in the Old Testament forecasting a grim dawning of the End Of Time where a plague of Locusts descend to ravage populations.  Nothing in the Good Book about plagues of kids donning 'Low-Cost' eyewear, so God is on this account not guilty.  He in probably thumbing through his receipts as I write, looking to get the magic beans back spent on us, over this latest craze to add to the Fall of Man.  Giving Man the chance to look this way of Mans own volition is probably more than a bit embarassing for him in the big Staffroom in the Sky. 

Not one of these Scenesters wearing said spectacles can have a genuine problem with partial-sightedness.  This is simply proven with the Science of Deduction|:-
               - If these glasses were actually aids for vision, then the wearer/wayfarer, would by proxy be able to see what they looked like with them on, and promptly take them off, afterwards checking about themselves to see if anyone had seen them.
               - If, on the other hand, these instruments are worn by a kid who does not rely on them to cross a road safely, and wearing them infact is detrimental to their field of vision due to the inevitable 'Blurring' we all know well from trying on our mates glasses (or from nailing a couple of bottles of vino of a Tuesday afternoon), then, ipso facto, they are worn as a 'Look' rather than 'To Look'.

The poor petals cannot actually see how much of a div they appear to others.  They are helpless to asssess themselves in this state.  Which in these terms, makes their 'Fashion Statement' a form of visual tourettes:- A silent but voilently offensive swear-word on their faces which we must either politely ignore, or tick off said tic.

Engaging in conversation with anyone wearing these double-glazed glasses is tricky if you get close enough for an encounter baring in mind that their experience of seeing you, takes a lot of effort.  If you have ever tried to see underwater, you might relate.  It is difficult to conduct a conversation with someone whose whole upper-head is in a conservatory, you might want to let them know that they can let the window down if the effort is making them perspire, or ask them directly if you could install a window box as really, there is not enough floral distraction about town.  

Not only can you not take anyone looking so daft that you could post them to that equally crappy TV programme, 'You've Been Framed' SERIOUSLY, you can neither take your eyes off of them.  From being a complete non-entity before, with perhaps a fairly feature-less face, with the addition of a pair of fat frames, they go from the emfeebled Clark Kent to the Superhero stud Superman.  Except the effect is obviously the other way round, with the metamorphosis merging at the confusing point of Superhero-Speccy geek.   So thick are the rims of these facial asbos that you cannot help but question for a moment, whether the wearers are taking the piss.  Before you realise the level you have stooped to to actually question yourself at the behest of this type.  No, they really are for real.  Gone are the days of actual, subtle, normal glasses.  In its place are these fixtures which undoubtedly have more personality than their innocuous wearer.  KIDDO, if you are going to make a statement then follow that up with some actual gravitas, be a bit of a hero, do a little dance.  Whatever, just do something with the entrance you have made for yourself in such silly eye-wear. 

If these kids didn't just stand about with about as much charisma as a coaster, then there would be more or less, a peace-pact.  It is the formidably lazy attempt at looking like 'Something' that is - interesting, a bit kooky, a little bit 'out-there', cool, scene - all of those adjectives that bring me out in a rash, that the wearers fail in their attempt.  Topping off a dress sense inspired by your last game of Consequences, with a pair of specs that speak louder than you- speak over you infact, so in effect, you take the part of its ventriloquist dummy, is just not on.   






             

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Vittles 2

When briskly pavement-gliding, reverse moonwalking or even kicking-forward at a normal, much-to-do-about-nothing type-pace, you might one day trip over something small and inconsequential afore your striding path.

Small is, infact, Big – as exampled recently by a case which made luminous much bowel-fishing, profligate word-play from the red topless’.  This being the case of the slug whose sheer terrifyingly small dimensions, and most likely similarly-sized ambition, killed a young motorist.
A modern-day, Baz Luhrmannesue remake of David vs. Goliath, Said Slugs’ sluggly-trail, like a wedding-train of ill-fate, crippled as effectively as kryptonite on superman, the line of sensors placed on a road signalling to a set of traffic lights, and tripped a short-circuit in the system which inevitably led to a def light being switched off for twenty mintues.  Unless the ensuing disaster was a pre-meditated attack in revenge for the past winters incessant road salting, then I would say that small is, at any critical divergent on the axis of time and place, as devastatingly powerful as MASSIVE, GINOURMOUS, FUCKING BIGGER THAN YOURS ANYWAY.

So small, we have it, is Big.  And also exponentially dangerous.  However, what I am describing is more striped caterpillar than hapless slug- as it is also RED the colour of DANGER and this is why, so often around town, I notice them everywhere.  I believe they are symptomatic of a litter-bugging, ‘Nay- I do not give a toss if your letters are late…By a week…If you've got any complaints, write to us’, Royal Mail Postal Service.  A band-of-brothers so far removed from the dedicated Postman Pat of yore, it is hard to reconcile that they derive from the same genealogy.  Just think, for every tacky birthday e-card you send, a non-striking postal worker, (If found- I often wonder if posties strike in order to rush off to work their second job on the London Underground, and vice-versa), somewhere, lets out a death knell.

Yes!  Now it makes some kind of sense.  It’s those little red elastic bands that don’t biodegrade isn’t it!  The red elastic bands that all our fan mail is bunched together in.  Separating your, lesser collection, from mine- which is dropped round the back to the IT department, to be sorted by a small team of Irish Travellers.  The red elastic bands, which, like self-loathing, sexually-depraved mayflies, have but one day of existence outdoors, before sucked up into the street cleaners’ chariots like helpless Noah into the mouth of the whale. (A whale that flosses)







The Disintegrator : Fires 144 elastic bands at a time




Practically as aplenty as pigeons around London, if you collected every single one seen on your daily commute and combined them into that old-skool gadget ‘Elastic-Band-Ball’, to then roll down a hill for larks, neighbouring schools and residential areas would have to be evacuated.  Best way forward in this would be to put an advert in the National Press, excluding the Daily Mail.

And so here it is.  The title of my blog.  The epitaph ‘A Red Elastic Band’ on the grave of our future generations’ ‘Green Planet’.  Each little red elastic band- the one you see, the one I see- an omnipresent emblem of our shared commonality as Mankind. 
It is also a fantastically cost-effective marketing campaign, being free.  So I am spanning some large demographic trawling nets of advertising, as that is some wide distribution.
   No need for the exertion of having to buy a silly hat and brightly coloured converse to tag up an advert in some scene shithole, like.  Hopefully scenesters wouldn’t be scene dead reading this blog.  This blog has been sprayed in anti-scenester-icide, so if they are, not to worry, then soon they will be. 

XXX 




Some ideas of what to use your red elastic band for :  


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7985359.stm


Apparently a postie gets an £80 fine is caught red-banded :


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/09/shortcuts-red-rubber-bands