quote: media as a tool for achievement

I was talking to this guy Matt Hook at Vizeum, and anyway amongst other things, he said:

Amongst younger male audiences, media is being seen less as a thing to consume, and more as a tool to achieve

as evidenced, for example, by the proliferation of specialist titles, and the increased amount of how-to features and articles in Sunday press. I just thought it's quite a neat quote/viewpoint.

pub evening - Wednesday 28th February

Three Pints ... Three Pints ... Three Pints, originally uploaded by ali_sutton.

A lot like Russell Davies coffee mornings, but with 2 differences:

1. They're in a pub, not a coffee shop. The Commercial Tavern. Nearest stop Liverpool Street Station

2. They are in the evenings, not the mornings. 7pm, Weds 28th Feb 2007

So far we have me and Faris, any other takers?

Ant

we are the jumble

DSC02050, originally uploaded by dead insect \ /.

I saw this just off Brick Lane, Shoreditch, where the busy and jumble-esque market is. Brilliant, I thought, a jumble sale. Then I was like, hang on, it's probably not even a jumble sale, it might be a secret gig, or an art exhibition if it's in a studio.

I googled it and found this:

As part of its tentative exploration of the parameters of the transactional aesthetic, studio1.1 is pleased to present

WE ARE THE JUMBLE
15th - 25th Feb
(during Fashion Week, enrich yourself with our rags)
OPENING THURSDAY 15TH 6 - 9PM

pick your way through the grey area where the Duchampian ready-made meets conspicuous consumption, and jumble is born.

Which doesn't leave me much wiser. It's right next to my office, I'm going to go on Saturday the 24th at 12pm - anyone want to come? If there is no actual jumble I can actually buy with actual currency, I will perform my contemporary movement and object orientated piece "the dance of petrol and lighter".

more fish paintings

aerosols on hardboard, 120cm x 60cm

my birthday party

I did a number of things for my birthday. It was a joint effort with my friends Cookie and Ash.

First up was a spoof protest pub crawl. Within about 10 minutes of meeting at Buckingham Palace we were surrounded by police with sub-machine guns, and in fact we were beisged by automaton-like minions of the system at every major landmark.

We also went to a bar - Shish in Old St - an alright place for meeting a bunch of people, and then to Bugged Out's warehouse party where 2manyDjs played to a crowd who hardly knew where they were. It was all in all a brilliant birthday ranging from good clean fun to absolute filth. Thanks to everyone who came.

Special props:

Simeon for the Energizer Bunny/Rave Monster Award - 3pm the next day finish

Ollie for most humourous slogan - "Say no to death: the biggest killer of all"

The 5 people who between them found all my clothes and bags around shoreditch and managed to get them to me.

Team Malden Arms for the Jim'll Fix It biscuit/medal thing







more pictures on Cookie's flickr site
and on Hal's

think local, act like you're at a festival - house party 2.0

Edit - so, evidently, I'm not able to make this happen. I am totally stoked that it's a good idea, and I'm going to try again next year.

Ok, here's an idea to run by you. It's essentially a festival made up of house parties, lasting for 4 days - Friday through til Monday, with the capacity for about 100-150 people.



Here's how it'll work:

Designate 4-5 mates' houses, all around Victoria Park, about 20-30 minutes walk apart from each other.

Each house is decked out like for a house party, but with an important difference - there is a designated sleeping area (e.g. tents out back or a few airbeds on the top floor, etc) and there is a designated food area (kitchen with some soup and bread).

The festival starts on Friday at noon. Get some clothes, maybe a sleeping bag in a pack, go to the main house, get your wristband. Woohoo! Festival time!

Rule 1: No going home until you leave the festival! Even if you live a couple of tube stops away!

Each of the 4 houses will be manned in some capacity for the whole festival.

Each night one of the houses will have a totally sick party, and one of the houses will have a chilled party e.g. acoustic gig.

If you want neither, you can go to one of the other 2 remaining houses, where people will be monging around in small numbers. You could shower,or perhaps have an early night.

That's it. Consider this the first pass at a manifesto for "urban fest summer 2007", or whatever it's called:

1. Re-imagine your home and local life as places where routine and drudgery aren't compulsary. This is important, because otherwise we start believing that home is boring and we have to spend money in flash clubs or go far away in order to have any real memorable fun.

2. If you think you're in a festival, if you're always within 20 minutes walk across the grass from somewhere with dancing, if you're surrounded by like-minded happy people with nothing to do, and no home for the next 3 days, then you ARE in a festival.

3. You don't have to have a loaded posh cousin with farmland to start your own festival. Yay!

We could theme the festival however we wanted - fancy dress like Bestival, or different themes for different houses - I have some ideas here.

What do you reckon guys? Up for it? I volounteer my house first, and put forward the August Bank Holiday weekend as a tentative date.

DFS Winter Sale ad

DFS Winter Sale ad, originally uploaded by dead insect \ /.

this is the only DFS ad I have ever seen that I haven't completely hated, and in fact I really like it. Goes to show that even faced with the most bludgeoning of creative constraints and non-propositions, you can still make a decent execution.

declarations of love

Love locks, originally uploaded by Massimo6342.

I found this photo on Flickr, from someone who'd commented me. What a sweet idea, using locks as declarations of love.

unusual animal friendships - dog and frog

a rhyming friendship! full details at http://www.cuteoverload.com

slow exposure photography plus moving light from a mobile phone

My flatmate Stuart and some others from glue pioneered this technique of waving a mobile phone light around a subject whilst shooting on slow exposure. I don't know what the name for this type of photography is, but it we all had fun shooting in our kitchen with Hal's camera. More pics soon.

brands as filling narrative gaps in our lives

Nice quote from Charlie Brooker at the Guardian. He's talking about Macs and PCs, specifically the new UK Mitchell and Webb ones and how much he hates it. It's a great article, but anyway my favourite part is just about brands in general:

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose.

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality.

Well said. It's diametrically opposed to Hugh MacLeod's statement that we use brands to fill up gaps in our personal stories, and basically says a big NO to consumer brand marketing. I quite like it today, because it's a Monday and I feel like sticking it to the man.

unusual animal friendships: lambs, rottweiler

Another animal friendship reported by the BBC here.
I guess there should be categories - sibling friendship, adoptive parency, playmates, etc, with additional labels, like "would normally kill/eat each other", "not native to same environments", "size differential".
This would help us work out why they're unusual and work towards our ultimate goal of creating better animal friendships.