Making Space Athlone

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I will be taking part in a public art event on Saturday and Sunday the 28th and 29th of May. I will be projecting a video piece, i the that I made recently, in the Civic Square, amongst a variety of works from other artists. The is Making Space Athlone and it is doing just that, making space for contemporary art in Athlone.

Vintage UFO Slightings

Canada, 1956

USA, 1967

USA, 1950

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Fun cheesy UFOs for inspiration.

Solstice at the Cork Midsummer Festival

Solstice from Solstice on Vimeo.

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Solstice, an emerging artist curatorship at Cork Midsummer Festival are looking for support through fund it, the online crowd funder.

It is a multi disciplinary event, taking place from the 16th to the 19th of June. I will be exhibiting a few drawings as part of the visual art programme.

Looking

Monster Truck and the Power of Social Media

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Monster Truck Fundit from Monster Truck Gallery on Vimeo.

Monster Truck are currently looking for funding for a back projection screen for their gallery in Temple Bar through online fundraiser Fund it, an Irish equivalent to Kickstarter. The screen will project media art, day and night, on a window in the busy tourist/night life area. This is a great idea, it is an effective way to increase art literacy by allowing contemporary art to reach a wider audience. It eliminates the boundaries of the gallery walls.

Something similar has been going on in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary for a few years. SWITCH is a video art exhibition in which shop fronts become cinema screens at night. I would love to see town centres, across the country revived in this way.

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Monster Truck have also produced a viral video to promote the fundraiser, which again, is an excellent idea. That makes three great new media ideas, the screen, the viral and the Fund it campaign. Fund it is a website that allows users to post creative projects that they need funded and advertise it to their networks. Backers pledge money to the project and in return receive rewards. MART used a similar campaign recently for a US tour.

There are 28 days left to give. I plan to pledge when my moneys are a little more plentiful and when I have not just had an ebay spree.

Moving Image Cork; Lord David Puttnam

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Moving Image Cork is an organisation for anyone interested in video or film. They organisied a talk with British producer Lord Davis Puttnam recently which, unfortunately, I could not attend. Amazingly, MIC have released a podcast of the whole thing. It is great, well worth a listen.

I am a huge fan of podcasts and they are increasingly becoming more popular, CIRCA online have been producing a few that I have been downloading lately. They are one of the better applications of the web for alternative media. 

Art I Like: Dali's Royal Heart

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I have never been interested in Dali's paintings. I find it too difficult to objectively look at or think about his melting clocks and weird worlds. Because that type of imagery has been regurgitated by popular culture and championed by simple minds, I think Dali's concept has been lost, as if in a game of chinese whispers.

His bejeweled objects have not had to suffer the same fate and so, I can look at them without the haze of other people's opinions... and I think they are spectacular. They are a prequel to recent art history (Damien Hirst's skull) and sure as as ever, I love a good art history clairvoyance reference.

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Click on image/video for source.

Modern Irish Landscape

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This is the palette of recent Irish architecture. When I go to a new city I always feel at home. These colours are so familiar, I never have to go far to find an apartment complex in this style. I suspect it is all the work of a single large architecture company.

Though they are not imposint, I wonder if these colours will become part of the country's image, will visitors leave with these ingrained into the memory?

Video Stills

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I woke up today to perfect lighting and made some video clips. These are a few stills from the footage. I have a new sound recorder so I plan on making some audio later (if I ever read the manual).

I have to get up early for the right light for video and stay up late to record audio when the traffic is not so noisey. I am thinking of taking up insomina.

Cracks and Seams

1.  Melted glacier water and salt water of different density having difficulty mixing in Alaska.
2. Cracking Ice.

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These are not my images. I found them on flickr, click on numbers to find the sources.