![[KSCHHH]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DLAYoFmmJtI/SnDfSlqBpPI/AAAAAAAAAgA/NlcZG2e48BQ/S1600-R/kschhhtitle.png)
1.
The Internet owes its' existence to the pinnacle of 1950's technological advancement, Sputnik. The ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network - the internets' great-grandfather, was born in 1969 as a response to the Russian's 1957 launch of the first man-made satellite.
2.
The first piece of commercial spam was sent by a US law firm in 1994. The message was titled 'Green Card Lottery - Final One?'
3.
David Bowie was the first musician to offer an album for commercial download with 'Hours' in 1999.
4.
As recently as 2002, UK citizens were confused by British Telecom's first major advertising campaign for broadband internet as they didn't realise they needed a computer.
5.
The web recieves an estimated 100 billion clicks per day, contains 55 trillion links and is thought to have the same processing power as the human brain.
5 Things You Didn't Know About the Internet
Design Is Hard / Design Is Fun [Graphic Design]
Design Is Hard / Design Is Fun is a typographic, illustration and graphic design project to visualize this phrase with both of the elements 'hard' and 'fun' in a single image.
As well as designing the title image, I also created the image above as the first submission to the project. I hope to regularly add images to this project, ultimately with the goal of publishing it as a book. It would be cool if I could interest other designers in contributing to this project and get a cross-section of how different designers tackle the brief.
Culture of Decline [Editorial]
Is High Culture A Burden On The Economy?
The growing effects of the recession are being shared across the globe. Rising unemployment, the collapse of long standing institutions, poverty and hardship are widespread. Could there have been a single driving force behind these crises? Some blame under-regulated derivatives trading or the sub-prime lending spree, but perhaps the cracks run deeper in the crumbling foundations of this house of cards built on sand.
The symptoms of our crisis are felt throughout the world, but they are best illustrated in the land of their birth, the United States of America. Not only due to their heritage, but also because nowhere else is everything quite so well documented.
I stumbled across the image above while researching the effects of the economic crisis to be able to make an informed book recommendation to a friend. It is an illustration of unemployment trends after the the effects of the economic crisis were beginning to bite in the US. The first thing I noticed was that worst hit areas were those that are more known to be centres of culture generation, the east and west coasts. This made me wonder what role high culture plays in this observation. Could there be a correlation between high culture and economic decline?
First, to prove that, beyond the stereotype, the east and west coasts are genuinely cultural hubs. This image, mapping the sales of Classical music (red) against Country music (blue), isn't as detailed as the map of unemployment, but if you look at the red areas as those more likely to have higher unemployment, there are the beginnings of a correlation.
Record sales alone are no basis for condemning high culture. If that were so America would have followed George Orwell's advise and scrapped art and the dictionary after Mariah Carey sold her 200 millionth album. So I introduce the work of Peter J. Rentfrow, Samuel D. Gosling, and Jeff Potter looking at the geographical variation of personality traits.
This map charts the trait of 'Openness', which the researchers describe as reflecting "curiosity, intellect, and creativity at the individual level." They suggest that people demonstrating Openness would hold liberal values, and have an above average chance of being in the "artistic and investigative professions." It appears that when 'Openness' is paired with above average sales of classical music (red) or below average sales of country music (white) - sure signs of a propensity towards high culture - unemployment is sure to follow.
So, is culture a medium for spreading fear in a system tenuously built on faith? Is a cultured populous therefore more prone to fear of the future, leading cultured consumers to rein in spending and cultured business people to cut back on employment? Could there be a religious element to contribute to fear of the future? Is there more hope if the Good News tells of an eternity of happiness, while the News at Noon tells of unending suffering and woe?
When we add together the evidence so far, a compound of classical music, 'Openness' and a lack of religious adherence seems to be a deadly concoction to employability.
We are fed stories of innovation and creativity being the driving force behind economic recovery, but they seem to be the cause here, rather than the cure. In the past the only things to have pulled us out of crippling recessions has been good old fashioned ideologically charged politics and an energizing war to stimulate manufacture and bolster the military-industrial complex. Wait, that was before the recession...
On an individual level at least, it looks like the best way out of circling the economic drain is to abandon any hopes of a creative life, listen to country music and buy a bible.
The growing effects of the recession are being shared across the globe. Rising unemployment, the collapse of long standing institutions, poverty and hardship are widespread. Could there have been a single driving force behind these crises? Some blame under-regulated derivatives trading or the sub-prime lending spree, but perhaps the cracks run deeper in the crumbling foundations of this house of cards built on sand.
The symptoms of our crisis are felt throughout the world, but they are best illustrated in the land of their birth, the United States of America. Not only due to their heritage, but also because nowhere else is everything quite so well documented.
I stumbled across the image above while researching the effects of the economic crisis to be able to make an informed book recommendation to a friend. It is an illustration of unemployment trends after the the effects of the economic crisis were beginning to bite in the US. The first thing I noticed was that worst hit areas were those that are more known to be centres of culture generation, the east and west coasts. This made me wonder what role high culture plays in this observation. Could there be a correlation between high culture and economic decline?
First, to prove that, beyond the stereotype, the east and west coasts are genuinely cultural hubs. This image, mapping the sales of Classical music (red) against Country music (blue), isn't as detailed as the map of unemployment, but if you look at the red areas as those more likely to have higher unemployment, there are the beginnings of a correlation.Record sales alone are no basis for condemning high culture. If that were so America would have followed George Orwell's advise and scrapped art and the dictionary after Mariah Carey sold her 200 millionth album. So I introduce the work of Peter J. Rentfrow, Samuel D. Gosling, and Jeff Potter looking at the geographical variation of personality traits.
This map charts the trait of 'Openness', which the researchers describe as reflecting "curiosity, intellect, and creativity at the individual level." They suggest that people demonstrating Openness would hold liberal values, and have an above average chance of being in the "artistic and investigative professions." It appears that when 'Openness' is paired with above average sales of classical music (red) or below average sales of country music (white) - sure signs of a propensity towards high culture - unemployment is sure to follow.So, is culture a medium for spreading fear in a system tenuously built on faith? Is a cultured populous therefore more prone to fear of the future, leading cultured consumers to rein in spending and cultured business people to cut back on employment? Could there be a religious element to contribute to fear of the future? Is there more hope if the Good News tells of an eternity of happiness, while the News at Noon tells of unending suffering and woe?
When we add together the evidence so far, a compound of classical music, 'Openness' and a lack of religious adherence seems to be a deadly concoction to employability.We are fed stories of innovation and creativity being the driving force behind economic recovery, but they seem to be the cause here, rather than the cure. In the past the only things to have pulled us out of crippling recessions has been good old fashioned ideologically charged politics and an energizing war to stimulate manufacture and bolster the military-industrial complex. Wait, that was before the recession...
On an individual level at least, it looks like the best way out of circling the economic drain is to abandon any hopes of a creative life, listen to country music and buy a bible.
Standers - The Politics of Feet [Illustration]
Standers is a planned series of illustrations based on the body language of people standing. A lot can be read from the way people position their feet. Whether interlocked, shuffling or curled, the actions of feet can signify everything from the standers involvement in conversation to their feelings toward the owners of another pair of feet. I hope to explore these inferred emotions and group dynamics in this series of illustrations.
...more to come
Governor Glitch [Video]
Taken from a broadcast from the Governor of California governmental website, this video was originally a speech regarding California feeling the effects of the economic crisis. This video has not been edited. The stuttering is a glitch, a byproduct of the embedded video player used by the website when the user scans through the video from one time code to another.
'Butane Blood Bubble' renamed to 'Too Polite to Ask'
Installed as 'Butane Blood Bubble (Internaut Naught Naught)' in the exhibition Passage, Belgium.'Butane Blood Bubble' was a name chosen out of a passing obsession with alliteration and was used in part to experiment with the perceived necessity of an artwork to exist dually as object and as critical text. Later, when the work was to be exhibited, I added '(Internaut Naught Naught)' to the title in an attempt to suggest the exploratory nature of the work - as the inspiration and the black and white stock footage contained in the work were taken from surfing the Internet. However, given time to consider the effectiveness of the name, I have decided to change it.
'Too Polite to Ask' is a reference to Gore Vidal's famous quote on the subject of his bisexuality. When asked about the gender of his first sexual partner, Gore Vidal replied, "It was dark, and I was too polite to ask." For me, this sums up this video installation.
Firstly, I must point out that the videos are arranged in order to be read, from left to right, and as such are in effect a narrative. Between the two videos a scenario of observation is introduced. The first video presented has the hallmarks of internet-video, reduced in resolution and image quality to better be transmitted. As an internet-video taken from it's original context and placed in an artwork, it is a symbol of mass observation. The second video introduces the observer who is outwardly acting the process of observation. The protagonist is building an interpretation of the video with the limited tools that have been allowed him, until he has something that resembles the original.
Now, the question referred to in the title is asked by the protagonist and it is this: "Am I watching the video? Or am I watching my video?" When observing, there is truth, and then there is our construction of the truth. This, I think, is applicable to how we construct ourselves. The constant narrative that we construct and tell to ourselves is rooted in this same questionable act of observation.
Beyond our mind is darkness and, like the ancient idea of the human eye being a source of light illuminating the objects we look at, we incorporate the illumination provided by our own distinctive perception. To ask what truth these objects would hold in the darkness without the light of our eyes is a profane question.
Hexagon Traffic and Venetian Babies [Video]
These short video clips are from experimental works Hexagon Traffic and Venetian Babies. The original videos were made exploring the idea of making video as another instrument in a musical composition, following it's structure and mood.
Venetian Babies (cut)
Both videos were made by filming an old TV of mine playing pre-recorded footage and digitally editing the clips together. The TV used was 17 years old an when you fiddled with the tuning knob it would suddenly explode with bright colours and other great visual distortions.
"The Upside Down People 2007" for Il Tempo Del Postino, Manchester [Project]
In 2007 I spent ten days wearing upside-down goggles with 11 other people for the benefit of Carston Hรถllers' work in Il Tempo De Postino, a time based (as opposed to space based) experimental gallery. The exhibition was held in Manchester's Opera House and lasted around fifteen minutes. Here are some images from the ten days that lead up to the show.
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