Pomme de terre

Show Reel

2009-04-07T04:42:00.000-07:00

2008-06-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

This is going to be the cover for the CD. Im going to get it printed better than I have for the prsentation becuase I ran out of time but it looks fine. I'm also goign to put seperate pictures inside the case, just some of my favourite shots, these are the ones I've chosen:

Thinking about the text in the film (the title and credits), I wanted something scratchy and rough so I traced over printouts of the words in Baskerville Old Face.

The marks come out differently on different sizes, I liked the largest size best becuase I ended up being messier.

Editing

2008-06-01T16:11:00.000-07:00

It's going quite well so far I think although I wold have preferred to have more footage for the end of the film. I'm not sure how I'm going to finish it - I think the main problem here is that I didnt plan it thoroghly enough. These are some of the shots from the film so far:

Filming over!

2008-05-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Finished the filming today, think it went well, There were some very nice shots - especially the ones we did inside where I could control the lighting. It was surprisingly easy to work wth someone else - I don't know whether this was becuase Lauras my friend anyway, or shes used to working with people like that but I found it quite encoraouraging - I was dreading working with someone!
This is for one of the where I'm chasing her down the road. Obviously we were very careful and we were in the safe hands of our stunt driver.

This is the carefully constructed and thorough filming plan:

2008-05-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

I'm deciding to use Blue Orchid by The White Stripes, its got a very clear, constant beat and I think it's a very exciting song! I'm finding it alot easier to imagine how the video might look and type of movements I want now. Christoph Stoltenburg said to me that I have got to plan EVERYTHING out exactly and you've got to be able to just tell people what to do becuase you know whats got to be done which I thought was good advice however I didn't have an actuall idea of what I wanted to shoot.

This is a rough plan, looking at the structure of the song.

These are some rough storyboards so I've got bit more of a clue on wednesday:

Planning the Shoot.............

2008-05-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

I'm planning on filming on the 28th and 29th, this week. Me and Laura are going to Jo's derelict mushroom farm. These are some photos of around the farm to explain why I got so excited:

I've been trying to find potential songs I could use. I want something quite rocky, lively, lots of guitar. I want to use somthing that isnt instantly associated with dance (more classical instrumentals), I've also been looking at songs with singing in them - I havn't seen many examples of dace films which use songs with lyrics in then (see Still You by Mijke Dejong). Having a song with singing in it will make it seem more like a music video rather than a dance video, which is what I want becuase the people I'm going to be showing will be more familiar wth this format, therefore, wont be put off by something they think they wont understand (which is the reaction I normally get when I talk to people about dance).

These are some of the songs I've narrowed it down to:

Secret Eyes Fear of Flying

Stranded The Mutts

Eyes Only The Cherubs

Blue Orchid, Seven Natin Army and The Denial Twist The White Stripes

Break on Through The Doors

Baby The Drones

Uncle Johnny The Killers

I Feel You Depeche Mode

These are just some vague ideas of what I might to include:

Idea 2

2008-05-23T01:13:00.000-07:00

I've found a dancer now (one of my friends in the end) for my main idea, I just wish I did earlier becuase she really wants to work on this collaboration. Shes a dance teacher at the Laban Contemporary Dance school. She's interested in combining contemporary dance with parkour (this is where I know her from).

She said something that I found interesting; she doesn't enjoy videos of dance becuase she keeps expecting the dancers to stop dancing and speak as in normal films. I would really like to experiment with using some sort of dialogue in the peice - whether that be words from a poem or just the dancer talking to me. I've got to avoid it seeming too casual though - I dont want to just show two freinds out somewhere having a chat whilst one of them is dancing!

Thinking about the parkour influences we want to include, I was thinking about suitable locations we could film. I can organise t film in one of my friends barns (yes, one of my freinds has a barn!) with electricity in it so I can control the lighting. I'm also gong to have a look along the Thames at the industrial areas and docks for anywhere around there. I want a very cold, industrial look to contrast with the movemets the dancer will be making. Also, there will be oppurtunities for some parkour-ness to go on if it has interesting surroundings.

Idea 1

2008-05-23T00:57:00.000-07:00

The other night I went to see the Rambert Dance Company at Sadlers Wells. In the last performance Infinity choreographed by Garry Stewart, I particularly noticed the lighting.

Ballet Rocks

2008-05-22T02:16:00.000-07:00

I watched a behind-the-scenes documentary of this dacne film Ballet Rocks performed by the English Naional Ballet with costumes designed by Giles Deacon and music by Bloc Party.

hmmmmm, re-thinking

2008-05-12T03:52:00.001-07:00

After meeting and talking to a few dancers and being let down by a few dancers, I'm considering other possibilities for my film. I don't nessarcarily need to use a professional dancer, the movements can be fairly simple and still be classified as "dance". I'm going to focus more on creating impact through the filming techniques I use, and less on the actual movement. I could include different componants (as in Pull by Bruce Mclean, David Proud, Ashley Page, Jane Thorburn and Mark Lucas).

"What the Body Does Not Remember became a very physical performance. It won a Bessie Award in New York and suddenly everybody called it 'dance', while actually the piece was not created by professional dancers, we were not working with the 'contemporary' dance language from that time. The result was a movement language created by the performers and myself. Over all these years, and with the different crews I have worked with, we have kept on developing this language." - Wim Vandekeybus

These are some photos I found on a flyer I had for the Rambert Dance Compnay's perfrmance of World View. I really like them, I'm not entirely sure how they are done.

Wim Vandekeybus

2008-05-12T03:25:00.000-07:00

Wim Vandekeybus' mainly draws his inspiration from the world surrounding us and life in all its aspects. Encounters with nature, people, different movement forms and styles, music, film, literature, theatre, … form the seeds for his creations.

interview with London Dance:
You originally trained in psychology. What impact has that had on the kind of work you make?
I studied psychology at university during 2 years, but never finished these studies or practiced it professionally. So, in fact I only got the theoretical part. My work is more the result of intuition, the intuitive psychology that everyone has in his/her way.
Who, or what, are your main influences?
My youth experiences, writers, photographers (koudelka), cineasts (Kalatozov, Cassavetes, Imamura, ...), encounters with people, the world around us, ...
Film is often an integral part of Ultima Vez performances - and the films also stand alone. What is your process? Do you consciously make two works - a film and a performance - or does one emerge from the other?
This depends, I made several short films as part of my performances, in which the themes of the performance were approached from a different angle, or that were part of the scenography. With film you can create a strong context/past of the people on scene and thus enrich there existence. Next to the short films, I also made dance films adaptations of my performances.

2008-05-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

Becuase of all the faffing about with dancers, I hadn't actually produced any actual work so I made this video today just to play around really.

MOTION CONTROL

2008-05-02T02:38:00.000-07:00

Choreographer: Liz Aggiss
Director: David Alexande Anderson

The Snowball Effect

2008-04-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Choreographed by the V-TOL Dance Company for the Dance For The Camra series on BBC2.
Director: Brett Turnball
The music is the driving force behind this peice, the deep bass makes it all so exciting, almost like a chase scene. Its in soft focus, the clours and the light are very important -very soft, yellow, warm colours, the light bleeding into the hall they are in, makes it look very dramatic. theres also a secion in it where its all slow motion with added motion blurrs on the characters, theres also red lighting, all of this completely shifts the mood.

Still You, Dir: Mijke Dejong, choreographers: Suzy Blok & Christopher Steel

2008-04-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

Janneque Draisma

2008-04-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

These videos are fantastic!
The music and sounds she uses as well go so well with the visuals.
Janneque Draisma is a Dutch choreographer/dancer and director. After an education in classical dance, she studied painting and film in Amsterdam. She then went to Paris where she took lessons in 'corporal mime'! In 1992 she received the prize for 'Best Actress' (Golden Calf) at the Dutch Film festival. Since then Janneque performed in several films, participated in a number of opera productions. At the same time she continued realizing and producing experimental films and theatre performances for which she founded her production company `The Draft Foundation' in 1995. At the moment Janneque is gradually developing three feature film scripts, which she will also direct: a Dutch film, a French musical and an Italian film. She is also a photographer and actress.

This is a picture of her as a sea monster (?)

research

2008-04-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

EXIT
Choreography: Jamie Watton
Director: Charan Goul

The location (the london underground) in this peice is as important as the dance itself, some shots have no dancer oin them at all. Clear narrative, shown by cross cuts.

PULL
Bruce Mclean, David Proud, Ashley Page, Jane Thorburn and Mark Lucas

This discribes itself as a "scultural dance". its about searching for the perfect body. The movements and editing are fosuced around and influenced completely by the props - which make up some of the costumes (huge card hats) and also big boards the dancers transport around like billboards. There are lots of sliding screens and split screens so in the end you dont know whether its the boards moving around or the editing! this is one of the few peices ive seen so far that include text within the dance, almost like headlines. the screen is alos in widescreen format which i think is to remind you of watching films.

MAN IN MOTION
Choreographer: Moniek Merkx
Director: Noud Heerkens
1995

E PUR SI MUOVE
Choreography: Harijono Koeban, Andrea Leine
Director: Peter Delpeut

The entire film is done in one shot, it zooms in and out but stays stationary. Interesting use of blurring - the film starts of completely blurred, you can just see movemet and colour.

CORZAND
Choreogrpher: Clara van Gecol, Angelica Oai
Director:George Bugmans
1993

KADER

madness

Duet
Choreographer: Will Tucket
Director: The Quay Brothers
2000

Matthew Bourne on dance made for film

2008-04-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

"In my work, I use imagery from my favourite movies t create vivid and familiar pictures but creating dance for camera offers a completely different but equally rewarding challenge.

Dance and television are natural companions but theatrical dance can often appear constrained by a 2-dimensional TV screen. This series [4 Dance] escapes these confines by making the camera the motivation for the choreography. These pieces couldn’t be performed in the theatre.

Some films tell a clear story and place us in a real world with recognisable characters and situations. Others have a less clear narrative but evoke potent emotions and feelings. And some take pleasure in the movement itself and its relationship with the camera and space. Because dance is not a literal art form, its secrets and meanings are revealed gradually - the interpretation often personal and unique to the viewer. You don’t need to be an expert in contemporary dance to enjoy it – far from it. Each film communicates in its own special way.”

MY breif!

2008-04-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

I intend to explore the possibilities of combining film and dance to create a final piece that not only documents the dance, but adds to it. I find this relatively new combination of art forms very exciting. I am also interested in the use of sound and music as accompaniment to the visual piece. I’m planning for the final outcome to be a film piece but I want to allow myself a certain amount of freedom to add to this, maybe with photography, print work or even live performance, depending on where the dance takes it!

A dance film is one in which dance and film/video are both integral to the work. This simple definition separates dance films from archival records of stage or site specific dance compositions. The placement and movement of the camera, the lighting, the balance of foreground and background, and the composition within the framing of each shot is considered in the overall choreography. A dance film can take many forms: documentary, dance designed for the camera (cine dance or screen dance), a screen adaptation of a stage work, animation, or kinetic abstraction.

“The structure for a dance for the camera, otherwise known as a cine dance or screen dance, may be driven by a kinetic or visual design concept, poetry or narrative, imagery from reality and/or dreams, traditional or idiosyncratic musical forms. The intention may be to produce what cannot be conceived in a live performance or to stretch and condense a multi-media form. The essential difference between an archival record of a stage work and what we are referring to as a dance film, a dance for the camera, is the involvement of the choreographer in a collaboration with a composer, cinematographer, editor, and a director. The choreographer may also assume all those roles him or herself as well. ” – Dance Films Association

"Dance and Screen have been so inextricably linked since the beginnings of cinema that audiences and even many dance makers almost take them for granted. Perhaps this familiarity contributes to why the dance film ‘genre', in relation to other cinematic endeavour, continues to remain under-developed as a singular creative medium. This immaturity has certainly impoverished the growth potential for a nascent critical language or a coherent democratic means to set in place uncontentious qualitative criteria." - Sandy Strallen, Curator of the LIDFF (London International Dance for Film Festival) 2007

Explaination of my Idea

2008-02-14T01:59:00.000-08:00

Whilst reading lots of things about physchogeography, I realised how much it ties in with Parkour. A traceur has to respond and adapt thier movements to thier enviroment, being competely aware of thier surroundings.

"Parkour is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas."

I thought it wuold be interesting if I could make the urban enviroment respond to the traceur - as well as te traceur responding to the enviroment. I'm going to make a short video tracking a run, where the surrondings are changing and responding to the movemets of the traceur.

interesting quotes

2008-02-14T01:58:00.000-08:00

"Reality, as it evolves, sweeps me with it. I am struck by everything and, though not everything strikes me in the same wa, i am always struck by the same basic contradiction; although i can always see how beuatiful anything could be if oly i could change it, in practically every case ther is noghting i can really do. Everything is changed into something else in my imagination, then the dead wieght of things changes it back into what it was in the first place. A bridge between imagination and reality must be biult."

The Revolution of Everyday Life, Roaul Vaneigem, 1967

About psychogeography- takes pedestrians off thier predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.

"All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops – the geometry."

Manifesto of Unitary Urbanism, Roaul Vaneigem

"-understand their location, and therefore thier existance" -?!

"architectural performance."

"pedestrian exploration of the urban and suburban landscape."

The following quotes are from Formulary for a New Urbanism, Ivan Chtcheglov, 1963;

"Our imaginations, haunted by the old archetypes, have remained far behind the sophistication of the machines."

"Closed landscapes"

"integrate modern science into new myths remain inadequate"

"Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting"

"Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality and engendering dreams."

"Architectural complexes will be modifiable. Their appearance will change totally or partially in accordance with the will of their inhabitants"

"This need for total creation has always been intimately associated with the need to play with architecture, time and space."

"the absence of the object becomes a presence one can feel." - of de chiricos work

"The changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in total disorientation."

The following quotes are from Theory of the Dérive, Guy-Ernest Debord;

"In a dérive, 1 or more persons drop usual motives for movement and action and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there."

"When freedom is practiced in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere image of itself. The ambiance of play is by nature unstable. At any moment, "ordinary life" may prevail once again. The geographical limitation of play is even more striking than its temporal limitation. Every game takes place within the boundaries of its own spatial domain."

"playful-constructive behaviour."

"-cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes thats trongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones."

"People can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is animated. Obstacles were everywhere. And they were all interrelated, maintaining a unified reign of poverty."

(Debord quoting Marx)

one dot zero

2008-02-14T01:41:00.000-08:00

I watched a short video of the hightlights from a one dot zero dvd. I'm going to look at the actual dvd when I can but in the mean time, these are the ideas I liked in what I have seen so far and some that have influenced my idea;

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

2008-02-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

After looking at Opus 4 (walter Ruttmann, 1925), I went into town at night to take photos for an animation. Out of the photos I took, I chose to use this one first;

I was looking for interesting shapes and patterns with bright lights that created contrast. I wanted to recreatea similar sort of effect as in Opus 4 but by using existing forms rather than abstract ones.

Hotel photoshoot

2007-12-01T01:46:00.000-08:00

final idea

2007-11-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

My puzzle for Perec;
I originally wanted to create some sort of puzzle for other people to work out or put together but it seems this particular puzzle was aimed at me, the creator! Something I’ve always noticed is that some of the time, it’s equally hard to create a puzzle, as it is to solving it.
I have made a folding wooden toy, which is covered, with my own writing. Because all the sides eventually have their time to fold out and show their sides, in different combinations, I had to think carefully about what words to use. All of the sides that meet each other and are read in the same direction match up with each other. Of course there are some sentences that are better than others and on some occasions, artistic license had to be used but more or less, all of the sentences match up and make sense. As like many other people (from specific forums that talk about subjects like this) that have tried other word games such as lipographs and anagrams, it’s strangely refreshing to actually think about that language and words you choose to use in such detail.
I chose to do this because I thought it was an interesting way of generating material. I am by no means a poet but working to a set of rules (as does Perec in, for example, A Void, where he writes the entire novel without using the letter ‘e’.) actually made it easier to generate words! Perec called these devices “story making machines”. I think Georges Perec would have liked my wooden word cube thing.
The OuLiPo group developed the theory that writing under constraints and rules was a way to achieve true originality. Perec believed that the more you limit yourself, the freer you have to become. I wouldn’t have come up with some of the sentences I ended up writing. The subject nearly always ends up self-referencing; the cubes are talking about themselves quite a lot.
Below, I have laid out all of the possible combinations of the cube. Instead of them being in cube form though, I have written them out properly; these are the produce of the “”story making machine”. I hope you can see these alright.

final idea?

2007-11-22T14:04:00.000-08:00

For my final outcome, I wanted to focus on the playfullness in Perec's work. From reading the start of Life: A User's Manual, its easy to see his absolute love of puzzles, games and, in a number of the 'tales' in the book; craftmanship. He really values the art of creating puzzles - a side of which I'd never really thought about, particulary regarding jigsaw puzzles.

"It's not the subject of the picture, or the painter's technique, which makes a puzzle more or less difficult, but the greater or lesser subtlety of the way it has been cut."

For my final peice, I decided to make a jigsaw puzzle of my own. I've thought about lots of different things I could use as an image, but I've settled on using text. This is becuase the way Perec explains; just one puzzle peice on its own means nothing, can relate to sentences. As a novelist and writer, Perec's main tool is language. Just one word on its own can only hold so much meaning. If the sentences are broken up into to puzzle peices, the words will be as muc part of the puzzle as the peices are. I hope that explains it ok?

I decided to make my own, rather than sending it away to one of those companies that print and cut it for you, becuase of the view of Perec's that machine cut jigsaw puzzles "destroys the specific nature of jigsaw puzzles" and I wouldn't want to go against Georges' beleifes would I? "-an arbitrary cutting pattern will necessarily produce an arbitrary degree of difficulty-". I intend to make my puzzle impossible (or really really hard). This will mean that i'll have to take a photo of it when i have finished cutting it before it is destroyed forever, never to be seen as a whole again.

I doubt I will be able to make a puzzle out of wood, as I am not carpentryly gifted, so I'm thinking thick cardboard at the moment or a bit thinner than that cardboard. I'm still thinking about how I'm going to put the words on. I'm NOT going to stencil it (my first idea) becuase that will actually damage me (see picture below), so I've been thinking about using asatone but I need to learn how to do that. Below is the 'image' I will put on the puzzle. Not sure if you can see well enough here but its the preamle from the book Life: A User's Manual.

a puzzle

2007-11-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

I think i should re-think my idea, after the crit today i felt abit lost- with only three dys to go to the deadline! panicing at the moment but ill get an idea somehow!

Thinking about Georges Perec

2007-11-12T18:24:00.000-08:00

After reading descriptions about how Life: A User's Manual is written, I found it hard to understand how Perec got from a set of rules to a novel! I worked out which order the units of the house went in (and then found one on the internet) to see if this made it any clearer. It did, but I wanted there to be a visual pattern and there wasn't! The main rule that is being used

is The Knight's Tour which is a mathematical problem involving a knight on a chessboard. The knight is placed on the empty board and, moving according to the rules of chess, must visit each square exactly once. There are many solutions to the problem, of which exactly 26,534,728,821,064 have the knight finishing on a square from which it attacks the starting square. This one is on a 8 x 8 grid but creates a geometric pattern. For some reason I'm enjoying the book more now I've done all this. The Knights Tour wasn't the only writing constraint Perec used.

He created a complex system which would generate for each chapter a list of items, references or objects which that chapter should then contain or allude to. He described this system as a "machine for inspiring stories". There are 42 lists of 10 objects each, gathered into 10 groups of 4 with the last two lists a special "Couples" list.

Some examples:
-number of people involved
-length of the chapter in pages
-an activity
-a position of the body
-emotions
-an animal
-reading material
-countries
-2 lists of novelists, from whom a literary quotation is required

The way in which these apply to each chapter is governed by an array called a Graeco-Latin Square. This is an example:

It means that no two squares contain the same ordered pair of symbols and every row and every column has exactly one of each symbol. To further complicate things, the 38th and 39th list are named "Missing" and "False" and each list comprises the numbers 1 to 10. The number these lists give for each chapter indicates one of the 10 groups of 4 lists, and folds the system back on itself: one of the elements must be omitted, and one must be false in some way. Things become complicated when the Missing and False numbers refer to group 10, which includes the Missing and False lists.

2007-11-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

I'm really enjoying this book, its very different from any other book I've read. It's as if time has been held still for me so I can walk around the house and look at everyone without them knowing! The detail he goes into is amazing but its not boring to read as I would have expected it to be. Besides the style of writing, the actuall stories (or "tales") included are so intricate and detailed. I love the story of Bartlebooth and his puzzles! - the fact that, at his death, he has nothing to show for the past 20 years of adventuring around the world although, as the reader, we know that so much more happened!

I've also been looking at other systems Perec used to generate material. He used these:

L E C A R T § I S N O U
S L E C A R T O U § I N
I T L A R O N C E S U §
L I § E C O U R S A N T
L A R U I N E S T O C §
A N T L E S § O I R C U
L § E S A C O U I N T R
I § U E L O R S A N C T
U A I R E C L O § N S T
U A N T S I C L E § R O
§ I T A R E C U L O N S
§ A L O I N C R U S T E

they are called Hétérogrammes. They are a fixed-form poem based on the isogram (above), a series of letters in which no letter appears more than once.
In the poem below, La clôture, Perec uses the principle of a joker, adding one additional letter to the original series.the jokers are written with the § sign.

L'écart
dis-nous l'écart où finit la ronce sublime
coursant la ruine
stockant l'espoir

Cul-de-sac où intrigue l'or sanctuaire :
clowns tuant —sic— le profit à reculons

Halo incrusté…

there are english translations aswell but I just wanted to explain what they were.

I might use this in my final peice (below). I want to use existing text becuase I'm not very good with words myself.

"My ambition, as Author, my point, I would go so far as to say my fixation, my constant fixation, was primarily to concoct an artifact as original as it was illuminating, an artifact that would, or just possibly might, act as a stimulant on notions of construction, of narration, of plotting, of action, a stimulant, in a word, on fiction-writing today."

Perec has got an asteroid named after him.

I've only just found out that Perec wrote the worlds longest (french)palindrome- 5566 letters! despite being dead, Georges Perec is still a member of the Oulipo—which makes no distinction between living members and deceased ones.
“I consider myself a genuine product of the Oulipo. My existence as a writer is 90% dependent on my knowing the Oulipo at a pivotal point in my formation, in my literary work,”

This following passage is from where I found quite a good essay about him:

http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/essays/magne/oulibio.html

“Exhausting the subject”Much is made now of the currency of Georges Perec. Rightly so, if one means by this that the importance of his work is increasingly recognized, but the term would hold equally true in its philosophical sense, the opposite of latency. This eminent member of the workshop for potential literature has always prized the act of literature, preferred realization to simple virtuality, and thus positioned himself in opposition to the attitude of François Le Lionnais—“Don’t forget […] that the method in itself is sufficient. There are methods without instantiation. The example is an extra pleasure that one gives to oneself and to one’s reader.”

I've also been looking at constrained writing on the web.
http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr10/10sus.htm
The ALAMO "Workshop for literature assisted by mathematics and computers" was created in 1982 by two Oulipians: Paul Brafford and Jacques Roubaud.

there was a link on tat page to
http://ambigram.matic.com/ambigram.htm
twas quite interested in making a font based on these ideas-becuase they are so hidous to look at. "Ambigrams are words or phrases that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single vantage point, most commonly right-side-up and upside-down. Ambigram.Matic is the world's first and only online Ambigram Generator! Flip any word, different words of the same length, or even an entire (symmetrically spaced) sentence on its head, and read it both ways!"-from the website.

I then looked more at palindromes (these are just loads of facts about the I found interesting).
"The actual Greek phrase to describe the phenomenon is karkinikê epigrafê (καρκινική επιγραφή; crab inscription), or simply karkiniêoi (καρκινιήοι; crabs), alluding to the backward movement of crabs, like an inscription which can be read backwards."-wikipedia, dont know their source.
Palindromes date back at least to 79 A.D., as the palindromic Latin word square "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" was found as a graffito at Herculaneum, buried by ash in that year. Ive been there! but I didnt see it.

Another Latin palindrome, "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni" ("We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire"), was said to describe the behavior of moths.

Apparently palindromes can be used in music. Igor Stravinsky's final composition, The Owl and the Pussy Cat, is a palindrome.
Brian Westley wrote a computer program for the 1987 International Obfuscated C Code Contest which is a line-by-line palindrome
The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is tattarrattat.

Perec in my brain

2007-11-09T09:04:00.000-08:00

An Introduction to Georges Perec

2007-11-08T11:04:00.002-08:00

final outcome

2007-11-08T11:04:00.001-08:00

this is my new idea

2007-10-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

This is one of the videos I found. I just neeeded an example video to practise with until I got my own footage. The section I have taken from is about half way through. Its a video of a dance choreographed by Merce Cunningham.

I've been looking at the work of Muybridge - he's famous for using multiple cameras to capture movement and obviously having a fabulous beard.

Through looking at his work, I decided to take stills from every few frames or so. This gives that gerky effect, a bit like a projection. I also want the whole thing to be black and white.

This is the video so far - this isn't exactly how I want it to be at the end, its just a rough idea. I've managed to organise a studio and a dancer to film!

2007-10-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

I like some ideas in these videos

Map update, mupdate

2007-10-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Eventually, I would like to combine the written notation aspect of it with actuall movement. Most of my ideas are pointing towards making a video but I'm still exploring representing it all in 2D. These are some bits from my book with some of the ideas

My favourite idea so far is fairly ambitious but I think I can do it. I wanted to film someone making a cup of coffee or something but the movements gradually getting more and more dance like until the movements they are doing are just for dancing sake, no function. Down the side of the screen, I want there to be the notation moving up as the dance progresses. Make the notation look like its been put there after I have filmed it. At the end, the person comes over to the notation and writes in the final movements of them writing in the final movements. I was inspired by an advert I saw. I think its by Fallon but im not sure, it just looks like thier sort of thing.

I really like the way it is filmed- letting the story just unfold in front of you.

Another idea, is to somehow encorporate the notation into the actuall dancing. I saw this advert ages ago and really liked it.

I was thinking about doing a similar sort of thing but with the notation - taking it out of its formal structure - and placing the symbols on the floor or in the air.

Map

2007-10-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

This is an example of a form of dance notation- Labanotation. It is a universal way of describing movement using abstract symbols. I chose this as my map becuase its fantastic visaully and also the idea of describing something like dance which is a fluid and natural in an ordered and disiplined way really interests me.

To begin with, I want to notate everyday actions like getting out of bed, and getting ready in the morning- although these suond like mundain activities, they will still look like a dance in notation form. I'm also interested in incorporating dance into the project somehow.

Short Video project

2007-10-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

So I've finally managed to upload my video! I apoligise for the crap quality and there doesn't seem to be any sound.

I was interested in the video we saw by Lasse Gjertsen which presents a stream of thoughts. I started by going into my garden and writing down my thoughts constantly for about half an hour. I then made this animation in flash, focusing on just a few lines from what I had written. The writing is scanned from the notebook, I wanted to use the original writing and I think this went well with the drawing style I chose to use.

Poster design for John Maclean

2007-10-15T04:20:00.000-07:00

I was quite excited when I found out who was doing the lecture on wednesday becuase i really like The Beta Band, so I was definately going to have a go at the poster. I'm pleased with the outcome but I'm not sure if people will like it. I've been working at it for hours without being able to go and have a break and come back to it with fresh eyes. The drawing is of a robot that can solve rubik's cubes. Becuase wasn't entirely sure what John Maclean would be talking about, I looked into what The Aliens character and style was and thier past album covers, artwork etc. I thought John Maclean probably liked robots and what better robot to use than a rubik's cube solving one. For the type, I printed it out on newsprint paper (the font was "OCR A Extended") really small. My printers abit crap so I got the strange line effect which I liked. I then scanned it in and made it much bigger which exaggerated the imperfections.

Josie Long

2007-10-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see Josie long, a comedian, who was down in Brighton for the comedy festival. She was absolutely fantastic- i've never actually been inspired by a comedy act before. I recommend to anybody to go and see her if you get the chance. Aswell as obviously being really funny, there are actuall points she wants to get across underlying her jokes. Shes so enthusiastic and positive about everything! The show was called Trying is Good and was basically praising poeple who put in the extra effort and keep on trying even though everythings against them.

One of her stories really stuck in my mind. She talked about the Quaker Edward Hicks who painted atleast 62 versions of the same painting- A Peaceable Kingdom. He did this becuase he found that painting this scene from the bible didn't in anyway compromise his religion or his act of painting.
She concluded with "if your inspired, however weird it is, just do it anyway". I haven't really done the story justice becuase I can't
properly remember it but I felt very excited and enthused afterwards!

This is Josie Long's version of The Peaceable Kingdom!

She made her own show pragramme and photocopied it for everyone, this was one of the pages:

I quite liked the quotes she picked out particularly the last one.

At the end, she gave out postcards addressed to her and wanted anybody to write to her if they find any interesting characters. Me and Sadie are sending her one with Vance Vance on it with the drawing we did.