|
home of matt pearson, maker of abstract things.
|
 rss feed
|
|
Opiamas TrangeloJuly 28th, 2010
“Well the good news, we like the book so much we’re doubling the number of colour pages. The bad news, you’re gonna have to pull your finger out and create some extra content to fill them. Okay? Great, we’ll leave you to it. Oh yeah, one more thing, it needs to look good set opposite the work of Robert Hodgin. S’that okay? Goooood.” This, plus a few rejected covers, just added to my flickr stream. TweetArtist / WankerApril 20th, 2010Of all the social networking sites, I think I hate LinkedIn the most. Which is why, I am very proud to say, I committed my first act of social media suicide this weekend, and erased my profile. The impetus behind this wanton self-destruction was having, what alcoholics call, a “moment of clarity”, when I was suddenly so disgusted by the profile update I was almost considering that I had to change my ways there and then. Struggling once again to hammer the round pegs of my working life into the square holes of LI’s horrific corporate pastel, I had found myself considering the use of the word “artist” in my job title. LinkedIn represents everything I hate about our box-ticking, tie-wearing, caffeine-addicted soulless capitalist machine – the teat we all suckle to feed our children/mortgages (/narcissism/drug habits/… delete as appropriate). And, ultimately, as someone who only ever takes full-time work for the nihilistic joy of quitting when someone looks at me the wrong way, LinkedIn is utterly useless to me. At least FaceBook has a point (keeping in touch with people you can’t be bothered keeping in touch with). But when I found myself considering the A word, I knew it was time to get off the bus. Despite occasionally doing work that I call “art”, and writing a book with “art” in the title, and doing the kind of stuff that could only be called useful if it were to cover some discoloured paintwork on a gallery wall, I would never use the A word. And I was only being forced to consider that as job title as a way around the inflexibility of LI’s imagination-free way of ordering its human cattle. “Artist” is an entirely useless term. Everyone is an artist. To call yourself an artist is about as meaningful and descriptive as saying you breathe air, or that you “work with computers”, i.e. it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t. “Painter”, “Musician”, “Interaction Designer”, “Programmer”, etc; these all have meaning. But “artist”, on it’s own, is meaningless. This is why, whenever I see “artist” as someone’s job description, even those who I respect and whose work I admire, I subconsciously read it as “wanker”. “Art” is something we all do, but only the most perverse individuals like to advertise the fact. Much like masturbation. Every scribble, gesture, utterance, movement or expression we make can be art if we decide to call it so. The route we take to work is art. The last tweet you wrote: art. Every stool we leave in the cistern of life can mean something to someone. So to say that you are an “artist”, by which you are saying your output is more “art” than the next fool, just screams WANKER. This in mind, those of you who are hanging on to your LinkedIn accounts, perhaps you might consider changing your current job title to “wanker”. It is not only refreshing, iconoclastic, eyecatching and indicative of a “GSOH”, but is also, frankly, probably more honest that whatever you currently have in that slot. TweetLast FM VisualisationsJanuary 28th, 2010
This time last month everyone was compiling their lists of the year and lists of the decade. But I wasn’t playing, and when it came to music I just lazily directed folks to my lastfm stats – the warts-and-all representation of what I’ve actually been listening to since 2004, untainted by any consideration toward “cool”. With the help of scrobblepod my lastfm account tracks more or less everything I listen to, be it on laptop, spotify or either of my iPods (how does one manage with less than two iPods?). Discounting vinyl, CDs (which I never listen to now), 6Music and the videos I watch on NME.tv pretty much all bases are covered. But the real joy of stats is visualisation. The image above is a slice of my listening habits in the latter half of 2009, beautifully rendered by http://lastgraph.aeracode.org/. This is only one of many free tools on the web, if you want to explore further this list is a good place to start. TweetRudy at DecodeJanuary 1st, 2010Rudy, my four year old, is a huge fan of “daddy’s patterns“, so naturally he was the person I most wanted to accompany me on my visit to Decode, the V&A/onedotzero “Digital Design Sensations” exhibition. Rudy, as part of the resident savvy child collective in our house, acts as my personal futurologist. The way he interacts with the world is the way the world will be when his generation is running it. Rudy fails to understand why all content isn’t on demand, why every screen is not a touchscreen, why his favourite media is not available on every device. And seeing him, after lapping up Decode, attempt to prod, wave at or talk to other inanimate exhibits around the rest of the V&A, I suspect he will now be questioning the relevance of any artwork that doesn’t involve, reflect or interact with the viewer. Interaction; with our machines, objects, materials, environments, and each other, will soon become something that is simply expected. And anything that we can’t communicate with will have decreasing relevance over the coming decades. Those who snobbishly dismiss interactive art as being “something for kids” should remember that soon it will be these very same kids who will be making the decisions as to what is and isn’t art. TweetLego RelativityJuly 14th, 2009
MC Escher’s Relativity gloriously rendered in Lego by Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu. Full size version here. Read the ‘making of..’ here (they made “widespread use of SNOT – Studs Not On Top – techniques” apparently.) See also their other Lego Eschers: |
