Reality/TV

My partner, her 10 year old son and I were having one of those morning-cup-of-tea-in-bed type wandering conversations about how our TV watching was policed when we were kids and how much harder it is now to do that. We wondered if, indeed, there was a point to policing TV (but then, last night's family viewing was Tim Minchin's Ready For This) or was the policing of TV in our youth similar to how early motor cars couldn't be driven without a man with a red flag walking in front to warn people.

The boys in this house are more aware of certain - mostly sport-related - aspects of the world than we were as kids. Which is great. The down side of all this TV razzamatazz however is that often the real world fails to live up to the TV experience. Compare sitting way up the back of the crowd at a major basketball game with the coverage on the TV. Sure, there's atmosphere, but many folks - and young boys in particular - often prefer the autistic feast of stats paraded across the screen to the ambience of the stadium.

This made me think of those nature documentaries with David Attenborough and the like that the BBC used to make back when it wasn't crap. We swam with whales, flew with geese and buzzed through fields of flowers with bees. Nature made the stuff of spectacle. So awesome was the footage that real contact with nature - simply going out into your back yard and listening to a blackbird - seems utterly pointless. Lame as, bro. Reality just isn't as interesting as TV even though TV doesn't give you anything like the sensory richness of the real world. I held forth on this subject briefly. My partner's son nodded wisely:

"That's why we need 3D TV."

Not in my back yard

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Worrying developments at the kennels

Left Jim the dog at the kennels last weekend. Think there's been some sort of change of management.

UN Security Council to Dismantle Internet

A spokesman for the US-owned United Nations Security Council confirmed last night that telecommunications workers around the globe would be drafted in to complete “the greatest disarmament programme since the Second World War”.

The Internet was invented in the 1960's as a fault-tolerant communications network for military and private use. The unforeseen explosion of personal computing, mobile communications and the World Wide Web, however, has meant that ordinary people have accidentally been given access to more information than at any time in history. Some of this information is also correct.

Roy Hobbs, Minister of Branding and New Media in Her Majesty’s Government, described the Internet as “a complete fucking nightmare.”

“There have been no international protocols, treaties or test bans to limit the Internet’s proliferation. With the exception of parts of rural Scotland, every country in the world is now part of what is probably the most dangerous weapon the we have ever known.”

“The threat to ordinary people of unfiltered ideas, lunatic beliefs and unmanaged information has to be countered. Allowing this sort of thing to go unchecked will erode the very bedrock of our democratic freedoms. We must act now.”

Wikileaks.com - the future of web browsing

 “Here in the UK we were pursuing a more moderate approach, a Third Way, if you like. We have already redirected Wikileaks to a list of 24-hour emergency plumbers. Our next step was to give everyone really high-speed internet so that they could spend their time downloading the latest series of Desperate Housewives and watching dancing cats on YouTube rather than reading news items or, dear God, sharing ideas.”

“It’s an approach that has worked well with television.”

“But we have realised that as this is the UK we couldn't possibly deliver a high speed broadband network any time within the next twenty years. So we are following the Security Council resolution and dismantling the whole thing. The Internet was a colossal miscalculation. Demolishing the infrastructure will save hundreds of innocent lives, and will create dozens of much-needed jobs in Reading.”

“Interruption to your daily lives will be kept to a minimum, although you will no longer be able to send or receive email, or call the emergency services. Or anyone else. You will, however, still be able to use your iPhone to play Angry Birds.

He added, “What about that level thirteen, eh?”

New advice from HM Govt to students

Preview of the new UK government poster campaign produced in the wake of the student protests

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Honey - the taste of the burbs

My partner and I visited friends on the outskirts of Melbourne last weekend. They are the proud recent owners of some bees, all lodged in a smartly painted white hive. Keeping bees is not for the faint-hearted. Beyond the threat of stings there is the possibility of "bee thrall" where the beekeeper opens the hive and becomes mesmerised, Quatermass-like, by the fluid motion of the bee commune, forgetting not only why they had opened the hive, but that the hive contains tens of thousands of potentially enraged stingers.

We were lucky enough to taste the first honey from the hive. Tradition has it that the first honey is magical and you should make a wish before you have the first taste. We duly did... and then tasted. The flavours of that honey - squeezed cold into a jar and eaten fresh, no boiling, no added anything - were astonishing. There was liquorice - "ah, they'll have been at the fennel flowers"; there were notes of pear - "the neighbour's pear tree". The teaspoon of honey was like flying through the local back yards. The flavours were like a bee's conducted tour of favourite, fragrant spots. Close your eyes and you're with them. Did I really detect the faintest aftertaste of rusting Holden?

Commercial honey is okay, in the same way that blended whisky is okay. Blended whisky contrives to taste like whisky ought to, generically, but if you want to get into the whole whisky experience: the heather, smoke, honey, peat and goodness knows what else, you need a single malt. Honey, it turns out, is no different.

That first magic teaspoonful has ruined us for all other honey.

Kettling

In the light of recent events in Whitehall, London, where grown men have been beating up children in the defence of democracy  I need to share a quote from Soviet dissident Boris Kagarlitsky:

"Globalisation does not mean the impotence of the state, but the rejection by the state of it's social functions, in favour of repressive ones, and the ending of democratic freedoms." 

I reckon this can equally apply to the idea of Small Government (aka Big Society).  The champions of Small Government imply it will mean less interference in our lives by the state. Events lead me to suspect the opposite will be true. 

For many of school age this was their first taste of how it goes if you use public places to exercise your theoretical right to express your opinions. When I was at school we were always told "if you want to know the time/are lost, ask a policeman." What are we teaching kids nowadays?

Inside the Whitehall Kettle - New Statesman article

Boris Kagarlitsky - Wikipedia biography

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Swiss couple’s reality check in the Maldives

 
Caveat emptor!

If you were from, oh I don't know, let's say Switzerland, and you wanted to renew your marriage vows, why would you go to a palm covered island and have them renewed in a hotel that offers karaoke nights and rides on an inflatable banana as part of its suite of experiences?

Of course, most of the western press are on the side of the couple - falling for the irresistible combo of self-righteous indignation, fundamentalism and consumer rights - so I’m going to skip all the crap-du-jour that the papers are trying to whip up about this. I mean, there may well be hatred, but I would doubt it has religious fervour at its heart. If I was serving cocktails that cost more than my weekly wage, I would probably harbour some lingering resentment of those who lazed by the pool. 

What I wonder is how far removed folks like the Swiss couple are from their sense of place: their sense of home, of where they are in relation to everything and everyone else. Their sense of reality. How can they have thought that going somewhere far away from their homes, friends and family to renew their sense of their place in the world was a good idea? What are they lacking that they need some mystic mumbo-jumbo intoned over them in a language they don’t even understand on a private hotel beach in front of a bunch of people they don't even know? 

It seems as though one of the things that we most want wealth to do is remove us from our fellows. In regeneration projects, if you want to find out about a place you ask the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community as they tend to be the ones spending most time out on the streets, and have the keenest eyes and ears. As you climb the socio-economic ladder you find people more and more removed from their immediate surroundings with less and less knowledge of and engagement with their communities.

For folks like the Swiss couple, it seems the ultimate expression of wealth is the privately-owned island. Those who can’t afford an island go for two weeks in the Maldives, Seychelles or some other self-styled paradise and play make-believe. Make-believe millionaires, make-believe ceremonies, make-believe vows.

Don’t they have a favourite place within walking distance of their house where they could celebrate with friends and relatives? If not, why not? Find one. Get real.

Vilu Reef Beach and Spa Resort

The video - if you really need to see it. You will also get access to the comments... considered opinion from folks who spell Islam with a 'z'.

Sat Nav – the end of hope?

I recently put instructions on the Sensory Trust's web site on how to find our office after an increasing number of visitors found that their sat nav deposited them in a farmyard with no mobile phone reception a half mile up the road. This got us to wondering about the effects of satellite navigation on our relationship with the world.

Back in the days of paper maps we never lost a visitor, but now it happens repeatedly. Even to folks who have visited us before (that is, before they bought a sat nav). How has the sat nav changed our perception of the places we travel through? What is the difference between following instructions and reading a map?

Where we used to move mindfully through a wide landscape of choices and decisions we now hurtle through a tunnel of digitally voiced instructions. There is no room for the side-track and no need for the spontaneous. Indeed, a spur of the moment detour leads to the science-fiction scenario of the computer squawking at you to “turn around as soon as it is safe”.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Those of us who live in urban areas have little chance to experience the natural world at the best of times. Everything from double-glazing and air-conditioning to television documentaries serves to keep our experiences twice-removed. Now, even when we're in it, the wider countryside is defined as a set of destinations that we're locked in to arriving at, “guided” by a tinny voice from the dashboard. Anything on the way is in the way.

Take a look at an OS map of the area around Stonehenge for example. A glance shows that we’re knee deep in prehistoric earthworks for miles around. This incredible richness was distilled for me recently by my (rented car) sat nav as “in 200 yards turn right onto the A344”.

A whole world of experience: history, geography, geology, the environment and landscape reduced to a list of left and right turns. Discovery is written out of the plan; no one gets happily lost.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive”. With the sat nav, the only point of the journey is arrival. Can we still travel hopefully?

"I'm late, I'm late," said the rabbit, "I'm late for a disappointment."

"Don't you mean an appointment?" asked Alice, pedantically, "I've never heard of anyone being late for a disappointment before."

The White Rabbit pulled his satnav from his waistcoat pocket and peered at it. "No, it's definitely a disappointment. And I'm late!"

And with that he disappeared down a rabbit hole.

Tomen-y-Mur Roman Fort

Visited the site of the Roman Fort at Tomen-y-Mur in north Wales today. Refreshingly there was a complete absence of interpretive panels to drain every ounce of joy and discovery from the experience and I could Google it at my leisure when I got home. I was able to unearth this page from a rare textbook about the Romans in north Wales edited by none other than George Monbiot.

Regeneration Nightmares Volume 2

Another piece about how our public spaces are formed. Made for the Sensory Trust.

Movie star told “get out more”

A well known Hollywood actress has been diagnosed with severe vitamin D deficiency as a result of avoiding sunshine. Gwyneth Paltrow, most famous for her teary over-long Oscar speech and some films that I can’t care enough to remember, was diagnosed after suffering a Tibial plateau fracture… that’s the top of the shin bone for the rest of us. A subsequent bone scan revealed the beginnings of osteopenia, which many medical folks see as the precursor to osteoporosis.

In an attempt to stay young-looking Paltrow has spent a good deal of time avoiding the ageing effects of sunshine by staying indoors on nice days and covering up on the rare occasions that she finds herself outside. Not only has this resulted in an alabaster complexion to die for but, by avoiding the sun, she has become spectacularly deficient in vitamin D which, along with protecting us against some forms of cancer, keeps our bones strong. As well as prescribing massive remedial supplements of the vitamin, her doctors told her to spend more time in the sun.

There are two factors in the desire to stay whiter than white. For centuries white skin has been a goal for many women. Among the aristocracies of China and Europe for instance, swarthy skin was considered vulgar. Renaissance artists celebrated women with translucent marble-like skin. White skin meant good breeding. The efforts to maintain white skin in the past have been as damaging as Paltrow’s efforts in this century. Notoriously, arsenic and mercury were two compounds of choice for whitening skin. They do of course kill you, but that was felt to be a small price to pay for beauty and status.

The other factor is skin cancer. Or, more accurately, the fear of skin cancer whipped up by media reports and ill thought out government campaigns.

Speaking about something that the entire world has experienced daily since the beginning of time and that creates and sustains life on the planet, Paltrow said "I was curious if it was safe, having been told for years to stay away from its dangerous rays”. She doesn’t say exactly who told her to stay away from the sun but we can guess that alarmist media and government advice had something to do with it. The horrors of skin cancer are promoted widely. Certainly in Australia hardly a week goes by without being presented with a TV image or vast motorway poster close-up of a melanoma… lest we forget.

Much less promoted are the benefits of sunlight. Apart from stopping our bones from crumbling, studies also show that optimal vitamin D levels protect against ovarian, pancreatic, lung and breast cancers. A lack of vitamin D can also lead to cardiovascular disease and cognitive impairment in adults.

We spend a lot of time indoors nowadays; probably more than at any other time in history. Even when it’s not raining. Quite what the cumulative effect of our indoor lives will be is only just being uncovered: shorter life expectancy, environmental ignorance and social ineptitude may be the melting tip of the iceberg.

An actress can be forgiven for behaving like this, as the earnings crash that occurs to women in Hollywood at the first signs of wrinkles is usually spectacular. The rest of us have no such excuse.

Get out more, and enjoy responsibly.

Gwyneth Paltrow's original newsletter article
Hormone disruptors and nano-chemicals - latest guide to safe sunscreens

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British Life To Change Forever

David Cameron or Nick Clegg warned today that he would change forever the way the British lived. Dismissing accusations of social engineering as “the whining of wound-licking socialist running dogs” he stated “there is no such thing as society, therefore there can be no such thing as social engineering.”

The UK prime minister warned that the cuts to public services would be unpleasant, however the good news was that he would never meet those most affected by the changes at a dinner party. He went on to say that unpleasant things were always good for you, which meant the cuts were Common Sense and the Right Thing to do. The war in Iraq and the medicine his nanny used to give him were proof if proof were needed, he added.

Speaking later at a London private club to an audience of Daily Mail readers bussed in from Middle England David Cameron or Nick Clegg said “in layman’s terms the problem with the NHS and social welfare is that they simply do not make any money.” He then went on to attack the idea that these services were necessary. “I’ve never had to use them, and I can’t see why anyone else would need to either.”

“These cuts are not motivated by ideology, they are simply Common Sense. We plan to close the NHS and stop welfare payments to voters in the North.” He then went on to talk about the importance of continuity, pledging to continue the Labour Party’s policy of donating tax revenue to the banks. “They make excellent profits, and this is Good Business.”

Hitting back at criticism he said “suggestions that public spending can somehow support growth and improve the economy are the insane ravings of the sort of left-wing university intellectuals who never invited me to their parties at Oxford.” Stepping back from the microphone he then punched the air and shouted, "who's the daddy? I own you bitches" before continuing to lay out the government's planned cuts.

Inspired by the public apology given recently by Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, for the excessive cuts of his predecessors David Cameron or Nick Clegg announced that the UK government would quickly form a Canadian-style Star Chamber of Private Sector experts to make government more efficient. “The speed with which BP have dealt with the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico should be a lesson to us all” he shouted over rapturous applause from the Daily Mail readers.

After the speech James Kirk, a Daily Mail reader from Penge said “finally we have a government with Common Sense. It’s about time those scroungers in the North stopped taking out of the taxpayer’s pocket. If they want health care they should cash in some of their investments to pay for it like I do.”

“At last we've got a proper English government that we can look up to instead of all those fucking Jocks.”

A hommage of sorts to the Daily Mash

Regeneration Nightmares Vol 1

Part of the day job is working with folks who don't get much of a say in how their environment is built and managed.

Part of what we do is host events that are accessible, fun and create a casual atmosphere that enables people to voice their opinions on decisions that will affect their places. We take these opinions and ensure they influence the planning decisions from the beginning of the project.

This is a cartoon I made a while back which we were going to use in a piece of promo that didn't quite come off.

It is, of course, a work of fiction and no resemblance to any real person, living or dead, or any public art project, is intended or implied.

Red Dot or Not

Three and a half easy ways to earn a living as an artist

The Red Dot is the goal of many artists. The Red Dot confers on the artist (after a suitable wait for the gallery to process the payment and remove their commission) almost superhuman powers such as the ability to pay rent or their overdue electricity bill. In quantity the Red Dot can produce a kind of mania and artists who have the Red Dot can be seen in supermarkets spending lavishly on basic food items that are not on special or near their sell-by date. This all sounds great but beware. Artists who have too many Red Dots may be seen by commercial galleries as “product”. Do you really want to be painting the same picture in ten years time? And remember, you’re only as good as your last show.

Then there are artists who shun the Red Dot. For them it is a symbol of a system that forces artists to sell their souls and prostitute their abilities to produce meaningless gewgaws for the bourgeoisie. They are the Cutting Edge, challenging the concepts and conceits of Art and refusing to sell out to the system. They remain true to themselves by competing for official government support in the form of grants and residencies. Filling out application forms and lobbying decision makers can often be time consuming and in many cases these artists see grant applications and social networking as part of their art form.

The third way to earn a living as an artist is to earn a living doing something else. What that might be depends on the artist but it is often wise to choose something that offers flexible hours and does not involve creativity so that can be saved for making art. Administration and hospitality are popular choices. Infantry soldier and trawler fisherman less so. Nightshifts can be handy for artists who prefer to work in daylight. Aside from the ability to eat and pay rent, a big advantage of this method is that it allows artists to experience "real life" which in turn can give their art more "meaning". Experiencing real life, along with a working class background and claiming an indigenous great-grandmother are essential for any artist who wants to be written about in a lifestyle magazine. Being attractive and/or having a nice house can also help.

For artists at the beginning of their "career" (as it’s been called since the 80’s) it should be noted that none of these methods is guaranteed to net financial success. In only a few cases will the Red Dot sales approach make the artist permanently wealthy. Government agendas change often and only artists adept at predicting fashions can rely on grants. The third method is not without danger too. The seductive lure of eating regularly and being able to socialise with friends who have proper jobs can lead to voluntarily taking on more hours until there is little time left for art making. So the “three-and-a-halfth” method, and the most sustainable, is to do all three, in a balance that suits.

A final sober word of caution. Many students at Art School (or “university” as it’s been called since the 90’s) view the idea of doing nothing but make art as a sort of holy grail. When you’re surrounded by other people making art in a social atmosphere it’s easy to imagine doing just that for the rest of your days. The reality is that often art-making is a very solitary occupation and anyone considering being an artist for the rest of their lives should consider how they might balance that with other activities that keep them human. Even if you don’t need the money, maybe that barista job is a good idea.

Breathing New Life into an Old Routine

There’s a new coalition government in the UK and it seems there are commentators in the press who are worried that the ConDem Alliance will somehow fail the country. They worry that a government of two halves will not be able to make timely and accurate decisions, will compromise, fudge issues and fail to deliver on its election pledges. Surely not?

Aside from lobbyists having to work twice as hard with twice the budget it should be business as usual. What the press commentators fail to remember is that England has a long history of such alliances stretching back nearly a century. From Flanagan and Allen through Morecambe and Wise, Cannon and Ball to Reeves and Mortimer, the double act is a tried and tested method for pleasing the punters and should do well in the House of Commons. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

“The template for the modern double act began in the British music halls and the American vaudeville scene of the late nineteenth century. Here, the "straight man" was a necessity as he would repeat the lines of the "comic". This was done simply because the audience would be noisy, and repeating the joke gave the audience a fighting chance of hearing the joke and the comedians a fighting chance of getting a good reaction. Soon the dynamic developed so that the "straight man" became a more integral part of the act, setting up jokes that the comic could then deliver the "punchline" to.”

Which one will be the straight man? Who will get the louder laughs? It’s an exciting time in English politics and it’s all still up for grabs.

More about the double act on Wikipedia