I was reading the December Edge this morning on the bus. A fairly good article about Games and Art. Well as good as edge is going to do it anyway.
It did put me on to brodycondon and his work.
Gamers are weirdos, artists are weirdos, therefore games are art.
Marvel (Short for Marketing-vel) is suing Cryptic Studios and NCsoft for copyright violation. The basis for this is that CoH has made is possible for people to create Toons that are similar to Marvel characters and play them without bowing down before any great copyright. Cryptic also seem to think that this is ludicrous. Basically Marvel are upset that people like their characters and want to play as them. They ought to be proud and supportive, if anything CoH is going to move more comics that anything else. I’ve had tons of ingame comic chats with the other folks in there, it’s made me buy some comics I probably wouldnt have otherwise. I hope they get their asses royally kicked.
A selection of digital images that are part of “The House in the Middle” exhibition in Eastbourne. A show inspired by ’50s propaganda/educational films (should that be edu-ganda or propagational?) that showed how to survive a nuclear war… mostly by painting yourself or your house white. I must admit I’ve been intrigued for a while with the concept of using games as studios and models, using screenshots as photographs, backdrops or scenes. And more importantly with the relationship between gamers and the larger than life worlds they inhabit.
The exhibition is supported by supported by Photoworks UK
And also the top 10 for googling homesdirect from the UK. Not to be confused with the homesdirect.com site that I talked about a while back.
I’ve made the top 10 for Darren Russell googles. My part in joining up the information network is played.
I also spotted this… Fraud Awareness Month October 2003 - Schedule (Eastern Region). A year old and I have no idea if it is the same Darren Russell.
Wow!! Google Scholar lets you find academic literature with google. Home in on the smart sounding stuff. Maybe I’m not as in to the academia now, but still handy and interesting. I think I should make this the default for my google tool bar search.
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
I’m a little late to notice the recent launch of the new iPod Photo. So there was no pre-launch drooling on my part, I will have to confine myself to post launch drooling.
The one thing that it should should should have is bluetooth, so it can suck images off phones… or other cameras when they all get with it. Mind you if they did that then there would be open air bluetooth filesharing going on, naughty naughty. Oh to have a electronic fog of images floating around my body.
The following may sound a bit harsh, but that’s because it has grains of truth in it. Basically here in the “real world” I’m surrounded by idiots. Let’s face it and it’s been said many times before 50% of people are below average. I keep coming across it again and again at work that people just dont get stuff, really dont get things and make no attempt.
Told you it would be harsh, here’s some more… Any job or work type requires lots of different skills, attributes or abilities and people are most likely to be below average at something and therefore not be briliant at everything. I count myself in here too. I dont get everything, even though I make a bold attempt. So I admit I’m an idiot and I’m surrounded by idiots - who may or may not admit to it.
Idiots get things wrong, or continue to make the same mistakes becuase they dont learn. Now I ascribe at least partially to the whole post-modern multiple readings of things, and in the business world there are many right choices that one can make. However there are also a lot more wrong choices to make. Idiots make those wrong choices, and dont learn.
In a purely commercial business there is some kind of Darwinian selection. It may take aeons, but there is a bottom line fit for survival criteria. If a business or a bit of it aint then it dies. In a non-commerical world they don’t. Therefore I’m surrounded by idiots who will stay idiots, and I suppose following on from that I’m an idiot because I’m staying.
So why am I liking and enjoying the Art world more at the moment? Because there is no right and wrong. This is where that whole post-modern, deconstructive thing is in full bloom. At school I can look at other people’s work and think, “I dont like it but I can see where you’re going” or “I stragenly like it even though it isn’t what I would think of as good.” It’s all about opinions, and everyone’s is valid there. As long as you dont want to be famous or make money out of it you can do damn well what you please. Everyone can be equal and equally valid… no one has to be an idiot!
This is a bit black and white, and I dont have the time to delve into a full tonal range of detail. Businesses all over the world are full of people who are above and below average. And generally I would think that I have worked here at the beeb with people who are mostly above average in most bits of their job focused bits. However the BBC is infected with another dangerous element. People here care! And this is really dangerous.
Caring would be great if you were around in October 1917, but not so good when running a smooth business now. And the other problem is although just about everyone here has a real passion, they all care about different things; doing good works, good use of the license fee, public service, value for money, high quality, reach, more stuff, their careers, to name a few. And none of these have a bottom line, none of them can be subject to any kind of Darwinian action to take out the not-fit-for-survival elements. It’s all opinion, which is better suited to being hung on white walls.
For our first crit at school the other day someone bought in a whole bunch of phonecam shots. Strangely enough I could see a connection between her B&W images and her phonecam, near narative, set. Both had a very personal feel but in different ways.
Saw this on Boing Boing, an online collection of publicly contributed phonecam shots. Contributed to by all sorts of unlikely types, including Weird Al!! And ex-trekker uber-geek Wil Wheaton. More a collection of non-artist icons, than your traditional artist types by the looks of it.
I was discussing with Heather the effects of phone cams on Art. With a sort of pseudo-moore’s law phone cams ought to have the quivalent of large format resolution cameras in them within 20 years. What will that do with so many cameras around? Will it make any difference?
My contentious point though is that photography is not about taking pictures, it’s about not taking pictures, or at least pretending that you havent taken them. Editing is the key, take Robert Frank, 28,000 images pared down to an esential 83 for his “The Americans.” Every photographer’s work appears as if they are the only pieces in existence, when in fact there will be a huge body of material that didn’t make it to the final stage. Editing and process are thus hugely important and only more so with more images becoming available.
Plenty more stuff about others being scammed by Darren Russell around the web. This forum thread on the Residential Landlords Association. Including a post from a lady at LWT trying to include him in a landlord scam program.
Good stuff here about Dirty Dazza switching his companies from sole trader status to limited liability to avoid personal liability.
There are folks out there worse off in this than us. We’ve just got to move and loose some rent. Others have been put in dire straights because of him. There was at least one post from someone who had worked at Homesdirect saying to steer well clear. I find it hard to believe that people would be willingly involved, but - even on the generally nasty level of estate agents - the people that we were dealing with at Homesdirect and Chase Devonshire were slippery beyond the pale.
