Monthly Archive for January, 2011
VC Photography Students, or indeed any student interested in photography, might be interested in contributing to the following: Developing the Librarys Photography Collections.
Documenta 13 is the latest incarnation of the renowned art festival, which has now become, as many art festivals have, a “county fair for intellectuals“. Manifesta is a more itinerant version of its sound-a-like equivalent. Unitednationsplaza is what happened when the Greek/Cypriot government cancelled Manifesta in 2006, its video archive is now online. UNP was organised by (amongst others) Anton Vidokle. Open 16 investigates the phenomena of the art biennial, with some fascinating and critical writing.
It sometimes feels like everyone is talking about data visualisation, but lets for a minute look back rather than around at both the peerless work of Edward Tufte, and the social/political/communicative projects of Otto and Marie Neurath, and collborators like Gerd Arntz. I like the pictogram on the left, it looks like facebook on a bin-bag.
Gallery 4 at The Lighthouse hosts the Visual Communications Work In Progress show, incorporating Illustration, Photography and Graphic Design.
Come along to the opening night – Wednesday 26th January from 4.30pm - Free Admission throughout the exhibition.
Lighthouse opening times:
Mon, Wed – Sat 10.30am – 5pm
Tues 11am – 5pm
Closed Sundays
TIME: Saturday, 22nd January 2011, 12.30-4.30.
PLACE: Partick Burgh Halls, Burgh Hall Street, Glasgow.
Right to the City Forum has been running events since last summer creating spaces for discussion, and exploring ideas of community activism and how to define our own lives.
We are hosting an education forum on Saturday 22nd January at Partick Burgh Halls, Burgh Hall Street, Glasgow, from 12.30-4.30 (note: 12.30 for 1.00 start, prompt!). The venue is just off Dumbarton road, Partick, only two mins from Partick rail and subway lines: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=55.87129974,-4.30905008
The Forum will attempt to open up the education debate beyond an immediate defence against the cuts, and make a useful contribution not only to the education movement but to wider activity against the marketisation of cultural and public space. Members of the forum are not aligned to any one party or political position, however, the ‘Really Open University’, in the statement below, express some of our concerns very well: http://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/
“The recent response to the marketisation of higher education has given a voice and a collective identity to a discontent stretching beyond funding constraints. It is now time to respond as well as create, looking for new action and dialogue for the future. We want to open up debate, not close it down.
Issues to consider: What is worth salvaging from the university system? What strategies do we have for attracting those who ought to be sympathetic: passive academics, apathetic students, individuals outside of the University, young people? How to operate within the academy without being corrupted by it? What could The University be? How do we make this happen?”
In short, the Forum will attempt to ‘re-imagine the school and the university’ – fighting for what education should be, not just preserving what it currently is.
We will be looking at wider cuts/resistance in education and not just the university. We also recognise that education is not confined to educational establishments, and that those outside of educational establishments have just as much if not more to teach than those in education. The event is open to all. It is an opportunity to meet other like-minded people to discuss the deep political implications of how the education system manages human potential.
A set of short texts will introduce the main themes the forum will explore. These will be handed out to all participants on the day and used in the initial discussion session to develop more in-depth discussion from people’s responses. Some themes to be explored include: student debt as training for life, the function of education in market relations, transformative potential of education/what education might be, uneven cuts to arts and humanities, academic ‘autonomy’?, disciplinary role of cuts/debt, crisis of aspiration (hope), wider cuts beyond education, and linking of struggles within and beyond education.
Best Wishes,
Right to the City Forum.
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143062559084259
This event is hosted by Strickland Distribution http://www.strickdistro.org/. It is supported by ARIKA http://www.arika.org.uk/.
Really interesting idea continuing from The National Theatre. A production is simultaneously broadcast around the world, there’s one on 17th March directed by Danny Boyle. It will be on in Glasgow and The Hague so it will be like a time portal (or something) between everyone who is watching, ooooo. But also I am keen to see how it feels to be in a cinema and seeing a play, will seeing different camera view etc change how you absorb the play? For the better?
It’s certainly a hybrid and i’m intrigued.
This fascinating post on the Doors of Perception weblog about ‘How the banks want to make China sick – and broke‘, compares system design of healthcare in the US and China, and I post it up because of the interesting diagram of the US healthcare system. What does this communicate as a piece of info-graphics? Perhaps the unintentional message, as John Thackara points out, that almost all the circles and squares represent profit-centres for someone.
GSA Pecha Kucha IV coming up tomorrow (Wed 19th), 6pm in the Vic. (Free) Tickets by following that link.
The Foulis building (along with the Newbery Tower and ref) is coming down in the summer of 2011 to make way for a brand new “striking and inspiring world-class building” for The School and for Glasgow. I’m gathering and recording memories and stories of the Foulis, so if you have any recollections or anecdotes (no matter how mundane or random) please leave a comment or email me at walterhamilton [at] hotmail [dot] com. You can find me in real life in the Graphics studio, 1st floor, Foulis building, 158 Renfrew Street, Glasgow if you want to have an analogue conversation about it.
Also, please let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for what the new building could/should be called.
Thanks.
Via manystuff.org, D-Crit lectures videos with Rick Poynor, “Curating ‘Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design’”, Rob Giampietro, “On Design, Distribution, and Circulation”, David Reinfurt, “The First Rule is Always Production, Never Documentation. The Second Rule is There Are No Rules”, and more…
In that rarest of venn diagrams that features Jim Davidson, Branding, Corporate Identity, Semiotics and Colin and Justin, we find out that a Glasgow pantomime dress broke the Geneva Convention.
A spokesman for the Red Cross said; ”The emblem is a special sign of neutrality and protection recognised by all sides during armed conflicts.Misuse of that emblem – even when done in an innocent and light-hearted manner – has to be addressed. Repeated and widespread misuse of the Red Cross emblem could dilute its neutrality and its ability to protect.”
“Compare your life to other people’s — Test how you match up against their achievements!”
via MFA graduate, Ellie Harrison, and her new project; Trajectories.
These initial forays into a web-based Afghan culture museum, which I came across via this article, caught my attention, as it overlaps with some other interesting stuff I’ve come across recently about curating, museums, archives and how we create and propagate collective ‘memories’ in a digital/networked context.
Highlights symposium I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I Want To Be There from Graphic Design Museum on Vimeo.
I was planning to write up my trip to the ‘I don’t know where I’m going’ conference, but find myself in the strange, (but not unsurprising if I thought about it), situation where the whole thing has been recorded and documented online in great depth. Therefore what I think I’ll do is a personal travel diary, with some vimeo clips in the middle to represent the proceedings on the day. This may or may not work.
5.45am, Glasgow Airport: The plane boards, only 1/4 full as most flights back out of Schipol are cancelled due to yesterday’s snow. Wonder if I’ll make it back tomorrow, but I’m doing this for Vis Com, and plough on regardless.
A 45 minute delay to take off, they’re spraying de-icer on the wings. Worried, I wonder why the illuminated ‘no smoking’ and ‘seatbelts fastened’ signs look so similar from a distance. I wonder If anyone else wonders this.
Take off.
The strange but strangely enjoyable sandwiches (egg and cheese) are brought round with a cup of tea, a tiny spoon and a paper napkin faked up to look like a gingham tablecloth.
Mid-flight the guy next to me gets out to go to the toilet, stopping to do up his hiking boot laces. They were presumably unfastened to get them off going through security, but have inadvertently created a terrorism-related mise en scène, as he bends down in the aisle and starts fiddling about with his shoes, somewhere over the North Sea.
As we head east, the sun is coming up in front of us, more coffee and tiny spoons appear.
Amsterdam, a light southerly breeze, -5, snow.
We arrive slightly late at the conference, having completely misjudged the distance from the station to the venue. The talks proceed as follows, and you can pick up most you need to know from the following link.
Lunch, improbably long queue in bagel bar next door. In a moment of serendipity for any terminal name-dropper, we stand next to Danny van den Dungen from Experimental Jetset while we wait. Sure he’s written a similar post about how he stood next to me and Lizzie.
Afternoon highlight (for me) is Metahaven’s Wikileaks talk, and the ideas of ‘image economies’ (as relates to someone’s or something’s identity in a digital networked environment) and ‘agency’, doing only what needs to be done, and being prepared to do, or design, nothing.
Daniel van der Velden – Metahaven | Symposium I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I Want To Be There from Graphic Design Museum on Vimeo.
Post-conference beers, shop/gallery opening, pizza, freezing, good deviating conversation. Hometime. Semi-drunk late-night check-in at a hotel where the room is approximate 30cm2 bigger than the bed that’s in it.
Return via Schipol airport. A modern Bosch-esque scene of travel infrastructure overload, make the gate with 5 minutes to spare, this is how I like to operate.
Things magazine is a link-heavy read, with some really interesting combinations of culled hyperlinks. It eminates from the V&A/RCA and used to be a paper based magazine, which you can still get (some) back copies of.
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