Kayla's RSS Feed

Burn

user@domain.com — 2014-09-29T23:20:39+01:00

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Squall

user@domain.com — 2014-10-07T23:39:01+01:00

Full moon in a rush of storm clouds. A temperature drop, with racing winds and heavy downpours, marks a change in the weather pattern. Early morning on 8 October there’s the second of four total lunar eclipses in a row, known as a lunar tetrad. Not visible from Europe. A total lunar eclipse is referred to as a ‘blood moon’, because of the moon’s rusty red appearance at totality. Spaced out at intervals of six lunar months, the total lunar eclipses have no partial eclipses in between. The previous blood moon was 14-15 April 2014, next is 4 April 2015, then 28 September 2015. Previously, a lunar eclipse tetrad occurred from 2003 to 2004. The next one will be 2032 to 2033.

Perigee

user@domain.com — 2014-08-10T23:43:12+01:00

OutsideInside The moon is closer to the Earth than it’s been for over 20 years; the second of 3 supermoons in 2014 - the first was on 12 July, the next one is 9 September.

Weir Quay

user@domain.com — 2014-08-28T20:36:00+01:00

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Tide

user@domain.com — 2014-09-09T21:54:49+01:00

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Rising sun

user@domain.com — 2014-08-02T22:59:22+01:00

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Skylight

user@domain.com — 2014-07-11T23:55:00+01:00

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Swifts

user@domain.com — 2014-07-02T23:41:51+01:00

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Antoinette

user@domain.com — 2014-06-13T23:33:40+01:00

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Silence

user@domain.com — 2014-06-07T23:50:43+01:00

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Maggie's

user@domain.com — 2014-05-14T23:16:44+01:00

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Bodies of water

user@domain.com — 2014-04-14T23:20:39+01:00

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Pink

user@domain.com — 2014-05-03T23:15:36+01:00

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Heavenly

user@domain.com — 2014-04-04T23:47:53+01:00

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Spacecloud

user@domain.com — 2014-03-15T23:53:08+00:00

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Slim

user@domain.com — 2014-03-03T23:19:12+00:00

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Valentia

user@domain.com — 2014-02-14T23:36:03+00:00

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Stream

user@domain.com — 2014-02-02T23:30:13+00:00

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Smallest moon

user@domain.com — 2013-12-17T23:37:00+00:00

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Gone

user@domain.com — 2014-01-16T23:22:00+00:00

Outside the backdoor by the water butt, a tiny full moon rising above the rooftops of St Judes into a bank of cloud.

Storm

user@domain.com — 2014-01-03T23:10:51+00:00

Up on Plymouth Hoe, blowing a gale and about to get messy.

M4

user@domain.com — 2013-12-07T23:49:00+00:00

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Sweet FA

user@domain.com — 2013-11-08T23:42:00+00:00

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Glassy

user@domain.com — 2013-11-18T23:42:00+00:00

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White space

user@domain.com — 2013-10-19T23:38:00+01:00

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Wired

user@domain.com — 2013-10-09T23:29:00+01:00

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Powerup

user@domain.com — 2013-09-18T23:24:00+01:00

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All change

user@domain.com — 2013-09-09T23:16:00+01:00

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Proof

user@domain.com — 2013-08-20T23:12:00+01:00

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Liner

user@domain.com — 2013-08-16T23:06:00+01:00

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Jelly

user@domain.com — 2013-07-22T23:48:00+01:00

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Interlude

user@domain.com — 2013-07-13T23:57:38+01:00

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Ssuper

user@domain.com — 2013-06-23T23:50:22+01:00

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Takeoff

user@domain.com — 2013-06-13T23:18:42+01:00

Outside Arnolfini, Bristol. Piercing Brightness, before, and after.

Superfull

user@domain.com — 2013-05-24T23:41:21+01:00

Moon full early Saturday morning 25 May 05.25 BST.

Mist

user@domain.com — 2013-05-15T23:06:17+01:00

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Silent

user@domain.com — 2013-04-26T23:47:04+01:00

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Sing

user@domain.com — 2013-04-17T23:22:13+01:00

First sight of the new crescent, back garden, looking up through the telephone wires to a violet sky. Fresh wind gusting in from the west, twanging the wires. New moon, Tuesday 10 April.

Conjunction

user@domain.com — 2013-03-27T23:18:05+00:00

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Crossed wires

user@domain.com — 2013-03-13T23:14:00+00:00

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High white

user@domain.com — 2013-02-27T23:11:16+00:00

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Clear

user@domain.com — 2013-02-14T23:04:50+00:00

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Sedgemoor moon

user@domain.com — 2013-01-27T23:44:00+00:00

Speeding down the M5, heading south, dodging the apocalyptic rainstorms drifting north east. Slides, Annabel Nicolson, 1971; installation, Film in Space exhibition, Camden Arts Centre, 27 January. Curated by Guy Sherwin. “Slides was assembled from precious fragments of earlier 16mm and 8mm films and 35mm slides of her paintings, which were cut into thin strips and taped together to form one long strip This was hand held in the Co-op's contact printer and moved up and down during printing. The images are mostly abstract, with vibrant colour flares, sewn and hand-painted sequences, a woman's face and other recognisable snippets interacting with framelines, sprocket holes and edge lettering moving in and out of the picture frame. The film's dynamism lies between the stillness of the original images and the on-screen movement, orchestrated by manipulating the speed and duration of the filmstrip against the printer light. This was undertaken whilst watching through the printer's viewer.” Felicity Sparrow Annabel Nicolson: The Art of Light and Shadow: Single Screen Films (2005).

Madeira moon

user@domain.com — 2013-01-14T23:39:19+00:00

Thin crescent, looking south over Plymouth Sound.

Cut

user@domain.com — 2012-12-27T23:33:49+00:00

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Man in moon

user@domain.com — 2012-12-15T23:19:30+00:00

3 days’ old, over May Terrace chimney pots. Visit to Specular exhibition, KARST, Stonehouse, Plymouth, on a very cold 1 December. Curated by Karen Roulstone and Andy Klunder, featuring work by Jo Bannon / Samuel Cook / Peter Davis / Sarah King / Charlotte Knox–Williams / Hester Reeve / Gabrielle Llewellin / Peter Matthews / Barbara Nicholls / Minou Norouzi / Monica Valcarcel Saez / Wiebke Maria Wachmann.

Jupiter moon

user@domain.com — 2012-11-28T23:53:05+00:00

Outside the back door, Jupiter and the moon appear at their closest in the sky tonight. Jupiter will be at its nearest point to the Earth on Saturday 1 December, closer than it will be until 2021.

Henleaze

user@domain.com — 2012-11-17T23:24:12+00:00

Waxing crescent first seen opposite Henleaze Waitrose in the New Park Tavern car park. New moon with total solar eclipse 13 November. Next total solar eclipse Friday 20 March 2015, Faroe Islands (greatest totality, 2 min 47 sec), and Svalbard. Swarthmore allotment.

Stormy

user@domain.com — 2012-10-29T03:02:54+00:00

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North X

user@domain.com — 2012-10-18T23:00:35+01:00

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Harvest

user@domain.com — 2012-09-29T23:01:18+01:00

From the back doorstep: brilliant white light from the rising harvest moon, shining off the rooftops and bright enough to read by. I now have almost 3 years’ of double moon portraits, taken at approximately 2 week intervals, when full and at the first sight of the new crescent. The photographs are as they come from the camera, untouched.

Equinox

user@domain.com — 2012-09-21T23:44:00+01:00

Waxing crescent, sinking in the southwest. One more day of summer. After Saturday, the storms hit, with an amber warning of torrential rain as ex-hurricane Nadine spins up from the Canaries. The long view: 46 years after their alignment in Virgo during 1965 and 1966, Uranus and Pluto formed a waning square on 19 September, allowing the energies released in the revolutionary events and upheavals of the mid-60s to be seen from new perspectives. There are 7 exact Uranus-Pluto squares between June 2012 and 2015, beginning with the first Uranus-Pluto waxing square on 24 June 2012. The last series of squares was between 1932 and 1934, with 5 exact hits. Uranus and Pluto, along with Neptune, are viewed astrologically as agents of transformation. Uranus is the catalyst of new ideas (the mind), with Pluto forming the parameters of action (will); the dynamic interaction between them generates conditions of upheaval and turbulence, with long-lasting cultural, economic and political effects. Dates for the next exact Uranus-Pluto squares are: 21 May 2013, 1 November 2013, 21 April 2014, 15 December 2014 and 17 March 2015.

Diamond ring

user@domain.com — 2012-08-30T23:18:00+01:00

A lick off full.

Dream machine

user@domain.com — 2012-08-21T23:58:34+01:00

Faint impression of crescent moon over rooftop on May Terrace. New moon 4 days earlier, when we caught a train to see Shezad Dawood’s trailer for an imaginary film in his Piercing Brightness exhibition in Cornwall. Gallery shots (left to right, clockwise): Trailer (film) and New Dream Machine Project, (kinetic light sculpture) at The Exchange, Penzance; and New Dream Machine Project (film) part of a concert by the Master Musicians of Jajouka and Duke Garwood, filmed in Tangiers, at Newlyn Art Gallery.

Conjunction

user@domain.com — 2012-08-02T01:20:34+01:00

Blazing above Mount Batten, after midnight. Mars and Saturn are nearing a conjunction and will be at the same degree of Libra on 15 August, their first alignment since 2010. In astrological terms, Mars is energy, Saturn provides structure, and Libra is concerned with relationships. The approaching conjunction signals the conclusion of the cycle of the previous two years and the beginning of a new two year cycle, with a cross-over period in which long-term are achieved and new goals are put in place.

Weather pool

user@domain.com — 2009-08-13T15:47:22+01:00

This is so delightful: looking through the glass wall I can see the rectangular lake. It’s enclosed on three sides by buildings, open on the shorter edge opposite to the hills on the horizon, like Bute park in Cardiff. The feel of an Oxford or Cambridge college quadrangle, or Dartington Hall: there’s an air of learning, of being involved in a long term creative thinking project, and of being connected to the past with a line stretching out from me to the future. ...Small groups of people are walking in the water, others stroll along the banks, and some people are crossing from one side to the other. I have multiple viewpoints: I am able to look at the scene from my vantage point behind glass at ground level, but also see from above and to the side. Water in all its forms: milky steam ice snow rain. Teignmouth mermaid, small watercolour painting, Teignmouth Museum collection. Reminiscent of Hokusai’s woodcut of a young shell diver’s reverie 蛸と海女, published in a 3-volume book of shunga erotica in 1814. Teignmouth was invaded by the French in 1690, and part of the town was burned to the ground. Sodium chloride, or common salt, was one of the main economies until Brunel’s railway opened up the town as a seaside resort from the 1840 onwards. ...Many years ago my large colour prints of 16mm film frames taken from Unknown Woman were shown in an exhibition of landscape photography in the Orangery in Bitton Park (which was built in 1842, during the railway boom). The other artists were James Ravilious, and Paul Warner, who also curated the exhibition.

Curve

user@domain.com — 2012-07-23T23:28:53+01:00

Leaning against the wall at the end of Whittington Street opposite the park. Sketchy chalk arc, barely there, tipped to the left in clear blue bowl. I saw Spica in the same spot on Saturday evening, the first star a blue-white twinkle that at first I thought was moving. Guy with tattooed neck and arm walking home on the other side says: Photo of the moon? Beaumont Park tree shadows: horse chestnut, beech, sycamore, ash. Aristotle noted that "sunlight travelling through small openings between the leaves of a tree, the holes of a sieve, the openings wickerwork, and even interlaced fingers will create circular patches of light on the ground" (Euclid's Optics c.300 BCE).

Shutter

user@domain.com — 2012-07-05T23:59:40+01:00

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Flood

user@domain.com — 2012-06-24T23:37:28+01:00

The wheelbarrow Mike left in the garden has filled up twice in the last few days, as low pressure swirls dump a month of rain. Twelve flood alerts have been issued by the Environment Agency for Devon rivers including the Dart, the Plym, the Otter, the Sid, the Axe and the Torridge. A bumper crop of strawbs from the allotment. Moonset 22.47. Waxing crescent.

Watery

user@domain.com — 2012-06-04T23:44:44+01:00

The first proper rain for ages. Faux moon: streetlamp across the back lane.

Darklight

user@domain.com — 2012-03-26T23:05:18+01:00

Fat new crescent with Venus.

Gorgeous

user@domain.com — 2012-04-06T23:58:41+01:00

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Brightsky

user@domain.com — 2012-04-26T23:53:58+01:00

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Supermoon

user@domain.com — 2012-05-06T23:47:53+01:00

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Threshold

user@domain.com — 2012-05-25T23:34:53+01:00

New crescent high in the west. The hottest day of the year so far. Great gusty wafts of warm dust rolling in from the east. Picked the first strawberry.

STITCH foyer Fri

user@domain.com — 2012-03-16T16:27:11+00:00

FADE IN: THE NEXT DAY - FRIDAY INT. UNIVERSITY ART AND MEDIA BUILDING - FOYER - MORNING A square cardboard BOX, closed with brown parcel tape, and labeled in red, white and yellow: Eastman Colour High Speed Negative FILM 7294. WOMAN breaks the seal with her thumbnail. Handwritten on one side in shaky blue ink: OSOTH 94 11 Feb 85. She extracts a thick black plastic package, and upwraps a silver can with old fashioned white cloth tape stuck around the join between top and bottom. Then she peels off the sticky tape, opens the can and takes out a 400 foot roll of unexposed blank 16mm double perf FILM. SHINY BLACK on the outer side, dull flat yellowy-browny pink on the inner. See video documentation of STITCH performance.

STITCH foyer Mon-Thurs

user@domain.com — 2012-03-15T23:18:38+00:00

On the righthand side of the entrance, there is a small space with white walls on three sides. The CELL is empty, apart from some small drifts of bluish grey FLUFF along the righthand edge where the wall meets the floor. ... The double doors to the building are BROKEN, one door has been JAMMED OPEN by the CLEANERS. ...It says: Eastman Colour High Speed Negative FILM 7294: this stock was discontinued in 1986, and replaced with 7292 Tungsten, EI 320. ... Handwritten on one side in shaky blue ink: OSOTH 94 11 Feb 85, and in spidery black ink: 300ft Recan 8 Mar 85. WOMAN extracts a silver can with old fashioned white cloth tape stuck around the join between top and bottom. She unpeels the sticky tape, opens the can and takes out a roll of unexposed blank 16mm FILM. The film is double perf, SHINY BLACK on the outer side, dull flat browny pink MANNEQUIN FLESH on the inner - the slightly repellent colour of unprocessed emulsion. ...WOMAN fixes one end of the film at WAIST HEIGHT to the lefthand edge of the ‘room’ with a drawing pin, and stretches the film to the lefthand corner, parallel to the floor: a straight black horizontal line along the wall. She then arranges a loose LOOP, up to the roll of film wound on a core, which she places on top of a white PLINTH, left over from the previous inhabitant of this space. ...WOMAN is sitting in the front row, next to her on the left, GABBY is drawing a small DIAGRAM in WOMAN’s notebook with a blue biro, to demonstrate how to CROCHET. ...She chooses 2 reels of strong white cotton, a pack of 5 darning needles, and some thin white crochet yarn, and a crochet hook.

Trine

user@domain.com — 2012-03-07T23:06:18+00:00

Mars above left, a steady rusty pinprick in the blank eastern sky, midnight blue with a tinge of mould. Jupiter and Venus dazzling to the right, beyond Orion. Moon full 9am tomorrow morning. A bright meteor over northern Britain, three nights ago. Traveling southwards, said to be a fist-sized chunk of rock, probably the debris of a planet that never properly formed. Seen around 9.40pm. Described as a very bright orange nucleus with a green tail, and white with an orange glowing tail.

Waxing

user@domain.com — 2012-02-26T23:58:05+00:00

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Blazing

user@domain.com — 2012-02-07T18:24:00+00:00

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Moon + Venus

user@domain.com — 2012-01-26T18:20:00+00:00

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Fade

user@domain.com — 2012-01-10T18:18:00+00:00

Dark point.

Liquidity

user@domain.com — 2011-12-30T23:28:17+00:00

Drowned landscape, the reservoir brimming. Buttery coconut through the dripping rain, gorse in its second flowering of the year. Hawthorn trees at the turn of the year. We parked up near the leat above Burrator. I took this photo through the wet windscreen.

HomeGround

user@domain.com — 2011-12-28T23:13:45+00:00

Damp afternoon walk after lunch at my mum’s in Bristol.

Making Glass: studio

user@domain.com — 2011-12-11T23:16:55+00:00

In the studio today, Stuart films me Making Glass, a re-enactment. I clean the dust from both sides of a large glass sheet and place it on the rostrum so it is lit from below by the daylight fluorescents. Then carefully arrange my coloured glass fragments. The glass surfaces slither and clatter against each other. I balance each piece to make a small still life.

Making Glass: location

user@domain.com — 2011-12-10T23:24:48+00:00

As the lemony sun sinks into a grey cloudbank over Mount Edgcumbe in south east Cornwall, Stuart films me on Stonehouse Pool beach, round the back of the playground off Cremyll Street. ... Views south west to the Royal William Victualling Yard and then west across the Hamoaze, where the River Tamar pours through the narrows into Plymouth Sound and joins the ocean. ...Scummy urban beach, a rubbish strewn fan of sandy grit overlain with squelchy mounds of sticky bladderwrack uprooted by Thursday’s storms, tossed with debris of plastic bottle tops, rope ends, feathers, squashed drink cans, polystyrene chunks, and worse. Bladders popping underfoot, releasing a waft of fermenting home brew, I step carefully down from the slipway across the heap of rotting seaweed onto the narrow strip of sand below the high water mark. ... This cold forgotten place, tainted with sewage and leaking radioactivity, is swamped with fucus vesiculosus, a form of brown algae, also known as back tang or sea oak, which is covered in air-filled pods. Rich in iodine, the living plant is harvested from the seabed and used as a herbal stimulant for the thyroid and to extend the menstrual cycle. ...As I walk to and fro in the winter light, bent over, my eyes sweep the ground for fragments of colour. ... I glean two small triangular shards of pottery: a curved lip glazed deep primrose yellow, a crazed piece of plate decorated with tiny blue-green flowers. ...For two months in autumn 1831, Charles Darwin lived a few hundred yards further along the coast to the north west, at 4 Clarence Baths on Mount Wise foreshore, while the the HMS Beagle was refitted in Devonport Docks for its second epic expedition. ... The Beagle was finally ready to set sail on Boxing Day from its mooring at Barn Pool across the Hamoaze. But almost the whole crew were absent or still drunk from celebrating Christmas, so the voyage was delayed until 27 December. ...At home in the kitchen I scrub my hands and wash the glass several times, laying the pieces to dry on the window ledge.

Bright

user@domain.com — 2011-12-09T23:46:12+00:00

After the wind, flat greeny-white moon through trees round the back of B+Q at Coypool. Moon full early tomorrow, with a total lunar eclipse (not visible in Britain). An hour later the moonlight was dazzling, even through cloud.

Sound-image

user@domain.com — 2011-11-20T23:15:43+00:00

Sound-Image Scope of me whistling into the Hellivox, at the Practical Electronica exhibition, Phoenix, Brighton during a weekend visit to Cine-City festival. Trailer for Ian Helliwell’s film Practical Electronica: The Sound World of F.C. Judd.

Still

user@domain.com — 2011-11-27T23:12:34+00:00

Clumps of snowdrops in Beaumont Park. Little owl hunting up and down the terrace just after dark.

Beautiful

user@domain.com — 2011-11-10T23:38:10+00:00

From left hand bedroom window, sitting cross legged on the floor. The disc face high and bright to the east in a racing tide of swirling clouds.

Coil

user@domain.com — 2011-11-01T23:34:02+00:00

New crescent in my face as I stepped out through the school door at 4.30pm; photos taken through bedroom window later that evening. Reddy-brown ring coiled tight around the moon, a ruddy fist wringing the turbulent curdled clouds, squeezing the water out of them

Faux moon

user@domain.com — 2011-10-13T23:28:43+01:00

Lying on bathroom floor holding camera up to the eco globe. Lots of rain.

Hoop

user@domain.com — 2011-08-31T23:21:17+01:00

Up on the allotment, Central Park. Pale crescent, upright imprint, 2 days’ old, seen over in west south west, very low in light green sky above rooftops on Alma Road 8.13pm.

Full cloud

user@domain.com — 2011-08-13T23:14:00+01:00

Complete cloud cover. Photo of street lamp in back lane through blackout curtains in the bedroom. It’s the peak of the Perseid shower, with meteor activity between midnight and dawn. Best viewing around 2am when the full moon is setting, low in the south to southwest sky. Hmmm.

Absence

user@domain.com — 2011-08-08T23:29:02+01:00

The evening sky strangely empty after a week of mild mist, cloud, and heavy rain: a white gibbous moon waxing to the south, skimming the cloud remnant from the last weather system, stretched across the horizon beyond St Judes.

Sonant

user@domain.com — 2011-09-30T23:33:43+01:00

Sliding into dusk. Swarthmore allotment. The crescent far to the south-southwest.

Timelapse

user@domain.com — 2011-09-12T23:24:42+01:00

After the arts centre opening we crossed the viaduct, heading north.

Double

user@domain.com — 2011-07-14T23:35:50+01:00

Very bright and yellowy; ‘lady’ on disc of moon very distinct. Full 8.40am tomorrow morning BST. Second set of photos taken through black-out curtain in bedroom, long exposures lying in bed.

High water

user@domain.com — 2011-07-05T23:46:41+01:00

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Eclipse

user@domain.com — 2011-06-15T23:39:09+01:00

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Clara

user@domain.com — 2011-06-06T23:34:32+01:00

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None

user@domain.com — 2011-05-17T23:30:38+01:00

It had to happen one day: this is the first time since I began the project at the beginning of October 2009 that the full moon has been completely occluded. The air became prickled with moisture just after lunch, and by early evening a light mist had become drizzle. I took the photos of the eco globe light by the front door at home from the hallway through the glass pane in the inner door.

Swift

user@domain.com — 2011-05-08T23:17:53+01:00

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Full

user@domain.com — 2011-04-17T23:56:27+01:00

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Swallow

user@domain.com — 2011-04-06T23:31:33+01:00

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Close

user@domain.com — 2011-03-20T00:00:59+00:00

The photos are taken just before midnight 19 March and just after midnight 20 March, with the full moon at its closest position to the earth since 1993. A pulse runs through the spawn in the pond, and the jelly of full stops becomes a mess of commas.

Burn

user@domain.com — 2011-03-07T23:52:10+00:00

Cold ache, arms outstretched at the top of May Terrace, with a jittery new moon. We’d walked earlier through the darkening damp along the Laira, the powerlines fizzing and spitting.

Falling down moon

user@domain.com — 2011-02-17T21:50:24+00:00

On Wednesday evening 23 February, I found out that my dad had died the previous Thursday, the 17th: he came home from visiting the doctor, and had a heart attack on his doorstep. He’d just had his 78th birthday. I went up to Tunbridge Wells on Thursday 3 March; before the funeral I visited his home and I took some photos of where he’d lived for the last 12 years, and where he died.

Soft fuzz

user@domain.com — 2011-02-07T23:25:26+00:00

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Green

user@domain.com — 2011-01-19T23:24:35+00:00

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New town

user@domain.com — 2011-01-08T23:18:44+00:00

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Solar eclipse

user@domain.com — 2011-01-04T09:14:00+00:00

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Solstice eclipse

user@domain.com — 2010-12-21T10:01:48+00:00

Half gone 7.12am the Blockhouse, -3.5C. Cold start, 6.30am. The Corsa slips into place by a tree. A few dark inches of pavement by the wall, where the sun has caught the ice: I dance along, gently, pressed forward by the heavy air. My boots crack the thick snow/ice steps to the Blockhouse. Hand over glove along the railings, I slide up to the playground, and freeze in the uterine chill. Across the city from what was Mount Pleasant: a soft hiss of steam rising from the dockyard sheds, light clanks and rattlings, the dark terraced hillside of Keyham and Ford, then beyond to the red spots of the telecoms mast. Just past halfway, the lit moon is a breeched foetus facing south left, caged in rust. Peach glow in the east, squeaks of unseen small birds. Crunching dog walkers, tuk-tuk blackbirds, coarse stereo seagulls, clicking magpies. The eclipsed moon dips into a dull grey mist rising from the Hamoaze.

REQUIEM // 102 minute #29

user@domain.com — 2010-12-16T00:01:00+00:00

Nick said that REQUIEM // 102 “aims to expand and push the boundaries of writing and thinking about film in the digital era [and] examines/explores/riffs on/detours from/responds to/aggravates/ supplements/ one frame from each minute of the film. 102 minutes = 102 frames.” ...I didn’t recognise this image, and I realised that I couldn’t recall much about the film either, although I know at the time it had a big impact on me. My experience of Requiem for a Dream comes around the half-way point of the twenty years I’ve lived here in Plymouth, a city on the far south west coast of Britain. I decided not to watch the film again, but to respond subjectively to the ‘essence’ of this frame when I finished work at the University (1) at 3 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon 15 December 2010, the day before publication. ...I read #29 as a found image, discovered within a dream of favourite cinematic drug moments; taken by an unknown photographer of someone whom I know/I’ve never met. ...I wrote mine on a slip of card attached to a helium-filled balloon with a thin red ribbon: “swimming in the bathing pool (no clothes, under moonlight) in the rocks off Plymouth Hoe after the clubs kicked out X”. ...portrait=0" width="470" height="353" frameborder="0">

REQUIEM // 102 minute #29 Memories Wanted from Kayla Parker on Vimeo.

My balloon is the green one: it is this fugitive colour that allows me to pass through #29 into an/other place. The students are planning to set all the memories free, but the camera battery is running out, so I go home to charge it up and download my jpgs and mpgs. ...I swerve around a purple-faced drunk who has no front teeth, ignore three men doing a dodgy deal in a side alley, and reach the indoor market at the bottom end of town, which is about to shut as it’s almost 4.30. ...Nick Rombes, for inviting me; Stuart Moore; the architecture students from University of Plymouth, who were doing a project set by their tutor Dr Gursewak Aulakh; and my PhD supervisors Professor Liz Wells and Professor Roberta Mock. ...A large mirror above the fireplace allows the girl Alice to get through to the other side in Lewis Carroll’s Through the looking glass and what Alice found there; published in 1871. ...Read more info about the project in a piece by Scott Macaulay: 102 celebrations of Requiem for a Dream in Filmmaker, the magazine of independent film (2 November 2010)

Advent

user@domain.com — 2010-12-08T21:22:06+00:00

Crescent moon, 3 days old.

Swirl

user@domain.com — 2010-11-21T21:39:00+00:00

Past the Cristal flooring warehouse, along the Laira. The slop-slop of grey green water a foot below the top of the gabions. North easterly blowing in one ear and out the other as I spin down The Ride to the travellers' camp, followed by an ice cream van (Just one Cornetto). Lone black gelding snuffling the verge across from two visiting caravans: a plastic stool makes a step below the door; beige flip-flops and a clear plastic sack of tumble-dried clothes sat on wet tarmac. Red generator, dark green portaloo with its door ajar, shiny yellow trailer. Late November sun sets behind dark shreds. Lemon icing honeysuckle flowers, floury pink Valerian, a second bloom of gorse buds. Cold leaf mash under the trees. A handful of raggy black rooks thrown against the grey-blue sky; rising, then falling back, caught by the roost. The bones of the Ocean Maid thick with water.

Buttery

user@domain.com — 2010-11-10T19:32:40+00:00

Crescent swing back north.

Shiny

user@domain.com — 2010-10-22T23:36:11+01:00

Full moon 2.36am 23 October: photos taken on Friday evening before the rain came, from side bedroom window looking east. Very silvery. The hunter’s moon, and the blood moon: on Thursday the first frost, Friday the first fire of winter. Found at the lunar south pole: ice, plus two of the seven metals of alchemy: gold, silver, mercury, copper, lead, iron and tin. H2O frozen water equals hydrogen aka rocket fuel and oxygen. The alchemical symbol for water is an equilateral triangle balanced on one of its points. Hg mercury aka quicksilver and hydrargyrum, which means 'water silver’. Mercury was used by alchemists to make red mercuric oxide by heating the element in a solution of nitric acid - this produced a dramatic reaction in which a thick red vapour hovers over the surface and bright red crystals precipitate to the bottom. The symbol for mercury is the biological sign for ‘female’ with horns or a crescent lying on its back. Ag silver comes from its Anglo Saxon name 'seolfor', although it was once known by its Latin name of argentum, from the Indo-European root arg - for 'grey' or 'shining'. Pure silver has a brilliant white metallic lustre. The astrological symbol for the moon - a three-pronged fork - was interchangeable with the symbol for the metal silver.

One minute

user@domain.com — 2010-10-19T23:00:43+01:00

Screening of One Minute volume 4 the collection of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry. Plymouth Arts Centre Thursday 19 October. Some of the audience: Susan Austin and Trish, James Jones Morris, Pat and Tony Hill, Andy James, Joy Elliott, Ole K Rodberg, and in the booth: Gavin the projectionist. Stuart took the photo. It’s a bit like listening all the way through a music album or a CD of different tracks, I said, as I introduced the screening of 46 films each lasting around 60 seconds. Watching the programme made us all feel like going out and making a film. Afterwards we saw the shifting transparency of noctilucent clouds, low over Staddon Heights to the east of the city. Programme notes

Dust

user@domain.com — 2010-10-11T23:12:00+01:00

Scent of warm fruit. The slim curve of a new moon in air so clear there are no jet trails. Fleshy pink stocks, fresh valerian and bitter brown fleabane along the verge. A cormorant on the edge of the old wooden jetties. Twigs, dried seaweed and polystyrene crumbs scrunch on the bike track where the tide has come over. I cycle home without lights and photograph the crescent before it disappears.

Moon flow

user@domain.com — 2010-09-23T23:31:09+01:00

The harvest moon, balanced between day and night, rounds up a whole year of moons.

Sea change

user@domain.com — 2009-09-07T23:02:30+01:00

Our final day on location. Meet at the museum shop 8 Teign Street 11am to film a selection of items from the collection. Pat brings the Airfix collection to the kitchen on the first floor and unwraps the crinkly white tissue paper, and we film the tiny plastic 1930s aeroplanes ‘flying’ across our white reflector balanced on the worktop. In the office downstairs Stuart plays the silver bo’sun’s whistle while Pat holds the mic. We drink coffee and complete contributors release forms: 3rd party material for all items and make photocopies for museum. Feta, olive and sun-dried tomato salad at the Oystercatcher café, then we have a wander through the town to the sea (herringbone waves along the spit, foamy stitches along the sand) and back one last time, filming (HD video and motor-wind photography) and recording the sounds of the built environment: views along streets in town, across to the quay (loading/unloading ships). Then we drive out of the town, sopping at 3 ‘postcard viewpoints’ to take the key stills: the Welcome to Teignmouth bridge, half-way up the hill, and below the golf course. We double back and cross the bridge to Shaldon to photograph Teignmouth from the other side. And we’re done.

Immersion

user@domain.com — 2010-09-14T23:59:00+01:00

A south westerly blowing a fine mist up Royal Parade as we sit and eat our baguettes outside the Civic Centre. Gusting a stream of light drizzle by the time we cross under the Big Screen. Raindrop splatter, we stop under the umbrella of a tree to watch the end of the ICCI 360 Festival promo, then up the wet steps and slip into the tent: the circular cinema set out like a café-bar, white tablecloths on round tables.

Curl

user@domain.com — 2010-09-11T22:19:00+01:00

Head out on my new bike bumping down the back lane. Red apples following gravity to the sea. No moon, pale turquoise green sky, ripples of white cloud on the western horizon catch the light and burn pink, orange, mauve as the sun sets on another summer. Fresh cool air tinged with cut grass and salt fish. No swallows, the tide fills the wreck of the Ocean Maid. Buttery toadflax in the skimpy verge by the Laira. Along the Ride, water, weed and debris sloshing onto the path. Huge bushes of golden fleabane gleam in the dimpsy light, and the path is flooded a foot deep by the travellers' camp - the kids say the water just came up out of the drain. Turn for home, the sky deep dark blue with grey stripes. No lights on my bike. On Saturday the pale curl of a new moon.

Cycle

user@domain.com — 2010-08-24T23:37:00+01:00

Fuzzed up: a warm front slowly dissolves the moon, and the rain starts.

Birch

user@domain.com — 2010-08-23T23:37:00+01:00

High white hole, arms in shadow outstretched through the birch leaves. Swallows dip into the broken hull of the Ocean Maid, and out again in a beat of the waves as the tide lifts the weed in a mouthful of mackerel and ozone. A black kitten races down from South View Terrace across Llanhydrock Road into the park, chasing a squirrel.

Balance

user@domain.com — 2010-08-14T23:21:21+01:00

Early evening: waxing crescent lies in the southwest above chimney pots on May Terrace. Through a lens of Cava: Kayla and Stuart.

In place

user@domain.com — 2010-08-02T23:43:10+01:00

I stand in a bowl-shaped valley and the film curves around me. The concave granite walls amplify sound, and the covering of conifers, broad-leaved trees and scrub soak up reflections, so that the vibration of a bee’s wings on the far side of the clearing is heard as if in close-up. Our experience within a 360 degree film is different to that of a single screen film viewed in the conventional ‘black box’ cinema, fixed in rows of tiered seating, the unseen projector/s behind casting one beam of light above our heads onto a flat rectangle with proscenium. In the 360 Immersive Digital Arena the audience’s audiovisual experience shifts as circularity and mobility add additional dimensions: we are in a hemisphere, upright, standing, and may wander around, sampling images and sounds, make recordings with cameras and phones, and we can choose to talk to others. Rectangle: a four-sided shape with angles of 90 degrees at each corner; both pairs of opposite sides are equal in length. Circle: a continuous curve made by a single length of thread travelling around a fixed point. Earth, wheel, sun, moon, spool. The field off Ringmore Down crammed with white lorries is the production HQ for Spielberg’s new feature War Horse, based on Michael Morpurgo’s book. Complex Solar Eruption Triggers Monster Tsunami on the Sun See Solar tsunami: aurora borealis or northern lights caused by solar flares in The Telegraph.

Fireweed

user@domain.com — 2010-07-31T23:49:00+01:00

Get up when the sun shines and head into the breaking cloud with the cameras to film timelapse and bee fly-bys. ... The rose-purple flowers open just after sunrise and provide nectar and pollen for bees at the tail end of summer. ... Park up below Sheepstor and follow a pony path through the rough wet grass to a big clump of brambles where we did the sound recording. A Golden-ringed dragonfly, yellow and black striped with glinty green eyes, lots of bumble bees, about 3 honeybees, several small Ringlet butterflies, chocolatey wings with a scattering of white spots; and a male Orange tip. ...Pointed blood-red sepals support 4 large soft lilac-magenta petals around a drooping fringe of 8 stamens or a prominent 4-lobed curly white stigma. ...Rosebay willow herb (Epilobium angustifolium or Chamcenerion angustifolium) is from the same family as the Evening primrose, and grows across the Holarctis, a broad sweep of land across the northern half of Europe, Asia and north America, and Greenland. ... The dried leaves can be made into a tea (known as Kaporie tea in Russia). In Kamchatka the leaves are fermented with the sweet gelatinous pith inside the stems and dried Fly Agaric (Agaricus muscarius) to make a trippy shamanic brew. Huge heat in western and southern Russia, the highest temperatures for more than a century, hundreds of forest fires. ... Here, the lowest rainfall for the first half of the year since 1929, but Burrator reservoir is almost full, the air is soft and moist, light grey cloud flashed with blue; rowan branches bend as the berries turn. A large Green woodpecker with a red head flew across the track into the deep forest. On the hilltop two cloud layers moving in different directions overhead as the sun set and a robin pulled worms from the grass.

Golden bee

user@domain.com — 2010-07-26T23:35:00+01:00

Up close and steamy today in the lab today, Martin’s gilded bee has a starring role on the miniature 360 degree stage of the scanning electron microscope. We ‘film’ our prize specimen from different positions, focusing on her lovely furry face: which, I notice, is heart-shaped. High, bright full moon again tonight (some sites give 25, others 26 July). I take photos from the bedroom window across to the ridges of empty quarries in Coxside.

Burrator

user@domain.com — 2010-07-25T23:59:35+01:00

We take a different path through the wood and find a clearing among the trees that’s out of the wind. Perfect for filming and sound recording: the breeze from the north west is picking up and puffs of light cloud start blow across. ... Honeybees and at least 10 different varieties of bumble bee feeding on the nectar, and more butterflies than I’ve seen in one location this year: a peacock, a small white and several gatekeepers. South West Lakes Trust which manages/owns the area around the reservoir has put up signs in the last few days to warn that Phytophthora ramorum aka sudden oak death has been found in Burrator Woods in the Japanese larch grown as a cash crop: it was found to have jumped from Rhodedendron, its main host, in autumn 2009. Lots of trees will be felled soon and will be destroyed by burning or deep burial. For now, it’s quiet except for the thud of ponies coming down off the side of Sheepstor to feed on the lush grass and drink from the streams. ... A whirling blue-green dragonfly, sage-orange rowan berries, black slugs sliding over the sandy grass as the air prickles with moisture, bird’s foot trefoil, small crickets; blackhead great tits with white cheeks climbing in and out of the fir tree nearby; further off, magpies and crows; and mallards hidden deeper in Narrator plantation to the west. We film time-lapse sequences as the clouds thicken and race overhead, and the light turns off and on; and record our sense of the place. There’s a particular quality to sound here, a combination of the tor rising steeply above the density of trees, and the lake: once the village of Burrator, the valley was dammed and flooded to provide water for Plymouth. Three ponies, two pregnant mares with heavy swinging bellies, one dark brown and one mid-brown, and a sandy brown foal with rough, shaggy baby hair, about three and a half feet tall. They’re followed by a small sleek-coated black horse with a white bottom, also pregnant, that came right up and snuffled my arm. The full moon just before midnight: dazzling white disk with mottled clouds passing quickly from the north west.

Bee-proof

user@domain.com — 2010-07-22T23:38:00+01:00

We drive through heavy rain along the southern edge of Dartmoor, then clouds evaporate as we head down into South Hams and arrive at Martin’s house. To get kitted up Martin gives us each a circular beekeeping hat and veil combo, with a panel of stiffened black net in front of the face, and soft white net all around with elasticated arm loops. I wear my old anorak over the top, zipped right up, with a pair of grey walking gloves under some Marigolds from Wilko’s (to keep my hands from getting sweaty inside the rubber gloves), and hiking sox long enough so I can tuck in the legs of my trousers. ...Encased in clothes and net, I can smell and hear, but it’s difficult to focus my eyes on the camera screen through the black mesh. ...Martin opened up both hives: the colony on the right attacked the small mic that Stuart dropped in to record the hive interior, and although hundreds of bees massed on the tops of the boxes, they were settled. ... Once the bees found me they got curious, crawling over the camera, walking up and down my fingers and flying at the lens. ... But the bee wandered down towards the inside of my elbow, so I went (carefully) up to the garage, pulled off my Marigolds, held open the sleeve of my jacket and gave it a shake. I looked down as I did this, and felt a pinprick on my chin: a bee nestling in the folds of net around my neck. ... Martin said there are 30 to 40 thousand bees in each hive, and a bee sting releases alarm pheromones that trigger other bees to attack. Evening: off in Val’s car for a meal with Liz and Peter who live north of the city in the wilds on the border between Devon and Cornwall. ...The house is in a triangle of hills near Rumleigh, between the Tavy and Tamar rivers, on a south-facing slope with a view across a valley dense with random trees. ...

Flow

user@domain.com — 2010-07-19T22:44:04+01:00

Yesterday lunchtime Tony and Ruth from next door brought round 3 tiny froglets they’d found in the gutter out the front: escapees from the Lidl bowl in our back garden. Back to sunshine again today, and in the sound studio with James, working on the audio design. We sit in the centre of the room and get our heads around sound ‘in the round’ using alien tech. After laying down some bee-like music we use a recording Stuart made at Burrator arboretum to see how a natural, textured and dynamic soundscape flows from a digitally sculpted piece, and to test proximity and direction... we can hear my footsteps walking off along the curved sandy path for about 20 yards, while the birds keep their positions at different heights in various trees. There’s a lot of spherical depth and clarity, the movement is subtle: it sounds good. We need to check the number and position of the 6.1 surround speakers relative to the 5 ‘screens’ in the igloo’s immersive environment so we can choreograph our soundtrack with the 5 projectors that create the 360 degree panoramic moving image. A couple of years ago we went to a BEAST - Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre - concert, presented by Jonty Harrison in the Crosspoint area of the Levinsky Building. BEAST uses multiple channels and lots of speakers that are amplified separately and arranged in pairs: we sat in rows under a metal pergola with small speakers mounted above our heads, and other speakers placed around the performance space. We’re constructing an ambisonic design for an expanded cinema event in a dome that will direct people to move around the arena when people are mobile, but it has to work for a seated audience as well. As we left the studio I picked cranesbill flowers which I pressed at home: a wild geranium with 5 pink petals. Pogo's Alice In Wonderland Music Remix

Lavender

user@domain.com — 2010-07-17T23:54:35+01:00

On the edge of rural Plymouth there’s a ceramic plaque with a drawing of a bee that says: A beekeeper lives here. A lavender bush with flower heads on long curved stalks: a small bumble bee hovers, then swoops for a floret. The house faces east, there’s a balcony facing thick green woods on the slope across the valley, and inside a little guard dog is barking. It’s a cool blue evening, with white feathers blowing in the sky. Bill the beekeeper takes us down slate steps to the garage where he has our bees in his deep freeze: about 30 in a Spar matchbox wrapped in a plastic sleeve, he thinks there could be some drones in there too. His hives are out near Yealmpton. I ask him what are his bees’ favourite flowers: he says that they always go for the nectar. If you have several lavender bushes in your garden, the bees will go to the one that is producing the most nectar. People thought it was the scent of flowers that attracted the bees, but new research is that the lavender bushes emit low level ultraviolet to attract bees when they’re producing lots of nectar. And then another bush will turn its lights on, and the bees will then go to there instead. That’s really interesting I say, with a picture in my mind of vibrating flowers, humming UV waves and wafting scents into the air. Back home, on Bill’s instructions, we put his matchbox in the ice compartment of the freezer: They’re dead, but just in case any wake up, you don’t want them stinging you - they’re tough little creatures, he says.

Bow

user@domain.com — 2010-07-21T22:28:20+01:00

I buy bee protection supplies for tomorrow’s filming date with Martin and his honeybees: yellow Marigold gloves (they have longer wrists) and long sox. ... On my way from Black’s to the Armada Centre I see Damaris and Steve outside the Bagatelle, and stop for a chat. ... Steve Spence's first collection of poems A Curious Shipwreck is published by Shearsman Books. Huge rainbow around tea time, curved from east to south, with extra rings of peppermint green and purple inside. ... There are several cloud layers and it’s raining at different levels, so the bow is ultra-bright and saturated with colour in one arc, more faded in other sections. ...A rainbow is really made up of overlapping bows of different colours from red to violet rather that distinct bands of separate colours. Isaac Newton identified 5 distinct colours: red, yellow, green, blue (cyan) and violet, but he believed that light and sound were comparable and later added orange and indigo (ultramarine), giving the rainbow the same number of colours as notes on a musical scale. In Opticks: or, a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections and colours of light (published 1704) Newton describes his experiments into light and the nature of colour, and the conclusions he has drawn from the outcomes. The note of D starts the sequence: red is placed in the arc DE, orange in a smaller segment EF, yellow FG, green GA, blue AB, indigo BC (smaller, like orange), and violet CD. The segment size is proportional to that colour's intensity in the spectrum. Newton thought that light was streams of particles: the ‘centres of gravity’ - the area of most intense ‘saturation’ (concentration) - of the colours are indicated by lower case letters p, q, r, s, t, u, and x, with red light being refracted least by a prism and violet the most. At the centre is O, representing white light, the sum of the spectral colours.

Lab time

user@domain.com — 2010-07-20T22:44:41+01:00

We opened Bill’s matchbox and were surprised how small honey bees are when they’re dead: they have a bigger presence flying around, visiting flowers. Under the light microscope: honey-coloured, caramac, butterscotch, toffee; very hairy all over, their little legs all curled up beneath, and wings mostly closed; their eyes deep black. Three bees with a full set of antennae and proboscis were chosen: one for a dorsal shot (looking straight down on her furry back), another that looked good from the side, and a third on its back so we could ‘film’ her mouth and look at the undercarriage. ...On the SEM we could see that parts of the bees had collapsed and shrivelled, so we filmed the best bits. Zooming right in to the hairs on the abdomen we saw a miniature moorland landscape of moss and fir fronds; the end of the proboscis was a tangle of tubes (the tongue?) ...Martin brought us his worker bees in a Swan matchbox, and some comb: pure white and made of smoothed out chewed wads of wax papier-mâché: so light and airy. ... Martin’s bees had been dead a while, and had all four wings out-stretched; with more colour variation and lighter eyes. The wings were iridescent, striped pearly pink, mauve and mint green; incredibly strong: I read the wings can go up to 230 BPS (beats per second). We chose one of Martin’s bees with her body in a heroic flight pose, proboscis extended and her eyes bronzed copper colanders covered in tiny hairs. ...Watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) directed by Julian Schnabel, based on Jean-Do Bauby’s book: paralysed in a fleshy carapace, locked inside an immobile exoskeleton, his world experienced through hearing and one fluttering eye. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski mediates Bauby’s sight through a watery swing-and-tilt lens that flexes between close-up and mid-shot, light and dark, creating the in-and-out-of-focusness that Schnabel calls “the texture of seeing“. ... To make Small World we projected a frame of found 35mm colour negative onto our tiny landscape and used an old photographic enlarger lens, a spectacle lens, lost glass marbles, fragments of mirror and other bits and pieces to create our hi def interior world.

Bloomsday

user@domain.com — 2010-07-16T23:56:07+01:00

Huge gusts wrestling branches, leaves ripped. Bumble bees hide out the storm in the thick of the bay tree. As the pressure drops, water overflows the moors. Puddles become pools, then small lakes as the drains bulge. The sound of a twig caught in the wheel is a large bolt for holding corrugated iron, and shreds the tyre. Then it’s over. The first sight of the new moon: in the back garden I take photos handheld through lovage and bay, later in my studio upstairs through the open window across to the horse chestnut trees in Beaumont Park.

I write like
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Get on!

Breathe

user@domain.com — 2010-06-26T23:57:12+01:00

(null)

Drifting

user@domain.com — 2010-06-14T23:53:00+01:00

Candle wax smoke and the laughter of student parties. A smooth ginger cat stalks the walls and corrugated rooftops of sheds and garages, criss-crossing all the way down the back gardens to Salisbury Road. Sea fret prickling the skin on my arms, cars move silently into cool mist over Laira Bridge. Four magpies rocking in a tree, tails flashing blue-black, plump white breasts. Greenfinches, a martin sunbathed golden on the Ocean Maid. Greasy brown slick, crusted bladderwrack, a flock of starlings follow each other from fence top to post to playing field. Turquoise dream: the surface heaving a patchwork of azure fission, shimmering liquid sapphire, rocking back and forth beneath my hands, the tiny white chalky nodules of sea creatures, small waves skim the surface like dolphins. Then it rains. Sky: a grey-blue painting smeared by a cold shower into blotched islands, the new moon is an invisible puncture-mark, curved one day old. A speckled brown frog rests on a pebble under a primula leaf. I take two photos of the crescent cut into the western sky over Cobblestone Parlour, with Venus pinned to the right and swifts in the air till after 10.

Mute

user@domain.com — 2010-05-28T23:10:26+01:00

(null)

Scratchy

user@domain.com — 2010-05-14T23:51:47+01:00

Step out into cool evening blue, chalk-marked from the northwest. The brim tide fills the Ocean Maid, the swell on the Laira slopping through the smashed planks and out the wreck to starboard. Dead leaves, shanks of old rope, skanky weed clinging to the scum. Then along Finnegan Road green waves break in a rush of fennel, vetch, trefoil, garlic, campion, herb robert, stitchwort, ivy. A blackbird alarm on every lamppost. Forget-me-not near the electricity sub-station at Howard’s Quay marks a planning application for a new marina with a 3 story clubhouse, balconies, and a wind turbine. The acrid taint of decaying south waste water clags our mouths. At the top of May Terrace one bright star. A new moon swings down behind the rooftops, scratching the smooth blue.

New one

user@domain.com — 2010-04-15T23:35:00+01:00

Jittery slim crescent

Moon fret

user@domain.com — 2010-04-28T23:55:00+01:00

This one’s for Lesley B x

Cosmic

user@domain.com — 2010-03-31T10:29:53+01:00

(null)

Smiley

user@domain.com — 2010-03-20T22:40:11+00:00

Walk out the front door and before my left foot hits the path I look up and the slim crescent is swinging up over Cobbles the Clown’s rooftop. A curvy razor smile with bloody teeth and the bottom lip bee-stung ultraviolet. Saturday springlike: a dollop of spawn in the pond. After lunch, climb up to the moor, gorse beginning to buzz, coconut yellow, grasses pale white straw, sides scabbed with brown, charcoal stumps, low cloud trailing fog white mist along the backs of furry ponies and sweetheart-faced sheep. The scaffolded prison dripping misery.

Moonwave

user@domain.com — 2010-02-27T22:31:04+00:00

7am hailstorm Plymouth; earthquake Chile. Little Sainsbury’s carpark 5 o’clock, prickly moist air, smeary sky, the sun a fizzing lemon bonbon dissolving into a bowl of grey suds. After shopping, grey-green stippled waves flicked inches below Phoenix Quay, and at the southern edge of the Sound huge rolls of white water poured over the breakwater towards us. As the sun sank, the fuzzy white disc of the almost-full moon rose up at the other end of the seesaw. By the time we got home the mist had curdled and floated the moon in a ring of mossy filaments. Two male frogs sitting in the darkness at opposite corners of the pond, their heads out of the water.

Crescent loop

user@domain.com — 2010-02-18T20:21:40+00:00

Dunes performance: she held the bowl in both hands and projected the pattern of light-water onto her body. Aeolian particle wave: crescentic dunes are nomadic and migrate across the desert at more than 100 metres a year. Smaller dunes move faster, and appear to ‘punch through’ the larger dunes. Also known as a barchan, an arc-shaped sand ridge with two horns curving around on either side, formed when winds blow consistently from one direction. There are fields of barchan dunes in a ring around the north pole on the surface of Mars. Sand Dunes Thawing on Mars (3 March 2008) Flowing Barchan Sand Dunes on Mars (20 April 2009)

Moonfull

user@domain.com — 2010-01-30T21:17:00+00:00

There’s a fiery planet twinkling above left of the moon, which is at perigee ie closest to the earth. Mars is at opposition. It’s cold. I take photos through the boiler room window across JL’s roof.

Present absence

user@domain.com — 2010-01-24T00:46:18+00:00

D When I started performing in art venues [telling my stories in a microphone], I thought that I could go further, and look at the archetype of the image ... the term autobiographical puts you in a box right away. ...I’m not interested in doing it to an empty room, and I have to get pumped up and imagine an audience in a performance for the camera. ...Like Ron [Athey] I started my performance career in music - they were the only people who would have me. ...H Like Ron, I’m completely institutionalised, I excrete what I do in the institution when I am a performance artist and I do work. ...Q Making a connection between your burnt breasts and the Bild photographer on your topless journey: if you were going back to document or publicise that event, would you do it differently? ...H It goes back to the schizophrenia of teaching: this personal drive of what you’d like to be doing, but then there’s this intellectual drive. ...He performed, or was constrained by a set of rules or parameters which place him in a particular natures of being; what it means to be human, to be free or constrained, what it means to be a person in time, in a home or a city, in relation to another person. ...“Layzell’s approach was to present a lateral future of a tragic nature, yet an hour and en minutes and a slick set just wasn’t enough to make me believe or care, and without provoking that emotional involvement, Layzell’s commentary functioned almost in opposition to his subject matter. The first half of the performance began in low light, with Layzell entering into a minimal post-Caligari set of angular grey frames which incorporated various doors, a video monitor and a spot-lit lectern, to the accompaniment of synthesised piped wind sounds. After divesting himself of a gas mask and overcoat, he delivered a lecture to the audience, informing us that we had ‘come a long way’, and that we shouldn’t listen to those subversive elements amongst us who say that ‘things were better in the past’. ... Between silently reading a book to a voice-over of Wordsworth’s poetry, and directly addressing his audience with bewildered questions as to what do bees, clouds, flowers smell and feel like, Layzell began to incorporate a wider visual sense into the piece. At times he hinted at the pathos an ecologically destructive society, when tangible films were projected over the set; searching for a goose only to have it disappear as he ‘touched’ it, surrounded by rotating clouds in a blue sky, donning the gas mask again and miming slowly to the screeches of an elephant whilst enclosed by iron bars.”

Absent presence

user@domain.com — 2010-01-23T00:41:18+00:00

“In the context of the development of Marina Abramovic’s new Institute for the preservation of performance and the work she is co-curating in Plymouth, participants in the Live Laboratory Symposium are invited to witness durational performance works and engage in a dialogue about the issues of foundation and generation in performance and live art practice. ...In order to teach my students about performance, or ‘live art’ as it used to be called ... in those days performance art was rarely videotaped, so I had to rely on “the iconic photographs”, and on describing what I had seen, but - despite my passion - my words could never really communicate my experience. ...She wears a long sleeved nightgown made from calm un-dyed cotton: we can see the her feet, arranged together, the toes falling slightly to the side so the rosy bunion on each foot is exposed; her hands rest palm up, a few inches away from her sides; her face looks back at us, full lips, parted below a strong beaked nose, framed by her long dark brown hair with its right parting. ...The set-up is used, traditionally, to re-copy photographs or to make a photographic copy of other 2-D picture forms, although it can also be used in animation to create stop-motion sequences of 2-D cut-out shapes and 3-D small objects. ...MA: I like to say, it’s so so important ... young people talk to me and say how to succeed, find a place in the art structure? ... they want to have success immediately right now, but not to compromise: every good bit of art never die. ...Picking up themes mentioned by Marina, such as preservation, cross-generational contact, the art market and the hybridisation of artforms - are we starting to see a new kind of artform that takes place in a virtual space, such as Second Life, or via the internet? ...It is a good time to reflect and think how we can preserve what has been, past experience, and ask if we want to go down the ‘museum route’ as a repository of cultural and social history and memory? ...Maria: Response from a male viewer of one of the performances yesterday in The Peformance Market: “Well that’s the thing where the man eats the flower and puts it in the woman’s mouth with a kiss, but they’ve got it the wrong way round.” ...Smiling man who comes from Plymouth and who use to live in Stonehouse when he was a kid - Memory of the Athaneum in Plymouth: my first performance was when I was a fox aged six. ...Smiling man who comes from Plymouth and who use to live in Stonehouse when he was a kid - There is a direct link between talking about lineage and this event - on Darwin’s voyage The Beagle was victualled from RWY. ...For me it is a chain of people cascading back through the lineage: Roberta Mock; Richard Layzell; my mother ‘in character’ (masquerade) on stage in Berengaria; Mrs Flegg reading The Midnight Folk to me at bedtime; my three imaginary childhood friends: Toni, Betti, and the dark one whose name I never remembered.] ...KIra - her friend who is a film-maker and who documented a performance: she followed her closely, walking down the stairs as she fell down them, mirroring movement, had written herself into the manoeuvres, partnering KIra’s perfomance with her camera: “coming down the stairs with me.”

New

user@domain.com — 2010-01-17T20:23:58+00:00

Today’s new moon just before it slipped behind the rooftops into Beaumont Park; looking across to the pair of in-fill houses in May Terrace: the two houses were built to replace part of the terrace taken out by WWII bombs.

Blue moon

user@domain.com — 2009-12-31T20:33:00+00:00

Shivery cold through the birch tree rising to the east.

Slivery moon

user@domain.com — 2009-12-20T17:16:12+00:00

Turn right along the edge towards Ringmore. Across the valley to the left Burrator dam, waterfalls made miniature by distance. My eyes cup the tiny landscape and hold the view. Three small rough-haired ponies hide out in the carpark by the cottage; swollen bellies, chestnut, black and white-brown. Head off down the lefthand fork, single track towards Sheepstor village, rivers of ice skidding across the tarmac as the weight of water squeezes out of the grass crown of the moor. Auburn bracken crumbled into crystal green. Just below the horizon sight connects distant-there-then to present-here-now. When middle ground is absent through topography or focus, vision is held within, embodied; a far view of external-landscape becomes an interior-miniature. Space collapses, tumbles into the eye, and becomes time: the distance rings with future/past - where one will be and what was once. The lace curtains of icy water tumbling over the dam and my looking are inverted, reversed. ...Peg the cold wet clothes to the line as three blackbirds scare each other in the thin blue dusk. A curl of moon high in the south beyond the phone lines, scratchy Jupiter nearby.

AURORA: last day

user@domain.com — 2009-11-15T23:21:16+00:00

Jem Cohen sitting on the stage at Norwich Arts Centre. Milena Gierke lacing up the giant Super 8 super-projector brought over from Belgium for the festival.

Journey home

user@domain.com — 2009-12-04T20:05:26+00:00

Little Chef on the 303.

Tate moon

user@domain.com — 2009-12-03T20:34:54+00:00

At Tate Modern to see the AnimateTV programme in the Starr Auditorium, introduced by Stuart Comer, Tate Modern Film Curator. A sumptuous setting to see our Sea Change film Teign Spirit on the big screen. The moon high outside Tate Modern after the screening, taken while walking past the birch grove and down to Leon Bankside for drinks (lemonade); then along the river to Pizza Express. I choose a Padana pizza, because I’ve never had one. A pleasant mouth-fullness of dry/wet bite-able textures: thin chewy dough with crisp edges, mild milk-sour goat’s cheese, moist spinach leaf and curls of red onion; the sticky brown dots of caramelised onion a bit too jammy and slightly strange. We swap to a window seat when someone leaves, and eat while watching the reflections on the Thames spool by. Two pleasure boats, glowing blue-purple with fairy lights, skim the slick surface downstream, with St Paul’s back-projected on the horizon. Walking to the moon I offer up my camera. The gestural trace between there (what-I-see, my direct vision locked onto the moon [a two-way phenomenon]; I am aware of the periphery, the cobbles, curb, pavement slabs below and around my feet; proximity of fixed, moveable and moving objects to my legs, body, head) and here (my-position-on-the-moving-earth); and our relative movements within a space-timeframe determined by the shutter speed blink - the sensitivity of the camera sensor to reflected and direct light/s. Being down south we miss the Lumen launch of Art in Unusual Spaces in Leeds: the One Minute collection of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry is being presented in the Merrion Centre by Lumen in December 2009 and January 2010. Photograph by Kerry Baldry - thanks Kerry! Two of our films White Body and Verge: Nocturne are included in the One Minute volume 3 programme which is being shown with onedotzero: citystates 09 in the entrance and first floor cinema spaces at the Merrion Shopping Centre in Leeds, just down from the universities.

Moony

user@domain.com — 2009-11-29T23:57:15+00:00

Back garden 6 o’clock. Gritty tang of wet coal, a sodden mess of leaves below the infrared beam. Lift up my camera and catch the bulgy moon in a veil of fast clouds spinning across from the north east. A few specks of cold rain, flickery brown-red iris.

Wet wind

user@domain.com — 2009-11-22T23:45:21+00:00

Up past Burrator and miserable dripping Princetown to the carpark beyond Merrivale, five rooks hopping and bobbing in the misty drizzle on the grass. Drive through the streaming water across the moor to Hexworthy, the West Dart river running chestnut brown ripple, coffee chocolate with vanilla foaming veins; then Venford reservoir where there are waves and the Victorian road bridge across the dam is flooded. Home via Holne, Coombe and Buckfastleigh; a fierce wind gusting, with a proper old-fashioned man in the moon, a sky-white crescent swinging down to the south west horizon. Two photos of the moon in cloud just over the top of Dogman’s roof on May Terrace: I stand on the paving by the pond and hold the camera up above next door’s garage roof. I capture the streetlight in the back lane and a light fuzz of a clouded moon. Long exposures with arms outstretched: the camera uterus, light reflected into the black box recorder through its aperture, fingers an inverted image upon the wall of the dark chamber.

AURORA: Norwich

user@domain.com — 2009-11-13T19:17:00+00:00

Cathedral Apartments: the large window on the stairs has crimson and deep blue glass panels framing the central pane. Tooth dream A more seated position than in the real-life dental surgery, as Andy Blonden injects novocaine into the roof of my mouth, then drills and fills the crack in my lower left 6 molar (it showed up on the x-ray). There is a collar around my tooth, a ring of shiny silver metal, created during an appointment years before. ICO Screening Artists’ Moving Image course The learning resource centre of Norwich University College of the Arts. A very smooth, swish refurb of Duke Street school with a hip-busting highly-polished wood floor. The women’s toilets have two windows set high above the washbasins. Ivy presses itself against the glass outside. The hand drier roars. There is coffee.

AURORA: transcription

user@domain.com — 2009-11-14T23:59:59+00:00

Unseen people talking behind me as I sit in the cinema and wait for the next programme: “This tiny gesture that she, no this tsunami ... that ripples out across the whole family ... this idea of desire starting something ... under the caravan setting it on fire to stop it ... but then we see him with his ... and watch the whole thing come down. It’s such a small thing. I sent an email it was really great ... she’s got a mouth on her. No, I was impressed. It’s true, it is true. Yeah yeah. Sorry. That’s what it is I think ... she feels ...” Gareth Evans sitting on the stage at Norwich Arts Centre, talking about film. Alasdair Roberts played nu-folk in the evening, to a backdrop of 16mm filming by Luke Fowler.

Inspector Specto

user@domain.com — 2009-11-07T00:52:24+00:00

Studio One: Inspector Specto from Kayla Parker on Vimeo.

Plato’s Cave as the womb: unless I was breech, I would be upside down in the uterus, my head resting above the entrance to the cervix. It is not completely dark in here, there is a fibrous deep-orange-red glow, like a hollowed pumpkin lit from within. The glowing smooth rounded shape calls up Louise Bourgeois’ The Destruction of the Father (1974) which I saw at her Tate Modern retrospective in 2008. ...A curl of clementine peel, the outer skin punctured with a twisting scalpel blade, lying on a lightbox. ...Set up the Specto 16mm analysis projector and splice white leader onto the head and tail of the film strip. ... I turn the controls to M: the projector whirs and clacks, a warm glow shines out from its interior, through the gaps in its metal casing; I turn the Bakelite dial clockwise to the next position: a window of murky light is thrown onto the white emulsion panel on the wall four feet away. Projected at 2 fps, the focus flexes as the ‘frame’ between the sprocket holes stops in the gate: one can see each individual knife cut, every tiny scratch and slice of the scalpel. ...Strange to have people living in what was once the Housing Advice Centre: an open plan apartment in the basement of Virginia House, a young man in a kitchen that came out of a catalogue; two young women siting in a settee in the ‘living room’ area. ...Tell Suzanne that I’ve switched off the lights to Studio One: Simon had the keys at home.

Wobbly

user@domain.com — 2009-10-29T23:00:00+00:00

AFTER Artist’s residency at Studio One, Plymouth Arts Centre Camera handheld at arms length up to the moon through the birch leaves. Traffic, warm, no breeze; faraway mewl of a cat and helicopter drone; a splosh in the pond as a fish scares itself and flips in the water. Later, high bright moon: I could see the little dog’s face in the shadows again. Haircut this afternoon; pretty short.

Mouth loop

user@domain.com — 2009-10-26T14:20:00+00:00

Dream: in a small waiting room, with a glass wall and door, on the border between nature and culture. ... Behind me a group of First Nations Canadians file in and sit around a low circular table: elders, with their tribal collections of knowledge coded into artefacts made of wood, berries, stones. ...Sally at home in the forest, peeling apart squares of birch bark to make thin sheets which she folded in four equal quarters and then bit a pattern of holes with a flower at the centre: she said she was taught this by her Cree grandmother, that they were used as covers for baskets, and you could push the roots of plants through the holes. ...One stick bent the rice stems over the boat, the other stick was used to beat a percussion on the first stick so the ripe grains fell into a cloth: this way the rice could be harvested several times as the grains ripened down the stem. ...“how can one or the other of the women analytic partners re-mark the limits of their bodies, their desire? ... there is no transactional or transitional object unless they create one which they can exchange and share between them.” ...10.53 BATTER STREET drizzly quiet, lightbox and laptop hum [SEAGULLS LAUGHING; WOMAN’S VOICE WALKING PAST; CAR SLIPS DOWN HILL ACROSS THE WET COBBLES]. ...Lighter Hands: random process fixed onto my dead granddad’s cigarette lighter - I made rubbings of the old floorboards and basement corridor leading to the toilets. ... In what used to be called the L-shaped Studio upstairs I made As Yet Unseen in 1994, the film originated from the combined dreams of my mother and my dead grandmother; and I did 11 months of observations and teststrips for Sunset Strip between September 1994 and the end of July 1995. THE MEASURE: take the end of the film in my lips and pass the spool down between my legs, up my back, over the top of my head to meet between my teeth: cut here. 11.23 at the window a small sleepy fly takes a few steps up the glass, then wanders off [GULLS CRYING, SUSTAINED FOR 12 SECONDS] An old man carrying a grey and black cloth shopping bag in his left hand and using a cane in his right hand crosses the street, walking up towards Looe Street; the top of his head is pink and freckly. ...11.58 sound recording 4 minutes 15 seconds - me working on lightbox [A BURST OF QUIET MUSIC BEHIND THE DEEP BLUE DOOR] frame 60 ghost wings {KEYS, DOOR SHUT, FOOTSTEPS DOWNSTAIRS, DOOR SQUEAK, SLAM] This lightbox connects me to Lefkos’ studio above the diving shop in Pier Street where I made Nuclear Family: the pool of light in the indoor twilight of a wet day in autumn

Cutting edge

user@domain.com — 2009-10-25T18:44:00+00:00

16.16 BATTER STREET Gavin sitting up in the projection room getting ready for the Sunday evening screening. ...THE MEASURE: Empty frames circle my head [SOMEONE PRACTISING ROCK GUITAR MOVES BELOW] Sunlight sinks down the chimney pots; gulls cruise around in the golden light. I catch their flight on the strip of 16mm film with a scalpel blade and move to the lightbox to scratch in frame edges using my child’s plastic ruler. ...frame 16 scratch and blow the screech of the blade blend with the mewling gulls, as I scrape away sections of the black [BLACK SABBATH GUITAR INTRO “Finished with my woman...”] ...16.50 EAT BANANA then walk back to the window: two gulls over Sutton Pool [POWER CHORDS] I’m expecting the guitarist to break into the Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen in Love. ...The cinema opens: trailers from the left; electric guitar moved position, now from below and affecting my stomach. 17.27 put the light on in Studio One; sound recording 2 min 8 seconds a few bars of syncopated, chopped strumming [one-and two-three] plus soundtrack to John Woo’s Red Cliff [AARGH! ... I’m working on the film in a fairly abstract way, keeping it the ‘right way up’ ie working down the frames from top to bottom; using the marks I made at the window as my guiding ‘sketch’. ...frame 36 [TWO CARS CRUISE OVER THE COBBLES, DOWNHILL] the activities are harmonious, film soundtrack [SQUEAKING DOOR]; whoever is in Deep Blue Sound this evening is pretty quiet and doesn’t bang the doors [FLUTE] The only talking is the dialogue in the film. ...JAUNTY FLUTE MUSIC] frame 42 there is the sense of something having begun, me sitting in semi-twilight over a lightbox, working on a strip of 16mm film [SMELL OF CIGARETTE SMOKE WAFTS IN] building up a new repertoire of marks and moves. ...18.08 frame 49 my attention on the strip, a pool of blurred light in the soupy gloom, eyes slightly defocused, using (remembered) movements of fingers and hands to manipulate the cutting edge of the blade on the smooth/scored surface of the film. ...AND AGAIN] Things stripped down to a single side, a cut, a rhythm, white/black, on/off, silence within a basket of sound, no talking.

Space to speak

user@domain.com — 2009-10-24T17:55:00+01:00

Two small round plastic caps at the top of Peacock Lane: cerulean blue E63 and light lime green FLIP OFF. ... [TINKLY TOP NOTES ON A PIANO, CONTRALTO SMOKY SOUL DIVA IN CONVERSATION WITH A MELLOW SAX] [“Feel your touch... the thrill [...] nights are [...] lovers can [...] the thrill... is gone... this is the end...”] ...Fading light [CLACKETY-CLACK (magpie) BURSTS OF POLICECAR SIREN (in the distance) A YOUNG GULL PEEPS, HUSH OF WIND] A man and woman in blue jeans with carrier bags of shopping walk up to Looe Street on the far pavement; she has silver baseball boots, he wears white trainers. ...“This dimension of sexual difference constitutes the horizon of the possible unfolding of a analysis [LEAVES RUSTLE] as an opening or an enigma rather than the peremptory imposition of the authority [CAR CRUISES UPHILL] of a word [parole], [A CHILD COUGHS, GULLS CRY] a language [langue], a text. ...Lucy to comes in to make sure everything’s ok and to check the door’s locked to downstairs (ITALIAN VOICES, MALE, WITH BACKGROUND WHIRRING OF 35mm FILM RUNNING THROUGH PROJECTOR. ...There’s a message inviting people to make something to say what they think of the show, and some plastic containers with scraps of cloth, felt, cotton, darning wool etc. I’m drawn to a new hank of deep yellow embroidery thread in its paper cuffs, which I use to sew the tiny plastic caps I found earlier into a clear plastic zip-lock pocket left on the seat - like a dolly’s handbag, I pull the two ends and tie them in a bow. ...Waiting for a lift home, I cut a circle out of egg yolk yellow brushed cotton using a pair of round-ended child-safe scissors; I choose a triangle of soft black suede slightly larger than my circle, and sew the two together at the centre with bright yellow embroidery thread, leaving loops of around the diameter of my index finger. Then I secure the thread with a double stitch underneath, trim off the end, cut the edge of suede into a wavy line just larger than the perimeter of the yellow cotton circle; and finally cut the loops of cotton. I have made a badge, a flower, which I fasten to the roll of white cotton sheet hanging on the post between café and stairs with a safety pin. ...At the top of Looe Street by Peacock Lane I turn and see the new moon, clear bright white, for the first time. It’s warm for the last weekend in October, clear overhead, sycamore leaves and seeds scattered on the ground, collecting against walls and against the curb.

Lightbox

user@domain.com — 2009-10-24T12:40:11+01:00

Behind the deep blue door: rap/hip-hop [“Birdz ov a feather now [...] get back muthafucka, u don’t no me like tha’] Young male voices [YOU HAVE LISTENED TO RAP ON TELEVISION! ...old flattop lightbox (present from Roy when I left Devon Library Services’ studio to be self-employed in 1988) ...a free paper tape measure from Bristol Ikea (100 cm on one side, 39 and a bit inches on the other) Elizabeth French Vivo clear nail varnish (Perfection / 2 IN 1 BASE / & TOP COAT / nail care / soin des ongles); bought at Wilkinson’s in 2005 when we were making Verge ...10.56 THE MEASURE OF IT: stretch the black film between my outstretched arms, and snap it between my fingers [IT WAS QUITE DIFFICULT TO MAKE IT OUT [...] ...I dreamt that Stuart jumped into the sea with all his clothes on and that I went to a party at Marcel Seip’s flat (tiny and self-contained at the top of an old building in France). ...Scrape emulsion, score the film; moving between window and lightbox, what is sensed outside leaning against the smooth coolness of glass, and looking into the dark interior of the film, pressed onto neural milky perspex. ...Back to the window to sample the day [METALLY RATTLE OF TAMBOURINE (one two three, one two three) SCRATCHY AN’ SO ON] [RANDOM DRUMSTICKS] [CAR CRUISES OVER WET COBBLES] ...11.42 sunshine [RUSTLING BREEZE, ON THE PAVEMENT BELOW A BOY COUGHS A SMOKER’S COUGH] [METAL ON METAL WHINE OF AN ANGLE GRINDER (outside the north west side of the building)] ...JINGLING (ACOUSTIC GUITAR) AND SINGING (recorded) TAMBOURINE (live)] ”And I’ll be happy, to, get away... beautiful day ... death defy me, to my grave...“ ... SAVE TO LOCAL DISC (manly music tutor) THE HARD DISC IN THE MACHINE] Lean over the warm hum of the lightbox, scoring the film, the strip of uncut emulsion over my left shoulder: scratch, blow the tiny black curls away, smooth the surface [WELL DONE, LADS! ...Caroline and Jude come in to collect some mugs and stuff [DEATH DEFY ME TO MY GRAVE...]

The measure of It

user@domain.com — 2009-10-23T17:32:00+01:00

THE MEASURE OF IT: I use the window as a lightbox, scrape the skin of the film, peel back strips of emulsion with the blade. [THE FLY DOES A LITLE BUZZY DANCE] Leaning on the glass I am in/outside, my vision flexing. ...My fingers pressed into the cool smoothness of the pane [ON THE OTHER SDE OF THE DOOR AN INVISIBLE HAND RAPS A TIN DRUM] percussive score of the blade on filmstrip. ... [HUM OF CENTRAL HEATING AND TICKING OF AN AIRLOCK IN THE RADIATOR] On the other side the glass is smeared with the residue of salty rain and the splash of a gull shit comet speeding towards 1 o’clock/north north east 15.36 an unknown man with tattooed arms enters the room [TYRES SPEED ACROSS THE COBBLES; MALE VOICES TALKING] ...The banana [MEWLING ADOLESCENT GULLS] a flow of short cuts; staccato incisions on the clementine peel ...The air bitty with moisture, a light drizzle; gulls arc through the sky above the wet rooftops [TAPPING FAST RHYTHM WITH DRUMSTICK ON THE DOOR] I scratch the surface of the film as the sycamore leaves sway ; a man and woman walk down Batter Street below my window under a black umbrella [MEN LAUGHING IN THE MUSIC ROOM. ...sycamore leaves trickle across the frame from upper right to lower left, become light trails seen for a moment in the deep darkness of the screen. ...[SPLATTER OF WATER ON THE SKYLIGHTS: SWISH, WASH, SWISH, WASH] [SIZZLE OF TYRES] The measure of the day. ...woman with straightened strawberry-tint hair clacks down the hill in buff suede high heel boots. ... 17.32 Full-on driving rain [WOMAN’S VOICE IMPLORING] (cinema trailer) Over and out.

I'm In

user@domain.com — 2009-10-23T14:26:00+01:00

small Muji pencil case (birthday present) with a few crayons - Karismacolor Light Blue 904,Terracotta, Imperial Violet 1007, Vermilian 921; Caran d’Ache Prismalo 999-110 (purple); a Made in Germany Staedtler ergosoft Art. Nr. 157-37 (turquoise) crayon; a Great Britain Staedtler Tradition 110 2H pencil; and a Made in Britain Rexel Cumberland Derwent Graphic 4B pencil; and a Stephens 6 inch/15 cm clear plastic ruler ...Staedtler permanent DRY SAFE Lumocolor S black pen (wasserfest auf fast allen Flaschen + CD/DVD * lichtbestandig / waterproof on most surfaces + CD/DVD * lightfast / indélébile sur la plupart des surfaces + CD/DVD * résisant à la lumière / nachfullbar * refillable * rechargeable MADE IN GERMANY Art. ...my best scalpel Swann Morton MADE IN ENGLAND 3, brass BS 2982 with a 10A blade with a dab of red nail varnish on the handle so I don’t get it mixed up with my other scalpels - my ‘best’ scalpel, the one I use for engraving on film, and I haven’t changed the blade for at least 10 years about 400 dusty foot of 16mm black leader with single sprocket holes, on a yellow egg yolk core (either part of the 16mm collection from Lefkos Greco or rescued after being chucked in a skip at the art college) ...11.19 Jack Bruce-like bluesy rock funk in the music room, bouncy slapped bass arpeggio, man singing in a throaty mid-Atlantic stylee “ah sed ah [...] tarm urv they larves [...] narthin narthin surtayntee, yeah ... yesssurree [GUITAR BREAK] tuh-mar-o brings change, aah sed aah surtayntee, yeh [...] narthin narthin surtayn-tee yeah.” ...THE MEASURE OF IT: stretch the film between my arms, the journey from one finger tip to another, a long dark walk between the frames: “U gone gut ur seedn may...“ ...Sprocket holes to the left, top down, shifting between frames: magpies, gulls, sycamore leaves and twigs sieve the light; ghosts, phantoms, traces. ...”The issue of the transference seems to revolve around who can best perceive the other, who can return the other, or return in the other, closest to his/her source, a gesture [BASS GUITAR RIFF] almost never perceived as bilateral. [TWO CARS CRUISE DOWN THE COBBLES, ANOTHER CAR DRIVES (FASTER) UP THE STREET] The third term in the transference becomes the limits not only of the body but also of the mucous, [SEA GULLS SQUEAL, THE THROATY RATTLE OF A MAGPIE] not only of the walls but also the experience of the most extraordinary intimacy: a communication or communion which respects the life of the other [AN UNSEEN MAN WHISTLES A BAR OF AN UNKNOWN TUNE] whilst still tasting the strangeness of his/her desire.“ ...12.48 Simon returns to say that Ian is the only person who knows the password to the arts centre wifi, and he’s on holiday. ... I say: I’m going to use that, so he gets it out of the bin and puts it back on the table again.

Feeling full

user@domain.com — 2009-10-04T22:00:00+01:00

BEFORE Artist’s residency at Studio One, Plymouth Arts Centre Photos of the almost-full moon: hand-held at arms outstretched in the bay window upstairs, facing south. Long wobbly sepia exposures.

Drawing down the moon

user@domain.com — 2009-10-01T21:00:00+01:00

BEFORE Artist’s residency at Plymouth Arts Centre ...A frog, unseen, gurgling to the music of water tickling into the drain by the back door. Sweet white liquorice smell of bean flowers, water hawthorn vanilla ice scenting the air around the pond. The temperature slowly dropping, a degree lower every night once the sun goes down. I’m hunting spiders in their webs with my camera, but the webs are past their best, ripped by the wind. The moon’s up. High and bright white, a slice off full; clouds like star fields and moody galaxies. I stand in the dark next to broad bean plants that are taller than me, with my camera at arms length held up to the moon. ... Eyes wide, I breathe: clouds tumble copper, bronze and silver, the sky deep aquamarine; the moon shows a dog’s face, and the shutter closes. In the bay window upstairs I draw down the moon, my pencil feels its way across the scratchy paper by moonlight. ... Through the double glazed window to the south east I can see another, smaller, more perfectly round moon lower down and slightly to the left, floating in the sky: the double moon. Meanwhile, the real moon appears to be gliding in orbit upwards - due to the movement of the clouds, a curdled swirl of golden brown and mauve.

A seaside rendezvous: at the MUSEum

user@domain.com — 2009-09-04T23:00:00+01:00

Teignmouth, Friday: the day of the first Muse concert on The Den. The home-made signs and posters were the best: there is a tabletop sale 10am to 1pm at the MUSEum on Saturday morning 5 September. Moments: getting my feet wet, dance steps of seagulls printed in the sand under the pier, sitting on a flower bed wall eating sweet greeny-pink Victoria plums in the sun, and rescuing a giant-size Elephant Hawk Moth larva: we tempted it off the pavement onto my Thomas Luny postcard of Teignmouth, and transported it to safety near the Quay Street carpark. We were invited to have a free cuppa in the octagonal church by a very friendly lady: we said we’d come back later, but never did. My favourite sign on a second hand T-shirt: Welcome Muse from all at Age Concern.

Hello

user@domain.com — 2009-08-26T11:54:38+01:00

I’m now adding stuff, but expect things to shift around as the site progresses