Tuesday 30 November 2010

Projected imagination

Check out this wicked example of video mapping, used on the 600 yr old Astronomical Clock in Prague's Old Town (I've been there! but I wish I'd been able to see this)  It was a pretty amazing clock to begin with, but this animation technique takes it to a whole new level


The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.


Quoting from the Makula website (translated from Czech):
Video mapping using current technology available in the entertainment industry, a whole new way. The main contents are the projections to cooperate with the selected object and try to break the perception perspective of the viewer. With the projector can fold and stress any shape, line or space. Evocative play of light on the physical object creates a new dimension and changing the view of the seemingly "normal thing". Everything becomes an illusion.

Sunday 21 November 2010

A candle-lit dinner

We had a powercut the other day, only for an hour or two but it took out over 850 houses.  The whole estate went dark, the streetlights went out, all the way up the main road almost to the university.  Fortunately I'm a hoarder so I had 2 large candles my Dad gave me and a box of long thin ones that I use for wax resist drawings, which I snapped in half and set in glasses.

Of course I realised I couldn't heat any food since our oven is electric (I knew there was a reason I preferred gas hobs!) so took my torch and walked into town towards the lights where their grid was still on.  It's literally a 1min walk or I wouldn't have chanced it, but it was lovely walking down the street without the street lights on.  Of course everyone else was out too, wandering round outside their houses trying to work out if all the streets were down.  Amusingly everyone's first respnse was to phone everybody else and tell them about it!

I bought myself some crusty bread for sandwiches, juice and a whole lot of biscuits.  I enjoyed a very uncomplicated dinner, lit by a cluster of tiny lights.  A nice surreal break from the usual.

Jumpers and... and...

I love autumn.  I mean, who doesn't, but I really do.  There's something about the crispness of the air, the mist, the biting chill, the golden light that you just don't get at any other time of year, early in the morning or when the sun's coming down, that makes everything glow against the sky.  And everything's dying but man is it beautiful.

Maybe it's that whole Death is a Part of Life mentality that just clicks everything about our place in the world back into it's proper perspective, or just nature being phenomenal, but even though we all moan about cold it is how can you not love it?

Still jobless, curled up on the sofa in my favoruite jumper -it's a kind of ruddy orange knitted thing I found in a charity shop and took the sleeves in on.  A proper cold-weather jumper.  I'm watching 'Into the Wild', which I've wanted to see/read for a while now.  It's not done yet but so far I'm loving it, enjoying the vaguely sad feeling that if I went into the wild like that I'd just die (much as I still want to take a road trip someday), but that there are other people out there too whose skin crawls at the idea of a life rules by work and objects where everyone has everything they want and it's still not enough, they still don't treat each other right.  It's something I worry I'll lose once I get a job, once I have money and the temptation is really there.

Looking for work is weird.  I can get by on JobSeekers Allowance but I only get that if I'm looking for a job.  I'm more concerned about what I'll do once I get one than whether or not I'll find one, how it will change my life, my time, what I do with myself, what I care about, even the way the contents of my wardrobe will change.  But in the meantime applying for work and not getting it can be just as bad.  It's hard to stay motivated sometimes, harder to keep a routine going (especially given my preference of late nights over early mornings but it's pretty necessary if you want to avoid a serious case of apathy) and to be on time for things.  The last 2 weeks in particular I've been late for almost everything, despite having nowhere else to be.  You forget what you are capable of when you try, of working hard, of drawing well, of drawing at all in my case. 
But then sometimes it's fine.  I enjoy all the time I have, the fact that I can go see people and spend time with them, that I can drop everything and do something else if I want to.  And then I wonder if I even want a job.

Loving the Non-Dairy Diary   It's charming and lovely and makes me smile.  And there are pictures like this to the right :

See?  Doesn't that just make you want to have a nice day?