I went to the UK Museums on the Web conference on Friday as it looked good, but it far outshone my expectations. What really blew me away was the level of discussion and the range of exciting and people-positive things UK museums, gallerys and smaller projects in the related digital heritage ecosystem are doing. I’d not been before but it felt to me like they (or at least some of the projects in question) had leapfrogged the commercial world and were building out flexible new services with a durable and far-sighted backbone. Well, as far-sighted as you can be with digital development… Another takeaway for me was while the necessity-driven aspects of innovation are widely touted, what unfolded at #ukmw11 was just as much despite necessity as because of it. Whilst the spectre of unnovation was sulking in the corner somewhere, fostering truer collaboration took centre stage. This was clearest in the open-minded approaches to learning and feedback in ongoing development, and the emphasis on meaning over metrics (although measurement and impact were usefully addressed by Jane Finnis of Culture24). So alongside hi-res re-usable art digitisation from the National Gallery, mega crowdsouring that humanises structured data about World War One fatalities from the Imperial War Museum and the development of an objects-based collections system for Museum of London’s Picture Bank and Pocket Histories, we also got a peek at the British Museum’s trials of tablet-based augmented reality in elearning, a user-powered accessibilty widget GoGenie (in beta), and the user-centred design process of Pallant House Gallery’s online platform OutsideIn for socially excluded artists to manage and exhibit their work. In contrast to all the other presentations, the Belgian-based FreeYourMetadata trio chose instead to do some live “cleaning” of messy museum metadata using GoogleRefine on stage. Given how largely impenetrable the details of linked data and the semantic web are to most people, including most people in the digital industries, the relative simplicity and power of this tool sent ripples of excitement round the hall. I haven’t covered every project that was mentioned but further links to the above initiatives, plus others and some photos from the day are collected in the Storify below. View the story “UK Museums on the Web 2011″ on Storify] The day was organised by the UK Museums Computer Group (@ukmcg) and an idea floated on Twitter during the day that they could re-run the ‘hacking and mashups for beginners‘ workshop recently run at Museum Computer Network conference in the USA was something I’d be very interested in attending. In terms of other coverage, a blog post by newly elected UKMCG committee member Oonagh Murphy looks the first half of the day, with more promised, and another from David Little on the Digital Humanities staff blog at Kings College London gives a flavour of the design, UX and participatory themes. We’ll add other links to blog coverage here as they emerge, or feel free to add them yourself in the comments. All in all, lots of food for thought and a few synchronicities with the Open Plaques project. A mention must also go to @RichardOfSussex who I met there. Turns out he’s an Open Plaques contributor and knows a thing or two about the linked data world.
-
I posted to wordr.org
UK Museums on the Web 2011 storified
- Tags:
- News
- culture
- Heritage
- Events
- #ukmw11
- accessibility
- archive
- British Museum
- conferences
- crowdsourcing
- digital culture
- digitisation
- engagement
- Imperial War Museum
- innovation
- linked data
- metadata
- Museum Of London
- museums
- National Gallery
- open data
- OutsideIn
- Pallant House Gallery
- UK museums
November 29 2011, 1:54pm | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Steve Tilston: The Reckoning – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/07/22/steve-tilston-the-reckoning-%E2%80%93-review
A Four Star review from the Guardian for Steve Tilston‘s album ‘The Reckoning‘ This article titled “Steve Tilston: The Reckoning – review” was written by Robin Denselow, for The Guardian on Thursday 21st July 2011 21.31 UTCIn the Pennine hills in Yorkshire there lives a singer-songwriter and guitarist who has never achieved the public attention he deserves, but has always been praised by fellow musicians. Steve Tilston writes thoughtful, highly personal songs and is one of the finest instrumentalists on the folk scene, with a style that echoes the elaborate, rhythmic “folk baroque” guitar work of Bert Jansch and Davy Graham. He writes about anything that takes his interest, and the songs here range from unashamedly lyrical pieces about the countryside to others concerned with memory, nuclear waste, or a cheering story from the Spanish civil war, given a flamenco edge. There’s even a thoughtful meditation on the existence of God, Doubting Thomas, given a slinky, bluesy backing, and an update of the traditional Nottamun Town, now treated as a contemporary political nightmare. There’s occasional backing from accordion, harmonica and even a string section, but the album is dominated by Tilston’s exquisite guitar work, and features two spirited solo instrumental tracks, including a suitably virtuosic tribute to Graham.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogSteve Tilston: The Reckoning – reviewRelated posts:The Unthanks: Last – reviewRadiohead: The King of Limbs – reviewGolden rower Tom James forces his way back into Olympic reckoning
- Tags:
- Music
- folk
- Folk Music
- Steve Tilston
- Features
- blues
- Bert Jansch
- Singer Songwriter
- album
- Yorkshire
- The Guardian
- Article
- culture
- Album reviews
- Reviews
- Film & music
- Robin Denselow
- baroque guitar
- Davy
- davy graham
- fellow musicians
- flamenco
- Graham
- nottamun town
- Reckoning
July 22 2011, 5:46am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Björk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/07/05/bjork-manchester-is-the-prototype
Björk, the Icelandic singer’s Biophilia project incorporates handmade instruments, iPad apps, David Attenborough’s nature films and an album too – and she’s showcasing it all at Manchester international festival.“There will be an album in September, with an app to go with each of the 10 songs“.Extraordinary.This article titled “Björk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’” was written by Alex Needham, for The Guardian on Monday 4th July 2011 19.00 UTCOriginally formulated by scientist Edward O Wilson, the biophilia hypothesis suggests that human beings have an innate affinity with the natural world – plants, animals or even the weather. Yet it’s not biophilia but good old-fashioned fandom that has drawn a small band of Björk obsessives to queue outside Manchester’s Campfield Market Hall since 10am this morning. Not that there’s anything old-fashioned about the woman they are here to see. Biophilia is the Icelandic singer’s new project – the word means “love of living things” – and promises to push the envelope so far you’ll need the Hubble telescope to see it.A collection of journalists have already had a preview at a press conference in the Museum of Science and Industry over the road. Björk is absent, preparing for tonight’s live show, her first in the UK for over three years, which will open the Manchester international festival. Instead, artist and app developer Scott Snibbe, musicologist Nikki Dibben and project co-ordinator James Merry talk through Biophilia’s many layers. There will be an album in September, with an app to go with each of the 10 songs. There will be an education project, designed to teach children about nature, music and technology – some local kids will embark on it next week. There will be a documentary. And then there will be tonight’s show, performed in the round to a 2,000-strong crowd including journalists representing publications from New Scientist to the New York Times, as well as the diehard fans waiting outside. One, 20-year-old Nick from London, is a classical violinist who has loved Björk since the age of 14. “I wasn’t really into pop at all until I heard Medúlla,” he says, citing her most challenging album. “It was like a gateway drug from me liking difficult 20th-century western art music to liking pop.”It’s a journey in the opposite direction from the one most music fans make, and one which speaks volumes about the complexity of Björk’s work. “More classical musicians respect Björk than any other pop star,” he adds.At the museum, Snibbe is demonstrating the apps. The app that goes with the first single, Crystalline, includes a game in which you collect crystals in a tunnel, through which process you alter and customise the music. The app also includes an abstract version of the musical score; and an essay by Dibben that explains, in this case, how the structures of crystals relate to the musical structure of the song. The app for another song, Cosmogony, presents a 3D cosmos you can navigate. Each app has been created by a different – often rival – developer. “To me, it feels like the birth of opera or the birth of cinema,” says Snibbe.Yet Björk didn’t have such lofty aspirations in creating the project. “My main aim is to not get too bored myself,” she says, via email (she rests her voice between shows). “I feel that if I’m curious and excited there is a bigger chance the listener might be. At the end of the day, it’s more about the feeling of an adventure rather than the details of the adventure itself. So in short: whatever turns you on.”That said, the change from a passive to an active listening experience is a radical one. “The apps are mostly made for headphones and a private experience,” says Björk. “What you see live is only us playing our version. You can play a totally different versions at home.” If you’ve no desire to do that, Merry is at pains to point out that Biophilia will still exist as a CD or download – and indeed only those with access to an iPad or iPhone can experience the apps. So far, the project has been too expensive to adapt to other handheld devices.At the show venue, the journalists are being given a tour of the new instruments that have been specially built for the project. One contraption looks like a giant silver mangle decorated with two massive ear trumpets, but is called a sharpsichord. There are two giant pendulums, which have strings plucked by a plectrum as they swing past. There’s a Tesla coil that descends in a cage from the ceiling; two prongs that emit purple flashes of lightning – and, with it, sound. There’s also a celeste, which has been gutted and fitted with the pipes of a gamelan. These fantastical devices are controlled by an iPad. Above the performance space is a circle of screens that show the apps for each new song; moving tectonic plates for Mutual Core; invading pink cells for Virus (“Like a virus needs a body, as soft tissue feeds on blood, I will find you, the urge is here,” go the lyrics).It must be one of the most complex pop shows ever, and according to Björk, it could have been more elaborate still. “Manchester is the prototype,” she says. “We had to leave many things out because of budget and time and stuff.” As it is, the whole project has taken three years and cost so much money she told Rolling Stone that “we’ll be lucky if we earn zero”.Yet, on purely artistic grounds, it’s hard to regard Biophilia as anything other than a success. As the lights go down, Björk’s childhood hero David Attenborough’s unmistakable voice, recorded just that day, fills the room to explain the songs. The show includes Björk’s favourite footage from BBC nature documentaries playing when she performs older songs. Hidden Place is illustrated by a beautiful but disturbing clip from Attenborough’s Life – of a seal’s corpse being devoured by psychedelically coloured worms and starfish. All 10 tracks from the new album are played. Such an onslaught of new material would try the patience of most audiences, but this one is rapt – no one even goes to the bar.Much of this is due to the sensory bombardment of music, images and costumes – not least Björk’s bright orange wig, which a comment on the Guardian’s review says makes her resemble a tamarin monkey. Her decision to ban cameras and other recording equipment from the venue has also played its part. “I feel since everyone has made such an effort to be there all together at the same place and time, we might as well go for it,” she says. “It can be hard to play music for people who are filming you for Twitter or whatever. It’s like going to a restaurant with someone who keeps texting their friends while you are speaking to them – hard to concentrate.”Then there’s Björk’s extraordinary voice, once compared by Bono to an icepick, and still imperishable at 45. “My voice has changed,” she says. “I thought it had gone a little deeper. On my last tour I got nodules [on the vocal cords] but managed to stretch it out with three years of vocal work, so I’m back to my old range now.” Björk “adores” a whole range of singers: “Chaka Khan, Beyoncé, Antony” – the latter being Antony Hegarty, a former collaborator who is here in the audience – though her “favourite singer alive today” is Azerbaijani devotional singer Alim Qasimov. She is accompanied by a 24-piece Icelandic choir she discovered on YouTube.After spending so long meticulously making Biophilia, performance feels liberating. Live shows and making an album are, says Björk, “extreme opposites. After noodling for ever on an album, gathering together the best moments, it’s refreshing and healthy to have to do it all in one whack. Then you sort of have to take real life into it and accept that you only have whatever you have that day – and that is enough.”Right now Björk is at the intersection of music, nature and technology, exploring how the three together might help build a more sustainable future. But is it still pop? “Yes, absolutely!” Björk claims. (Dibben, who wrote a book about Björk, says the singer is wary of having her music hived off into the rarified world of the academy.) “Or perhaps I would rather call it folk music – folk music of our time. I was never too much into Warhol and the whole pop thing – it felt a bit superficial. I prefer folk. People. Humans.”• Bjork plays Manchester international festival on 7, 10, 13 and 16 July. Biophilia is released in September<br /> <a href=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” _mce_href=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” rel=”nofollow”><br /> <img src=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” _mce_src=”http://oas.guardian.co.uk/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.ads/guardianapis.com/music/oas.html/@Bottom” alt=”Ads by The Guardian”></img><br /> </a><br />guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogBjörk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’Related posts:who is itExclusive Radiohead artwork plus The King of Limbs album streamCanterbury Cathederal
- Tags:
- Music
- London
- wildlife
- lyrics
- social objects
- Features
- Eyjafjallajoekull
- musical
- life
- The Guardian
- Article
- culture
- Pop and rock
- Amazon
- Apps
- Comment & features
- G2
- Manchester
- Biology
- Festivals
- complexity
- ipad2
- Alex Needham
- Antony Hegarty
- Appazines
- Biophilia
- biophilia hypothesis
- Bjork
- David Attenborough
- handmade instruments
- instrument
- Manchester international festival
- musicologist
- nature music
- Simon Reynolds
- world plants
July 5 2011, 8:45am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/29/why-marx-was-right-by-terry-eagleton-%E2%80%93-review
Is Marx more diminished than enhanced by Terry Eagleton’s defence of him?This article titled “Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton – review” was written by Tristram Hunt, for The Observer on Sunday 29th May 2011 01.30 UTCAs the IMF dishes out its medicine in Lisbon, Dublin and Athens, and the limitations of neo-liberalism become more apparent, the moment is surely right for a compelling account of Karl Marx’s relevance to the modern world. And in campus conferences, continuing sales of Das Kapital, and even the words of Pope Benedict XVI (moved to praise Marx’s “great analytical skill”), there is a growing appreciation for Marx’s predictions of globalisation, rampant capitalism, and the instability of international finance. As the Times put in the middle of the 2008 crash: “He’s back!”But Marx also remains the target of any number of lazy slurs. The easiest way to kill off debate about Marxism is to jump straight to the Stalin show-trials, Soviet gulags, and Khmer Rouge Year Zero. The philosophical beliefs of a mid-19th-century denizen of the British Museum are all too quickly elided with the most terrible atrocities of the 20th century as an all-purpose intellectual get-out card.So Terry Eagleton – literary critic, liberal-baiter, Marxist man of letters – has set himself the task of explaining why Marx was right. “What if all the most familiar objections to Marx’s works are mistaken?” he begins. His plan is to take on “10 of the most standard criticisms of Marx and try to refute them one by one”. He does so, he believes, at a time when capitalism is uniquely in crisis: “the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe, and can be seen instead as the historically rather recent phenomenon it is”. Or as Friedrich Engels used to put it: “This time there’ll be a dies irae such as has never been seen before… all the propertied classes in the soup, complete bankruptcy of the bourgeoisie, war and profligacy to the nth degree.”But for any admirer of Eagleton or Marx, the book is a disappointment. There is none of the logical precision, winning prose or intellectual ambition displayed most recently in Eagleton’s Yale lectures on faith. Part of the problem is the structure. This is a work of intellectual rebuttal, as chapter by chapter Eagleton takes on a century of misreading Marx. All of which means he is fighting on an enemy territory of dreary objections. For example, there’s a long attempt to justify the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the Leninist aftermath, as well as the East German system of childcare – not something, I imagine, Marx and Engels themselves would have bothered with.The consequence of such deviations is that there is little sense of the anger, brio and bravado of Marx and Engels; none of the humour, irony and creativity so central to the Marxian heritage. Instead, this book reads like a rapidly crammed set of notes for an American midwest college course. There’s an array of lecture-hall style jokes and fairly worthless hyperbole. In no credible sense do one in three children in Britain today “live below the breadline”.Thankfully, amid the banalities, there lurk some wonderful passages. Eagleton is right to stress the centrality of democracy to Marxian communism, as well as explain so successfully the nature of free will within Marx and Engels’s account of history. This is all very much the humanist, Paris Marx of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.Eagleton also stresses the modernity of Marx’s thinking and how, for example, he saw the nature of social class shifting with the progress of capitalism. “As long ago as the mid-19th century, he is to be found writing of the ‘constantly growing number of the middle-classes’ … men and women ‘situated midway between the workers on the one side and the capitalists on the other.’” This is a long way from the hackneyed dichotomy of proletarian and bourgeois.There is also a touch of the old Eagleton when he deploys Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure to explore the interaction of culture and materialism. When it comes to Jude Fawley, we need to appreciate that “Oxford University is the ‘superstructure’ to Jericho’s ‘base’.”However, Eagleton’s touch is less sure when it comes to the human condition under communism. In trying to rebut claims of utopianism, he goes too far in suggesting that “Marxism holds out no promise of human perfection” and “envy, aggression, domination, possessiveness and competition would still exist”. Engels, though, was clear that the ascent from socialism to communism entailed a metaphysical change. Under the leadership of the proletariat, humanity achieves true freedom liberated from its animal instincts: “It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”Here was the quasi-theological endpoint of Marxism and it would have been more rewarding if Eagleton, such an intriguing catholic thinker, had expanded upon the Judaeo-Christian assumptions underpinning much of Marx’s heaven on earth. But perhaps that was too close to the bone.In the end, this is another worthy volume in the rarely scintillating Marx-Engels interpretative canon. Useful for undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame, but not for anyone else interested in the drama, insights, and majesty of Marxism. Marx might well have been right about an awful lot, but sadly Eagleton fails to make you care very much. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogWhy Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton – reviewRelated posts:Karl Marx, part 6: The economics of powerThe Wizard of Oz – reviewThe latest word on globalisation
- Tags:
- bankruptcy
- politics
- General
- Social
- socialism
- Class
- revolution
- Article
- culture
- The Observer
- Reviews
- The New Review
- democracy
- Books
- Philosophy
- capitalism
- modernity
- Economic
- international finance
- worker
- Communism
- Soviet
- Stalin
- karl marx
- analytical skill
- das kapital
- khmer rouge
- neo liberalism
- philosophical beliefs
- pope benedict
- Terry Eagleton
- Tristram Hunt
May 29 2011, 11:40am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh – Series 32, episode 5
This Matthew Graham episode of Doctor Who set in a grimy industrial future is classy, stylish and nicely unsettlingThis article titled “Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh – Series 32, episode 5″ was written by Dan Martin, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 21st May 2011 18.30 UTCSPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching the new series of Doctor Who. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen episode five – The Doctor’s WifeDan Martin’s episode four blogNeil Gaiman live Q&A “You poured in your personalities; emotions, traits, memories, secrets, everything. You gave them your lives. Human lives are amazing. Are you surprised they walked off with them?”It’s that time of year again. We’ve been to Planet America, we’ve been on a dodgy pirate ship, we’ve been through the plughole at the bottom of the universe. And now, to complete Doctor Who’s checklist of formats, it’s time for the one in the grimy industrial future. So yes, this is familiar ground in many ways, but whether it is Matthew Graham’s writing, or simply the swagger with which this series has been carrying itself, it is particularly satisfying. This is what last year’s disappointing Silurian story should have been.True, with so much buildup and exposition, it ends up feeling like not very much actually happens by the time groundwork is laid. There’s also a debate to be had as to whether, since it doesn’t feature any aliens, it qualifies as a proper Doctor Who at all. But on the parameters it sets itself, this is classy, stylish and nicely unsettling.Graham creates a believable world and workplace in that converted monastery, which you buy into from the opening credits. Raquel Cassidy’s deliciously brittle Cleaves, Marshall Lancaster’s Manc everydude Buzzer, and Sarah Smart’s mouse-that-roared Jennifer are well-drawn. And most promisingly of all, while second parts tend to look limp compared to first episodes, here’s a story where it’s the other way round. “I’ve got to get to that cockerel before all hell breaks loose! I never thought I’d have to say that again.”The episode opens with an extended clip of Supermassive Black Hole by Muse, and as Matt Bellamy and co’s sex-funk-rock-jam swaggers in, we’re straight back into Tardis housekeeping. These extended soapy sequences could have turned out, well, soapy – but seeing them play darts, listening to prog rock as the Doctor continues to surreptitiously scan Amy’s uterus just serves to lend credibility to what on paper is a ridiculous scenario. They may be having a laugh, but we also get a sense that the arc is really starting to go somewhere. Fear FactorThe Gangers are, at heart, a more psychologically disturbing creation, and The Rebel Flesh’s questions of identity and spirit and “who is the real monster?” are bound to invite comparisons with Battlestar Galactica and the Cylons. But when they do bring out the sparing CGI, it reaffirms the renewed horror quotient we’re getting this year. Mysteries and QuestionsThe obvious assumption here is that with a Ganger Doctor now running round, we have an easy and obvious get-out for the Doctor’s death. But wouldn’t that be too easy and obvious? And of course it assumes that both Doctors are going to survive next week’s episode. Elsewhere The Doctor refers to The Flesh as “primitive technology.” So what else does he know about it and what will it be turning into?Meanwhile, something intriguing has come to our attention. Deep within the bowels of the BBC website you’ll find this video of the Doctor in some distress. Its title, Analysis Lessons, is an anagram of Lonely Assassins. And Lonely Assassins was of course a name for … the Weeping Angels. Could they be this year’s real Big Bad? Time-space Debris• The Doctor chastises Amy for the suggestion they have arrived by accident. Is that a reference to last week and the Tardis taking him “where he needs to go,” or is he up to something.• Rory: “My Mum’s a huge fan of Dusty Springfield.”Doctor: “Who isn’t?”Actually, I’m not sure that I have ever met anyone who doesn’t like Dusty Springfield either.• Eyepatch Lady is back after her week off. Are we all agreed she’s the midwife?• Are we to assume that Jennifer is going to lead Rory down the path of temptation? He wouldn’t, would he?• I’m not sure how I feel about The Doctor’s “northern” jibes. Was I the only one who felt a little offended?• Matthew Graham’s only other contribution to Doctor Who is the best-forgotten Fear Her from 2006. Legend has it – although we don’t know whether it is true or not – that when Stephen Fry’s script finally proved unworkable, Russell T Davies asked Graham to come up with something in two weeks and with buttons for a budget. Next week!Something rather major happens. That’s all you’re getting. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogDoctor Who: The Rebel Flesh – Series 32, episode 5Related posts:Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who story to be novelised
- Tags:
- General
- television
- Article
- culture
- Blogposts
- Fiction
- Television & radio
- TV and radio blog
- Doctor Who
- Fantasy
- Science fiction
- Amy
- believable world
- Dan Martin
- flesh
- monastery
- neil gaiman
- pirate ship
- Sarah Smart
- The new Who
May 21 2011, 4:56pm | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Write me a hit by teatime: the world of professional songwriters
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/18/write-hit-songwriters
Songwriters work in the shadows, knocking out tunes to order – sometimes in a matter of hours. The songwriters who work for Jay-Z, Adele, Florence and more tell Alexis Petridis how they do it – and why times are getting tough
This article titled “Write me a hit by teatime: the world of professional songwriters” was written by Alexis Petridis, for The Guardian on Tuesday 17th May 2011 20.30 UTC Two years ago, Al “Shux” Shuckburgh found himself catapulted straight into songwriting’s premier league. The Londoner hadn’t expected much from the track he’d produced and co-written at a songwriting session with American tunesmiths Angela Hunte and Jane’t Sewell-Ulepic, about how homesick the pair were for Brooklyn. Later, Hunte sent it to Jay-Z‘s label, Roc Nation, but received a frosty response. Then EMI’s head of publishing overheard it at a barbecue, and decided it would be perfect for Jay-Z. The following night, the rapper wrote his own lyrics, recorded them, and then excitedly told Alicia Keys he had “a song that was going to be the anthem of New York” and asked her to perform on it. Back in London, Shuckburgh wasn’t even allowed to hear the track. “Well,” he says, “I could have heard it if I’d flown out to New York. But they were being so careful about anything leaking. At that point, I didn’t really have a track record, they didn’t really know who I was, so they didn’t know if they could trust me.” In fact, the first time he heard Empire State of Mind was when The Blueprint 3, the Jay-Z album it appeared on, finally leaked online. “It was very weird. I remember listening to it in my studio thinking, ‘Is this for real?’” Shuckburgh sounds more sanguine than might be expected for a man who was actively prevented from hearing a song he co-wrote. Perhaps the subsequent effect of Empire State of Mind on his bank balance and status has eased his pain. The track shifted 4m legal downloads and spent five weeks at No 1 in America, making it Jay-Z’s first US chart-topper. “It’s not like everything’s easy now,” says Shuckburgh. “But everything’s easier.“ Maybe that’s just how professional songwriters tend to be: whatever other attributes the job may require, a giant ego and a sense of preciousness aren’t really among them. This may be why songwriting tends to attract so many former performers, who have either tired of the limelight or watched it fade, and are now making some pragmatic decisions about their futures. Among the more improbable credits on recent hits were the three songs on Beyoncé‘s last album co-written by Ian Dench, formerly the guitarist of 1990s British indie dance band EMF (big hit: Unbelievable); then there’s She-Wolf by Shakira, partly the work of Sam Endicott, moonlighting from his day job as frontman of New York-based the Bravery. The washing machine technique “It’s the kind of job where the best thing you can be is invisible,” says Shuckburgh’s former mentor Eg White. “The very idea of a professional songwriter gets in the way of the singer.” White should know. He began his career as a performer – in boyband Brother Beyond and then in the critically acclaimed Eg and Alice, makers of glossy adult pop. He then went on to become one of Britain’s most successful songwriters for hire. He’s been responsible, or at least partly responsible, for Will Young‘s Leave Right Now, James Morrison‘s You Give Me Something, Adele‘s Chasing Pavements and Florence and the Machine‘s Hurricane Drunk. Tomorrow, as they have been doing for half a century, the Ivor Novello awards will turn a brief spotlight on to the shadowy world of professional songwriters, those people who ply their trade in studios and writing sessions, half-hidden from view, despite being the backbone of the music industry. Up for songwriting awards this year are the composers of such inescapable hits as Tinie Tempah‘s Pass Out, Katy B‘s Katy on a Mission and Plan B‘s She Said. As pop and R&B dominate the charts again (indie bands tend to write their own songs, or if they don’t, they keep quiet about it), the songwriter-for-hire is back in demand. At the top of the UK singles chart sits Bruno Mars, whose songwriting credits include Travie McCoy’s Billionaire and Cee-Lo Green‘s Fuck You. These songwriters do something that seems to go against every romantic notion we have about artistic creativity: they write songs to order (and apparently the current craving among UK labels is for songs that sound like Mumford and Sons, or Florence and the Machine). White, himself the winner of two Ivor Novello awards, is prevailed upon to meet an artist, form a bond, and come up with something chart-topping in the space of a day. “Sometimes less,” he says cheerfully. “Sometimes I get two hours. Someone comes over at three, we have a cup of tea, chew the cud for a bit, go: ‘All right, shall we write a song?’ And by six, they’ve gone home and we’ve fucking done it. Chasing Pavements, that took two or three hours.” Enormously affable, White seems to love every aspect of the process, even being forced to make friends with artists he’s never met before. “You immediately stop observing the niceties of gentle human contact between strangers,” he says, adding that he subscribes to “the washing machine theory” of songwriting. “I tend to play a few records and discuss them: what we need is the beat from that one, the fragility of that one. We try to keep it open, but we talk about the ways it might have precedents in different genres, smash them all together and get something different. If you just put one thing in the washing machine, you’re going to get one thing out; but if you put two or three colours in, who knows what colour’s going to emerge? Pop music is built out of pop music.” This is not an approach adopted by everyone. Jim Duguid, co-author of five songs on the debut album by Paolo Nutini, says: “Some record companies will give you a list of five songs and say, ‘We want something like this.’ But that’s like someone turning up with a BMW, giving you a load of parts and saying, ‘Can you build something like that for me?’ It’ll kind of look like it, but it won’t be right.” Duguid, who was drummer and songwriter with the old band Speedway – of which Nutini was a huge fan, doesn’t care much for knocking out a collaboration in a couple of hours, either. “I try to avoid that like the plague. A lot of industry people think, ‘Yeah, we’ll throw you together and you’ll write a hit in a day.’ But we did that in Speedway and it’s not the way the best music comes out. I like more of a social occasion, maybe three days of chatting and listening to music, then getting a couple of ideas together that reflect that.” The one thing professional songwriters seem to agree on is that times are getting tough. “Having had some success,” says Duguid, “it still shocks me how little money there is in it. I’m lucky in the sense that Paolo is one of the few artists who still sells physical CDs, and there’s money in that. With downloads – at one pence a download between three songwriters – you’ve got to be shifting a heck of a lot of records. The real money’s in getting your song on an advert or on television, but that’s getting harder, because everyone’s trying to do it.” A glorious bloody nose It’s a situation that is changing the nature of recording, says White: “Nobody wants album tracks any more, they just want singles. Before, you weren’t just chasing the money and the radio play – you could do something you really wanted to do, and had thus far been thwarted. Nobody wants the beautiful slow song that ends up as track 11 on an album but that everyone who buys the album will end up loving best of all. It’s down to iPod playing, cherry-picking, downloading. Fifteen years ago, you would hope that albums would outsell singles two to one. Now, I hear stories about Taio Cruz selling 13m downloads and 300,000 albums. And it’s not just him. Katy Perry: massive singles sales, small album sales. For publishing companies, that’s not a disaster – 13m singles is fantastic. But it’s a disaster for record companies and it’s a human disaster. The album is no longer the way people define themselves: there isn’t enough meat in there.” For a moment, White’s ebullience seems to desert him. Then he mentions Adele’s LP 21, which has just spent its 15th week at No 1 in the UK, and suddenly he perks up: he has a song on that. “Oh, that’s a glorious bloody nose to the music industry. Short-termist arses. Start fucking making music with your hearts! The record industry was saying no one was buying records any more, and then someone makes a very stoical, honest, beautiful record and people are buying it in shedloads. Because it’s nutritious.” Anyway, he says, album tracks or not, it’s a great job. “I’ve had Matt Cardle in today. We’ve both been making a fuck of a lot of noise, turning the guitars up really loud.” Matt Cardle off The X-Factor? Loud guitars? Noise? Really? “Yeah,” White chuckles. “Songwriting really is great fun.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogWrite me a hit by teatime: the world of professional songwriters
Related posts:Can you learn how to write lyrics? The Songwriters Circle The demise of professional photographers
- Tags:
- Music
- UK
- song
- internet
- youtube
- online
- guitarist
- singer
- songwriter
- arts
- songwriting
- The Guardian
- Article
- culture
- Pop and rock
- Awards and prizes
- G2
- Britain
- performer
- Publishing
- collaboration
- Music industry
- Studio
- tune
- mumford
- Adele
- Alexis Petridis
- Beyoncé
- blueprint
- co-author
- Jay-Z
- mentor
- Paolo Nutini
- professional songwriters
- Shakira
May 18 2011, 4:56am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Bob Dylan posts web message about China shows
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/14/bob-dylan-posts-web-message-about-china-shows
Bob Dylan on his own websites claims the authorities did not censor his setlist for the recent China concerts.
This article titled “Bob Dylan posts web message about China shows” was written by Caspar Llewellyn Smith, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 13th May 2011 18.12 UTC Confounding seasoned Bob Dylan fans, the 69-year old song and dance man has posted a message on his official website addressing the controversy surrounding his concerts in China in April. Dylan has never previously communicated with his followers in this way, but he has now refuted the suggestion that he allowed the Chinese government to censor his setlist. Several critics – if not all – questioned his motivation, including New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote that Dylan “sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left.” In response to such accusations, Dylan wrote on bobdylan.com that the Chinese authorities had not refused him permission to play there, and while “according to Mojo magazine the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats”, there were not many empty seats and this was not true. “If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came,” he continued. Dylan added: “The Chinese press did tout me as a 60s icon, however, and posted my picture all over the place with Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The concert attendees probably wouldn’t have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last four or five records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn’t have known my early songs anyway.” In respect to the idea that the Chinese government vetted the setlist, Dylan wrote: “We played all the songs that we intended to play”. The singer turns 70 on 24 May, and with an oblique reference to the happy occasion, the sometime author and radio show host concluded this novel missive: “Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogBob Dylan posts web message about China shows
Related posts:MoDo on Bob Dylan and protest The day I (nearly) met Bob Dylan China considers relaxing one-child policy
- Tags:
- Music
- andyroberts
- folk
- internet
- Bob Dylan
- radio
- politics
- Folk Music
- bobdylan
- Chinese
- Websites
- Magazine
- seat
- ICT
- China
- The Guardian
- News
- Article
- culture
- Censorship
- Pop and rock
- Books
- New York Times
- controversy
- Caspar Llewellyn Smith
- maureen dowd
- Communist
- USA
- allen ginsberg
- che guevara
- chinese authorities
- chinese government
- chinese press
- columnist
- jack kerouac
- joan baez
- permission
- question
- response
- web message
May 14 2011, 3:20pm | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Cannes film festival review: Midnight in Paris
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/13/cannes-film-festival-review-midnight-in-paris
Cannes Film Festival opens with a Woody Allen love letter to Paris, the French capital, a shallow examination of nostalgia with endearing performances from Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard
This article titled “Cannes film festival review: Midnight in Paris” was written by Peter Bradshaw, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 11th May 2011 12.45 UTC From this movie’s opening postcard-view montage of Paris — familiar in a number of ways — it’s clear the French capital is to be added to the list of cities that Woody Allen adores, and idolises all out of proportion. His new movie was an amiable amuse-bouche to begin the Cannes festival feast: sporadically entertaining, light, shallow, self-plagiarising. It’s a romantic fantasy adventure to be compared with the vastly superior ideas of his comparative youth, such as the 1985 movie The Purple Rose Of Cairo, in which it was possible to step through the silver screen, or his 1977 short story The Kugelmass Episode, in which it was possible to enter the world of Madame Bovary. And it’s notable for a cameo from Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, playing a deadpan, tolerant museum guide: though it’s a measure of how muted Woody Allen movies are now that she is not obviously outclassed by everyone else. The camera adds 10 pounds, they say, but this rule does not apply to the fashionably thin Carla Bruni. I wonder how Carla’s sister Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi would have played the part. Once again, Allen finds himself in a luxury-tourist European destination, whose interiors he somehow manages to bathe in a soft golden-yellowy glow, like that which might suffuse the lobby of a five-star hotel. As so often, the film features a lead character who should really be played by the director as a younger man, though perhaps Allen intends his movie’s main theme — the fallacy of nostalgia — to be targeted at those critics who worry that his films aren’t any good any more. Owen Wilson is Gil, a wealthy Hollywood scriptwriting hack who still yearns to write a great literary novel; a visit to Paris with his testy fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her grouchy parents triggers a mid-career crisis. Irritated by the banality of contemporary culture, and electrified by his own idealised view of bygone bohemian Paris, Gil takes a midnight stroll, and gets picked up by mysterious revellers in a vintage automobile. He finds himself whisked back in time, hanging out with F Scott Fitzgerald (a nice performance from Britain’s Tom Hiddleston) not to mention Dalí, Hemingway, Picasso, Buñuel, TS Eliot and many, many more. These great figures from the past — Gil doesn’t meet any non-legends in his time-travel — cause him to fluster and squeak with excitement, though Wilson, fundamentally laid-back as ever, doesn’t give it the comedy-astonishment that Woody himself would undoubtedly have delivered. Gil’s ingenuous enthusiasm entrances Picasso’s beautiful mistress Adriana, played with conviction and finesse by Marion Cotillard: they fall in love, but it appears that Adriana is just as discontented with her time period as Gil is with his. It could be that Allen is satirising not just necrophiliac pining for the past but a kind of “history tourism” and “culture tourism” to go with the literal tourism described in the movie. Or it could just be that Allen is hopelessly in thrall to precisely this glib tourist view of Europe. Well, he’s brought back a negligible, pleasant piece of work from his city break. The view of Owen Wilson strolling, incidentally, shows a distinctive loping gait: like Robert Mitchum or John Wayne, he might have one of the most notable walks in Hollywood.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogCannes film festival review: Midnight in Paris
Related posts:Arts venues band together to fund new festival of finest radical theatre South of Pigalle Paris Breaks Competition Why is Samaritaine in Paris still closed?
- Tags:
- Film
- paris
- Europe
- french
- city
- Article
- culture
- Cairo
- Reviews
- Peter Bradshaw
- sarkozy
- opening
- Euro
- guardian news
- European
- F Scott Fitzgerald
- Cannes 2011
- cannes festival
- Cannes film festival
- Carla Bruni-Sarkozy
- french capital
- letter to paris
- madame bovary
- midnight in paris
- Owen Wilson
- romantic fantasy
- scriptwriting
- Woody Allen
- woody allen movies
May 13 2011, 3:35am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
An insider’s guide to book fairs
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/03/an-insiders-guide-to-book-fairs
If you’re not in the trade, book fairs can be confusing occasions. These are some useful pointers for novice buyers attending book fairs in the UK and abroad.
This article titled “An insider’s guide to book fairs” was written by Rick Gekoski, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 09.26 UTC Just recently home after five days displaying our stock at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, and I’m resting. You need to: it’s a peculiarly exhausting business, exacerbated by the fact that I had flown in from Sydney via London, and kept waking at 2am longing for bacon and eggs. For the first three mornings I eventually got up at 6am and went out to dinner. Worked for me. Great steaks in New York.
We do three fairs a year – California, New York, and London – and none of them are much fun. In the olden days (I feel an old fart moment coming on) fairs had a real buzz about them. During set-up (when dealers unpack their trunks and shelve the books) other dealers would crowd round, checking out each book as it emerged, picking up the occasional bargain. Set-up was why you were there, to see if you could buy something before the public got a look-in, and sell enough in that hectic first few hours to cover your costs.
No more. Things are tighter and tougher, we’ve seen each other’s books in catalogues and online, and there is no excitement during the two-day (too long!) set-up period. We sold one book for $5,000 (£3,000), which is better than five for $4,000, and pretty much in line with what I would have expected. The key to surviving a fair emotionally is to keep expectations realistic, which means low. I set our bottom line hope at sales of $40,000, though whether such a sum is profitable depends on what you have sold. Sometimes we have books on consignment at 20% to us, at others we may be selling something we own – better yet, have owned for ages – and get an entirely positive cashflow boost.
I need one. I have, alas, taken my eye off the ball this last year, with reading for the Man Booker International prize, and the effect on the business has been predictable. Even my bank manager is starting to twitch an eyelid. So it was essential both to get some money in from New York, and to generate a project or two with clients or other dealers: find a collection to buy, an archive to sell, a line to pursue.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, and it may be hard for you to envisage what I’m talking about. People in specialist trades often do this, and lose their audience in a welter of trade jargon and inappropriate assumption that one will be understood. So:
What is an antiquarian book fair, anyway? It is an arena for members of the rare book trade publicly to offer their stock, and for collectors to peruse it.
That sounds a little dull, doesn’t it? OK, then. Dealers sit in their little, lit booths, displaying their wares like girls in Amsterdam windows. A few potential customers drift by. Sometimes money is exchanged. Some pleasure is had. Usually nobody gets hurt, but many wives are not told of the transaction. Or husbands.
What sort of things might one see at the fair? Enticing ones, naturally. Hand-coloured antique maps, letters by Freud or Dickens, leatherbound sets of Jane Austen, rare books on travel, nature or military history, books illustrated by Arthur Rackham or Beatrix Potter, first editions by most of the greatest writers.
Why are first editions valuable? They’re not. Most first editions are worthless, because most books are first editions – that is, not worth reprinting. A tiny number of these first editions are desirable because they are by collected authors, and were printed in small numbers.
How can you tell if a book is a first edition? Generally, it can be assumed unless there is any evidence to the contrary.
Why are some authors collected? Most, because they deserve to be: John Milton, Jonathan Swift, John Keats, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, James Joyce, Graham Greene. Some, because whatever their deserts, people love them: Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, JK Rowling.
Does the condition of the book matter very much? Hugely, as with all collectibles. If a book looks fresh and near-as-damn-it new, it will fetch many times more than a tired and worn copy. With 20th-century books, the presence of the original dust wrapper is crucial. A first edition of Brighton Rock (1938) without the dust wrapper is worth, say, £2,000. With it? I just paid £80,000 for one, on behalf of a customer.
Isn’t that silly? Very. But the argument is that a book without its dust wrapper is as incomplete as a Chippendale chair without its legs.
Do you think that’s a fair argument? No.
How does one know if the asking price is right? There is no “right” price for a rare book, though there are certainly wrong ones. If you buy from a reputable member of the trade, and you are happy with your purchase, then the price is probably right enough.
But isn’t a book worth whatever it fetches? Certainly not. If I convince a muddle-headed plutocrat to pay me £1m for a common book, it doesn’t mean it is worth it. It means I am a crook, and he is an idiot. Books can be under- or over-priced. That’s part of the fun: trying to locate the former and avoid the latter.
When I find what I want, should I ask for a discount? Yes.
Will I get one? These days, for sure.
What advice could you give to a new collector? Only buy what you like. Always buy the best copy you can afford. Buy fewer books, at a higher level. Buy from someone you have reason to trust. Spend 30% more than you can afford.
What about buying and selling at auction? Auctioneers claim that (1) you get the best bargains if you buy at auction, and (2) you can get the best prices if you sell at auction. Both can’t be true, though it is amazing how many people believe it. But about 90% of the books at auction are sold to members of the book trade. It’s best to know what you are doing.
Can’t you get a better deal on ebay, and cut out the middleman? Every now and again you might. You are more likely to end up roasted with an apple in your mouth.
How do you explain the allure of rare books? You either feel it or you don’t. It’s a matter of taste, and inclination, and, like love, doesn’t need to be justified. I think holding a copy of the first edition of Ulysses, or Great Expectations, is thrilling, especially with a presentation inscription by the author. If you don’t feel similarly, you haven’t got the makings of a book collector. In fact, I don’t even think I would like you.
Final note: we ended up with takings of $60,000, which was not bad, and buying three or four things at reasonable prices, that will make one or two of our collectors very happy. I am now eating breakfast in the morning, and dinner in the evening. Maybe I will sleep through the night one day soon.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAn insider’s guide to book fairs
Related posts:The New Book Schmap guide to London The Kindle and the Tube
- Tags:
- London
- UK
- General
- Travel
- California
- crowd
- Amsterdam
- Article
- culture
- International
- Blogposts
- Books
- Books blog
- Booksellers
- breakfast
- Peru
- New York
- Sydney
- specialist
- Agatha Christie
- Antiquarian
- antiquarian book
- Arthur Rackham
- bacon and eggs
- Beatrix Potter
- book fairs
- Booker
- Brighton
- cashflow
- catalogue
- catalogues
- Charles Dickens
- condition
- dinner
- Freud
- Graham Greene
- Hand-coloured
- Ian Fleming
- James Joyce
- Jane Austen
- John Keats
- John Milton
- Jonathan Swift
- leatherbound
- Mark Twain
- occasions
- Rick Gekoski
- Rick Gekoski: Finger on the page
- Rowling
- transaction
- trunks
May 3 2011, 5:25am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
The wacky world of May Day
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/30/the-wacky-world-of-may-day
From a horned Justin Lee Collins, to a big biscuit tin with the face of a vampire cat, Stuart Goodwin rounds up some of the best bets for a bonkers bank holiday and May Day.
This article titled “The wacky world of May Day” was written by Stuart Goodwin, for The Guardian on Friday 29th April 2011 23.05 UTC Another long weekend – yay. But also boo. Because with the big wedding out of the way (my auntie Doreen’s, it’s her third), you might be struggling to think of things to do. But worry no longer! May Day is a treasure trove of, how shall we put it, eccentric British days out. Basically Christmas for grown men who like lobbing around with bells on their toes, your May Day weekend starts here … Jack-In-The-Green Festival Hastings, Sat to Mon Traditional May Days have tended to go one of two ways; fire or fauna. For fire go to Edinburgh. But in Hastings it’s all about the shrubbery. Essentially a garland competition that got out of hand, where folk used to sport tasteful daisy chains, some poor soul now has to spend the bank holiday drowning in leaves, roaming the streets like a panto triffid. Thankfully, some nice morris men are on hand to make him feel less of a prick. Cerne Abbas May Day Dorset, Sun For fans of impressively chalked tips, there’s two options this week – but if you can’t be doing with the snooker in Sheffield, join the Wessex Morris Men at dawn on this hillside near Dorchester, home to the Cerne Abbas Giant and his 40ft alabaster cock and balls. There’ll be singing, there’ll be dancing, there’ll be dew. Also present will be the Dorset Ooser, a masked morris man that’s basically a startled, oversize Justin Lee Collins with horns. Dorset Knob-Throwing Contest Cattistock, Sun More knob-based fun in Dorset, albeit of the non-phallic variety. A “hard, dry, savoury biscuit”, the Dorset Knob is ideal for throwing about. Current record: 26.1m. Not only will the Knob appear in the main event, it will also star in a Knob & Spoon race, Knob Darts and a Hunt The Knob competition. Thomas Hardy was apparently partial, although it’s unclear if he was ever a proud owner of a commemorative “I’ve thrown a Dorset Knob” carrier bag. Stilton cheese rollingCambridgeshire, Mon Note: not the event at the sharply-inclined Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, scene of many broken limbs and jolted tail-bones.That’s now cancelled, due to danger, so head to Cambridgeshire, where teams coax a large wheel of cheese along a disappointingly flat high street. Risk of paralysis: minimal. Meh. Rochester Sweeps festival Kent, Sat to Mon Three days long this, but the main event is a flashmob of gleeful Dick Van Dyke wannabes, evoking a time where men were men and children could reasonably be asked to scrape toxic dust off brickwork that nobody ever sees. Eliza Carthy features, so we’ll tread carefully for fear of having to give her two pages of a future issue where she tells us off for making light of dying artforms. Padstow ‘Obby ‘OssCornwall, Mon Apparently a stallion, but really an oversize biscuit tin with the face of a vampire cat – the ‘Obby ‘Oss plucks women from the crowd, drags them ‘neath his cloak and daubs them with coal, all in the name of aiding fertility. Yep, that old chestnut. Evidence from last year showed the ‘Oss to be sporting a smart pair of white old-school Nikes.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogThe wacky world of May Day
Related posts:Millions will watch as Boat Race is re-branded as ‘world-class event’ The world wide web is shrinking Online CoP meets face to face
- Tags:
- General
- Travel
- cornwall
- Day
- may
- Features
- weekend
- vampire
- Bank Holiday
- The Guardian
- Article
- culture
- May Day
- Wessex
- The Guide
- bonkers
- Cambridgeshire
- cerne abbas giant
- daisy chains
- Dorchester
- dorset
- Hastings
- Kent
- morris men
- Oss
- Padstow
- Rochester
- stallion
- Stilton
- Stuart Goodwin
- The guidelines
- vampire cat
- wacky world
April 30 2011, 6:50am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
This week’s new exhibitions
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/30/this-weeks-new-exhibitions
Ian Hamilton Finlay | Rob Churm | Young British Art | John Salt | Amanda Ross-Ho | The Count Of Monte Cristo | Norfolk & Norwich Festival | Kit Craig & Andrew Lim
This article titled “This week’s new exhibitions” was written by Robert Clark & Skye Sherwin, for The Guardian on Friday 29th April 2011 23.06 UTC Ian Hamilton Finlay, London Swamped by a tide of fleeting tweets, it feels good to be reminded of the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, the Scottish artist and poet who made language a thing of concrete beauty. Finlay was obsessed by classical culture and ideals but not in the fusty academic sense. He mined the epics for pressing themes like sex, death and violent revolution. “Zimmerat-haunting wood nymph”, reads one of his works in leafy green neon. To specialists in military history, a zimmerat’s a protective coating used on second world war-era tanks, but for Finlay it becomes a magnet for the hotties of Greek myth. A selection of his sculptures are being offset by “definitions” stencilled on the wall, using his own peculiar dictionary. Victoria Miro, N1, Thu to 1 Jun Skye Sherwin Rob Churm, Glasgow Rob Churm explains the title of this exhibition, The Exhaustion Hook, thus: “The hook looks like a leminscate but it feels like a ball bearing.” Clear? He deals in deliberate graphic bewilderments. A central figure of his etchings and wall drawings in Tipp-Ex and Biro is his alter ego Prame, a character who apparently dates back to Churm’s zine comics The Thirteen Flashbacks Of Prame and My Visions. This would all add up to pseudo-surreal wackiness if it weren’t for the artist’s subtle ability to mix dreamworld doodling with compositions of geometric precision. So Death wields a bladeless scythe amid a congregation of hardly credible angels and dragons as, elsewhere, good old Prame paddles across the River Styx in a toy canoe. Sorcha Dallas, to 27 May Robert Clark Young British Art, London As an artist, Ryan Gander’s known for his love of mystery and chance, peppering his sculptures, films and lectures with personal anecdotes and oddball cultural references. Here he turns curator, bringing together work by 38 young artists whose only point of connection is – in the words of the press release – that they’re “exceptionally talented”, and that every work selected is in black and white. The rest is left to merry happenstance. Look out for work by last year’s Cartier Award winner, Simon Fujiwara, who transformed sections of the Frieze Art Fair into an archaeological dig uncovering a fantasy bisexual, amoral and thoroughly hedonistic ancient city dedicated to art. Then there’s The Hut Project, a collective with a self-deprecating take on artworld conventions, as with their self-organised retrospective at the ICA a few years back, rascally titled Old Kunst. Limoncello, E2, to 4 Jun SS John Salt, Birmingham With this first retrospective, John Salt returns to his city of birth, where he was the first artist to exhibit at the Ikon in 1965. With a typically meticulous airbrush and stencil technique, Salt has painted pictures of American cars, plain and simple. Yet these on-the-road images follow the American capitalist dream as it has stretched from the cars dumped under the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge in the late-60s through to the cars abandoned outside 1990s trailer parks. It’s the deadpan focus of these paintings that affords them a chill air of psychological tension reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s earlier deserted cityscapes. But, unlike Hopper, Salt leaves out the protagonists. Ikon Gallery, Wed to 17 Jul RC Amanda Ross-Ho, London This LA-based artist’s work is a puzzle mixing personal history with 21st-century flotsam. Her sculptural assemblages and photo collages have included such disparate items as chunks of her studio wall, her old shopping bags and cat litter. And while she also uses family photographs, the history isn’t always obvious: coming from a tribe of professional snappers means these have included parental portraits and coolly close-lipped product shots. Here, a needlepoint diagram bearing the words “Time Waits For No One” is the jumping-off point. The Approach, E2, Fri to 5 Jun SS The Count Of Monte Cristo, Manchester Alexandre Dumas’s 19th-century tale of unjust imprisonment, treasure hunting, role playing and revenge provides the subject for present day reflections by five contemporary artists: Annabel Dover, Hayley Lock, Cathy Lomax, Alex Pearl and Memei Thompson. The angle is pretty ironic, as a project is proposed to use Arts Council money to assassinate thousands of artistic rivals (surprise, surprise: the Arts Council declined the funding application). Posters of aristocratic heartbeats are painted with utterly swooning brushstrokes (Lord Wilmore: “As rich as a goldmine and eccentric almost to insanity.”) The formal classicism of French garden design is digitally transformed into spaced-out hallucinations. Elsewhere, reproductions of aristocratic party scenes are defaced with viral rashes, and a spy camera is covertly used to investigate the V&A’s collection of miniature eye jewels.
Rogue Artists’ Studios & Project Space, to 6 May RC Norfolk & Norwich Festival The Norfolk & Norwich Festival has a pedigree that pre-dates Glastonbury. Begun as a music fest back in the 18th century, it now runs the gamut from circus acts to ballet and theatre. Kicking off this week, it ushers in a month of stand-out exhibition openings. Highlights include Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s show dedicated to Jean Genet, the gay French author beloved by the existentialists, with an unexpected connection to Norwich: Genet’s fascination with rebels and petty crims took him to the city for the wedding of his lover’s car-thief stepson. Later there’s a show featuring Hubert Duprat’s exquisite hybrids of precious gems and metals with caddis fly larvae at Nottingham Castle (14 May-29 Aug). A collaboration between man and fly, this work features larvae of just 2–3mm creating protective sheaths for themselves from gold, opals, pearls, rubies and diamonds. Chaimowicz: The Gallery at NUCA, Fri to 21 May SS Kit Craig & Andrew Lim, Manchester A complementary show of sculptural and graphic enigmas. Craig draws diagrams of contraptions seemingly designed for experiments into human perception or the inner machinations of the psyche. They tend to have mystic or mysterious titles such as Hermit’s Lampshade and Holomonic Model. Lim’s sculptures are precariously balanced abstract structures with titles as self-explanatory as Pressed Against One Another or as declamatory as O, OU, OUT. Together they’ve come up with an apt collective exhibition title: On Measuring Uncertainty. Castlefield Gallery, to 29 May RCguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogThis week’s new exhibitions
Related posts:Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor donate works to Cambridge gallery Theatre Blogger: 52 Venues in 52 weeks London Cable Car May Go Ahead
- Tags:
- London
- Art
- photography
- Sculpture
- victoria
- The Guardian
- Art and design
- Article
- culture
- Birmingham
- Norfolk
- Manchester
- Exhibitions
- installation
- Glasgow
- Brooklyn
- Alexandre Dumas
- amanda ross
- Amanda Ross-Ho
- Andrew Lim
- Annabel Dover
- Art Fair
- Cathy Lomax
- count of monte cristo
- Edward Hopper
- Hayley Lock
- ian hamilton finlay
- John Salt
- kit craig
- Norwich
- painting
- Previews
- river styx
- Rob Churm
- Robert Clark
- Ryan Gander
- scottish artist
- second world war
- Skye Sherwin
- Sorcha Dallas
- The Guide
- violent revolution
- wood nymph
- young british art
April 30 2011, 6:38am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
A misplaced May Day dream for the masses
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/29/a-misplaced-may-day-dream-for-the-masses
May Day by John Sommerfield describes a society on the edge. The parallels with today are obvious – but it’s the differences that make it worth reading.
This article titled “A misplaced May Day dream for the masses” was written by Sam Jordison, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 29th April 2011 14.15 UTC It might have associations with people in funny clothes performing arcane rites and with Oxford students getting smashed off their gourds, but most us don’t think about Tories when we think about May Day. As several union leaders have already pointed out, the party’s current desire to replace May Day with Trafalgar Day (supposedly to “lengthen the holiday season”) is not practical so much as ideological. May Day might feel like a natural part of the calendar – but it has only been marked by a bank holiday since 1978, introduced by a Labour government to mark international workers’ day. And that, of course, is why the rightwingers don’t like it. They’d like it even less if they picked up the book that I’ve just been reading: May Day by John Sommerfield. This was written in 1936, but has just been reissued, with excellent timing, by London Books. It describes a society on the edge. The rich are getting richer and the poor are paying for it. The authorities clamp down on protest with the cynical use of force. Someone on a march is killed in an “accident”. The success of a march leads someone to comment: “I don’t think there’ll be so much damned squeamish argument against arming the police.” The parallels with our current troubles are obvious – but it’s the differences that make May Day worth reading. Sommerfield describes a few days in the lives of dozens of different characters across London, showing them at work, at play, down the pub, in bed, making love, feeling regret the day after, giving birth, dying, plotting to overthrow the bosses, plotting to undermine the workers. It’s a broad, ambitious sweep, but it’s all heading in the same direction: the inevitability of a general strike and the exultant victory of the Communist point of view. By the time Sommerfield was writing, Stalin had embarked on one of the biggest murder sprees in human history, but Sommerfield pants for Soviet Britain. So much so that he frequently loses all restraint:
“Then into this sudden pool of quiet splintered an alien voice, a hoarse shout of ‘Workers, all out on May Day. Demonstrate for a free Soviet Britain!’ … This rang in a million ears. Eyes remembered the chalked slogans on walls and pavements. The slogans, the rain of leaflets, the shouts and songs of demonstrators echoed in a million minds.” He also gushes:
“The printing presses were spinning themselves dizzy. There had never been so many leaflets before. They fell like rain, they were scattered like machine gun bullets.” Sommerfield loved his leaflets. He was also absolute in his convictions. For him there are two races in the world – rich and poor and that is where all conflict will lie. “Soon a lot more people will be having to take sides,” he wrote. They did indeed – but not in the way he thought. They would be fighting against fascism, not for “Soviet Britain”. There are plenty of things to be said in the book’s favour, particularly in the ambitious way he looks into so many lives around London, explores their living conditions, and lays bare their pleasures and pains. There’s also plenty more to be said against his writing which veers from the ridiculous to the not-too-bad and never really gets close to the sublime. Yet it’s as an attempt at social realism that it is most fascinating – and most flawed. In 1984 Sommerfield wrote a new forward for the book acknowledging how few favours time had done for his “1930s Communist romanticism”, but also said he hoped the book could be read as “an historical novel – worth reading, now, I hope, in relation to our own times.” To an extent it can. But I read it more as a reflection on a lost past and an exercise in folly. Possibly, it is harsh to judge Sommerfield’s May Day, for getting things so spectacularly wrong. It’s a novel, after all. It deals in fiction, not fact. But then again, while I was reading May Day, I couldn’t help thinking of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novella with the same title. It’s just one mark of Fitzgerald’s genius that his reflections on the day – although written in 1920 – still apply. The protests he describes seem hopeless, futile, distorted by absurd mobs on both sides: “all crowds have to howl”. The rich are oblivious at best, unforgiving and condescending the rest of the time. The tragedies he depicts are universal – but also painfully personal. His lead, Gordon Sterett, is a penniless, struggling artist who has never found his feet since returning from the First World War, but who has found booze and bad company. He is drowning in the tide of history, but his problems are more individual than any Sommerfield manages to describe. He is more real. So too is the world around him. The clothes are smarter, the dancing is more formal and the drinks sound more exotic. No one has a smart phone and radicals print their views on paper. Otherwise, Fitzgerald could be writing about today – or forever. His despair and defeat for the small man rings far more true than Sommerfield’s misplaced dream for the masses. May Day is a crushed dream. It makes the Tory vendetta against the holiday seem even more than usually petty.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogA misplaced May Day dream for the masses
Related posts:TV review: Jamie’s Dream School The Kindle and the Tube TV review: Jamie’s Dream School
- Tags:
- London
- labour
- Art
- politics
- calendar
- Oxford
- may
- march
- crowd
- Bank Holiday
- Government
- Article
- culture
- Protest
- Society
- International
- Blogposts
- Books
- Fiction
- Books blog
- Demonstrators
- Students
- May Day
- Romanticism
- Student
- demo
- worker
- conflict
- Communist
- 1920
- F Scott Fitzgerald
- F Scott Fitzgeralds
- fascism
- history
- holiday season
- john sommerfield
- labour government
- Sam Jordison
- Soviet
- Stalin
- union leaders
April 29 2011, 9:47am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Jemima Kiss: How I kicked my digital habit
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/25/jemima-kiss-how-i-kicked-my-digital-habit
Twitter, Facebook, emails, and voicemail – we are overwhelmed by digital data, is it time to rebel against information overload? I wondered whe Jemima Kiss had gone too. But of course, managing the information overload IS your job.
This article titled “Jemima Kiss: How I kicked my digital habit” was written by Jemima Kiss, for The Observer on Saturday 23rd April 2011 23.05 UTC We were brushing through wet grass in the early morning when we saw it – a flash of white drifting behind a small patch of trees, backlit by the sun. Crouching down next to my small son, we watched the unmistakable shape of a barn owl until he disappeared into the wood. The look on my son’s face was part of a brief moment of magic, the kind of memory that we live for. Ordinarily, my next thought would have been to pull out my phone and take a photo, send a tweet or record a video. Connecting is something I do unconsciously now. Tweeting is like breathing and photos and video have documented nearly every day of my 21-month-old son’s life. The meaningful merged with the mundane, all dutifully and habitually recorded – my enjoyment split between that technological impulse and the more delicate human need to be in the moment. This is how we live. That weekend, however, our whole family – my partner, my son and I – were offline. Swallowtail Hill Farm, in Rye, East Sussex, is a pretty soft option when it comes to a digital detox; a charming small farm with a diverting collection of animals and four vintage tractors. Camping was an easy option for an offline experiment, but there wasn’t much choice outside that for a UK break. High-end hotels in the US are now promoting their offline credentials, from boutique luxury to remote donkey trekking, but the UK has some catching up to do. Anyway, blessed with two days of good weather and some delicious local food, I barely even noticed I wasn’t online. What I did notice was my partner, Will. If my worst digital habit is incessant tweeting, his is allowing his phone to be the single most disruptive thing in our relationship. Country walks, dinner, bathing our son – no moment is safe from the seemingly irresistible ringing, vibrating, nagging phone that demands – and wins – his attention when he should be enjoying the moment with us. Any objections of mine are swiftly defended by explaining the importance of dealing with that email/text/voicemail now, though it never seems anything that couldn’t wait half an hour. I take equal responsibility for our connectopia – magnetically drawn, as I am, to any screen that can feed my addiction.
We handed our phones in at the gate. The only interruption during lunch was from two woodpeckers and the entertainment during dinner by the fire was our own conversation. There was a moment when Will was distracted by a buzzing sensation and reached for his phone, before realising it was a bee. Without our phones, we had no idea what the time was. I reached for my phone when I wondered about local property prices and whether it is normal to see a barn owl during the day. And those moments when Artley, my son, was leaning out of the steam train window, having his bath outdoors under a woodburner-powered shower and being read his bedtime story in front of an open fire, I’ve had to try and commit to my own fallible memory. Breaking away from my connected life, I could feel how the compulsion, the divided attention, the multitasking has permeated my way of being. Early adopters, the heavy technology users who throw themselves at every new device and service, will admit to an uncontrollable impulse to check email, tweets or Facebook. Researchers have called this “variable interval reinforcement schedule”; we have in effect been trained into digital message addiction because the most exciting rewards are unpredictable. We’re no better than slot-machine addicts. The hustle we develop as we struggle to keep up with the pace of digital information has produced a restless, anxious way of engaging with the world. Desperate for efficiency, this seeps into our physical lives; I feel compelled to tidy while on the phone, to fold the washing while brushing my teeth. No single task has my undivided attention. A study by the University of California, San Francisco, last week concluded that constant multi-tasking gradually erodes short-term memory. And interruptions are a massive problem, taking anything up to 20 times the length of the interruption to recover. For those of us compelled to check email every few minutes, that revelation explains where the day goes. As consumer web technologies mature, so too does our desire to understand the impact they are having on our lives. Few books on digital dystopia are more resonant than Hamlet’s BlackBerry, an imaginative and thoughtful book that explores philosophical reaction to new technologies throughout time and the lessons we should have learnt from those. The author, former Washington Post journalist William Powers, is, like me, a true believer in the power and potential of digital technologies, but concludes that we need a little discipline to restore control over our unsettling, hyper-connected lives. “The more we connect, the more our thoughts lean outward,” he writes. “There’s a preoccupation with what’s going on ‘out there’ in the bustling otherworld, rather than ‘in here’ with yourself and those right around you. What was once exterior and faraway is now easily accessible and this carries a sense of obligation or duty.” That feeling that we should be reaching out, or be available to be reached out to, is tied to the self-affirmation the internet provides. “In less-connected times, human beings were forced to shape their own interior sense of identity and worth.” Powers offers practical solutions, including advocating the use of paper as a more efficient way of organising our thoughts. The theory of “embodied interaction” asserts that physical objects free our minds to think because our hands and fingers can do much of the work, unlike screens where our brains are constantly in demand. The eponymous technology he describes in his book is an intriguing Elizabethan version of a PDA, pocket-sized notebooks with pages coated in an erasable, plaster-like material. “Writing tables”, as they were known, were used for note-taking and checklists. While we can’t be sure Shakespeare used one, we’re shown that Hamlet was a keen user of the latest screen technology. “Yea, from the table of my memory,” Hamlet reflects, after meeting the ghost of his dead father. I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there Hamlet wants to clear his life of all the superficial detritus so that he can focus exclusively on avenging the death of his father. The development of print culture was adding to the tumult of life in Elizabethan England, just as we are overwhelmed with the explosion of always-on digital information today. Exploring Seneca’s “spa of the mind” as a way of escaping the commotion of a busy city, Powers explains that the constant demands of being overwhelmingly connected need to be balanced out by reintroducing a little disconnectedness. That’s exactly what Powers did at home, banning the internet at weekends. It took six months for the family to adjust. “Because we were now away from our connectedness on a regular basis, we grasped its utility and value more fully … There was an atmospheric change in our minds, a shift to a slower, less restless, more relaxed way of thinking. We could just be in one place, doing one particular thing, and enjoy it.”
At home, my concern about our digital addiction is most acute when I catch my son looking at me while I’m checking a screen. It’s reinforcing how much more important the screen is than him, as if I’m teaching him that obeying these machines is what he needs to do. Our fireside conversation that night, against a backdrop of a moonlit wood, was about Hamlet’s BlackBerry and what Powers calls the “vanishing family trick”, when a seemingly sociable family would gradually dissolve away to screens in different corners of the house. It’s a familiar story. “What’s lost in the process is so valuable, it can’t be quantified,” Powers despairs. “Isn’t this what we live for – time spent with other people, those moments that can’t be translated into ones and zeros and replicated on a screen? I sometimes felt as if love itself, or the acts of the heart and mind that constitute love, were being leached out of the house by our screens.” As we left the farm, the real work began, trying to resolve our new promise of balancing work and home life by introducing phone-free zones and offline days. Best of all, when the farmer handed back our phones, we didn’t have a missed call or message between us.
Jemima, Will & Artley stayed at Swallowtail Hill Farm, 01275 395447; canopyandstars.co.uk
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogJemima Kiss: How I kicked my digital habit
Related posts:Teaching Assistants Community Now That’s What I Call Music goes digital Digital love: Manuelle Gautrand and the Gaîté Lyrique
- Tags:
- social media
- theory
- tools
- Computing
- Features
- technology
- information
- Article
- culture
- Main section
- Society
- The Observer
- solution
- Digital media
- Ebooks
- explosion
- Jemima Kiss
- addiction
- Mobile phones
- rebel
- occupation
- In focus
- stream
- guardian news
- tweets
- BlackBerry
- detox
- early adopters
- habit
- information overload
- interaction
- revelation
- Social trends
- Telecoms
- tweet
- William Powers
April 25 2011, 10:45am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Red songs ring out in Chinese city’s new cultural revolution
Chinese city Chongqing’s ambitious party boss Bo Xilai has got the population singing red songs such as Road to Revitalisation and Love of the Red Flag
This article titled “Red songs ring out in Chinese city’s new cultural revolution” was written by Tania Branigan in Beijing, for The Guardian on Friday 22nd April 2011 15.46 UTC Road to Revitalisation may not sound like the most catchy name for a tune, but authorities in Chongqing are urging residents to sing along to it – and 35 more carefully selected “red songs”. The south-western Chinese city has launched the musical campaign to mark this year’s 90th anniversary of the Communist party’s birth. Television and radio stations are broadcasting the tunes, newspapers are carrying the scores and officials are arranging public performances of Love of the Red Flag and Good Men Should Become Soldiers. Officials are also urging artists to help train people “to raise a fever of singing red [revolutionary] songs,” according to the People’s Daily website. The initiative is the latest phase in the “red culture movement” launched by the city’s ambitious party boss Bo Xilai. “Red songs won public support because they depicted China’s path in a simple, sincere and vivid way,” Bo said last year. “There’s no need to be artsy-fartsy … only dilettantes prefer enigmatic works.” Chongqing television was recently ordered to drop popular soap operas and sitcoms. Instead, it airs improving material such as classic dramas and red song shows, reportedly leading to a sharp drop in ratings and advertising revenue. Other initiatives include ordering students to work in the countryside and getting cadres to don Red Army uniforms and follow the path of their forebears “to deepen their understanding and experience of hardships”.
While most expect Bo to be included in the top political body, the politburo standing committee, it is not clear what position he might take. His other striking initiatives have included a mass drive to urbanise the population and a campaign against organised crime, which won him plaudits but raised concerns about the manner of the crackdown. “He is a maverick. He has the confidence of his family background,” Bo’s father was a Communist “immortal”, rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution, in which Bo’s mother died. “Bo’s approach appears to be gaining some traction among some very high-level leaders,” said Beijing-based political analyst Russell Leigh Moses. Several senior figures have visited Chongqing recently, notably Xi Jinping, the vice president expected to take the top job next year, who praised Bo’s cultural drive. Moses said: “Bo’s campaign is multidimensional, but its primary objective seems to be trying to redefine local affairs as mass politics. [It] is not about policy as much as it is about a new communist theology that is nostalgic and not like anyone else’s.” Brady said propaganda had changed so much in content as well as method that comparisons to Maoism were lazy. When Bo invokes Mao Zedong in text messages to residents, instead of references to class struggle he chooses feelgood quotations such as: “The world is ours, we should unite for achievements.” “Some appear to have misunderstood the message in our campaign,” Xu Chao, the official leading the red song drive, told the Global Times. “‘Red’ doesn’t only represent revolution, communism or socialism. It also includes elements that represent happiness, harmony, being positive and healthy. The term is actually quite inclusive.” There are no Mao-era songs on the 36-strong list and many are recent popular hits about loving one’s family or one’s nation. Go China! praises Olympicdiver Guo Jingjing, baseball star Yao Ming and film director Zhang Yimou rather than Communist cadres. “It’s definitely not on-message in terms of what was traditionally regarded as ‘red’,” said Brady. “I think a Cultural Revolution-era propagandist would be appalled.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogRed songs ring out in Chinese city’s new cultural revolution
Related posts:Chinese New Year February 14th 2010 Chinese Lute The YouView revolution will not be televised just yet
- Tags:
- Music
- politics
- Chinese
- paris
- China
- musical
- socialism
- The Guardian
- News
- Article
- culture
- Main section
- World news
- Beijing
- Tania Branigan
- International
- Maverick
- president
- Olympic
- Population
- Evita
- Army
- army uniforms
- artsy fartsy
- Beijing-based
- Bo Xilai
- chinese city
- Chongqing
- Communism
- Communist
- communist party
- cultural revolution
- culture movement
- politburo standing committee
- public performances
- red flag
- Revitalisation
- revolutionary songs
- south-western Chinese
- struggle
- urbanise
- Xu Chao
- Yao Ming
- Zhang
April 24 2011, 4:21am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
What to say about … Betty Blue Eyes
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/15/what-to-say-about-betty-blue-eyes
A rasher of pocine metaphors breaks out among the theatre critics as a ham-imatronic animal makes a pig of herself in the West End. No porkies. It’s just a theatre review for Betty Blue Eyes.
This article titled “What to say about … Betty Blue Eyes” was written by Patrick Kingsley, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 15th April 2011 14.52 UTC Way back in 2008, when Barack Obama was but the junior senator for Illinois, he was involved in a right rumpus with the then-governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, about whether one could or could not “put lipstick on a pig”. At the time it seemed a debate into which Britain’s theatre critics were reluctant to wade. But people change. Would they put lipstick on a pig? Almost certainly, at least if that pig were animatronic, had the voice of Kylie Minogue and were on stage at the West End‘s Novello theatre as part of a heartwarming new musical called Betty Blue Eyes, directed by Richard Eyre and produced by Cameron Mackintosh.
“[W]itty, rude, lovable, warm, dramatic, hilarious,” proclaims the Times’s Libby Purves, a writer with more than a few adjectives up her sleeve. “[A] new smash musical is born.” The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer agrees, calling the show “popular entertainment at its very best”. Not for the first time, however, your correspondent was concerned for the safety of those sitting next to him, as the show left him “grunting and snorting with pleasure, and just occasionally snuffling with sentimental tears”.
Part of BBE’s appeal lies in its timely plot, which draws (conveniently enough) on the dual themes of recession and royal matrimony. “How fortuitous that it’s set in 1947,” point out bloggers West End Whingers, “with austerity and recycling paramount and preparations for a royal wedding celebration at full tilt.” It’s against this backdrop that we meet the show’s protagonists, Gilbert (Reece Shearsmith) and Joyce (Sarah Lancashire), the social-climbing Yorkshire couple who steal the pig that’s due to be roasted in honour of those royal lovebirds of yesteryear, Elizabeth and Philip.
It’s a story that, for the Guardian’s Michael Billington, trumps even A Private Function, the 1984 film part-scripted by Alan Bennett from which it is adapted: “The show’s creators [first-timers Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman] preserve the satire on small-town snobbery, greed and racism from the Alan Bennett-Malcolm Mowbray movie script, while sharpening the storyline and using music genuinely to enhance character”. They’ve done this, notes Paul Raven of West End Theatre, despite being American! “[H]aving a bit of distance from a subject is not a bad thing,” Raven explains, helpfully, “and they’ve written some pacey, witty dialogue that captures the spirit of the times without paying undue reverence to the movie.” But the show-stealer is Betty herself: “an animatronic, blue-eyed and weirdly flirtatious porker with a permanent smile and the singing voice of Kylie Minogue,” writes Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard. “What a star she proves,” enthuses Spencer, who was particularly captivated by Betty’s “amazing repertoire of grunts, squeaks and, above all, farts”. “It’s a great pig,” Purves confirms. “And I am happy to relate that, despite the usual desperate first-night deadline scuttle, two of us critics remained riveted by the escape door long enough to hear it sing in the final curtain call.” Some of the bloggers weren’t so easily impressed. “By the standards of modern stage wizardry,” complains Peter Brown at London Theatre, “this is not exactly an all-singing, all-dancing kind of mechanical hog.” Ian Foster, blogging at There Ought to Be Clowns, thought the pig “a bit freaky”. Brave man.
Meanwhile, not everyone admits to being fond of the rest of the show. “Some of the humour is clumsy,” says Hitchings, “and some reminiscent of pantomime.” And if you detected a characteristically arch tone in the West End Whingers‘ remarks earlier, give yourself a sausage: they simply didn’t like it. “Sadly, we weren’t smiling much,” whinge the Whingers. “Our (in the) minority report puts Betty on the butcher’s block along with our own necks, yet again.”
But hey, at least they’ve got in the spirit with that butcher’s block analogy. For if there’s one thing that unites our reviewers, it’s their utter inability to avoid porcine metaphors. Bacon, for instance, has either already been “brought home” by Mackintosh (Spencer) or it’s in the process of being brought there by Eyre (Purves), or even by the show itself (Billington/Hitchings). It gets worse. For Michael Coveney at the Independent, Betty is “piggy in the muddle, all right”; for Hitchings, the play is no “mere pork scratching”; and Spencer, perhaps the most outrageous of the pigging punners, promises us “I’m telling no porky pies”. Not that I’m immune to hamming it up a touch.
Do say: [Some random aspect of the show] brings home the bacon …
Don’t say: … and [he/she/it] is laughing all the way to the piggy bank.
The reviews reviewed: Pigs can fly. Sometimes. If they’re animatronic.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogWhat to say about … Betty Blue Eyes
Related posts:Blue – Andy Roberts What to say about … The Wizard of Oz The Critics and Social Media
- Tags:
- London
- theatre
- musicals
- stage
- Features
- west end
- musical
- american
- Article
- culture
- Sarah Palin
- Michael Billington
- critic
- Patrick Kingsley
- What to say about
- Royal wedding
- character
- Alan Bennett
- Betty
- Betty Blue
- cameron mackintosh
- Ian Foster
- kylie minogue
- lipstick on a pig
- novello theatre
- Paul Raven
- reece shearsmith
- Richard Eyre
- sarah lancashire
- theatre critics
April 15 2011, 10:25am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
MasterChef: have things gone stale?
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/14/masterchef-have-things-gone-stale
Masterchef is no longer very interesting at all and there are also far too many cooking programmed and celebrity chefs on tv at present. Jamie Oliver’s dream school wasn’t exactly a success so I expect he’ll be back in the kitchen soon as well. Then there are all of the hybrid programmed that try to combine the most audience engaging aspects from across several genres. They never work very well either. Relocation cookery, gardening talent, animal casting and so on.
This article titled “MasterChef: have things gone stale?” was written by Vicky Frost, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 14th April 2011 10.44 UTC Sometimes I wonder if I’m stuck in a kind of MasterChef vortex. First there was Loyd Grossman. Then there was John and Gregg bellowing and sucking their forks on BBC2. Next came the celebrities, the professionals and the juniors. Followed by the Australians, and their version of the UK show. And now? Now we’re apparently watching the UK version of the Australian version of the UK update of the Loyd Grossman original, on primetime BBC1. Who knows where it will all end? Or indeed who will still be watching? Because while previous incarnations of MasterChef might have been stuffed with ridiculous declarations, surplus rounds that appeared to have no bearing on the result, and more passion and determination than even Lord Sugar might think totally necessary, the show was rarely boring. This series, however, I’m finding it hard to summon up the energy to last a whole episode. The problems started with the auditions. John cried in one of them. Nobody cooked a playdafoo that looked like a child had made it unsupervised, wearing a blindfold, while having a tantrum. John and Gregg didn’t patrol the aisles rolling their eyes wildly and grimacing at anyone daring to experiment like they were actually going to be poisoned. Cocky competitors weren’t totally shamed in front of each other. Things haven’t really improved since. The set seems to have quadrupled in size so that the competitors could feasibly source entirely different sets of local ingredients, and the invention test box has morphed into a whole deli. Worse are the challenges. Fair dos to Gregg for trying to ramp up the tension of cooking for a circus on Peckham Rye – PECKHAM RYE! — or making a buffet for the cast of Merlin – THE CAST OF MERLIN! – or just some students – ERM STUDENTS! – but why aren’t the contestants doing more cooking in actual restaurants with actual chefs? That used to be most of the show, now it seems to be all field kitchens and mass catering. Things got a little better on last night’s show with the arrival of Michel Roux’s croque-en-bouche and a trolleyload of cakes – although it possibly wasn’t entirely wise to draw parallels between flying for the RAF and making some sodding sandwiches, Gregg – but I still feel that I’m seeing the series out to the bitter end, rather than actively enjoying it. Even old Toorude and Gregg the Egg appear to have changed their ways. I have heard not one metallic basil; merely a sprinkle of deep, velvety, iron-rich descriptions; absolutely no threats to de-robe and dive into a pudding. Only one proper, ridiculous moment has lodged in my brain: John doing some kind of uber-camp panto hiss of “Don’t bite off more than you can chew!” at Miss Swansea. Now that’s why I watch MasterChef. Instead we’ve had a few guest chefs to liven things up. But largely we’ve been meant to be caring about the contestants and their journeys and the challenges they’ve overcome. Sadly I haven’t, and I don’t. This year’s contestants are largely oddly unappealing – perhaps because they were whittled down to a final bunch astonishingly quickly. All I’m really interested in is their best two courses, which we get to see surprisingly infrequently. It seems strange, really, that MasterChef Australia, from which the new UK show borrows heavily, can combine many of the same elements and come up trumps. But then it also does everything the British show does, just 50 times bigger. So the judges are more flamboyant, more ridiculous; the contestants live in a house together and vote each other off; they have cook-offs against real chefs; they cater amazing weddings on boats. Against that background, setting the whole thing in a vast, sunlit warehouse feels vaguely reasonable. On BBC1, it doesn’t. So: how are you getting on? Are you looking forward to the final couple of weeks in a state of slight outrage after this blog? Or have you lost interest already? And can anyone explain why, when MasterChef was on seemingly every night for increasingly idiosyncratic lengths of time, we all moaned it was too much, but now we have it once a week for an hour, it seems it’s too little – even though it’s also completely boring? A quandry no?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogMasterChef: have things gone stale?
No related posts.
- Tags:
- UK
- garden
- cooking
- watching
- restaurant
- television
- Media
- sandwich
- Article
- culture
- Blogposts
- Television & radio
- celebrity
- Students
- TV and radio blog
- Student
- dream school
- auditions
- bbc1
- celebrity chefs
- challenges
- Food TV
- genres
- Lord Sugar
- loyd grossman
- MasterChef
- Michel Roux
- primetime
- relocation
- Swansea
- Vicky Frost
April 14 2011, 6:02am | Comments »
-
I posted to distributedresearch.net
Click to Download: YouTube, Cut Copy, Stereogum Monthly Mix
YouTube is already fundamental to online music, but now it’s expanding its official content and moving into live streaming.
This article titled “Click to Download: YouTube, Cut Copy, Stereogum Monthly Mix” was written by Chris Salmon, for The Guardian on Wednesday 13th April 2011 15.30 UTC At last year’s BT Digital Music Awards, YouTube beat Spotify, Last.fm, MySpace, SoundCloud and BBC 6 Music to the publicly-voted title of “Best Place to Hear Music”. That, as well as the genuinely rapturous response to the site’s win from the audience of young pop fans, underlined the fact that, for many, YouTube is as much a cherished on-demand music listening resource as it is a video site. Now, they’ve expanded that service. Following a number of one-offs, YouTube has unveiled a dedicated streaming section, youtube.com/live, where selected YouTube partners can webcast live. One of the first to take advantage is the Coachella festival, America’s nearest equivalent to Glastonbury, which will broadcast a selection of its acts, from today until Sunday. Head to youtube.com/coachella from tonight to watch live footage of artists, slated to include the National, Mumford & Sons, Duran Duran, PJ Harvey, Interpol and Cut Copy. That last act is also the latest band to appear on the excellent Swedish music TV programme Klubbland, a 20-minute show which features a short interview with a particular artist alongside live highlights of their gig in a Swedish venue. The Cut Copy episode, which you can watch in full at klubbland.se, features the groovesome Australians wandering around Malmo searching out good coffee and old records, before belting out three songs in the city’s Kulturbolaget venue. Meanwhile, the previous episode features Glasvegas discussing their success and playing some of their new songs in snowy Stockholm. Trawl back through the other 27 shows uploaded so far and you’ll find Lloyd Cole, Teenage Fanclub, Lykke Li, Beach House and, perhaps best of all, Robyn. It’s hard to think of a British music TV show as tasteful and enjoyable as this. According to a study of 4,500 US high-school students published last week, only 22% of teenagers would be willing to pay 99¢ to download a single track, despite the fact that 77% of them admitted to downloading music from the internet (with almost two-thirds getting it from file-sharing sites). In that climate, the offer of a (seemingly) legal free download isn’t as exciting as it once was, but it’s still worth checking out the latest Monthly Mix from Stereogum, the mighty US music blog. The compilation, available from bit.ly/sgapril, features 10 mostly-excellent tracks from acts recently featured on the site, including their three latest Bands to Watch, all of which happen to be impressive, female-fronted indie/electro popsters. With the album also featuring a gorgeously sparse track from the new solo album by Smog’s Bill Callahan, it’s definitely worth a download. Send your favourite links to chris.salmon@guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogClick to Download: YouTube, Cut Copy, Stereogum Monthly Mix
Related posts:Click to Download: Imogen Heap v Maroon 5 Convert Animoto to youTube Is VIDEO on Flickr better than youTube?
- Tags:
- Music
- internet
- youtube
- Features
- technology
- The Guardian
- Article
- culture
- Film & music
- PJ Harvey
- video site
- Digital music and audio
- Downloads
- lastfm
- Chris Salmon
- Click to download
- Coachella
- digital music
- duran duran
- live stream
- mumford
- Music blog
- MySpace
- new songs
- trawl
- tv programme
April 13 2011, 11:14am | Comments »
