Be-Longing: Travellers’ Stories, Travellers’ Lives, the ground breaking exhibition from Slovenian photographer Eva Sajovic, is in its final week at the 198.
There are two events being held.
On Thursday 18 March 2010, 7-9pm, there will be a film screening of Romano Hip Hop:
The final day of the exhibition is Saturday 20 March, 11am-5pm, with music provided by DJ Damian Le Bas, 6-9pm.
Don’t let the opportunity to see this ground-breaking exhibition from a highly talented artist pass you by.
Eva Sajovic’s “Be-Longing” exhibition is still running at the 198.
On Tuesday there is an all-day seminar on the future of travelling communities, chaired by Brian Foster of the Inner London Traveller Education Consortium.
Those taking part include:
The programme is set our below:
Programme
10.30 – 11.00 Registration and Coffee
11.00 – 11.10 Introduction
11.10 – 11.30 Prof. Thomas Acton
11.30 – 11.50 Rocky Deans
11.50 – 12.00 Bobby Rostas
12.00 – 12.05 Brian Foster
12.05 – 12.45 Panel Discussion
12.45 – 1.00 Q&A
1.00 – 1.45 Lunch
1.45 – 2.00 Patricia Knight
2.00 – 2.15 Dada Felja, RSG
2.15 – 2.30 Tricia Bowie Phillips, STAG
2.30 – 2.50 Prof. Judith Okely
2.50 – 3.10 Damian LeBas
3.10 – 3.15 Brian Foster
3.15 – 3.45 Panel Discussion
3.45 – 4.00 Q&A
Better community understanding depends on people being prepared to take an interest in things that at first seem one removed from their immediate environment.
Book yourself a place by emailing info@198.org.uk.
Kensington Palace is being transformed
In association with WILDWORKS (including Ellie and Myth!), featuring Vivienne Westwood, William Tempest, Stephen Jones, Boudicca, Aminaka Wilmont and Echo Morgan
You may recall I wrote previously about my super-talented arty sis Ellie, and her mad creative genius house mate Myriddin Elliot Drualus Wannell (Myth), and their involvement in a project to transform Kensington Palace. Well, the pair of them are are hard at work at Kensington Palace as part of Bill Mitchell’s Wildworks team and, from what I’ve heard, loving the chance to work in a historic building that is steeped in intrigue and that has so many dark stories to tell.
The Enchanted Palace will run alongside a programme of major renovations that will commence in June and run until 2012. These works will see new public gardens created, as well as the introduction of new education and community facilities. The Kensington Palace redevelopment is a £12 million pound project that hasn’t been entirely without controversy (planners rejected the original proposals for the new entrance). If you are interested in the scheme, there is more information over at Museum Insider.
However, whatever the ins and outs of the wider development, The Enchanted Palace will open on 26 March 2010 and is already capturing imaginations across creative disciplines.
The fashion world has been particularly excited by the involvement of designers like Vivienne Westwood (and Ellie and Myth!), and a quick Google will show that Ftape, the online fashion resource, is just one of a large number of fashion sites with a piece about it on its site. Superbreak’s blogger Sarah is recommending The Enchanted Palace on her pages and exemplifies how travel and tourist companies have picked up on the fact that The Enchanted Palace will offer a unique experience to visitors to the capital.
Perhaps the best description is to be found on the pages of Kensington Palace itself:
“From 26 March 2010, Kensington Palace will become The Enchanted Palace in a unique multisensory exhibition combining fashion, performance, and dazzling spectacle to reveal Kensington’s magnificent State Apartments in a magical new light.
In the sumptuous State Apartments, leading fashion designers Vivienne Westwood, William Tempest, Stephen Jones, Boudicca, Aminaka Wilmont and illustrator/set designer Echo Morgan will each create spectacular installations in collaboration with WILDWORKS, taking inspiration from Kensington Palace and the princesses who once lived there – Mary, Anne, Caroline, Charlotte, Victoria, Margaret and Diana. These extraordinary contemporary designs will be displayed alongside historic items from the Royal Collection and Kensington Palace’s Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, together with two dresses worn by Diana, Princess of Wales and Princess Margaret.
The complex and mysterious world of the royal court will be opened up through spectacular installations, interactive theatre, intimate storytelling, soundscapes, haunting film projections, and a series of intriguing clues hidden throughout the historic rooms, revealing tales of love and hate, surprise and sadness, secrets and jealousy.
Each room will have a powerful story to tell about Kensington Palace’s former royal residents and the life of the court – a world within a world, with its own time and rituals.”
For more information, please take a look at Kensington Palace – and consider treating yourself to a completely different sort of experience…
With delicious irony, the spirit of Wat Tyler has been stirred in Basildon’s creative communities by the way in which Basildon Council dumped Dave Chapple’s Woodsman Poacher sculpture at the park that bears Tyler’s name. I am sure Wat Tyler, who led a peasant army in revolt against financial dictats from the King (a poll tax, actually), would smile at the way Basildon artists are speaking out in opposition to local politicians who are quite happily rake in our taxes, but appear to have no respect for what the community actually wants.
Yesterday, The Echo reported how on Monday “More than 50 painters, sculptors, performers, heritage bosses, and other members of the arts community gathered for their inaugral meeting.” Liz Grant, who worked with other local artists to convene the meeting, describes it brilliantly:
“We had lots of people from across the arts spectum, which is fantastic for a first meeting.
“The Woodsman has been the catalyst for the group’s formation.
“We see it as a symbol of how the artistic community and the public feel about how the arts are being dealt with by Basildon’s current council and the previous one.
“It’s a symbol of all that’s wrong with how the council is operating.”
To my mind it is quite incredible how the plight of a single wooden statue has brought together Basildon’s creative communities in a way nothing else has. Steve Waters is one of the artists behind Old Man Stan, and his quote in The Echo captures succinctly the way in which the treatment of Dave Chapple’s creation has caused people to take a stand:
“We now have one united voice for the arts community in Basildon.
“The Woodman is what has brought us all together.
“We don’t want it to happen again, or ever be forgotten.”
Too damn right we don’t.
There was unanimous agreement on a motion of no confidence in the way that the Council currently engages those involved in the arts – and the way it looks after Basildon’s valuable collection of public art. As someone who has blogged variously about The Woodsman, public art in Basildon, the Wat Tyler sculpture trail and the Motorboat Museum, it was truly heartening to learn that all these issues were discussed.
What is particuarly exciting about this venture is that it is professionals and amateurs alike who are involved. Quite simply, it’s local people saying they want to have a say in how their public spaces look – and how their interests are supported – in just the same way that sport and other leisure activities are supported.
Politicians might think they can shrug this off. I don’t think they can.
Many of those who enjoy participating in the arts – creating things, making things, acting things, singing things, watching things, listening to things – get fed up with being treated as the Cinderella sector, left to sweep up the crumbs whilst the ugly homogeneous stepsisters “Sport” and “Leisure” receive the funding and the attention.
My own view, as someone involved in local politics and the local art scene, is that we attempt to tell people what they want at our peril. For me it comes back to the “raucous, unpredictable capacity of people” that lends our communities power and vibrancy and which, when untied in a single shout, demands attention as the voice of local people that help pay the Council’s way.
Being involved in the arts, involved in Basildon’s creative communities, is about being involved with each other, in all its glorious messiness.
Some things we’ll love.
Some things we’ll hate.
Some things we’ll think are pointless.
And some things we’ll disagree on.
But some things – like The Woodsman Poacher – will make us realise that we have much more in common than we think.
If you want to get involved, the next meeting is on Monday 22nd March at 7.00pm, St Martin’s Church Hall. Please call Elizabeth Grant on 07939 122864 for further details.
If you think Basildon deserves better than bulldozers and excuses, come along.
And finally, for those politicians who still think that all this really doesn’t matter, there’s a salutory lesson on Facebook.
Friends for the The Woodsman Poacher? 1,651.
Friends on the campaign page of Basildon’s Tory candidate? 150.
The Woodsman Poacher rests his case…
Music videos are close to an art form in themselves, mixing very different media to startling and stunning effect. The band OK Go have had some fun with their latest for their song “This Too Shall Pass” and I thought it worth sharing here, in case you’ve not picked up on it elsewhere.
If you are interested in the way they put it together, they have a second video in which they discuss making it:
There are also some interesting articles on OK Go’s video on LA Times blog pages, Buzznet and Alt Press.
Enjoy!
I received an email a couple of days ago from Yvonne Williams (no relation!) with the happy news that Basildon now has its own radio station! Gateway FM is a community radio station which now has a license to broadcast on the FM frequency. In awarding the five-year license, OFCOM said:
For those of you who don’t know much about Gateway FM, this excerpt from its website sums it up well:
“It is a local company dedicated to local people, staffed by local people and seeking to make our locality a better place to be.
It seeks to be accessible to everyone interested in media related activities irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, disadvantage, sexuality or faith…
In other words, really local, local radio, by, about and for everyone in that area that looks to Basildon as its main local centre.”
Until now it has been restricted to two 28-day broadcasting slots a year. That OFCOM has now awarded it a full license is very very exciting news for all involved. This now has the potential to become a tremendous community resource for our towns and villages in the Basildon area.
Just today, Gateway FM put the following press release on their website:
Get involved! And in the meantime, you can look at their schedule and listen online.
Readers may be interested to know that Eva Sajovic, the Slovenian photographer I’ve been writing about, has her own blog. Please check it out. Please stop by and take a look.
At dinner last night, we talked about the way that the experience of war imprints itself on the experiences of individuals and societies differently, according to the war and the immediacy of its domestic impact.
Reflecting on that conversation, it struck me that growing up with the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction hanging over us left its own imprints. Less immediately dramatic, perhaps, than the years of evacuation, rationing and lights out of World War Two, but no less terrifying in its own insidious way, the Cold War offered plenty of sleepless nights to this over-active imagination.
I remember panicking when we were told that total annihilation was just four minutes away. Whenever the sirens were tested I found myself wondering if the radar I now know was based at Jodrel Bank had picked up inbound enemy missiles that would destroy my school and my family and the small world of Langdon Hills that I inhabited. I imagined Soviet tanks trundling through my childhood stamping ground of the Fränkische Schweiz and rolling across Western Europe, destroying everything in their path.
Television films like Threads and the Day After depicted the horrors of a nuclear Armageddon in chilling detail. I remember lying awake for nights, terrified of what would happen.
I also remember taking the bus to Romford to see Rocky IV in 1985 and being reassured that we would always beat the bad guys. How could we not be? Our plucky little hero was avenging his friend’s death and completed his training montage in the frozen Russian countryside with just a few logs at his disposal.
Drago on the other hand, his giant of an opponent, was wired up to the most sophisticated computers and pumped full of steroids – yet our man still triumphed and, in doing so, won the admiration of the Russian President.
Gloriously awful nonsense, but now, looking back, the parameters seem so much safer. In much the way that my father’s grandparents reflected on the unique camaraderie of the Second World War, the sense of social obligation and national community, I catch myself thinking back fondly to the geo-strategic certainty of a time when two superpowers leaned in on each other. The USA and the USSR were the hammer-beam roof of our geo-politics, creaking and immobile under the weight of their respective nuclear edifices.
In this changed world of terrorist cells, underground bombers, dirty bombs and cyber-warfare, such certainty seems oddly nostalgic. For me, that surreal stalemate of infinite nuclear escalation has woven itself into the fabric of memory, mischievously tangling itself with normative childhood archetypes of safety, and I find myself prompted to rueful reflection by the architecture of redundant physical structures or the clumsily amateurish animation of public information broadcasts.
They each harbour the childhood ghosts of lingering summers spent wondering on the end of the world.
The Nuclear Bunker at Kelvedon Hatch is a local example of such a building. I find a certain poignancy in the way that this extraordinary structure, disguised beneath a simple cottage and chillingly significant in its original purpose, has been reduced to such a level that it can now be hired out for parties. If you click the picture below you might see what I mean in the gallery that I have pulled together on Flickr.
In a similar way, the series of Protect and Survive public information films retain their ability to shock, despite their amateurishness. I still wonder if hiding under some doors and suitcases would ensure my survival in the event of a nuclear strike.
But perhaps the greatest reminder that this period in our history is dead and gone is the strange news that Latvia recently sold Skrunda, an entire Soviet-era town, now completely deserted. Click on the photo below and you will be transported to an eerie gallery on Flickr that paints a haunting picture of decaying urban sprawl – its architecture, posters and purpose abandoned to the past.
Here the ghosts of my childhood nightmares can still play amongst the radar stations and the tower blocks and the crumbling, brick-strewn classrooms.
At last night’s Council Meeting I moved the following motion (see item 13):
“The Council welcomes the demonstration of public support for reinstating The Woodsman in St Martin’s Square, recognises the talent and generosity of Dave Chapple in giving “The Woodsman” to the people of Basildon, and commits to its restoration and reinstatement in St Martin’s Square at the earliest practical opportunity.”
I regretted that no administration had looked after “The Woodsman”. However, I pointed out that “The Woodsman’s continuing neglect, taken together with what they had done to other pieces of public art and Cllr Tony Ball’s comments on the funding of “Progression”, showed that the Conservative Party in Basildon (not nationally) had a clear position: they are not supportive of public art. I said that this seemed inconsistent with their Conservative colleagues at County Hall, their own press release and survey – and the public response on Facebook to “The Woodsman”. (I pointed out that “The Woodsman” had more than ten times more friends on Facebook than Stephen Metcalfe, the Conservative PPC, on his campaign page – and that the page for “The Woodsman” had only been running for a few weeks.)
The public survey is very interesting.
As you can see, response was low. 220 people offered an opinion. (I’ll state it again, despite the Council saying this survey had wide coverage, I saw nothing and so didn’t take part.) However, whilst it does show that 74% of people thought “The Woodsman” should be replaced, it also showed that a majority of people wanted a piece of public art in St Martin’s Square: either “The Woodsman”, another piece by Dave or a newly commissioned piece of public art. Just to be clear, I say a majority as if you take the totals for “The Woodsman”, “King Edgar’s Head” and a new piece of public art you get 130. That is 59% of 220 – a majority. Sadly, though, I suspect this survey was just another cynical manipulation of figures to present the result they wanted: “The Woodsman” gone and purple squid lights installed instead. (They are actually going to be putting the Town Clock where “The Woodsman” used to be. It’s a marvellous and unique piece of engineering, as Cllr Horgan said, but surely it should be put back in the Town Centre – where it was designed to be?)
Whatever people’s views on public art in general, I made the argument that “The Woodsman” was different: made from material from Basildon, made in Basildon, by an artist from Basildon, in front of people from Basildon and then handed over to Basildon – for free.
Finally, earlier in the meeting, Cllr Ball, talking on another item, had said that his Conservative Council was a listening administration and that they would hear what the people wanted and then deliver. I concluded by reminding the Council of what he had said, pointing out that 162 people had said take “The Woodsman” down in their consultation – but more than 1500 people were now asking for it to be put back. The people would be waiting for him to listen and deliver.
The Conservative Councillors commended Dave Chapple on his work. However, during the meeting I was accused of electioneering, making politics out of “The Woodsman”, and was told that the Conservative administration would take no lessons on support for public art as they had repaired the “Mother and Child” fountain. I was also told that that Dave had always wanted to see “The Woodsman” in Wat Tyler. They had consulted the public – and the public had asked for it to be taken down (all 162 of them).
The motion was defeated with every single Conservative Councillor present voting against – the three Liberal Democrats and the Labour Councillors present voting for.
I am a little wrung out with it all now to be honest. How sad to think that we are in this mess because no-one could be bothered to put a bit of teak oil on “The Woodsman” as Dave had requested.
I didn’t know Dave and I don’t know his family. I know one or two of his friends, but not very well. I simply want to see the “The Woodsman” repaired and restored and put back on display, either in St Martin’s Square or a suitable location that is actually in the town, not tucked away like some unofficial sculpture museum (graveyard?).
Let’s hope that the years of neglect have not left it damaged beyond repair.
And if they are not going to put him back, at least listen to what the majority of respondents were telling the Council in that survey: they want a piece of public art there.
Robot dietary requirements and Jedi
I am definitely not the first person to have blogged about the wince-inducing news that the American military have developed robots that can power themselves by eating organic material. However, I’ve not read much that speculates on what interesting things could happen if you marry this robot technology with several other recent developments in the field of computing – like “adaptive behaviour” for instance. (I use “interesting” in that very British way: gross understatement, superficial calm and underlying blind panic all at once.)
The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR – geddit?!) was sponsored as a business project by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This is the U.S. Government’s geek arm, where techno-nerds work on things like removing debris from space and developing an autonomous walking quadruped platform. (Basically they are all Star Wars fans and want to build a real life Imperial AT-AT – George Lucas should sue for breach of patent. And I bet they all put “Jedi” in the religion box on census forms.)
DARPA has been responsible for lots of sci-fi military technology.
They sponsored the development of the MQ1-Predator. This is the un-manned drone missile platform that costs $4.5 million a pop and that enterprising Iraqis hacked using a €30 piece of software called SkyGrabber – PayPal accepted. (If you are not quite sure yet what you’d do with your very own MQ1-Predator there is a trial version here).
Rather more “out there” DARPA projects include research into military-trained bees, remote-control rats and thought-controlled weapon systems (see ST081-022) . (If you are feeling really brave, there are 522 pages of declassified projects for 2010-2011 on the DARPA website. )
I first became aware of EATR in a report by Stephen Sackur on Radio 4, excerpted from a report he prepared for the BBC World Service. (If you’ve time, have a listen. It is chilling.)
Really?! I am glad they are straight about that!
Considered in isolation, I can fully accept that the problem we are dealing with here is one to do with the ethics of the individuals charged with programming these robots. There is only a problem with the Geneva Conventions if someone set the parameters for their diet too widely. (I am not entirely convinced on this point. I am diabetic – and I know something about the vagaries of diet control.)
Chaos Theory and “adaptive behaviour”
All well and good.
However, a few weeks ago, I was among those who marvelled at Professor Jim Al-Khalili’s programme “The Secret Life of Chaos”, a scientific tour de force which sought to outline the role played by chaos theory in producing the order we see about us every day. Whether or not you accept his assertion that the simple yet unpredictable rules of chaos which underpin evolutionary theory are the sole reason for our existence (rules best depicted by the infinitely variable intricacies of the Mandelbrot set) his analysis of process and the role of mathematics in revolutionising our understanding of biological processes was simply brilliant. (As it happens, I disagree with his assertion that this understanding takes science beyond philosophy and religion – for even if you argue this understanding to be true, there is still no scientific explanation for the existence of this behaviour-dictating rule-set in the first place. Btw you should really watch the Mandelbrot set zoom sequence above. It is incredible.).
One fascinating part of that programme was a demonstration of evolutionary behaviour in successive generations of computer avatars. Games software has often been at the cutting edge of computer technology. The increasingly complex coding necessary to create more life-like games enjoys a symbiotic relationship with computer hardware manufacturers producing faster and more powerful computer chips.
The software development company Natural Motion grew out of work at Oxford University, commercialising research into human and animal movement. Co-founder Torsten Reil, described as an “animating neural biologist”, worked on creating simulations of nervous systems based on genetic algorithms. He and his team set out to teach stick figures to walk using virtual neural networks analogous to that bit of the nervous system in the spine, something described in computer terms as “adaptive behaviour”. (It’s important to distinguish between this “learning” process (complex) and simply programming a computer avatar to walk (simple). This was the former, effectively the computer-generated avatar teaching itself how to walk).
Reil’s team started with lots of neural networks. By their very nature, those in this first generation were going to behave in a random manner. However, a genetic algorithm selected those examples that showed some promise, for example the avatar managing a small step rather than falling over, and then included that behaviour in the next generation of avatars. In twenty generations, the avatars had taught themselves to walk in a straight line. If you are interested, there is the most phenomenal video available at Technology, Entertainment, Design: Ideas Worth Spreading, in which Reil gives an inspirational and fascinating presentation to a live studio audience:
Natural Motion’s white paper on “Dynamic Motion Synthesis”, published in March 2005, sums up the power of adaptive behaviour technology:
This technology is now an integral part of computer game design in some of the world’s largest studios. Natural Motion’s endorphin technology is used by firms like Sony and Electronic Arts, whilst its morpheme software is used by Codemasters and Eidos, amongst others.
What if?
The moment I heard Sackur’s piece on Radio 4, I found myself asking the “What if?” question.
What if some bunch of loons, with a multi-billon dollar budget, thought that there might be some merit in at least experimenting with a synthesis of EATR and adaptive behaviour technology? Could those be the sort of loons that spend millions on bot-bees and robo-rats? The very same techno-brilliant weapons nerds you might find digging into the deep pockets of DARPA?
Throw the robo-rat technology into the mix and suddenly the prospect of a corpse-eating robot, that adapts itself to its fighting environment and, from time to time, turns captured soldiers into DARPA’s version of the “Borg” (or even EATR’s version of the “Borg” – the ones it doesn’t eat, anyway), and suddenly it all looks even more alarming.
Is it really too fanciful to conceive of robots that are imprinted with an evolutionary artificial intelligence and that then calculate it is in their best survival interests to over-ride the protocols relating to the Geneva Conventions, eat the corpses of dead soldiers to remain fuelled and re-deploy captured enemy combatants by remote control to bolster their offensive capabilities? After Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Project MK-ULTRA and Binyam Mohamed, reliance on the programming ethics of human beings seems a rather flimsy defence. It seems even flimsier in a context of unconventional warfare, billion-dollar research budgets and ever-diminishing physical resources.
Tech-heads and Terminators
James Cameron’s Terminator franchise depicts a world in which an artificially intelligent computer, Skynet, takes over the world, with computer-controlled robots deployed to destroy humanity. The long trailer for Terminator 2: Judgement Day gives you a pretty good idea of what it is all about. Not even Cameron had Arnie eating the corpses of fallen fighters for fuel. (Incidentally, for all you conspiracists out there, Skynet does indeed exist as a family of military satellites providing strategic communications to the UK Armed Forces and its NATO allies on coalition operations).
We may laugh about these things, but as we do, teams of DARPA boffins are beavering away in the classified bowels of the U.S. Department of Defense. If EATR, robo-rats and mind-control target acquisition are declassified, we can only wonder at what is going on behind DARPA’s firmly closed doors – and suddenly Cameron’s Skynet is looking distinctly ZX-81 compared to what could be coming down the military technology track…
And now for something (not) completely different…
In the meantime, rest assured that it’s not just the DARPA boffins that risk losing the techno-weaponry plot. Deep in the badlands of Texas, the gun nuts of Mil-Spec Monkey™ have discovered a need for flash-lights that double as submachine guns.
I kid you not.
Watch… And snigger. Or groan. And be glad you don’t live in Texas.
Fragments and Reflections 