Project

Began filming and recording for some experimental pieces this week around industrial parks, scrap yards and edgelands.

Bruce Lacey

 A retrospective of Lacey's work was at the BFI last night.
Mostly supported, thinly, by an audience with grey hair and a couple of well informed 30 somrthings.
Bizarre, English surrealistic fun and games abounded with some wonderfully awful sound design and highly inspiring ideas of hand-held camera work and the realization that technology must not get in the way of a good idea.
Bravo Bruce.

BFI

BFI membership is proving to be a wise investment. Not just getting me off my arse and out into the real world, but more importantly, the amount of documentary/independent/artist films is proving to be quite a stimulating affair for my work.

Of Time and The City

Got some great ideas from watching Of Time and The City by Terence Davies yesterday.
It's amazing when one gets into something, how there is already an established practice.

Edgelands

Marion Shoard was the inspiration for the poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts to write Edgelands. Here is a link to her 2002 essay.

Topic Idea 3: The Edgelands

This book and its ideas were very useful to me for the BA project. It looks at the strange areas at the edges of urban sprawls.

Topic Idea 2: The New Towns of England

Basildon, Harlow,

Swandown

Looking forward to this exhibition at Dilston Grove next week.
Another case of crazy coincidences; I was put on to Andrew Koetting by my tutor, John Wynne and have been exploring Sinclair's work just this past week, and now they have a joint exhibition in South London.

Non-Place 2

An example of what I do not want to do.
I like the fact that the topic interests them, but this is pretty superficial and tabloid in its use of banal questions and a non-conclusion. I'm sure they could have made something of this if they'd narrowed down the focus a bit and worried at that for an answer. I hope they continue with their work.

London Orbital

I found a lot of connections to my research in this film by Christopher Petit and Iain Sinclair. It is a documentary, connected to but not of Sinclair's book of the same name.
Working similarly to Kieller's Robinson films, this is great film commenting upon contemporary culture and politics through topographical movement and history.
Filmed without a crew, it has a very personal feel to it and creates a believable and intriguing narrative.
A real must for repeated viewing.

London Sound Survey

An article in this month's Wire magazine reminded me of this great site that I hadn't visited for months.
Geographically it is ideally suited to one part of my project.
http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/

The Individual.

Reading this week to keep my presentation work up-to-date, I realized several occurrences of the idea of the way in which many of us are becoming less social animals and more individual.
I relate this particularly to my research on personal smart media. Gone for many, are the days of interaction on a journey, for example. Sealed up with in-ear headphones, a mobile that cuts into your music, a personal playlist and GPS to help you when you get a bit lost and don't want tho have to look at landmarks.