Landmark change in conciousness
Ken - A people watcher with No Fixed Abode
Last Tuesday (16th) I was out working on my current project. I filmed this chap above. He's called Ken and he is homeless. During the interview he was drinking from a bottle of cheap cider with haste and talking about some filthy subjects. It was rather entertaining listening to the old boy ramble on in his up-beat Scottish accent. Toward the end of the shoot as I packed away my camera he noticed it was a Praktica and commented. He began telling me how he used to have a Canon A1 and it dawned on me how easily I had forgotten that homeless alcoholics had a different life before they were homeless alcoholics.
Several days later after telling people about my entertaining filming experience with Ken the moment had almost completely left my conciousness. Until Friday morning as I sat in traffic along Station Road. I noticed a crowd of concerned people around the public toilet, on the bench infront of the toilet was a large hiking bag with a bed-roll attached. Whereas I would normally have dismissed the moment, writing off the onlookers as blood-lusting rubber-neckers and the victim as another dead zooner not worthy of a second thought, I instead thought, "Oh shit, I hope it's not Ken" and that was the moment it hit me! I had just had a landmark change in conciousness. For the first time in my life a homeless person had moved out of the realm of being a public object and into the category of being a member of the community, that is to say my community; the people I chose to recognise.
The 8 Beers Afternoon DJ set
Martin Joiner DJing at Felix's all day party - Sat 13th June 2009
I had not DJ'd for over a year. The last time was a disastrous set at the Orange Box in Yeovil. My taste in music is so eclectic my DJ sets always turnout sounding rather schizophrenic to the unfamiliar bystander. To my friends who have spent time in my room or driving in my car the sets make perfect sense, but those people hardly make up the majority in a room.
So this set was my attempt at playing a tightly linked selection of tunes that anyone, stranger or friend could get into. I delved deep into my music collection and dug out old and new. It pained me to remove some songs from the list but I forced myself for the good of the experience.
I drank 8 bottles of beer during the set (hence the name) and here's what I played...
Dark Evil Opening Section
Massive Attack – Angel
Fischerspooner - Invisible
Mirwais - Disco Science
Beta Band – To you alone
Death in Vegas – Dirt (Or MAYBE DIRGE!!! I DON'T KNOW)
Black Strobe – Me and Madonna
Hidden track on Blur – Think Tank
Six Feet Under Theme (Photek Edit)
Santogold – You'll Find a way (xxx change remix)Constant Driving beat section
Jackson and his computer band – Utopia
Juliet – Avalon (orignal)
Audio Bullies - ????
Tommie Sunshine – Shiny Toy Guns
Yelle - A Cause Des Garcons (Tepr Remix)
La Roux - Bullet Proof
Simian Mobile Disco – It's the Beat
Kylie Minogue - Slow
Santogold - Creator
Air – Alpha Beta Gaga
Gorillaz - 68 State
The dove (Unknown track name)
MGMT – Weekend Wars (George Lenton Remix)
Justice - ???
Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes
Ting Tins - We WalkElectro drifty ambient section
Kate Nash – Foundations (Metronomy Remix)
LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous
Orbital - Funny BreakPositive Funky Retro Feeling Pop Section
Peter Bjorn and John – Nothing to worry about
Architecturein Helsinki – Do the Wirlwind
Tom Tom Club – Genius of Love
I Gotta Thang (Uh Huh) - Cass & Mangan
Bonde do role - Solta o frangoThe Cult – She Sells Sanctuary (Reserve Tune for emergencies)
The set went down well with several people commenting on the fact that they'd heard a lot of the songs in films or adverts before but could not name the tune or artist. I hadn't done that intentionally but when you do look back through you can see music from O2 adverts, the GTA 4 advert, Snatch, T-Mobile advert, 6 feet under (obviously), and several songs which are often used as bedding music to documentaries or journalistic entertainment shows.
To summerise, the set was popular, it created the right mood for the afternoon (as the party warmed up), the dubstep DJs took over after me and the day/night continued to grow into a very very good party. Even if I did suffer the consiquences the morning after! Thank you to Felix and all his house mates for putting on the party.
Dear Europe, we’ll take your free parking but not your people, sincerely yours, hypocritical Britian
No! Come back! Please!
Yesterday lunchtime in a sunny town centre I started filming on a project that I have been wanting to do for about a year. I am very driven on this because not only do I have a rock solid concept in mind with an exact vision of how it should look, but I have a confirmed exhibition for it. The exact location and dates are still in negotiation but I can say that it will be in Taunton town centre and will coincide with Somerset Arts Week, which, as the name in no way suggests lasts 6 weeks. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to call it Somerset Arts Month? This name would also carry the added advantage that the 3 letter acronym wouldn't sound like a horror film.
So today saw my second session of filming and to my great delight I found the people who were in my top 3 of desired subjects. They agreed to take part and I was so pleased to have gotten their pictures at such an early stage in the project. So I switched off my camera and said thank you, as I reached into my bag to pull out the final but still absolutely essential stage - the model release forms - they jumped up excitedly and rushed over the road to catch their bus. Like a desperate journalist watching his career fall away in front of him I chased them waving the forms, pleading that they would sign but they were having none of it. Gutted I stood there. I have on tape the best footage I have ever taken but cannot use it until I track them down and get their John Hancock on those forms!
I work with traditional fine art mediums too
Working in traditional fine art materials is important to me. The "hands on" physical stuff balances well with the "untouchable" video work. Both mediums are very different to straight poetry. I have tried on many occasions to focus on only one medium, feeling that having so many products on the go makes me too schizophrenic. But my attempts have always resulted in an out-and-out creative block. The cure to that creative block has always been to drop one medium and move over to another. Here is a photo taken earlier today of one of my many ongoing experiments in plaster.
Plaster experiment in studio
I am in love with La Roux and Little Boots
On a side note related to these two amazing electro-pop songs, I am going to start putting my poetry to music. Unable to find a producer or musician who works with the kind of tunes I want I am going to start by laying it down to loops of songs I like. I have just about enough musical experience to steal hooks from songs and put it together into an instrumental version ready for me to speak over the top of. Yes this will be uncleared samples but I am only doing it for personal use and then, hopefully, with a bit of luck, an electronica producer will want to step in and work with me to produce an original product.
Second related point. I am going to start working under an alias for a lot of my artwork. A performer name as it were, create a bit of focus to my on-stage character.
Martin Joiner Girlfriend
I am being stalked! Wicked.
A fellow blogger and friend from Bristol, Jal contacted me today explaining that whilst checking his web-stats he noticed a user had found his blog by searching Google for the term ""Martin Joiner" girlfriend". Now lets get all Columbo on this.... Whoever it was must have ample internet knowledge because they have used the quote marks to specify that my name must appear in that order with a space in between them. Not many people know this search engine trick. Also, my friend stated the user had visited the site before, suggesting they had been there to watch the YouTube video of my poem that was posted on that blog several months ago. This creates two trains of thought: Firstly, they are a poetry fan suggesting it could be the girl who was asking after me in the Perfect 5th several weeks ago. Billy the doorman said a girl was asking for me but I haven't seen her since. Secondly and rather ironically, the poem is called "Infatuated" and is actually a funny little piece I wrote about falling in love (or just thinking you are in love) with a girl on Facebook.
Linux experiment has ended so soon
After just a few days of attempting to use only Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) I have already returned to Windows XP. Here follows the list of restrictions that I experienced in order of when they came to light...
Negatives
- No 'Save for Web' option in Gimp
- gFTP does not support folders with spaces in the name
- FileZilla does not support 32 bit Linux systems
- Video editing programmes are ALL sub standard (worst than the early version of iMovie circa 2002)
- My DVD drive will read CD-ROMS but not DVD-ROM (no solution available on the web)
- Quanta code colouring not good and environment not as visually pleasant as Dreamweaver (it really does become a headache after just an hour of usage)
- No multiple file transfer feature in gFTP
- No 'Site Manager' feature in gFTP
- No separate adjustment layers in GIMP (only direct irreversible application to a layer)
- Flash/Vector animation is non existent
- Local host php development is made hard by Linux system security. (to develop on a live server you must be constantly logged in as root user, unlike windows where you just work on the files like any other document)
Notice I have not taken into account restrictions felt due to the inherent difficulties of changing environments. I do not feel it would be fair to judge a system on what is a basic human inevitability that one will take a while to adjust to a foreign environment.
There are many advantages to Linux Ubuntu system but here are the ones that specifically pleased me.
Positives
- File navigation is excellent to use, better than windows. Browse through a folder with many sub-folders, enter a folder and then click back and the window remembers what point you were scrolled to. Incredibly helpful for going through a well organised MP3 collection building a play list.
- Media playing is effortless
- Network set up is effortless and automatic
- Application adding/removing is brilliant
- System monitoring is very good
- Multiple desktops is very useful
- Spell checking web browser is a fantastic feature
Having learned all these positives and negatives I am not abandoning Linux completely, I will simply run a duel boot machine. I will alert the Linux developers of my experience so they can choose to fix or leave. I will also seek out plugins for Firefox and other applications to try and mimick the convenient features that I experienced in Ubuntu 9.04. And yes people! There is a spell check feature in Firefox in Windows XP you just have to install the Firefox British Spell Check Dictionary?
My new blog
Several past attempts at blogging have failed for several reasons. This however is my latest attempt at keeping a up-to-date interesting blog. The butterscotchworld blog didn't work because it wasn't clear who was the author (Me or Ollie). My Facebook Notes are only readable by my FB friends (that's no good). So this is my new location for my public writing. I have recieved some lovely compliments recently about how people really enjoy my little posts. Thank you guys.
No Windows or Mac for 1 month
For those of you interested in social/personal experiments here's the bare bones of my latest project.
The Rule
For 1 month I will not use a Windows or Apple computer. I will continue to work as a website designer and multimedia artist, I will continue to do all my usual things like downloading and listening to MP3s, producing animations, editing images, surfing the net, blogging, playing games, keeping records of expenses, and producing invoices. But all of this will be done without using a single Windows or Apple product.
How will I do it?
I have installed on my computer a free operating system called Ubuntu. It is installed with a free web browser called Firefox, a free email programme called Evolution Mail, a free website development environment called Quanta, a free photoshop equivalent called Gimp, a free word processor and spreadsheet application package called Open Office. And in case you hadn't got it yet, they are all free, developed by experts and supported commercially.
Extra Advantages (other than being free)
Right now, as I type this Note I am being spell checked. Every single word you write on Ubuntu gets spell checked immediately and, as is the norm, gets underlined in red if not found in the dictionary. You can be using a website, chatting on instant messenger, writing an email or putting text on a poster you are designing, it all gets treated as words that need checking.
Linux systems do not get targeted by virus makers. Hackers (anarchists) have no interest in attacking open source projects because most of them are friends with the developers and recognise the community and products as being non-capitalist. Therefore I have never seen a virus on a Linux system and am not expecting to get one.
Compatibility is not an issue. Open Office can read and save MS Word documents. MP3s are the same on all systems. As are PDFs, JPEGs, AVIs, PHP documents and almost everything else. I can send and receive any file a PC or Mac can.
To Conclude
If over the next month I find myself desperately needing to use a Windows or Apple PC I will make note of the circumstances around that need.
Please do comment your thoughts on this... Feedback is essential to me!
Would you ever consider dropping Windows for a free alternative?