My sister is studying music at university in Darwin, and a few days ago she asked if I could send her some of my animations so she could work on soundtracking them for a class. So I went through my hard-drive and made a DVD for her. I’d kind of forgotten about this one, and watching it back I still quite like it. It was an exercise in rotoscoping, and was drawn from two separate video sources — one I took of myself and one where I’d grabbed segments of plants growing from nature documentaries. The music is Lock of Freedom by The Happies, which was freely available at the time and can now be purchased from CD Baby and iTunes.
I can’t remember what started the the topic, but my notes from our first MFA (Master of Fine Art) talk read as follows:
TED Talks —> Do schools kill creativity, Sir Ken Robinson (2006)
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Woody Allen —> dentistry
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10 books, works of art, things of value —> what would it be?
We watched the TED video, and perhaps the discussion about ten things of value came from that. Regardless, I’ve spent the past few weeks putting together this list. Ten things that really speak to me and what I do.
Every RadioLab podcast is amazing. This one struck a particular chord with me as it explained exactly what I wanted my work to be about at a time when I was writing a proposal and really struggling to articulate my thoughts. I cried in public at a tram stop on Swanston St.
The Show with Zefrank. A podcast from several years ago, where Ze made a video every weekday for a year. Odd, hilarious and utterly inspiring. The clips above are a few of my favourites. I still subscribe to the feed because I just can’t let go. ‘Stumpy’ in particular brought the public waterworks.
The myth:
Creativity is a gift!
From a muse!
Or, whatever!
Merlin Mann has never made me cry. Although I have internally cheered on occasion. I’ve had this particular video saved in a blog draft for about a year. Occasionally I’ve ranted and raved about the talent myth here, and I may have said angry things about people who pander to it. In reality, the things that get you places are hard work and a love for what you do. I credit this video with my current habit of getting into the studio at 8:15 every morning, whether or not I have any idea what I’m going to do when I get there. I already had a physical folder equivalent to the box idea, but since then I’ve made myself an online box too. See once upon a spacetime.
4. Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
My first and favourite Neil Gaiman novel. I bought it for a plane trip to Darwin/Wadeye and didn’t put it down until it was done. I probably cried on the plane. When I struggle with a place to start a project, I think of the first line of this book. It begins, as most things begin, with a song. And I go from there.
5. Sigur Ros, Glósóli
The song alone gave me chills. Then I saw the video clip. And cried.
6. The Iron Giant
I saw the animated film first, then I read the original story, The Iron Man by Ted Hughes later. They are very, very different, but have the same heart. Brad Bird changed the story quite drastically for the film, and those changes suit the feature film format much more than Ted Hughes’ fantastical story would. The film guts me every time I watch it, and the book had a similar effect… when I read it sitting on a park bench on Sydney Road.
7. Woody Allen’s Manhattan
If you don’t like Manhattan we can’t be friends. Simple as that. I saw Manhattan for the first time only a few years ago. It was my first Woody Allen film and I had no preconceptions of what it would be like. I had no idea that (apart from a few stark differences in personal experience and preference) Woody Allen’s brain is (or was back then anyway) exactly the same as mine.
8. Joss Whedon
I could list Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Dr Horrible, anything that Joss has made here. Pretty much everything is worthwhile. Especially the speech he gave at Equality Now. I don’t doubt that Joss has made me cry in public on several occasions.
9. Cages, Dave McKean
My favourite graphic novel. Currently out of print. Apparently this will be available again in August 2010. I don’t know how many times I’ve borrowed this from the Melbourne University library. Lets just leave it at “a lot”. Cages is a story about creative processes. Aesthetically, there’s a wonderful sense of movement and poise in the illustration and it hits all my favourite philosophical notes. Wept on a tram while reading the last few pages.
10. The Flaming Lips
I was going to choose an album, but really, the ultimate Flaming Lips experience is seeing them in concert. I think I’ve said this before somewhere here, but the highlight for me from the show at Festival Hall in 2009 was Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Beforehand, Wayne mentioned (paraphrasing and depending on memory here, of course) that there was a particular song that he never expected would resonate so much with people, and how joyous he felt playing it live.
I recently began the habit of catching a ride half way to the city with Paul. He starts work at 8am, so I’ve been getting to the studio around 8:15 every morning. Every day for the past week or two we’ve seen the hot air balloons out and about over the city as we drive.
Occasionally in Preston, we’d be woken by insistent, angry barking from Henry, and we’d discover that he was attempting to protect the property from the big evil balloons. There’d be no consoling him, and it was hilarious — this little, floppy eared, skewiff toothed dog with extra long legs, letting loose his indignation at floating balls in the sky.
A few days ago I started a couple of tumblr blogs for Stella and Tom. Stellr and Tomblr respectively. I’ve queued up a bunch of photos and one is published each day. I’m sure Henry, the little attention seeker that he was, would be suitably jealous. I still miss him, but now I can look at the balloons and smile.
Yesterday I got news that my friend Alex and his partner, Rebecca, had welcomed a little boy into their family. Now, I knew they were having a baby, knew when it was due, but still somehow had only imagined making a present.
It turns out I can make one of these in half a day. Hooray! It’s the Umbilical Cord Hat from the first Stitch ‘n Bitch book, with 8 extra stitches and as such, an extra lot of decreases to make up for the thinner yarn and smaller needles. Rav details here. I hope it’s still cold enough in China for a tiny new babby to wear a lovely wool hat.
It is getting colder here. And when I was choosing a yarn to knit the hat with, I found two bags of ‘Summer’ wool/silk roving from the Melbourne Handweavers and Spinners Guild in my stash. What better time to start spinning it than just after summer’s end, on the weekend of constant storming when we get hailstones the size of golfballs?
On my birthday, I received Aperture 3 from Paul and a Microplane grater from my parents. <3
I also received some other lovely presents and many well-wishes from here, there and everywhere. Many, many thanks to everyone. I also had a very lovely party; thank goodness it was last weekend…
For about a month now I’ve been collecting images of circles and space and such on Once Upon a Spacetime, my MFA tumblr. So of course the first thing I did after setting up my studio this week was draw lines. I was thinking of them as threads or a warp, and have been playing with op art ideas of perception and the way our brains interpret visual signals. The lines evolved into opening sentences from novels. Today I took the camera in and started taking pictures. Not sure where it’s going from here, but that’s part of the fun, right…?
