3 Is A Magic Number - Bird Mobile - Langstone Junior School - 2016

Commission for Langstone Junior School by Portsmouth City Council.

Wanted to do something beyond just a static line of birds along a corridor.

Dynamic movement, character, living, educational, multi-layered,


The theme here is 3 and multiples of three. The mobile is based on three sets of three arms across three levels, three birds on each level with three bonus 'loose' birds flying around the corridor. The lengths of the arms on each level are prime numbers - the differences between the prime numbers being multiples of three. I made birds in three different sizes to populate the mobile, which hangs under a glass roof of three colours...

This is the confluence of art, maths, engineering and natural history, combined with recycled materials to produce a site specific installation for grown ups and children to enjoy.

There are more photos somewhere. I'll upload them when I find them. ;)

On - Being Naughty

I’ve occasionally wanted to deliberately be ‘naughty’ for at least as long as I can remember and probably longer. I clearly have phases when the ‘rebellious’ spirit rises up and needs to be expressed. I guess it goes with being emotionally twelve years old all my life. What do I mean by ‘being naughty’? We’re not talking seriously criminal here – I’m not a murderer – we’re talking; maybe drawing penises on public walls, swearing like a trooper, nicking stuff from work or skips, being in places I shouldn’t be - Protesting openly about stuff I believe in... ‘Being Punk’! 

Like, for instance, I really enjoy swearing. If you’ve spent any time with me you’ll know I use it like punctuation or breathing points. I try to be sensitive to these things, and there I are people that I love and respect who really do not like swearing. So I will swear and cuss openly and freely when I’m around people who have indicated that they don’t mind, and I will ‘behave’ myself when I’m not. I know we all do that. But we don’t though, do we? There are some of us who just don’t give a shit. When was the first time you ever swore in front of your Mum and Dad, or your Nan? I have only one memory of my Nan dropping an F-bomb…

I like to imagine that I’m actually a somewhat sensitive soul and quite deeply repressed, so I’ve mostly lacked the courage to be ‘naughty’ in public. I over-think things a lot! I constantly talk and shame myself out of doing things that other people would just wade into. My inner emotional rebel really is very heavily repressed. The angry twelve year old that lives in my head is sometimes really angry and potentially incredibly damaging. He has from time to time got out and fucked things up royally. So the repression and self-censorship has grown over the years. My chosen method of suicide in the past has been suffocation… the visceral, physical expression or manifestation of the psychological warfare with myself. **NB - I am currently good thanks, don’t panic. I’ve been in a relatively good, stable place mentally since at least 2018**

Of course I’ve been ‘naughty’ from time to time. I’ve been out on late night graff and paste-up missions, pinched stuff I’ve found or needed here and there, got into places I shouldn't have been, that sort of thing and such. I gave out hand-drawn, illustrated, erect penis stickers at a Christmas PCM night – I seriously agonised over that. The artists book that they belong to “Mr Dick Stickers’ Book Of Sticky Dicks” will (probably) remain forever a work in progress, (I’ve got hundreds of dick stickers in a drawer here) – or performing ‘Burning Down The Oasis’ at Southsea Castle, and painting it as a ‘protest piece’ at Upfest in 2023, but I’ve always found it extremely difficult emotionally. And I know I am or can be horrifically unforgiving, passive-aggressive and judgmental – an absolute wanker – people have told me so…

In my head, the lessons of my childhood live strong. Any sort of “Showing off in public” is ‘very bad’. ‘Self-promotion’ or being “prideful”, these things are also shameful. If your work is good enough, it will stand on its own merits. I know my two sisters feel the same to an extent – and we’re all three of us highly creative, expressive, repressed individuals. 

So. WCIDWWIG - What Can I Do With What I’ve Got? 

Where has this path lead me to? What is my enlightenment? I over-analyse everything. Everything. I self-censor to the point of being stifled and unproductive – and yet I am incessantly creative. I express myself in riddles and metaphors – clouds of ‘meaning’ that say everything and nothing. Bury everything beneath a storm of words. Keep my feelings to myself. Suffocate my creativity with guilt and shame. Definitely don’t let it out in public. Be ashamed and doubt the veracity of my feelings. (The current state of the backroom canvas is again, a physical manifestation of all of this – and it’s fucking magnificent! See photos!)

What's my strategy to counter all of this? Fierce Independence and as far as I can, self-reliance. Constantly question and refine my beliefs about everything. Make work for myself, which makes me happy. Try not to judge. 

On my back room wall there lives, for a few years, a 3 metre canvas. It covers one complete wall. Over the years, I've painted it, and repainted it, and painted over it, and repainted over it many, many times. It's purpose is to be a completely free arena for whatever is in my head at the time. When an idea is done, it gets documented and painted over - wiped clean. It's had a drum machine and laser harps built into it, (not there now). It's a 3 metre non-permanent, sketchbook; a go-to for immediate throwing up of ideas and experiments. It's had collages, drawings, paintings, landscapes, portraits  - every kind of art work on its surface. If I just need to get in and work out some emotional angst or just burn off some energy, it's there. It's job is to be on standby. 

It is iterative, constantly moving, constantly changing, but continuous. It's about process. It embodies so much of the way my head and my art works. It's transitive, open, free, enabling, non-precious, living. 

And if you’ve made it this far – thanks for listening, thanks for being there, have a great day and go and do something positive for a complete stranger. I will love you for that.

Thanks, all the best,

Los Dave

On Listening - Again.

  

August bank holiday is Victorious Festival weekend. I have nothing meaningful to say about that.

Occasionally I get asked what kind of music I like. Hmm. Well, I like a lot of different kinds of music dependent on my mood, where I am, who I'm with and what I'm doing.

Left to my own devices, I love challenging music. Music that makes you stop whatever you're doing and really pay attention. The antithesis of what my sister calls "Music to vacuum to". The kind you actively have to go find, 'cos you ain't gonna get it on the radio. Not Background music. 

I meet, work with, a lot of people who want music to be a background noise, aural filler, just something to listen to to take their minds away from "spending too much time with [their] own thoughts". People who hate "being in [their] own heads".  These are actual quotes from conversations I've had with people.

They work in a factory which is a constant cacophony of >70 - 75db machinery, alarms, sirens, beeps, loud bangs and crashes - but this they consider not really sound. Noise is not really sound... And the silence must be killed off at all costs. They hate silence. Can't stand it. And being in their own heads makes them feel lonely... Local commercial radio is their drug of choice.
None of which is comprehensible to me.
I cannot imagine what that must feel like.
There but by the grace of good fortune, go I. 

I love the kind of music that suddenly grabs you by the hair from behind and drags you violently to a stop, and makes you exclaim!  "What the fexpletive is THAT! " Like dropping off a cliff in the dark. That feeling of being winded by the unexpected. Discovery!

I enjoy actively Listening. Close listening is to me, like free-swimming. Absolutely liberating and calming and fascinating and stimulating. And it is just as good as a shared, social activity as it is a solitary one. Especially because as a social activity, it often means that everyone present shares a similar sensibility.

But above all, I guess I want music to be interesting. Isn't this what having a mind is for? Isn't this what we are? Explorers, experimenters, curious and creative? Playful?

So. Todays playlist. 

Six albums I've had on already this morning. Six infinitely interesting, compelling aural landscapes for listening, close listening, or just filling the void between your earballs with noise of a different origin. 

_______________________________________

Towering Inferno - Kaddish - Island Records - 1993

Richard Wolfson and Andy Saunders with Márta Sebastyén and Endre Szkárosi

Terrifying and beautiful reflections on the Holocaust, including Eastern European folk singing, Rabbinical chants, klezmer fiddle, sampled voices (including Adolf Hitler), heavy metal guitar and industrial synthesizers. Yeah. Like I say. Interesting.

Biosphere - Substrata - All Saints Records - 1997
Geir Jenssen

Stunningly beautiful, spatial, intimate, immersive aural landscapes and domestic interiors. Audio spatial, cinematic, documentary. Domestic and field recordings, and samples of speech taken from among others, Twin Peaks.

Meeting - Two Worlds Of Modal Music - Harmonia Mundi - 2004

Dominique Vellard, Ken Zuckerman, Swapan Chaudhuri, Keyvan Chemirani

Traditonal Indian classical raga meets Gregorian chant/medieval music. To begin, the two alternate and contrast, but as the songs progress there is much more interplay developing towards some incredible blending of the two forms. By the end, this is virtually metal.

Dead Can Dance - The Serpents Egg - 4AD - 1988

Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry

Extraordinary. The frequency of several of the tracks being used in numerous film and tv soundtracks is a testament to the power and sophistication of the vision, the writing and the performances. 

Peter Gabriel - Passion - Music for The Last Temptation Of Christ film by Martin Scorsese - Realworld - 1989

Peter Gabriel

Absolutely NOT like anything else he ever did. Stunning album. Includes some of his earliest forays into world music and ambience. As befitting its cinematic purpose, it paints glorious, dark soundscapes steeped in classic (now vintage) synths, mixed with modern and trad instrumentation from African and Asian cultures.

Simon Fisher Turner and Derek Jarman - Live Blue Roma - Mute Records 1993

Live performance of Fisher-Turner's soundtrack to Jarman's highly acclaimed film 'Blue',his final feature film, released four months before his death from Aids-related complications. Such complications had already rendered him partially blind at the time of the film's release and he was only able to see in shades of blue.

APROPOS OF NOTHING

 I want to try a thing. I have many creative habits. All of them very diverse and a very good many related to my highly variable somewhat autistic tendencies.

I generally have multitudes of 'projects' on the go at any one time. A vast number of them lie unfinished - I like to think they are just dormant, waiting for a critical component to drop into place. A lot of the time I tend to go through Phases, where one project or one of its spawn - maybe a 'type' of project becomes the focus - often obsessively so. At least until it withers again for some unfathomable or pedantic reason.

But here's the thing. The internet information network is polluted to fuck. The psychology of the internet, particularly the 'Social Media' networks is rabid.

It is un-ethical, corrupt, raping our minds and psychologies by design.

I have stepped away from the most popular social media platforms and retreated into the woods.

If you know me, you'll know I have always had this fiercely independent mentality. It's hard for me to describe because I have to look at it from the inside out, but I like the physical, real world. I really do. 

Anyway. Part of the aim of this ["New"], project is to try to focus some of my creative energies into a short daily burst of activity - for a while at least. I don't know how sustainable this is going to be on a long term basis.

The idea is to have a 20 minute, focussed time to use whatever is to hand to create some thing and publish it each day - or at least as often as I can.

Don't expect sense.

Don't expect polish.

The idea is 20 minutes of creative activity, as often, as regular as I can manage.

Be lucky to make it past the weekend I reckon. But there we go. We'll see.

Welcome. 

I've set a timer by the way, so I'll be tapping away until the buzzer goes off. 40 seconds to go then.

16, and 

IT'S BEEN A WHILE.

Things have changed. 

The big global game of Monopoly is almost over. The bank is bankrupt. Player One has almost all the money and nearly every property on the board. No one can afford to pay the rents, and everything they once owned has long since been mortgaged off to Player One. With every dice roll they are forced to keep moving onto the next square, accumulating bigger debts as they go. The forfeits are getting extreme. Players two, three and four are bored, frustrated, getting angry and want to end the game. Reset. Get some respite.

Player One is pissing everyone else off and is about to get his ass kicked.

From his high chair, he makes tantalising promises, token placatory gestures, just enough to keep the others in the game. He has won already, but he doesn't want to give in because it's not about the winning anymore. It's about being the centre of attention.

Meanwhile, in the next room, the baby is crying. She is hungry and lonely. She is still too young to understand. The grown ups are busy and distracted, fully emotionally engaged in the battle for survival/attention, unable to leave.

Everyone in the room is an attention junkie. As long as they are shouting and arguing and others are responding to them, it doesn't matter. Attention is attention.

The child is starving and screaming, unheard.

----------------------------------------

Things have changed.

There are three wells. 

speed and distance of the sun

In a "year", our nearest star, 'Sol' travels

4,255,032,924.41 miles at

485,415.175 miles per hour - that's

0.0007238142685227208 light years

or roughly 181/250,000 of a light year.

So, if you go back in time by one year, 

you would be 4,255,032,924.41 miles away across our galaxy, 

the 'Milky Way', which itself is travelling even faster, 

on a collision course with the next galaxy over, our nearest neighbour, 'Andromeda'.

In fact, it's a bit of a toss up whether our galaxy will collide with 'Andromeda' first or whether our star, 'Sol', will explode and die...

Now multiply that distance by however many years you fancy travelling back in time...

(travelling forwards in time is different...)

The thing is, everything else, every particle of matter in the Universe will also have to revert back to that earlier state AND coordinate position. Unless matter space and time are able to act independently...

Also, travelling back in time is "Reversion" - reverting back to an earlier state/position... 

Venus - Paean To A Pencil

First fresh book out of the studio here for 3 years apparently! (*Reviews all the unpublished drafts sitting back here in the virtual basement... Ah, yes. That'll be why...)

I can't remember when I wrote this. I think it was kicking around for a good length of time before I started to cut the text. It's been performed a couple of times at spoken word events, but the intention for yonks has been to publish it as an artist book, and I'd started handcutting the text as full page intaglio plates a few years ago. It's taken a while. People who know me well might recognise the pattern... But nothing is immutable or definitive. Even this publication has seen changes on the fly as I've finished cutting the plates. The illustrations came easily once I'd got the format sorted. The materials - especially the 'Izal' shiny toilet roll, I've kept stored for possibly well over 20 years, with the full intention to use them for exactly this sort of project.

The poem comes from a story attributed to the origins of Jean Genet's "Our Lady Of The Flowers", which I came across around the end of the '90's, and centres around the dichotomous nature of dependency and release embodied by the possession of such a mundane object as a pencil, affected by its use in the context of confinement. Temporary release is merely respite. The title 'Venus', is an allusion to both a well-known brand of pencil and the ancient Roman goddess of love, morally corrupted in Genet's novel by the inversion of values, virtues and sins.

____________________________________

"Our Lady of the Flowers" was Jean Genet's first novel. Written in 1942/43 during his incarceration for persistent vagrancy, petty theft and 'lewd acts', Genet wrote the novel in pencil on sheets of brown paper, provided by prison authorities for the purpose of making bags. According to Sartre in his foreword to the book, a prison guard discovered the first manuscript that the prisoner Genet had made from his "unauthorized" use of the paper, confiscated the script and burned it. Undaunted, Genet rewrote the book from scratch. The second version survived and Genet took it with him when he was released.

Genet's novel tells the story of Divine, a drag queen who lives in an attic room overlooking Montmartre cemetery, which she shares with various lovers, the most important of whom is a pimp called Darling Daintyfoot. One day Darling brings home a young hoodlum and murderer, dubbed Our Lady of the Flowers. Our Lady is eventually arrested, tried and executed. As their tales unfold, Genet performs a transvaluation of all values, making betrayal the highest moral value, and murder an act of virtue.