Saturday, 30 January 2010

The Best Bio

Born in Bradford, Tasmin Archer first worked as a sewing machine operator and joined a group called 'Dignity' as a backing vocalist. Later, after studying secretarial skills she became a clerk at Leeds Magistrates' Court. She helped out at a recording studio in Bradford called 'Flexible Response', and subsequently began working with musicians John Hughes and John Beck. Archer signed to EMI in 1990 and released her first single "Sleeping Satellite" (a philosophical song about the moon landings) in August 1992, it reached number one in the United Kingdom. Tasmin is a Sunderland AFC fan.

"And when we shoot for the stars
what a giant step
have we got what it takes
to carry the weight of this concept?"


Tuesday, 26 January 2010

Happiness



From 'Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe'

(part 1)
(part 2)










Additional Herzog; "I've always been after what I call an 'ecstatic truth' — an ecstasy of truth... facts do not create truth. Facts create norms, but they do not create an illumination."

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

HTB


































Excerpts from 'Horse the Band's Guide to Touring'

DO

Lower your standards to lower than they have ever been before.
When you start laughing in the midst of a horrible, mind numbing, financially devastating, morbidly depressing and pathetic situation, you are living at the top when you’re at the fucking bottom.

Wear your seatbelt.
Dying on tour is sad. I mean, when it comes down to it touring is pretty silly and self-indulgent. No good reason to die.

DO NOT


Be a pussy.
Really no one cares about you, and especially not your problems (unless they’re their problems too) just take it and don’t constantly be complaining or trying to get better shit than everyone else. It really doesn’t matter. And everyone notices and talks about you behind your back. You become a joke.

Sleep, in general, much.
Sleep is much better spent sprawled across tile or jigsawed between benches in airports, or drooling on yourself upright in the van than “during the night”. Nighttime is for living. Daytime is for regret/sightseeing.

Say the same thing every night.
You are supposed to be pretending to be an artist.

nugget





"There is something disturbingly yet comfortably contained about touring. On the one hand you get to focus on your craft, but on the other there is an aspect of detachment and singularity about it. It's easy to become self-absorbed as opposed to outward-looking."



Dave Okumu of The Invisible
(one of my favourites of '09)

Sunday, 10 January 2010

The Slits



(click to view big)














Doncaster Dome, December 2009. No photoshop, just grainy beer-splattered 35mm.

Saturday, 9 January 2010

Monday, 4 January 2010

(NASA image archive)


Happy New Year.

In the spirit of starting afresh, here's some ways to avoid going crackers in a new, self-determined environment.

(All taken from NASA's "Space Settlements: A Design Study" which proposes designs for Space colonisation)

  1. A large geometry, in which people can see far beyond the "theater stage" of the vicinity to a view which is overwhelmingly visible.
  2. Something must exist beyond each human's manipulation because people learn to cope with reality when reality is different from their imagination. If the reality is the same as the imagination, there is no escape from falling into solipsism. In extraterrestrial communities, everything can be virtually controlled. In fact, technically nothing should go beyond human control even though this is psychologically bad; however, some amount of "unpredictability" can be built in within a controllable range. One way to achieve this is to generate artificial unpredictability by means of a table of random numbers. Another way is to allow animals and plants a degree of freedom and independence from human planning. Both types of unpredictability must have a high visibility to be effective. This high visibility is easier to achieve in a macrogeometry which allows longer lines of sight.
  3. Something must exist which grows. Interactive processes generate new patterns which cannot be inferred from the information contained in the old state. This is not due to randomness but rather to different amplification by mutual causal. It is important for each person to feel able to contribute personally to something which grows, that the reality often goes in a direction different from expectation, and finally that what each person takes care of (a child, for example) may possess increased wisdom, and may grow into something beyond the individual in control. From this point of view, it is important personally to raise children, and to grow vegetables and trees with personal care, not by mechanical means. It is also desirable to see plants and animals grow, which is facilitated by a long line of sight.
  4. It is important to have "something beyond the horizon" which gives the feeling that the world is larger than what is seen.