Thank You

I made these as a quick series to use up a nearly-finished pad of paper. They are a great example of the rushed feeling I like - work that is kinda frenzied because you were excited or passionate whilst making it. When I made these I felt so grateful and happy. I wanted that to be obvious.

Chris Harnan & strawberries

Chris Harnan was my classmate at Wimbledon during my foundation and the first day we met we had a great conversation about what The Beatles would be like if they were dogs. Whenever I look at his art it makes me really happy and pleased in the sweet, natural, soft way which happens sometimes when you have found something that just totally inspires you and makes you want to go out and talk to butterflies and leave pressed flowers in library books and that sort of thing. There is a childlike freedom to his work that to me emits a great creative energy. It's just so sweet and free and lovely. It makes me think of strawberries and sunlight and dropping stuff into a river. The carefree spirit and the life that all this stuff has is super special to me.

All above pictures taken from chrisharnan.tumblr.com

Here is a strawberry screenshot which shows you the beautiful bright baby red loveliness of strawberries:

pixel icons for your inner e-baby

I want to make an endless amount of little pixel babies like this that people can use to decorate their webpages and to show their inner personality of "baby holding a flower". I also want to purposefully move into making digital work more exclusively as a way of making my work more literally accessible to me from anywhere and easy to make without the need for certain materials or space (especially as I always digitise my work after I've made it anyway).

Internet Culture - David Porter

I found a book in the library titled "Internet Culture" (published in 1997) and enjoyed a lot of its (somewhat outdated) musings on the title subject. Here are all the quotes I made note of, mostly to do with the topics of community and identity on the internet:

Introduction

David Porter

• "The culture that the Net embodies, rather, is a product of the peculiar conditions of virtual acquaintance that prevail online, a collective adaptation to the high frequency of anonymous, experimental, and even fleeting encounters familiar to anyone who has ventured into a newsgroup debate." - pg. XI
• "The majority of one's correspondents in cyberspace, after all, have no bodies, no faces, no histories beyond what they may choose to reveal." - pg. XI
• "In a medium of disembodied voices and decontextualised points of view, a medium, furthermore, beholden to the fetishization of speed, the experience of ambiguity and misreading is bound to be less an exception than the norm." - pg. XI-XII
• "What continues most powerfully to draw people to the Internet is its power and novelty as a medium of person-to-person communication." - pg. XII
• "As participants adjust to the prevailing conditions of anonymity and to the potentially disconcerting experience of being reduced to a detached voice floating in an amorphous electronic void, they become adept as well at reconstituting the faceless words around them into bodies, histories, lives: an imaginative engagement by which they become fully vested co-producers of the virtual worlds that they inhabit, and the boundaries distinguishing "real" from "virtual" experience begin to fade." - pg. XII
• "Where only electronic fragments are to be had, a more substantial being must be fleshed out in a reader's mind with all the familiar markers by which he or she might be "known." In a medium that presents such boundless opportunities for experimenting with one's public personae, the "accuracy" of these imaginary projections would seem a matter of little concern. Far more important is the fact that they arise consistently and even necessarily as a very condition of the medium's appeal. The defining interaction of Internet culture lies not in the interface between the user and the computer, but rather in that between the user and the collective imagination of the vast virtual audience to whom one submits an endless succession of enticing, exasperating, evocative figments of one's being." - pg. XIII
• "How does the Internet affect our understanding and experience of community? What is the sociology of so-called virtual communities and the precise nature of the communality they claim to embody?" - pg. XIV
• "What can be said about the psychology of virtual personhood? What are the implications of anonymity and role-playing online - are identity, agency, and subjectivity reconfigured in their cyberial incarnations?" - pg. XIV
• "What does communication become in this new cultural dimension? What effects does the Internet have on our practice or conception of reading and writing, and how does it color social interactions between individuals and within groups?" - pg. XIV
• "...anthropologist Mizuko Ito focuses on the fragile and even collapsing boundaries between the physical and the non-physical, real and virtual, machine and organism so characteristic of these intensely consuming environments." - pg. XV

One

Virtual Communities

An Archaeology of Cyberspaces

Virtuality, Community, Identity

Shawn P. Wilbur

"We use words as tools, as individuals and as scholars. On the internet we use little else. Whatever else Internet culture might be, it is still largely a text-based affair. Words are not simply tools which we can use in any way we see fit. They come to us framed by specific histories of use and meaning, and are products of particular ideological struggles." - Subheading: The Right Tools for the Job, pg. 6

• "I suspect there is some truth to the suggestion that the experience of dislocation in time and space - an effect of immersion in Internet culture - can help individuals to see their own identities in a different perspective." - Subheading: The I in Cyberspace, pg. 11
• "The persona that appears in cyberspace is potentially more fluid than those we assume in other aspects of our lives, in part because we can consciously shape it." - Subheading: The I in Cyberspace, pg. 12
• "But then the phone rings at midnight and a strange voice speaks your name, or a letter arrives in the mail, or you find yourself with an airline ticket to spend the week in a distant city, crashing on the couch of someone you have shared text with for a year but have never - that is, never "truly," as your friends will remind you - met." - Subheading: The I in Cyberspace, pg. 14
• "For those who doubt the possibility of online intimacy, I can only speak of births and deaths that have shaken the list in a variety of ways - of hours sitting at my keyboard with tears streaming down my face, or convulsed with laughter." - Subheading: Follow the Bouncing Donuts, pg. 18

Community and Identity in The Electronic Village

Derek Foster

• "Increasing numbers of people, upon discovering the Internet, are enamored by the technology's ability to publicly legitimate their self-expression and by the freedom it provides from traditional space and time barriers." - pg. 23
• "Solipsism, or the extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's own inclinations, is potentially engendered in the technology." - pg. 26
• "That which holds a virtual community intact is the subjective criterion of togetherness, a feeling of connectedness that confers a sense of belonging." - pg. 29

Being Sad (tiny webcam projects to ease your pain)

Sometimes when I'm sad I take a bunch of webcam shots, as if to exorcise my feelings, but also probably to validate them. We're used to hiding our sad feelings as a culture and pretend everything is okay and fine when it isn't. No-one wants to be made uncomfortable by someone having a difficult emotion near them. I don't want to do that. I don't want to, or feel any need to, pretend I don't want sympathy or help or encouragement. Things we are not supposed to ask for, but things that all of us want and need. But here I'm forcing you to see my sadness, and recognise it as an integral and normal part of me. I get sad and I need you to notice. It doesn't make me weak, it makes me real, and beautiful, and me.

That penis manga (Chintsubu - Yamato Nase)

I found this manga one day on the internet and it remains one of my favourite things. It's a take on the typical romance manga which tends to operate on a constant "will they, won't they, oh they almost did 1000 times but everyone's in excruciating nervous teenage denial of their feelings" theme. The premise is that the characters wake up one day to find that their sentient penises have body-swapped (or, uh, penis-swapped).

What I love about this manga is the caricaturisation of the typical, the cutesy/chibi style contrasting with the lewd, and ridiculous story. I love the rudeness combined with cuteness. 

Please enjoy some choice screenshots below.

You can read Chintsubu here.

The Saatchi Gallery: Paper, New Order: British Art Today, and Contemporary Ukrainian Artists

Elliot and I went over to the Saatchi this week and looked at all the things.

Freya Douglas-Morris - They Visited Twice, 2012

What I liked about the above piece was the watery texture and the subsequent hurried look to it. The idea of making art at speed, or art that is relatively simplistic, is really appealing. These textures could be created quickly but still look really nice.

Christian Holstad - Defending Decisions, 2005

This altered newspaper photo reminded me of some of my previous work, some photos I altered with water. It's a really pleasing thing to do because with one quick movement you can make such a huge change to a picture (or indeed, to other objects), and it can become so dreamy (which I love - a beautiful way of idealising a moment or image).

People

John Kleckner - Untitled (Herucles), 2006

I like this as a caricature of masculinity, or of representations thereof.

Storm Tharp - Love Nothing More, 2009

Storm Tharp - Love Nothing More, 2009

Storm Tharp - Love Nothing More, 2009

These Tharp paintings remind me of the technique experimentation I did during my fine art a level and I feel a bit nostalgic for using bamboo sticks and pieces of card to paint with! Again, I love the watery look. Very ethereal and uncontrollable and spooky.

Elliot ft. Margot Sanders - In Fine Company, 2012

Storm Tharp - Jodie Jill, 2009

The use of shading here is really striking.

Nicola Frimpong

Nicola Frimpong - Untitled

These Frimpong pieces interest me due to both their highly-politicised content and their childishness. That combination is compelling.

Paul Westcombe - Coffee Cups (my favourite is the little red one one, which is called "In The Morning In The Shower I Saw The Shit Run Down Your Leg")

People taking photos with Rebecca Turner's Dumbstruck, 2011

The secret art me and Ells found (arty ladders)

Art by some schools

Really cute and sweet and innocent.

Me ft. Zhanna Kadyrova - Diamonds, 2011

Elliot responding to art

Zhanna Kadyrova - Diamonds, 2011

Zhanna Kadyrova - Diamonds, 2011

These are really slick, smart sculptures. I like how neat they are as objects.

Elliot still responding to art

Pavlo Kerestey - Kids on Trees, 2009

The colours here are so bright and adventurous and unreal.

Roman Minin - Plan of Escape, 2013

Rafal Zawistowski

Rafal Zawistowski

Rafal Zawistowski

Chunky textures like this always make me feel sort of reckless and real and remind me of blood and food or something.

Wendy Mayer - After Louise,  2011

Wendy Mayer - Fly Away Peter, 2011

Wendy Mayer - Gold Watch, 2012

Amanda Doran - The Semen

Again some great colours. The salmon pink and blue combo is appealing. Seems young in some way.

Gert & Uwe Tobias - Untitled, 2011

Jake and Dinos Chapman - Exquisite Corpse, 2000

Jake and Dinos Chapman - Exquisite Corpse, 2000

Jake and Dinos Chapman - Exquisite Corpse, 2000

I am a big fan of exquisite corpses as a cool and casual mode of collaboration. So clearly defined in sections but so clearly all about that collaboration. These ones by the Chapman brothers are very much exquisite.