Fred McVittie
Wednesday 23 April, 2008 The Association of Writing: 'This site is an experiment in hive mind intertextual writing. It allows the reader to browse through the database of words and phrases, forging stories and connections as they go.' The Conference Report: 'The First Eternal Hypothetical Conference on Everything.' No Design: 'I swear as a web builder to refrain from personal taste! I am no longer an artist.' via Allen Fisher
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon
Monday 21 April, 2008 
I'm ok until it looks at me.
Sad Shields gig at Hoxton Bar and Grill, Shoreditch
Monday 21 April, 2008 Some thoughts on last night’s Sad Shields gig at Hoxton Bar and Grill, Shoreditch.
The name Sad Shields is as fraught as the band’s music. A shield can be defined as a protective device, meant to intercept attacks. The term often refers to a device that is held in the hand, as opposed to armour or a bullet proof vest which is, more passively, worn on the body. The modern day shield is also associated with the riot:
RIOT: A violent or wild disorder or confusion, a noisy, violent public disorder caused by a group or crowd of persons as by a crowd protesting against another group, or a government policy or even an unbridled outbreak, as of emotions and passions.
The word sad, on the other hand, intimates a whole other set of inverse referents. Sadness is a mood characterized by feelings of disadvantage and loss. When sad, people often become quiet, less energetic and withdrawn. However, interestingly, people in a positive mood often avoid deep information processing that may cause them to doubt the positive situation they are in. In contrast, people in a sad mood strive to change the negative situation they are in. The mood of sadness is one of the critic, the poet and the revolutionary.
Sadness is a temporary lowering of mood, but if taken to one of many logical conclusions it may develop into clinical depression. Clinical Depression is characterized by a persistent and intense lowered mood, as well as disruption to one's ability to function in day to day matters.
The music is fast and rabid and sets itself apart from normal rhythms of reception and concentration involved in the processing of day to day matters. This is not music to stay sane to. Between songs the guitarist fuses each song together with noise, feedback and half suggested notes which never really turn into melody, the drummer at times, then picks up on these rhythms, works the energy, and by the time you realise the next song has begun, you are submerged, caught up in the dummer’s injected combative rhythms which press the song ever onwards. Always a mixture of defence, critique, revelry and attack the lead singer often comes off the stage almost offering a challenge to the audience. What kind of challenge that is I haven’t quite decided.
Further more, the name Sad Shields becomes even more complex if a more archaic definition of the word ‘sad’ is considered as, though now an obsolete meaning, ‘sad’ can also mean ‘firm or steadfast’. This band made me feel something to the extent that I could be bothered to write about it, you should check them out.
http://www.myspace.com/sadshields
a tale of art and obsession
Saturday 19 April, 2008 in Mike Weller [wpvideo bTxBTYco] Sitting in a carriage with my notepads I viewed the drawings of the girl I'd sketched since I'd been in the university town. In a speech balloon above a likeness of her I wrote - YES, IT IS ME IN THOSE DREAMS WE HAVE TOGETHER. from Madeline My Love In Death And Fancy (Michael J. Weller, Visual Associations, 2001)
Coach House Books: Online Book Archive
Friday 18 April, 2008 From 1997-2002 the Coach House embarked on an ambitious and unprecedented project: to put the contents of our frontlist books online for free. Led by the then Coach House Web Editor and web developer extraordinaire Damian Lopes, we amassed an impressive collection of over 70 unique online books, representing every title we published over that span. Link
Chwakapedia
Tuesday 15 April, 2008 'Charismatic megafauna are large animal species with widespread popular appeal that environmental activists use to achieve conservation goals well beyond just those species. Examples include the Giant Panda, the Asian Elephant, and the Blue Whale. A flagship species is a species chosen to represent an environmental cause, such as an ecosystem in need of conservation. These species are chosen for their vulnerability, attractiveness or distinctiveness in order to best engender support and acknowledgement from the public at large. Thus, the concept of a flagship species holds that by giving publicity to a few key species, the support given to those species will successfully leverage conservation of entire ecosystems and all species contained therein. Examples of flagship species include the giant panda of China, the golden lion tamarin of Brazil's Atlantic coastal forest, the Indian tiger, the African elephant, the mountain gorilla of Central Africa, the orangutan of Southeast Asia, and the leatherback sea turtle.'
FOR PETER SCHNEIDER by Richard Barrett
Sunday 13 April, 2008 in Richard Barrett barrett.richard1@googlemail.com produce crated mystery of pyramid reproduction liverpool dockside a new life in a new the dream-time world of transit normal rules do not apply where can and as well never to be spoken of again the end is no ending just an interlude a nissen-hut pause, outside town a chalk-wipe erasure of yesterdays lesson as no longer relevant new set of rules to be learnt already settled family members or tentative spirit of independence bring dispersal around quicker a keeness for the new to begin mature students attitude of with especially high proportion keeping themselves to themselves the main body of their course-mates carved-off from cliquey cresent evenings the toasty pub back-room, the cool box seminar-room at 23 development of a language after 7 years disillusionment with the world of work finally learning to think understanding that "the history of C20th britain is the histiry of immigration" planners and developers dreams are of communities typified by diversity a levelling-out process where those professional rub-off against those downwardly aspirational the black-hole of research swallowing pounds by the millions hundreds of hours of time resources which no one absolutely no one thinks could have been better used self-fulfilling prophecy of proving what needs to be proved "subjects have trouble switching their point of view to consider what someone else might know" ...yet come the morning would be fair to say that in 1989 not every berlin wall fell
MATHEMATIZING THE RELATIONSHIP by Richard Barrett
Sunday 13 April, 2008 in Richard Barrett apple on the table varnished flat plane grain visible - no acryllic covering the centre of the table was where I placed that apple bringing together the straight-line and the curve (with one eye shut) intercourse of angles where legs meet table-top is why he's arrive drunk at her house (too drunk to do anything but listen to music or watch t.v. - he'd sleep on the couch) entirely predictable marriage at ninety degrees yet a still more interesting conjoining so I put my on the after she'd left (for Cambridge) and thought about taking a bite