Ice cream van of horror:
Labels: birmingham
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View Larger Map.
Experiment with embedding google map of recent walk, it took a bit too long to put this together to bother with regularly. Here's the same photographs in black using simple viewer and flickr viewer.
Labels: birmingham, googlemaps
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We're in Maida Vale studios.
We see Joss Stone. She doesn't know we're watching, but we can see she is recording her next hit single with her band. There is a real energy in the studio.
We see Joss taking a break in recording and she finds a Flake bar on the side. Half jokingly, she starts singing a tune that is more famous than her - the Flake jingle.
Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate…
Her singing is so effortless and pure it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. As she finishes she unwraps the Flake, has a bite, and smiles to herself.
She then goes back to work.
Labels: birmingham, video
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'Another Shadow Fight' is the current installation by David Osbaldeston in Bournville's International Project Space.
Manchester-based Osbaldeston is giving an artist's talk in the gallery this Wednesday (23 Jan) at 5pm, before visiting the space it might be best to read up on vorticism, Wyndham Lewis and Modernism, Sidney Nolan's superb Ned Kelly series, Richard Dorment's Telegraph review of Osbaldeston's 2006 installation 'Your Answer is Mine' and (according to the accompanying leaflet) Tim Robbins' 'Bob Roberts'.
Labels: art, birmingham, exhibitions
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First snow of the winter.
Labels: birmingham, flickr
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How to do justice to one of the best audio-visual performances of the year? With a twenty second pixellated video shot on your mobile phone of course.
Labels: birmingham, video, youtube
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This Tea House, intended as a place of contemplation, is part of the Festival of Xtreme Building in Birmingham. I've been meaning to visit it for a couple of months now but came across it by chance while attending Artfest. The festival is sited on waste ground in the city centre and looks at sustainable architecture. The installations are great, including one of those Micro Compact Homes which seem like a gimmick but actually looked to work really well.
Labels: birmingham, moblog, public art
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Went to see this spectacular public art performance behind Birmingham's disused Curzon Street Station on Saturday night. The free show was superb, up there with Tate Liverpool's Chinese exhibition fireworks as the best show of the year so far. We arrived to find a row of twenty or so burning furnaces, each one heating a barrel of water, providing steam.
We were kept behind barriers thirty foot back. Behind the furnaces runs one of the main train lines out of Birmingham New Street, Virgin's high-speed Pendolinos and an assortment of crappier trains running past regularly.
Black and white projections of steam trains lit up the full wall of the listed Curzon Street Station building, showers of fireworks occasionally raining down from it. A massive hot pipe organ shook the ground with its impersonation of a steam train gathering momentum. Completely overwhelming. Whistles rang out from the barrels over the furnaces. The pipe organ fired horizontal fireworks at the station building; the station building fired them back. Hundreds of helium balloons carrying hundreds of lights were released into the sky creating an man-made starlit sky. A huge blast of flames brought the show to the end.
Fantastic public art, combining spectacle with a real history - the station, the Lunar Society and Birmingham's pivotal role in the industrial revolution.
Labels: birmingham, flickr, moblog, public art
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An exhibition celebrating real ale culture. You could pull your own pint, eat cheese and pickle, pork pies and look at some photographs of a brewery. I don't like real ale so the exhibition was a bit lost on me but I thought the building, Made, was a great exhibition space.
Labels: art, birmingham, exhibitions, flickr, moblog
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I got excited about this campaign, presuming they were lowering the datacosts of their 3g cards for laptops. But they're not, it's just crappy internet on your mobile phone.
Labels: birmingham, flickr, internet
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Name in Lights is an installation by artist Joshua Sofaer for the Fierce Festival in Birmingham. The public were invited to nominate someone to have their name prominently displayed in Chamberlain Square, mimicking the Hollywood sign.
CJ White nominated her mother, Una White:
'My beautiful mother displayed strength and determination depicted in her journey through the 1960’s from Jamaica to England. She represented, cultivated and encapsulated the spirit of life in her heart and this conveyed to other people of all ages and races. She was very altruistic in her nature and for over 30 years worked as a devoted nurse caring for the sick and the severely mentally disabled.
It would therefore be very apt that 10 years after her death that her name should have the opportunity to light the skylines of Birmingham and would be the epitome of hope, faith, overcoming adversity, effervescent and cultural unity.
My mother was a role model to her daughters and her grandchildren too. Her sprit and faith lives on within us and the memories of her beautiful smile continue to shine everlasting in our personal journeys and her lasting footprint continues to guide us.'
- Photo of the name lit at night.
- Judge Mark Borkowski on Jodie Marsh vs. Una White.
- Video of switch-on.
Labels: birmingham, exhibitions, flickr, moblog
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During last year's Liverpool Biennial, I experimented with using Google Maps to provide an alternative presentation format to tradition listings. Since then, I've started using Google Calendar as my online diary and thought that I'd put the Fierce Festival listings into this format.
The listings were all taken from the excellent official festival website, where the listings are provided in a nice and accessible linear format (I wouldn't have even bothered trying if I had to fight my way through some of the database solutions you see implemented on many cultural listings websites..).
Importing the listings into Google Calendar allows me to see all the one-off events (I didn't include exhibitions that repeat over several days) in my own diary format. Anyone can view the calendar online here (I don't like the default layout, it's too cluttered, but I can't see how to change that), but it is most useful for anyone who already uses Google Calendar, with the ability to import either the whole calendar or one-off events into your own diary.
Labels: birmingham
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Labels: birmingham, moblog
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Central atrium of Fort Dunlop. Taken from the 6th floor, dj playing on the ground floor.
Labels: birmingham, moblog
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