Respite

Oh what a term that was – experienced a lot, tried a lot, made a lot, tested a lot, laughed a lot, failed a lot and I am absolutely buggered. (My muse is also suffering from severe art fatigue!) Looking back on the term, however, it was for me a productive and exhilarating time. It’s been a privilege to have the chance to participate.

I marvel at some of the talent in the class – some great works were presented at the assessment time. Well done! Very inspirational, but also a bit humbling. 

Pleased to have completed the projects – some took me an awful lot of time for rather pedestrian results. Lots of ideas, but they failed spectacularly in the execution! 

Wanda, Rest in Peace:

Image © PeteM2010

Wanda II

Got myself into an awful tizwaz attempting to complete the fish-drawing portfolio. I had a number of ideas about what I wanted to achieve, but the score ended up: rubbish bin 5 or 6, portfolio nil. (Counting becomes painful when you are on a loosing streak).

Then I remembered what Lidia told me in the early days of the course when I was struggling with the model assignment – “You can fix anything in Photoshop!”

So I exchanged the pen and paper for a stylus, tablet, fish photos and scanned drawings. Still quite a few attempts ended up in the virtual trashcan, but I found that less demoralising as those failures were not staring back at me. 

There are a few of ideas from the Sydney trip I still want to pursue though, but with finishing time looming, that will have to wait until the next project.  

A Shoal of Fish Bones:

Image © PeteM2010

Ups and downs

Experimented with some fish drawings yesterday, not a good day – should have gone fishing instead. Probably wouldn’t have caught anything, but at least I would have enjoyed the outing.

Had a look at last weeks drawing – now that was a bit of fun. Large pieces of paper stuck together to make a mega canvas. Now that was something to get lost in. Had quite a few laughs with the mess I created making this one. The final result reminds me of a dog we once had, Henry, forever cocking his rear wheel (leg)! 

Image © PeteM2010

Copyright

Rather than catching up on my artworks, today was spent in the Federal Court listening to legal argument and expert opinions. The Honourable Judge knew of my interests and invited me to attend the hearing.

The case revolves around intellectual property rights, a hot issue also being debated in Sydney today, however, in Sydney it was all about the music industry.

The plaintiff and defendants had between them about a dozen highly paid barristers and solicitors – the cost must run into tens of thousands of dollars per day. Add the cost of expert witnesses and potential damages awarded, and we are talking serious monies in anybody’s language. People take their intellectual property rights very,very seriously!

And that’s the point! Using copyrighted image and sound bites harvested from the Internet is too easy. Watch out – the worm has turned! Getty Images, the world’s largest image library is currently trawling the Internet for illegal use of any of their images, films, videos and sound files. Rumours have it that their robot/spider is able to find the illegal use of an image even if it constitutes less than 1% of a collage.  If illegal use of an image is spotted, an invoice is issued, and if not paid, court-action follows. These guys mean business!! My web sites have already had the Getty spider/robot visit more than once! How do I know? My ISP informed me and the AWSTAT for each site confirms their findings.

Remember Napster? The legal hullabaloo was back in 1999, but it changed the copyright debate forever. We have been warned!

If you happened to see me on the telly tonight outside the Supreme Court together with Mr Robert Farquharson, the association was purely coincidental. Honest.

Blender

Having spent a few frustrating hours trying to learn Blender, I was relieved to lay the blame on the Mac version of the program rather than on my ineptitude. Blender reportedly behaves on PCs, but for me, my PCs are used purely for business whilst the Macs are used solely for art. Never the twain shall meet. 

Anyhow, substituting the skull project for a vase project was fine by me. I found the latter much more fun, and having achieved a glass like transparency in Photoshop, I was chuffed with the final image.


Image © PeteM2010

Cube of Contrast

Image © PeteM2010

This 3D installation was my contribution to the Nocturnal Winter Arts 2010 in addition to  two projection slides. (See earlier blog entry.)

My unreserved thank you to John and Pradnya for their sterling effort in helping setting up AND taking down the installation. Also a thank you to the rest of the team that helped inflate and attach 200 balloons in 40 minutes – just sorry you missed out on popping them at the end of the evening! (And yes, we did clean up and take away all the rubbish).
 

Biennale

Reflecting on the pilgrimage to Sydney, I can only marvel at David’s (teacher) skills at organising and conducting such a spectacular “school outing”, and staying cool for the duration. Well done and Thank You!

Five days of total immersion in a kaleidoscope of the arts left me at times with a surreal view of the world. Much of what I saw and heard was very inspirational and I can only admire the talent, creativity, patience and diligence of the artists. Some of the works were outstanding, uplifting, and memorable. However, some of the exhibits, in particular, a few at Cockatoo Island had for me connotations of  “The Emperor’s new clothes” - or maybe I just didn’t get it. 

Rather than making this blog entry a catalogue of art works I liked or disliked – I have chosen, as a subject for discussion, just this image which is a small part of Kate McMillan’s work: “Islands of incarceration”. 

Image © PeteM210


At first look, I dismissed the installation as nothing more than an oversized shower-curtain, but as the inscription on Brett Whitely’s studio wall said:” Anything becomes interesting if you look at it for long enough”. I did and I agree. Click on the image for a larger version.

Fog panorama

Decided to stich a couple of the mornings images together - click on the image for a larger view.

Image © PeteM2010 (About 1250px wide)

Rain stops play

The fog was slowly dancing enchantingly through the valley this morning. I put a long lens on the camera and as I captured a few images, I thought maybe this scene could be turned into a stop motion video.

What would be the best way of depicting the movement of the fog - let the fog drift across the frame or a slow pan following the fog on its journey through the valley? Whilst pondering this conundrum, what started as a slight drizzle turned into a downpour and rudely obliterated my charming view.

 Image ©: PeteM2010

The picture above is the starting point of the video – the rest I will leave to your imagination. 

Stop Motion Video

Thanks Pradnya for doing the artistic painting!

Nocturnal

A great night - awesome images - fabulous displays!

Image © PeteM 2010

Flying Cow (Urban Legend)

Image © PeteM2010 (canvas approx 1400x900mm )

The Japanese Coast Guard received a distress call from a small sinking Korean fishing vessel, and on reaching the fishing boat they found it had been largely destroyed.

The Japanese authorities believed they had caught a spy vessel that had for some reason or the other blown up. The crew was arrested and interrogated as spies, but the Koreans insisted that they were merely fishing when a cow had dropped out of the sky and crashed through their hull. The Japanese didn’t buy the story and incarcerated the distraught sailors.

Hearing of the Koreans plight, a Japanese Air Force crew admitted to having rustled a cow whilst on an exercise flight to a remote island in the Japan Sea. However, on the flight back to base the cow had become quite mad, thrashing about and damaging the aircraft. The Captain decided that the only safe thing to do was to scuttle the animal mid flight -- the rest is history or so the story goes.