Once upon a time
October 17, 2012 in Uncategorized
This work is an attempt to condense the basic premise of most folktales into one all-encompassing concept.
Before the nineteenth-century, pre-capitalist folktales or “Volksmärchen” were full of righteous aristocrats fending off evil, magic-wielding misanthropes. By the nineteenth-century, and with the rise of the middle-classes, these tales morphed into the bourgeois art form of the “Kunstmärchen”, and they became symbolic of the struggle against feudalism. For example, the witch in Hansel and Gretel represents the feudal lord who enjoys a life of plenty (she lives in a house made of food). She is literally feeding off the people and their children (she tries to cook them in the oven), an is a hoarder of wealth (when the children kill her, they find a stash of jewels and bring them back to the poor, hard-working woodcutter).
This piece is executed in cross-stitch on 18-point cream aida cloth.
Original for sale on saatchionline here.
I’ve plopped out some more wordsearches…
May 22, 2012 in Cannibalism, Interactive, Passtimes, Waste of time, Wee
Gez-inspired wordsearches
May 15, 2012 in Cannibalism, Passtimes, Waste of time, Wee
I copied the sudokus and made wordsearches. I think I’ll probably do some more and use them instead of talking.
Get more here. There isn’t a prize.
Sudoku Poetry
May 13, 2012 in Abstract, Altered, Art, Design, Mixed Media
I’ve done a series of 9 of these and I’m hawkin’ ‘em here.
Viewtron Funk
March 29, 2012 in Music, Performance, Video
Synth funk tune I made with a Yamaha QY 70 ‘Walkstation’ portable music sequencer. Great little machine with a very decent sequencer from 1997 I recently got from Ebay. Runs on batteries and is about the same size as the lonely planet guide to China. Good for making tunes whilst sitting on the beach, train, lunch break etc. Has a mini keyboard – it’s a bit like playing a stylophone. The sounds are GM and Yamaha’s own XG extensions, so it’s good for cheesy 80s / 90s tunes.
Cable Car Cut
March 19, 2012 in Uncategorized
Design I’ve submitted to Threadless. Up for voting now. Give me 5 stars and I’ll love you forever.
Haunted Discothèque
February 17, 2012 in Abstract, Altered, Music, Performance, Sound Design
A story about my week…
I work in a school. This week was half term and I was the only person in the whole building (I’m non teaching staff and have to work in the school holidays). There’s usually a couple of us around in the holidays but this week it was just me. I was bored.
By Tuesday afternoon I was going a bit crazy, like Jack Nicholson in the shining, I’d started wandering aimlessly down the empty corridors just to pass some time. Thankfully I didn’t encounter any creepy bloodstained apparitions like in the film or I’d have most certainly shat myself. I decided I needed a project to make the time go quicker. I took my laptop down to the school hall and plugged into the PA system. The only audio processing software I have on my school laptop is the free Audacity so I decided (mostly at random) to import the track ‘It’s So Easy’ by 80′s Italo Disco producer Valerie Dore from my itunes library, and set about destroying it using Audacity’s built in effects just to see where it would end up.
The Audacity effects process the audio offline in non-realtime so the results were quite hit and miss and at times I got some unbearable screeching walls of feedback and noise particularly when using the echo and delay effects. Thankfully there’s a good limiter on the school PA system as it’s been blown a couple of times before. I also found an Alesis Quadraverb echo unit which was a bit battered and dusty but still worked so I ran the audio through that and the mixer had a few effects built in like pitch shifting and a ring mod. I also found an old sampler which unfortunately wasn’t working and some guitar effect pedals. I recorded each performance out of the mixer.
I tried to vary how recognisable elements of the original track were in each performance, some are barely recognisable while others are much more subtle. I have to say the atmosphere while performing these tracks, alone in an echoey school hall in a big empty school was actually quite moving. I felt a bit like I was summoning ghosts of school discos long past. This was the second shining moment of the week. I decided to pack up my gear and get the fuck out at that point…
So today is Friday, the last day of the half term break and I’ve ended up with this abstract conceptual EP just by using the same track processed through Audacity and the Quadraverb and the mixer. It’s been an enjoyable process having these enforced limitations and I was happy to be able to make use of the effect units I found lying around, unused and forgotten, dusty and battered like the sounds they’ve created. Plus it saved me from going psycho and trying to murder my family.
Now I’d better get on with some actual work…
Download DoreDoreDore
He just wanted out.
February 10, 2012 in Waste of time
Skyline Comb
January 29, 2012 in Altered, Art, Design, Mixed Media, Sculpture
Thor E. Limo’s Skyline Combs are individually crafted to create imagined metropolitan horizons. Each is unique and comes screw-mounted for wall attachment. When hung, the shadows lend a three-dimensional effect to the buildings evoked.
Available from my Etsy shop.
hairballs
January 6, 2012 in 3D, Abstract, Modification, Photography
As I was just checking the website was still working I thought I’d better post something as I haven’t bothered in over a month.
I’m still experimenting with compositing clumps of black hair into photos and video. I’m not sure why. I think it has something vaguely to do with Japan.
