The Image of the City

Kevin Lynch, 1960

I’m not sure how this got onto my reading list, but I’m glad it did. I’m still reading Ovid but alternating with chapters from this for variety. It’s an influential book about cities and what makes them memorable and pleasant to live in. Lynch’s team visited three study areas, interviewed residents and collected their sketched maps, then compared these with accurate street plans and professional field observations.

They could then formulate theories on what created a positive, clear mental image of a place. I really liked their methodology and intentions. Often you visit somewhere and think, “Man, there’s nothing much to this place, it’s nondescript”. Since you’re most probably not a town planner, you won’t be able to do anything about it, but after reading this book you’ll be able to define exactly what’s wrong. Saying that, I’ve been to towns where it’s apparent to anybody what the problem is. (“It’s a shithole”).

I really enjoyed this concise book, and look forward to reading his other classic: Good City Form. If this sounds like your sort of thing, then you should also take a look at the hefty, but fantastic  A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, which I might get around to reviewing sometime.

Cataloguing

It was our friend Olive’s 1st birthday at the weekend and the celebrations included a party in Garforth and accommodation at Paul and Sarah’s lovely house. (That makes it sound a bit like Paul and Sarah are Olive’s parents. They’re not though; that’s Tom and Gemma.)

So, after the playbarn and Garforth’s charity shops, we returned with Paul and Sarah to their home and were joined by Tom, Gemma and Olive for a most enjoyable evening. 

The next day I took the opportunity to catalogue Paul and Sarah’s collection of Davies originals.

Our Leeds flat was around the back of a large old house and the landlord used the grounds to store a continually-replenished supply of skips filled with rented-accomodation debris. At first we thought this was a bad thing, but then we realised that it was a good thing. We got a lot of good stuff from those skips, I can tell you. A lot of wood, a lot of furniture, a lot of everything. I only wish Freecycle existed then because some fantastic things went to waste.

After a bit we got rats, which aren’t so cool. It was worth it though.

Pretty self-explanatory.

This one took quite a long time to draft out. It shows the interrelation between the guests at one of Deb’s barbecues a few years back. Who met who where.

Leeds International Pool

The Leeds International Pool closed in October 2007, but temporaily re-opened as an art venue for a month or so in early 2008. Ignoring the artwork, we went to admire the structure and for the highly novel experience of walking around the bottom of a swimming pool.

Well, it’s finally demolition time and from a nearby footbridge you can observe the heavy machinery breaking it all down to rubble.

 

Heavy Metal Job Titles

I did these two t-shirts a few years ago for friends. There was 0% irony since both job titles were correct and both were metal fans. At the time I was a data-entering metal fan too, but no more. (I still like metal but have progressed to graphic design for the same employer.)

Both of these were done with the fantastic free vector software Inkscape.

His & Hers

This evening has seen me at work in the kitchen listening to Goatsnake and Michelle in the living room listening to Fleet Foxes. All is well in the cosmos.

Toy in development

Shelves in development

Old School

Ovid, Foreground; Scarlett squeezing flower, background

I’ve currently reading Metamorphoses by Ovid. When I first started properly reading (post- university, 1998), I limited myself to the classics and modern classics (up to the mid 1970s), to gain a reasonable grounding in literature. In recent years I’ve been mostly reading modern fiction, but this caught my eye at a summer car boot sale.

I didn’t know anything about the Metamorphoses (I’m not like, square) other than it was old, probably a poem and probably in Latin. Well; it’s a Roman narrative poem from 8 AD and is a collection of ancient Greek myths around the theme of things turning into other things.

So far I’m finding it quite boring because it doesn’t have any central plot or characters; it’s just a mass of stories around the theme. When it’s good, it’s good though, full of fantastic happenings and exciting exploits.  It’s also depressing – almost every tale features one god or another disguised as someone/thing else and conning or seducing an unsuspecting human. Then, in order to punish the human or cover up his/her crime (as for example Jupiter who is always hiding his rapes from his wife like some horrible sitcom), the human gets turned into a tree/animal/stone for all eternity. The gods continually act in a petty, cruel manner, abusing their position. Just last night I read about the mortal Niobe who boasts about her superiority to the goddess Leto, since she has a big family and Leto only has two sons. Leto responds by sending her two sons Apollo and Artemis to murder all 14 of Niobe’s children. I mean; what?!

Niobe understandably upset

I read an exciting bit last week about Perseus. In the film Clash of the Titans (1981 version), Perseus kills Medusa then rescues Andromeda from the Kraken in return for her hand in marriage…happy ending. Wrong! It turns out Andromeda is already betrothed to Phineus, who doesn’t react well to the news that his girlfriend is now going to marry a complete stranger. Andromeda’s family side with Perseus; half because that’s part of the saving their daughter deal and half because Phineus wasn’t any help against the sea monster. Phineus goes round to Andromeda’s house with a small army and there’s a total, gory massacre…

Phorbas of Syene, the son of Metion, and Libyan Amphimedon, eager to commit to the fight, fell, having slipped on the ground, warm and drenched with blood on every side. Rising, they were stopped by the sword, piercing Phorbas’s throat, and Amphimedon’s ribs. But Perseus did not challenge Eurytus, son of Actor, who had a battle-axe, with his scimitar, instead, lifting a mixing bowl, embossed with decorations and very heavy in weight, high in the air, with both hands, he dashed it down on the man, who vomited bright red blood, and, lying on his back, beat the earth with his head. Then Perseus overthrew Polydegmon, born of the blood of Queen Semiramis, Abaris from Caucasia, Lycetus from the River Spercheos region, Helices with flowing hair, Clytus and Phlegyas, and trod on a mounting pile of the dying.

It carries on like that for a while until…

When Perseus saw indeed that, his efforts would succumb to the weight of numbers, he said ‘Since you plan it like this, I will ask help of the enemy. If there are any friends here, turn your face away!’ and he held up the Gorgon’s head.

Enough is enough

Both pictures from Wikipedia:
Niobe
Perseus

Quotation text from A. S. Kline’s Poetry Archive

Cameras!

We recently came back from a two-week holiday in the midlands, staying half with my family, then moving onto Michelle’s. It was all very pleasant thank you, but for me a particular highlight was the acquisition of not one, nor two, but three fine cameras.

First off, bought by mum and dad from a friend, was a Zenit EM SLR (circa 1980) and a selection of lenses. Then, as part of a cardboard box of goodies from the Waterfields, I got two rangefinders – A Voigtländer Dynamatic (1959) and an original Canon Canonet (1961).

So, on to the cameras… I’ve seen quite a few Zenits about in charity shops and car boot sales, but I’ve never bought one because of a) I’m mostly interested in rangefinders and b) They’re very heavy. It’s pretty much a standard SLR, so it didn’t take much working out once I realised that the light meter was uncoupled. Basically that just means that although it has a light meter, it’s completely separate from the workings of the camera so you need to take a reading and make all the necessary adjustments yourself.

That wasn’t a problem as most of my cameras either have a worn-out meter or none at all. That brings me onto an interesting feature of old light meters – they need no batteries because they’re selenium cell or similar, meaning they’re solar-powered.  They can also look very attractive, often featuring faceted glass rings around the barrel (as on the Canonet) The down side is they’re not as accurate as their more modern battery-powered descendants, especially in low-light conditions. Also they eventually die and cannot be fixed. This death can be postponed if they are kept in the dark (e.g. inside their case), so it isn’t uncommon for them still to work perfectly after 40 or 50 years (as is the case with Michelle’s Olympus Trip 35).  So yeah, the Zenit works fine and I carried it around with me in Stafford. It was very pleasant to use and I look forward to my next film.

Next up is the Voigtländer. This was pretty worn, with corrosion on the body, a dead meter and iffy rangefinder alignment (meaning that the focus through the viewfinder was out of whack with the reading from the barrel).  Still, the shutter speeds and apertures all seemed OK and the lens and viewfinder were clear. I used this camera around Stourbridge and Bridgnorth by just estimating the exposure and focus. 

Just to emphasize for those of you that may have cameras that automatically identify and focus on faces or smiles; with many old rangefinders you have to both estimate how bright the light is (before calculating a suitable shutter speed and aperture combination) and also the distance between  you and the subject (in metres or feet, depending on the markings on the lens). Obviously this can compromise the spontaneity a bit, but with practice isn’t as hard as you might think. This hands-on approach and total involvement in the process is one of the things I most like about old cameras –it’s pleasant to do something that actually requires (a bit of) knowledge and skill.

The last camera is the Canonet, but things weren’t so good with that fellow. It looked like it was in good physical condition, but the needle in the viewfinder was missing. Without that I could use the camera in manual mode, but not in automatic because I wouldn’t be able to see what aperture it was selecting for me (and consequently tell whether the light meter still worked or not.) So anyway, to cut a long story short, once home I took it apart to investigate and discovered the massive, terminal fault of a jammed aperture. (The needle was there and fine, it was the aperture jam that meant it didn’t move.) I should have noticed this before as you can check for that without unscrewing anything but there you go…

Still, since it doesn’t work at all now I’m willing to risk removing the lens and attempting to free the blades. I’m afraid my chances of success are very low – as you can imagine, lens assemblies are very delicate (pause to look forlornly at pile of broken, lensless cameras).

Private Collection

Inspired by Freud, I’ve decided to start my own desktop sculpture/ornament collection. So far I’ve just got the baboon and a turtle-dog-thing, but hopefully this is just the beginning. They’ve all got to be quite small, say 15 cm tall at the most, so that they don’t clutter up my workspace or obscure my screen. They’ve got to have class too; so no novelty or plastic. I need stone, metal or wood. OK, maybe a bit of plastic if it looks like metal or stone, but that seems a bit sneaky.

I want to add gravitas to my desk, so I need history and sophistication… “It would seem I have misjudged Andrew by the hilarity of his emails; now I see he has a scale model of the HMS Victory upon his desk I am convinced of his knowledge and skills.”

An owl — An owl and a bust of Voltaire too. For starters.

My Baboon Has No Moon

I did a commissioned painting last year based on an exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute. Sigmund Freud had a large collection of small sculptures, a selection of which he kept before him at  his desk. The exhibition had his actual desk and replica chair in which to sit as you contemplated the twelve sculptures on display. I did a painting of my favourite four. My favourite of the favourites was the Baboon of Thoth – the Egyptian god in Baboon form. Thoth was the god of the moon and intellect and is most commonly depicted with the head of an Ibis. Well, on to my Baboon; I bought him from Huddersfield second-hand market for £3.00.

 

I wasn’t looking to buy a stone primate, but that changed when I noticed him on the stall. I’m not sure what he’s made from, but it looks like there’s a seam on the top from casting. So anyway, when I consulted my sources at home, I saw that he was missing a moon on his head. Thoth doesn’t always have a moon, but since mine looks like a copy of the one below,  I reckon it was done for cost-cutting purposes. Maybe some of them had metal lunar attachments like so:

Here’s the Henry Moore exhibition.
Here’s the Freud Museum.
The photo above is from Wikipedia.

Combination Lock

I’ve been really busy recently, both at home and work, so that’s meant no artwork and no blogging. I’m still busy, but I’ve made time to share with you my latest invention; the Special Move Combination Lock. Basically, it’s a 1990’s-style arcade console incorporated into the wall, like an ATM. To unlock the accompanying door you’d have to perform a special move using the stick and buttons. LEFT LEFT B B UP etc… 

If it was a high-security door (a bank vault, for example) you’d have to do a really complicated series of combos.