As Long As It Takes

I've just heard about John Cages piece of music "as long as it takes". There was a BBC news article about it because in 2001 a church in Germany, Sankt-Burchardi-Church in Halberstadt, began playing the piece on their organ and this week the note changed. An average playing of this piece of music has taken between 20 to 70 minutes but this church is attempting to play for 639 year. So a note change is a pretty big deal, as it will be months or perhaps years before another happens.

Schedule of note changes:

February 5, 2009
July 5, 2010
February 5, 2011
August 5, 2011
July 5, 2012
October 5, 2013
September 5, 2020

They keep the continuous note by weighing the peddles down with sandbags.

Circles

while walking home the other day....

I passed the Great Eastern Hotel on Duke St, I've passed it everyday for the past year and have always found it interesting and loved the idea of what might be inside. It was famous for being the largest homeless mens hostle in Britain but it was closed down around five years ago with big plans to turn it into something else but nothing has been done yet. It looks like nothing will be done in the near future either as in January this year a huge storm blew the roof off and theres been no sign of any restoration being done or even any protection from the elements? I imagine it will eventually just be another building left to rot and then easy to knock down.


But back to my walk home.... as i was passing it about two weeks ago i noticed that the ground floor side door was not only unlocked but sitting open. this temptation was just to much to resist so i went to explore. I dont doubt that it was stupid and a bit dangerous but it was fantastic inside!


the ground floor was full of odds and ends like chairs, traffic cones, old kettles and mugs. it smelled terrible and im sure there must still be quite desperate people spending the night there, its the most wind and water tight of the whole place and is probably a more comfortable alternative to the street. Going up to the different floors was much more exciting though, the floors higher up are so bare and as huge as ballrooms now that they've been cleared of all the tiny dormitories. The higher up we went the less floor there was and the more you could see the sky peeking through the holes in the floors above but we where "safley" taking pictures from the concrete side stairwell. by the time we made it to the fourth floor i was well and truley spooked and too scared to chance the very very narrow dark stairway to the higher even ricketier floors, particularly when we became sure we heard someone moving around higher up.


So narrowly escaping with my life (or at least thats how it felt at the time) and a few pictures it feels like another little bit of the city thats not such a mystery anymore.

ok... so...

I did manage to do a little bit of making over the summer, but only a little. I wanted to try just making for the sake of it and for the enjoyment of it instead of always trying to find a meaning in everything.

so i started knitting.
Knitting is something that i sort of enjoy anyway, I'm not great at it but you can do anywhere and once you get into the rhythm of it, it becomes almost meditative and very addictive... which is nice. Again i was trying to stick with the making for the sake of it and not to try to hard, so i practiced on certain bits and experimented with stitches and materials on others and when i was finished they began to look a lot like big creeping webs.


With this in mind it seemed natural to put them outside, so i did.

I though it would be interesting just to leave them there and see how they change. so far... nothing but its early days!! it would be nice if it started to become overgrown in the way that rope bindings round trees sometimes become swallowed up by the tree, but we'll see.

ive had a few coments on what they remind people of, one friend suggested it would make a nice homefor a lazy spider and another said it was like weaving a yarn. Like i was telling a story but in a physical way and they told me a little about Anansi the Spider who was The King of Stories in ashanti culture.

Swedish MFA

I visited Gothenburg at the end of last term and happened to be in a gallery as their school of art unveiled its equivalent to the MFA graduation show.
There where some interesting things but it was a little tricky to grasp everything that was going on as they had Fine art and Design mixed together and some of the design show is still a bit of a mystery to me.

There was one piece in the show that i especially like, I loved the used of the material and just fell in love with the presence they had in such a crowded space. There's more pictures on Flickr just click on the picture.

While walking home...

I passed the old BBC building just off Queen Margaret Drive. I think its a shame that it'll eventually be turned into just another giant hotel but there you go.
What i did see in the old car park was this!

Ive no idea what it is or was but i think it looks fantastic now. So i took lots of pictures and stuck them on flickr.

And speaking strange things you find while out walking I came across this tree in the park about a month ago. I spotted it because it was shining bright white and bare in amongst all the other freshly leaved trees.

I don't know what insect caused this web of silky stuff... it could be silk worms but I didn't think we got those in Glasgow?... It really was completely covered in the stuff and there where hundreds of little wiggly worms.

summer time

I thought, as its only a month till school starts again, it might be nice to write a few more things on my blog.Ive been doing a little bit of personal research but as its just for me its been fairly erratic, a bit hit and miss?

Two books I took from the library and keep flicking through are The Art of Lee Miller and Tim Hawkinson.

Tim Hawkinson in particular has some pieces of work that I found interesting. He makes some fascinating machines, most of which are made from found objects, like clocks made from tubes of toothpaste, envelopes or plastic bags. I love the intensity behind the making of these objects, the idea of someone being so dedicated and devoting themselves to making these things purely for the joy of making them. One of my favorites was signature

its made from an old school desk with a hand built machine which seemingly endlessly churns out the artists signature.

Another is Wall Chart of World History from Earliest Times to Present

I find it staggering to think about the patience and obsession it must take to make something of that scale. Its really the obsessional nature that i find most fantastic.

Also the materials which he chooses in his work are really interesting, the way they are carefully chosen and reassembles to create something new. This is done so carefully that at first glance you probably wouldn't recognise it was anything other than what it pretends to be?

Eggshell made of ground hair and nails

Feather made from the artists hair

Spiders web made from Hair

That its so well made makes me question the point in making it at all but i suppose that is the point, the novelty, the patience and the skill is really the interesting thing not the finished object.