neonascent

Well I’m not very good with regular schedules, but here’s this moments epitaph.

The previous…

The above image (with zoomed detail below) was created with a script I wrote way back in 2003. I’ve just rediscovered it, and have been tinkering around with it a little. The script allows you to recreated composited images using coloured circles, randomly generated winding characters (as above), or your choice of text as a substitute for pixels in the image. I’m tempted to get some A0/A1 sized wall posters printed of some of these, as I really love the aesthetic, and think there can be some fantastic effects produced with the right choice of text + subject.

I’ll give access to the script if anyone has any immediate ideas they’d like to implement with it… Give me a yell.

The BBC reports that four UN observers have been killed when their outpost was targetted by Israelly airforce.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was “shocked” at the “apparently deliberate targeting” of the post. Israel has expressed “deep regret”.

It seems that Israel has taken the kidnapping of it’s three soldiers as justification needed to start a full-scale regional offensive.

The targetting and wholesale bombing of Lebanese residential areas - first in southern Lebanon and now in Sidon, where refugees have been fleeing to - as an attack against Terrorism takes familiar rhetoric far past the absurd.

The trip back from Melbourne - starting yesturday and ending just 30 minutes ago this morning - was incredibly long and epic.

The stage for my denouement was set in the small town of Tarcutta, coincidently almost exactly halfway between Melbourne and Sydney.

I waited, I thought, I read. I wondered and looked at the incredibly clear sky and saw the milkyway. Then I saw two falling stars, and in the early hours of this morning a brilliant rainbow arch.

I got an idea of the lives of truckies. I got an idea of their deaths. A hundred and twenty-three of them younger than myself killed in truck accidents over the years.

Sat by fires, got lashed with freezing winds. Rode for hours into the dawn.

Trite as it sounds: lost a dream but found a story.

(Illustration image is from a night shoot with Tegan on Bridge St…)

Well this is the end of an incredibly long day. Today I got up at 4am and rode down from Paddington, Sydney to Central Melbourne. That’s about 900kms, which is roughly the entire length of britain tip-to-toe.

It all would have been great except for the freezing my ass off. It took about 12 hours in the end, having to stop 6 times for feeding, fuelling and hot cups of tea to help thaw out and brace for some more chill. Other than than eveything went pretty well. Riding into Melbourne was like riding into a different country - the difference in driving styles and road layouts really compound together, along with their hook-right-turn system which just makes it surreal!

Ironically at the same time as freezing, I also managed to get my face sunburned! :S

Anyway, Melbourne seems nice and interesting (and welcomingly different in a way), and I’ve got a few days of swish hotel to enjoy.

A few days ago I blogged a sculpture I had installed for a recent exhibition. The sculpture featured Nazi imagery (red-white banner with black icon) to point out the fascist tendencies of US government “warring against terror”, etc.

I had worried that the use of such imagery was pushing it towards the clichéd and would be considered hyperbolic - although to my mind the comparison is valuable in a media environment where perspective and historical context is as far removed as composed intellectually analysis.

Now, in an interesting twist the New York Times is reporting that neo-Nazis have infiltrated the US Military in Iraq. It seems that in the face of rising ire over the war in Iraq it is getting harder for military recruiters to fill their quotas, and they are no longer maintaining a block on racist and extremist recruits. Neo-Nazis already have an agenda to get into the military, and so are only too happy to be allowed in.

An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units.

“Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman’s war,” he wrote. “It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and ‘cleansed.’ “

• Link to New York Times article

It’s edging closer to my next birthday, and I feel that in my old age it is a good idea to have my affairs in order. Starting at the end, I’m going to make sure my spirit lives on in a witty epitaph for myself. I will endevour to come up with a good epitaph every week, and with pot-luck style selection if I die during that week, I take it to the grave! Of course if I think of a naff one for one week, I’ll have to try extra hard not to do anything fatal until I can think of a better one.

I’ve written a PHP script to help visualize, and they are auto-magically created.

This (highly political) sculpture was exhibited in the “Ground Floor” exhibition, Kudos. Two things I’ve wanted to do: engage in the gallery space itself, rather than just place things on a plinth within it, and work with the emotively charged black-white-red nazi style symbolism - I got my wish! Painting the walls was extremely liberating.

The installation consists of a stand holding two 100w klaxons, with painted wall banners on either side. The klaxons broadcast the sounds of war (bombs, air-raids, etc), with an underfloor sub-woofer providing deep rumbles.

Here is some (perhaps obvious) explanation:

Using Nazi imagery to point out the hypocracy of a War for Peace, and the fascism that’s been justified to “secure the country”. Dove with olive branch is biblical (i.e. very culturally specific) symbol for peace, and the nature of the War on Terror as a religious war (Bush initially described it as a “Crusade”) is tacit.

…Enduring Freedom is of course the name of US operations in Afghanistan.

Political support badges were also made, with two slogans, both of which involve some semantic/oxymoronic conflict.

There is always the danger of being too clichéd when dealing with political issues in art. I don’t want people to think that the Nazi imagery is in any way flagerant or gratuitous. During the Nuremberg trials Hermann Goering explained the power of the governement over the people through an uncomfortably familiar scenario:

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

I think it’s important to realise that when such insubstantial rhetoric as an undefinable and unwinnable War on Terror is used to justify incursions into human rights, they are by no means intended to be temporary.

• War broadcast sounds MP3 (5.58mb)
• Link to Flickr set