Google Book Links for Fine Art/Spatial Practices

Space Invaders:  Race, Gender, and Bodies Out of Place

Book overview:  Women and minorities are increasingly entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not. How are positions of authority racialized and gendered? How do people manage their femininity and/or blackness while in a predominantly white male context? How do spaces become naturalized or normalized, and what does it mean when they are disrupted? Engaging with a range of material from a variety of institutions, Space Invaders is a timely contribution to wide-reaching debates on race, gender and space. It is the first book to articulate the full complexity of diversity in organizations.

Google Book Links for Games Design

Click the Title for excerpts on Theory and Games Design

Google Book Links for Media, Film & Animation 2

Google Books Link to a text on the Globalised Culture of Leisure and Entertainment, in particular regarding Architecture and Animation.

Google Book Links for Media, Film & Animation

Click the Title to search links to books with texts on ideas and theory within Media and Animation

Very tasty spaces

Carl Warner, British photographer love to play with a food, bulding up the real land of milk and honey. http://www.carlwarner.com/index_small.html ,
http://www.moillusions.com/2008/06/carl-warners-food-landscapes-or.html have fun :)

Guy Ben-ner 'Stealing Beauty'

In response to Rob Bothma's post a few days ago the link above takes you to a review of video artist Guy Ben-ner whose work takes place, in this example, in an Ikea store.  He regularly involves his family in his work, in this case using the various 'homey' displays of the superstore (with price tags) to stage his narrative: that of an ordinary family in familiar surroundings.  However, the store is open to the public, as normal, and shoppers are seen traipsing through the set with their giant yellow shopping bags, wondering what the heck is going on: as do the management of Ikea as the artist never seeks permission to film there.

Twin Towns

A friend from Swindon sent me this link with the title 'Oh dear.' 

This is about the recent news that Walt Disney World has been twinned with Swindon, after a resident won the competition by sending in a video and writing a poem describing her hometown. An interesting quote from the article says, "It is the first time the "magic kingdom" has twinned with somewhere "in the real world". It seems strange that twinning towns is made to promote cultural and commercial ties when Swindon does not immediately suggest any links, at all, with Disney World, and now the two are connected. I can however appreciate the comparison between Swindon's roundabout with the tea cup ride, although the idea is most likely too abstract for other residents to identify with!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8402686.stm

"A Profound Weakness"

"Some protestant churches are eleborate and contemporary such as crystal cathederal in Garden Grove, California. However, there is not always the money, or even the desire, to build buildings. This portable, blow up church is one alternative solution-though it does seem a bit impotent and gives a whole new meaning to accusations that church services are full of hot air."

(Quote from Christians & Kitsch chapter 13 Betty Spackman)

With this idea of compromising, of not creating this building but replacing it with an, essentially, bouncy castle it takes away the aesthetic of the tradional church building and loses any authenticity.

http://www.bestival.net/html/whatelse/theinflatablechurch

UK Rave Scene of the 1990s

The United Kingdom was well known for rave music like hardcore, jungle and drum&bass in the 90s. It is argued that some of the best producers/ record labels/ and DJs came from the UK.
The Millenium Complex in Plymouth (formerly known as The Warehouse) was one of the UK's biggest rave venues in the early 90s and people traveled from all over the country to come to these huge raves.
Delta Video Productions documented many parties and rave nights and some of which were right here in Plymouth. This video is documenting a club night called 'Pure Energy' and was shot in September 1993 at The Warehouse.
Those familiar with plymouth may find this very 'surreal' as i have ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmplBTJuki8

Control

Oh! How I wish it was Ctrl-Z (Edit Undo).

Although we all perceive ourselves as being free spirits, because we are at Art College. Do we realize how much we are controlled? We have to conform to timetables, being in for a particular time and of course the curse of all Art Students adhering to project briefs and the nightmare of nightmares, meeting those “DEADLINES“.

When does home become something else?

When your Snoopy of course! and your home can become a World War 1 fighter plane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlf---13Q0g

Enjoy the Video

POLITICS AND CONTROL IN SPACES

An example of political control and power in spaces.

Orgreave is a village in north Yorkshire.
It is usually a quiet picturesque village but in 1984, as a result of striking miners it was violated and taken control of by force. Police invaded the normally peaceful village when they forcefully dispersed the striking miners at the nearby coking plant.

The whole village became a battle ground when brutal riots occurred between police and picketing miners.

The politics of the time threatened the identity of the local enviroment, as well as importance of the place.

The village is now remembered for 'the battle of Orgreave'. The time when political issues controlled and ruled this piece of land.

To Support Theresa's inclusion the following is an excerpt from Jeremy Deller's and Mike Figgis's 'Battle of Orgreave' (2001) which illustrates the point:

In reponse to this highly 'politicised' space, artist Jeremy Deller produced a re-enactment which was directed by Mike Figgis in a film 'The Battle of Orgreave' which [in an ironic take on the staging or re-enactment of battles popular with history enthusiasts] simulates the conditions and events of that time and space, using original members of striking miners and police, many of whom have painful and haunting recollections of those events and still live in the area. A copy of Deller's Orgreave is in the LRC. There's also a Text if you click on the title of this blog entry (Response: Sally Hall)

Country Life Vs City Life

Looking at spaces, I decided to express my feelings about my home town in comparison to Plymouth. In Dartmouth, nothing much changes, the scenery is wonderful and it’s full of life and magic. There is so much space which is representative of history, so the people who live there want to keep Dartmouth simple and elegant, and this is what brings the tourists in the summer.

In comparison, Plymouth’s buildings and scenery seem to change all the time, the history of the place is basically invisible now. Plymouth is very packed and the buildings very close together which people either like or dislike. What I’m trying to say is that although Plymouth is a much larger place than Dartmouth, it looks quite small because development is rapidly eating up all the empty lots of space around the city while, at the same time, obscuring sites of cultural interest and collective memory.

Posted by Fiona Dayment

Experience as a tourist

Ideas on representation. Whilst I`m personally not a lover of tacky theme parks prefer places with a sense of historical facts and interests, so I went to Scotland for one week. The beauty of the Scottish scenery was wonderful, the weather for November was great, made this part all worthwhile, but what got on my nerves was, the way that we were ushered around on set tours like animals being taken from a farm to the slaughters House. It was well organised, and you only had a certain amount of time at each destination before going to the next stop.You also had your fill of emit fodder ( tourist gifts) of Tartan and shortbread, you saw the same thing where ever you went.Surely there`s more to Scotland than this!.Finally glad to get back home for that Cornish Pasty.

Unreal Space

Thinking back to last weeks lecture and unreal space. The thought which sprang to mind, was The Royal Family (not the TV show) and one of their past modes of Transport, The Royal Yacht Britannia. I have always envisaged a Yacht to be a either reasonably size craft, which is powered by sail, or motor, which people used for cruising of racing and maybe a bit lacking on creature comforts. As is usual, The Royal Family took this to the extreme with Britannia, possibly the only reason Britannia was regarded, as a Yacht was that, she had three masts, why? Because she was too large to be powered by sail, perhaps it was to fly all the flags and regalia required by the various members of The Family.
On the inside, she was certainly not lacking in any comfort, well maybe by The Royal Families standards she was. Something which has always puzzled me, it shouldn’t matter who or what you are, there should always be an acceptable standard for all, not just a chosen few.

Virtual Reality?

Since the beginning of video games, humans wanted to make games as realistic as possible to give the player the adrenaline, fun as well as experience of doing something that might not be possible for that person to do in the real world i.e. going into space or being a soldier at Second World War. Are the games really such a great and realistic experience? Well, sort of, some games are more realistic than others especially the simulation programmes made for training marines or pilots of choppers etc but then it's still not 100% real experience mainly because of the AI(Artificial Intelligence), computers are unable to think like humans, which means they're predictable and limited of their actions, so as long as other humans or machines thinking like humans are involved in the game being i.e. enemies, no game can achieve the real experience level. However, there are things that gives us something to think about: the virtual reality(a hypothetical three-dimensional visual world created by a computer), which leads us into a virtual world like i.e. in the Matrix. So far the development haven't reached a level near close to the one shown in the Matrix but it still requires lots of development and experiments and things like 3d goggles or special gloves allowing the user to fully control the arms in-game are only the foretaste of what the future can bring us.

The Cul De Sac

A cul de sac (french for "dead end") is an arrangement of houses plotted around a dead end road that branches off a bigger or main road. This is the typical housing arrangement of a housing estate that consists of a main road connecting to many cul de sacs.

The overall purposes of this living system are the control of traffic around residential areas and the control of the residents through schemes such as Neighbourhood Watch.

My mother is part of the Neighbourhood Watch scheme and this entails keeping an eye out for criminal activity or general threats to the health and well being of the other residents. If there is anything that may pose threat or upset the utopian system of the sub-urban living arrangements of our cul de sac or neighbourhood, my mother is obliged to contact the local authorities for further action.

My mother is basically a voluntary, part time human CCTV camera.

-laptop battery is about to 'die' - part2 to come ..