Wednesday 31 January 2007

Turn loose the swans

I was at work late this evening, which meant I was walking across Trafalgar Square at about 9pm, while they were setting up and testing the technology for Flock, which officially starts tomorrow. It's more-or-less an interactive light show, using music and movements from Swan Lake, and it reacts to the people on the 'stage' and there are - well - the blurb calls them ghosts. I thought at first they were shadows of puppets, but when you see them for more than a glimpse, some of them are almost holographic, and some of them are puppets but some of them are filmed dancers. Different parts of the music have different colours and different effects : one essentially ripples blue as people move through it, another traces movements in yellow, another has spotlights which follow you, and let you follow the shadow-dancers, another is text - all text, or text you can only see if you move, or text surrounding a flying swan - and it's kind of interesting to watch, but so much more fun to *do* if you can just forget - as I did - that other people will be watching. It's going to be interesting from a social dynamics POV too, as people intentionally come to see and to take part in it. Tonight was just a rehearsal, and the crowd just people who happened to be passing, and even so - a bit like the Tate Modern slides - part of the fun is watching people play : the people who don't quite dare to step in, and the people who are daring each other to do it, and the people who are fascinated, and the couple waltzing across the square together, and the four girls who teamed up to try and keep the ghosts illuminated...

Basically, it's nifty, and if you are in the area you should go and play.

Wednesday 24 January 2007

The blackest snow falls on London


24th Jan 2007
Snow!

I am cheating on the one-a-day for the 365 Project here, because it just doesn't snow that often down here and it's pretty!

The top shot is what greeted me out of my bedroom window this morning.

The middle shot is on my way into work. Willow Cottage was built in 1863, and is now huddled incongruously between the tube lines and some 1960's low-rise council flats, looking a bit like a witches cottage that someone picked up and dropped.

The bottom shot is also from my walk to the station : gales last week and snow today - this little tree, which was only planted last summer, isn't very happy about that.

Tuesday 23 January 2007

there's wall to wall empty cans

So, last Thursday, whilst the wind was bringing down the entire transport system, I hoofed it up Tottenham Court Road to listen to Kevin Warwick talk about the Brave New World of cybernetics, courtesy of the Engineers Club (1).

I have to confess that the lecture proper was a bit of a disappointment – it confirmed that he is an accomplished self publicist, but he resolutely failed to go anywhere near the ethical issues which he'd put in his lecture title (2) which got a bit frustrating. From the questions, I wasn't the only one who noticed that.

But the event was held at the Building Centre Trust, which gave me the opportunity to explore their current exhibitions. The New London Architecture model of the greater city of London, with all the planned projects in place really is something. I live pretty close by some of the 2012 Olympic schemes and I've seen some of the plans, but there's nothing like the 3D scale model of the whole city to put into context just how much is going to change and, potentially, how much my borough and its neighbours could benefit from the games.

The Places for People Public City exhibition focused in on some of those projects, as well as some that have been completed and others that may never get realised, which was, if anything, more interesting. Architecture brought down to a very human scale, and some of it truly beautiful. The accompanying books isn't bad either, although I really wanted more text, more discussion, more words - but that's just how I'm wired.

I'm planning to wander back up that way in a month or so to see what their upcoming Sustainable London exhibition has to offer.

~~~

(1)(This is largely a networking opportunity for engineers, but as I am not an engineer, and neither is the friend who invited me to the lecture, I can only conclude that they are admirably open minded.)
(2) (Upgrading Humans – Technical Realities and New Morals)

Saturday 13 January 2007

won't be long...

Half price Yo Sushi. I see no bad in this concept. :D

Except that it doesn't start for another two days ....

Monday 8 January 2007

I have seen the writing on the wall.

This is a busy time of year for me, and I'll be working on Saturday, but now that Londonist have drawn my attention to this, I think I know what I'll be doing after that!

Exit

Because If you miss the show, you really won't have any chance of seeing the artwork again.

Or the building for that matter.

Exit is held in Union Works, a disused factory near Tate Modern. This grade II listed building houses the last remaining bear-baiting arena dating from 1680s and is going to be demolished at the end of the exhibition - with all the artworks still within it.


Late opening – January 13th the final night of the building standing - until 10pm.

to get on the bus that takes me to you

It's been a while since the TfL journey planner has been *quite* that obtuse.

If I leave my house and turn right, I am about an 8 minute walk to the nearest tube station, A. If I leave my house and turn left, I am about a 3 minute walk from the nearest bus stop, and about 15 mins past that the second nearest tube station, B.

TfL have a horrible habit of telling me to take a bus to station B to start all my journeys. (They suffer from the benign delusion that buses happen at regular intervals on the relevant routes ... this far out of the centre that just doesn't happen.) I've got in the habit of plotting my journeys from 'Station A' rather than from my house to work around this problem.

On Saturday night I was venturing south of the river to meet up with some friends. I wanted to check that the pub we had arranged to meet at was the one I vaguely remembered, so popped over to BeerintheEvening, who have the TfL planner embedded in their site in such a way as it only takes postcodes.

TfL did not want me to take a bus to station B. Oh no. That would be predictable. They wanted me to take *two* buses, to get to Station A.

Station A that is, if you recall, a ten minute walk, tops. Estimated travel time for that part of the journey by bus? 18 to 24 minutes ....

Friday 5 January 2007

Ok then, back to basics

New year, new blog address. Hi and welcome!

I've just finished moving over a few posts from the old site to give myself something to experiment with, and I'm hoping that the new system will make it a bit easier for me to keep on top of the updates : so many of last year's bits and pieces never actually made it online.

Nothing much to report today, though : they were taking down the tree in the square this morning - a day early for epiphany, mind - which always makes the space look much bigger and bleaker. I think I'm glad that almost all of the lights on the South Bank are regular fixtures, as I'm still walking that way in the dark of an evening, and will be for a couple of months yet.

Today's booking was for Sadler's Wells Sampled - or 3 evenings of very mixed bill dancing for a fiver apiece, with no booking fee. What more could you ask for?