Fourth plinth announcement

Walking back to the flats with a group of students yesterday, we talked a little about the Fourth Plinth project* - what I hadn't realised was that they'd just announced the 2011 and 2012 commissions just that morning!


Both the proposals I voted for ('Sikandar' and 'It’s Never Too Late And You Can’t Go Back') made the short list, but not the final cut, but the two chosen were probably my 3 and 4 of the final six. I am quite glad it wasn't th ATM/Organ, as someone who'd have to live with it long after the novelty would have worn off!

(*We were talking about One & Other, which was one of my all time favourite public art pieces.)

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.

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?

She stares up at the sky as if entranced

Yesterday evening, J took me out to dinner to celebrate his new job, and we got to sample some of the performances that are part of the Trafalgar Square Festival. To be fair to Nitro, I could only see about half the staging area, but IMO a fairly long narrative, like Mass Cari, doesn't lend itself to street performance that well, and mostly I was confused and the opera-style singing's not really my thing.

Song of the Sirens (by Mécanique Vivante) was fantastic though - the sirens are mounted on these fantastic cream spires, so they look like flowers against the sky, and the sound is - it's almost indescribable. It's musical sirens, in four part harmony, and I'll bet you could hear it for miles. Impressed.

We also caught the end of Strange Fruit's Spheres, which was gorgeous and elegant and ethereal, and totally different to their Canary Wharf performances, while using the same skill set.

The highlight for me, though, was Saurus (by Close Act) which absolutely hit my 'child-like wonder' buttons. For that half an hour there were three silver dinosaurs roaming around Trafalgar Square, and I was in love with them. Even after I worked out how they were doing it, they were still totally magical.

close my eyes and count to ten

I don't have anything important to say, but sometimes life's all about the little things, like noticing that it's finally light as I'm leaving work, and mentioning that on Monday there was an eighteen feet tall inflatable Grommit in Trafalgar Square, and one of the thing I love about my city is how almost everyone just sort of blinked and smiled and went about their days.

up at windows filled with light

I was walking across the Square in the freezing cold this morning, and they've finished putting up the Christmas tree and were backing up the cherry picker to start stringing the lights.

In the absence of any even slightly fantastic public lights this year, I find myself noticing the shop displays. My friend and I wandered around west London last night, and took in some of the Christmas windows - Harrods' didn't really stick, but Harvey Nicks are sort of 70's steampunk robots and the like - random, but cool. And here, have Londonist's write up of the Selfridges set. I'm still pretending hard that it's not less than a month till Christmas, but starting to feel it anyway - I do love this time of year, I just never have enough *time* to do everything I'd like.

*****

The weekend's been a good one, with a visit from a friend from out of town. We wandered around the Natural History Museum, discovering whole new species of mammal(1) and realising just how many species (ones I have heard of) look like they belong in a fantasy novel instead of the real world (2) and then the whales(3), which are still mind-blowingly big, and then a final detour in to the dinosaurs, to see the new animatronic T-rex. No small children were maimed or eaten. Although possibly one or two were traumatised.

We also signed ourselves up for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Darwin Centre, aka millions and millions and millions of Things In Jars : giant glass jars with unhappy looking head-fist eagles, or three squished echidnas, or four foot lengths of soft coral..... The lady showing us around was really chatty and informative too, which more than made up for the fact that the giant squid was in a giant box and not available for viewing.

We roamed West London in search of non-expensive coffee for a while (and accidentally wandered into Hotel Chocolate which was delicious but not coffee) before we decamped back to central London for dinner at Ed's, and a visit to Foyles, and then, finally, back home, where we chatted until the early hours.

All very good indeed.

(1) (Pink Fairy Armadillo! They really exist!)
(2) (anything which is basically animal x on stilts, for starters. And lemmings, who would clearly be fighting on Aslan's team.)
(3) (nothing like a stuffed elephant to put your whale in context.)

eyes full of wonder

Wednesday the square was full of storytelling yurts and a giant inflatable whale and play areas and other such nifty things as it was taken over for some sort of kids playday thing – it was really neat seeing all these little kids having so much fun. And they had bubbles.

Other nifty sightings : three cute baby skater punk girls doing their thing, and an impromptu shirtless capoeira tuition session on the grass outside the national gallery.

Trafalgar Square's been a lot more interesting since Ken pedestrianised it and started using it for gigs etc... Go team mayor.