End of the Black Dog

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Finally, I think I’ve pushed through my period of panic and uncertainty and unhappiness with my work.

I wanted to find a way to balance money-earning work and uncommercial creative work better – and to make good money from my skills and talents without having to do the same thing week in, week out. I’m easily bored and am much happier working on new ideas and completing projects quickly.

So: stop the simple cheap websites for people – start making more online video for slightly larger companies doing good things who need video to tell their stories better.

Short, well-paid, achievable projects, and no guilt for spending time working on personal video projects (self-development).

It seems obvious, but JESUS it’s taken me a long time to work it out.

Thank you Katie for putting up with me through these recent Black Dog days and helping me see the light.

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Rider Spoke – Interactive Mobile Technology Bike Theatre Game at the Barbican!

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My friend Lucy was reviewing this. She’s a theatre critic. She invited me along for the ride.

And yes, that title is the shortest accurate description I could find. It’s not often you get something that presses Geek, Art and Theatre buttons all at the same time. Not to mention Cycling, Gaming, and London buttons.

You’ll see what it is by watching the video.

It’s inspired use of new technology – Blast Theory, the artists behind it, have created something really Of The Moment, that couldn’t have happened until right now – or at least not in such an effective way. The key ingredients are:
the Nokia N800 (released in January, the sister device to my N93) a wide screen portable computer with Wifi wireless internet access and GPS satellite positioning; and The Cloud, the new City-wide wifi network.

For the benefit of both non-geeks reading this, these are the things that allow us, the riders, to roam around London, for it to know exactly where we are, to connect with the home server and allow us to hear other people – even those recording their messages Right Now – and for it to tell us whether the messages they left are near or far from where we are.

If Blast Theory want to, they’ll be able to make a little map of all the hiding places, with people’s recordings on them (either as an installation, or online). They could even feed the GPS co-ordinates into something like Google Earth, so you could do a virtual walkthrough of the City and you could hear people’s messages, exactly where they left them.

So I thought it was all very cool and inspirational.

If only it’d been longer… 😉

I got back in the end, and they didn’t seem at all bothered – but I *was* half an hour late for dinner on the other side of town.

I totally recommend it. Especially if you stick reasonably close to the Barbican instead of cycling for miles through the City’s labyrinthine streets like me.
It’s on from 11th October to 21st October at the Barbican in London.
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=6071
£10 if you rent a bike, £5 if you bring your own. How cheap is that? Given the average price of an average theatre show, I reckon they should be charging a lot more.

(PS – I saw yesterday that Google Earth have just started using the Geotag location information entered in Youtube videos so that you can see videos exactly where they were filmed. I’m geeky enough to always enter the Geotag info when uploading on YT, but I doubt most people do.)

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normal service will resume imminently

another video about being blocked. don’t watch unless you’re really bored. i do these every so often. as i sit in bed sending this, it occurs to me that past blockage videos have been immediately followed by periods of great inspiration. yes! that’s what’s happening here. this is the bowels of my mind making burbling noises after a long period of constipation. tomorrow, i’m going to wake up and poo everywhere. what a fantastic thought. goodnight xx
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20 second snapshot – Friday night at St Elmo’s (Fish) Bar

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Billy: Jules, y’know, honey… this isn’t real. You know what it is? It’s St. Elmo’s Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them… there was no fire. There wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you’re making up all of this. We’re all going through this. It’s our time at the edge.

Friday night is fish and chip night – this is the chippie at the end of our road.

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*that* was supposed to be *this*

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Well, that’s cheered me up. I attached the wrong file when I uploaded, and I didn’t even check. That’s what happens when you shoot, cut and post on your phone on a bit of a downer. This one is quite different to the one I posted before. Or is it? I don’t know. This one is half the length and has music (My Blue Wave, hence the title and lyrics of the last post). It was the revised cut – the other one I posted was my first assembly. Then I really stripped all the shots down to their essences. So there you go – you get to see some process. Lucky you.

The only thing missing is naked Jay and his pussy 😉

— Later —

So I just looked at *this* again 15 minutes later and now *this* seems too artificial with the music.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ Jesus. Like it matters. This started out as a shoot and post, and here I am with my third amendment.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ I really need to get out more.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ And not to Starbucks.

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my blue wave

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i am out of the office this afternoon. i thought going to a caf‚Äö?†??¬¨¬© to make a To Do list might make a difference.

i thought i’d snap my immediate environment in terms of how everything feels at the moment – flat, sharp, overwhelming, muted, colourless, all at the same time – and when i mostly failed, i just cut it together right now in the phone anyway. why not? got me out of my head for a moment. can’t be doing sitting on all these unposted videos – the original point of twittervlog was to get past that stifling old isitgoodenough filter and reach out, publish every day from my phone regardless of mood or time available. flex the creative muscles at a basic level.

as for my mood, it’s nothing serious – just bullshit that i’m sure will pass when i get on top of my work – which isn’t that hard. tomorrow. tomorrow. i love ya, tomorrow.

—–
And the best is yet to come / You may think you are the only one / To never get it right / Just stick around on this lovely lovely night / And we may be amazed /
By my blue wave

To conclude this interview / Many facts and fictions you construe / The dog gives you the paw / You pat his head and you wipe his jaw / He’s the only one who knew /
About my blue wave

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Moving Snapshot: Family

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My brother-in-law Jan, my sister Amanda, my nephew Vijay and their dog Finnigan. And Amy. On Long Beach in Tofino, on the wild Pacific coast of Vancouver Island. This is just what I need to watch at the moment – takes me right back there. Amazing place, amazing holiday.

They didn’t know I was filming. If you quietly set up a static frame and press record, invariably it fills with beautiful movement, purely by chance. Moving snapshots.¬¨‚?тĆ I shot a lot of pictures like this, while I was away, instead of taking stills.¬¨‚?тĆ Inspired by Lumiere rules videos, but different – I like to keep the sound, to give whole new levels of atmosphere, and I like to be able to press start/stop whenever I want to rather than have to cut it off at 1 minute.

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Season 2, Episode 1

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“Andrew you’ve got to be number one! I won’t tolerate any losers in this family. Win. Win! WIN!!!”

Yeah, I know. It’s a day late. Which is kind of missing the point of Twittervlog. What a fat loser.

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Two trailers for the price of one

So no sooner did I decide to get back on the horse, than I get an email from David Howell requesting my blessing for a trailer he’s made. Of me. Kind of.
Watch it at DavidHowellStudios.com – and while you’re there, check out his amazing video art and subscribe to his feed.

I can’t imagine the pain he went through (with a bad back) watching and cutting my face 100 times. Jesus. I’m tickled and amazed by it. But the real punchline is that 2 second flash at the end. What… WHAT? I don’t know if I’m secure and stable enough to cope with being made into a stop motion puppet. Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich. My reality is already fraying at the edges.

Permanent link to his videoblog post here

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