Having seen some of Soth’s large-format work in person, it would be really amazing to visit a multi-project exhibition of his as there is something about his work that works so much better either in person, huge and on the wall or in one of those beautiful full-scale coffee table photography books than viewed on a screen.
By some serendipitous mistake I found I had accidentally started twovideos at once and they were looping together creating a mesmerising soundscape, no doubt aided by the beautiful Max Alper track used in the first video.
Which led me to think how nice it would be if not just the two audio tracks could combine, but also the visuals.
So I tried embedding both videos into a page, overlaying one on the other and fiddling with the settings and the transparency, and this is the result.
It’s really quite hypnotic to watch, especially when, due to the differing lengths of the videos, you get a slightly different experience both aurally and visually with every new loop through. So not bad as a first effort, even though you may get a less than optimal experience viewing the simultaneously buffering, playing and looping videos on older computers / browsers.
Next is to hunt down some more “compatible” videos and see if I can’t create a whole series of overlaid pieces. It’s just a shame that any more than two simultaneous videos tends to bring my connection to its knees.
An intriguing creative charity (and let’s be honest, self-promotion) project coming out of a London group of creatives. They’re “donating” 100 brand-based ideas to the top 100 brands via a one-pitch-per-brand video in exchange for one ten millionth of their brand value. All of the proceeds go the DEC Haiti appeal.
Robin of Shoreditch is an anonymous group of creative outlaws looking to take from the rich and give to the poor. We’re providing every one of Brand Z’s Top 100 brands with a creative idea that can make a difference to their company.
In return, all we ask for is 1/10,000,000 (that’s one ten-millionth) of the value of their brand as a fee. We’ll then send on 100% of that fee to the continued relief efforts in Haiti.
Interesting piece over at packaging design site @TheDieline about the Betacup contest to redesign (what has become) the humble take-out coffee cup – something that has become so ubiquitous in our lives that we pay little thought to just how many must be produced, sold and in-turn, thrown away. Those double-lined, rolled-top cups, insulation sleeves and plastic lids must mount up on a simply unimaginable scale.
So bravo to the much-maligned @Starbucks for co-sponsoring the contest along with @Core77. And to @Jovoto for hosting. I especially like the ingenious radial fins in the Miller Creative design featured that eliminates the need for extra insulation sleeves whilst simultaneously acting as a heat-sink of sorts to prevent scorched hands. Nice work indeed.
The sudden burst of ultra-hot weather this past week meant that, with a sunny, west-facing balcony part of my new living arrangements, outdoors eating was almost mandatory.
To celebrate, I turned to an old standby, the classic white risotto and cooked up something that looked the very picture of mediterranean al fresco eating, bathed in sun-dappled, summer evening light. However, while I like to think I cook as seasonably as most middle-class eco-conscious foodies, this was in reality more of a hangover from the freezing winter. Comprising mainly of your classic risotto aromatic vegetables (plus carrots), the only concession to spring/summer was the addition of some good old British broccoli.
Aside from the pretentious descriptions of outdoor eating and the blabbering about seasonality, the real reason this risotto was post-worthy was that it was transformed by the deceptively simple addition of two ingredients that most cooks would consider risotto staples.
Firstly, I tend to be a lazy cook whenever possible and tend to use bouillon stock powder for my risottos which I boil up once and then leave to cool off. However, after reading this super-informative article over at The Guardian, I realised the importance of good stock, and not just any good stock, but good hot stock.
So following a beautiful roast dinner the previous weekend from @stuartfowkes, I found myself with the necessary tools (and when I say tools I mean the limp, pathetic carcasses of two dead birds) to create some killer chicken stock, which kept at a simmering boil throughout the cooking process, not only (as The Guardian article says) helped keep the cooking time to a minimum, but also infused the risotto with the most wonderful depth of poultry flavour coming through in an otherwise vegetarian dish.
The second revelatory thing about risotto preparation that I realised was the importance of not doing what I normally do and skimping on the amount of butter you limply stir into the dish at the end. Let’s face it, you’re already sitting down to eat an entire plate of rice for dinner – why skimp at the end?
Reflecting this devil-may-care attitude towards my health, I added a good hunk of butter and set about blending by method of the “mantecare” – a vigorous whisking or creaming of the butter into the cooked risotto. Even if not reflected in the slightly over-dry appearance of the risotto in the photos, this beating of butter into rice seemed to really convince the starches that provide a good risotto with its oozing, silken feel in the mouth to set themselves free and gave the dish a fantastic, luxurious texture.
So the next time you decide to make a risotto, ditch the stock cubes and the kettle and don’t hold back with either the butter or with your forearm – offset that extra fat with some summer evening, sweaty whisking.
Oh and finally, following a delicious run-in with The Arancini Brothers in London at the weekend, I felt compelled to pay a (sadly) non-deep-fried homage to their spectacular wraps by working the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner into a wrap stuffed full of white risotto, grated carrot and sesame seeds with a caper mayonnaise. Which predictably went down an absolute treat for lunch.
Japandroids blasted through Oxford on Tuesday bringing a potent mix of post-hardcore garage rock and Canadian affability to a relatively healthy mid-week crowd. Apparantly they are getting a decent amount of press and on this showing they certainly deserve it, coaxing shapes from the assembled indie-kids at the front and merely impressing the more mature, chin-stroking audience members towards the back.
Main support was from Phantom Theory, another addition to the swelling ranks of two-person noise-machine bands, who turned out what I thought was a bit of a Jekyll & Hyde set, starting off with a tangled web of pounding drums and throbbing bass guitar. Only once the bass was swapped out for a guitar did they really entice me to pay any attention as they unleashed what I thought was a stronger, more ambitious selection of tracks for the second half of their set.
Vancouver BC’s Japandroids upped the noise quota even further with a sound fleshed out by Brian King’s doubly amplified guitar and the amusingly named David Prowse’s relentless, high-energy drumming. Highlights for me were a blistering rendition of Sovereignty and a closing McClusky cover to end a set high on energy, noise and harmonic dualing vocals. To put it in a slightly more succinct fashion, check out the link below and grab the MP3s while you’re there:
Some recipes are so simple you can’t even really call them recipes. This is one of those and whilst it sounds a little odd, makes for a very refreshing milkshake/smoothie hybrid that kind of reminds me of Horchata, only unfortunately not quite as awesome.
I stumbled upon it while I was craving something sweet, had nothing much in the cupboards and remembered the old adage “If you’re hungry enough to eat, you’re hungry enough to eat an apple”.
Ingredients & Method
My approach to cooking (but not baking) is generally to throw stuff in and judge by eye how much you need. This is perfect for that – just bear in mind you want roughly double the amount of milk to juice and don’t add too much cinammon as that’s all you’ll taste.
One medium/large apple, peeled, de-decored and de-seeded.
A good sprinkling of ground cinnamon
1 tsp of runny honey
A glug of apple juice
Milk (I used 2% semi-skimmed – whole or half & half would be tastier)
Put all of the above in a blender and blend until frothy and slighty thickened. Taste to adjust sweetness/cinnamon levels, pour into a glass and drink, preferably rapidly through 2 straws.
It may seem like an unusual choice, but I can confidently say that when it comes to choosing a piece of poetry I consider beautiful, powerful and that speaks to me in ways I can’t fully explain, my favourite poem is not by a famous poet or playwright, but a comedienne called Abigail Burdess.
Like most products of the British school system, I sat through hours of English lessons memorising endless passages and stanzas that now seem to have been reduced down into a fistful of quoteable phrases. Little did we know back then but often, lifelong preferences for authors would be formed in those months spent meticulously reading and regurgitating passages in humid, sweaty exam halls in early summers.
However, for me, nothing in the poetry we read at school ever really stuck (at least not at the time, i’m now much more grateful for those grey afternoons reading Philip Larkin). And so returning to verse now and starting almost afresh, it isn’t a snippet of Eliot, Keats or Plath that I can point to and say “this is everything I enjoy about poetry” but strangely a short poem written by the comedian Robert Webb’s wife-to-be in an attempt to capture his heart.
As Webb says in his reading and explanation of the poem in the video above, it worked. And so too did the show in which it was broadcast: a dedication to a T.S. Eliot poem (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) that, just like his wife’s poem, ignited an interest in poetry that can be traced back to just a few verses in one piece of work.
