Photographer George Benson has a new website with a lovely new series of work, The Colour of Music.
This series purely looks at the colour of the record sleeves grouping all records by colour alone. In this way the genres of music were mixed with techno standing next to hiphop next to rock next to house and so on. The resulting photographs create a rythmn of colour, light and shade through an unseen collection of music.
Prints are available to purchase.
“Everybody who wishes to take part in ArtsFest must complete an application form and submit it by 28th March 2008.” That’s next Friday.
A programme of events around the theme Endurance starts on the 24th of April and runs until the 26th at Vivid.
Endurance is a three-day programme of screenings, performances and exhibition exploring the physical and mental limits of human endurance
There really are a lot of events to investigate, even if you can find the performative and body-art aspect of this sort of work a bit challenging (which, if you ask me, is even more of a reason to go), there should still be something of interest. a timetable for the events can be downloaded here.
I think I will at least try and make it to the William Hunt (pictured) piece on the Thursday night.
Nic Treadwell wrote (bloody ages ago actually – sorry!) about his Homegrown Podcast where he’s been featuring artists form Birmingham and elsewhere for a couple of years now. He’s interested in doing interviews / features with folk in his Rowly Regis studio. Get in touch at nic [at] homegrownpodcast.co.uk
Enigmatically I just got sent this in the post,
(click to embiggen)
no explanation or anything, just the invite. But after a quick dig I came up with this,
This new body of work is centered on notions of broken narratives. The work spans drawing, photography, video and sound, and is very much a departure as the show will not include any painting. The focus of my practice is on the process, and the documentation of the processes involved in making art, something that has developed out of my painting practice.
I am currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at the University of Wolverhampton.
Might be worth a look, although the 22nd is Saturday, the web site says the show starts on the 24th which is next Monday.
 Edit: been contacted and the private view is definatly monday 24th
At the Moseley Creative Forum meeting last night (at which I was on the panel) the chair, Steve Harding, mentioned that the Community Development Trust which owns/runs the building had secured £300,000 of funding to completely renovate the main ground floor space. What was interesting was what they intend to do with it. After the event (which I think went rather well – I’d encourage Moseley creative types to go) I had a quick chat with the CDT manager Tony Thapar and jotted down some notes. Bear in mind I’m blogging this before they’ve made an official announcement so I might have gotten some of the finer details wrong, but the general gist I’m comfortable with.
Firstly, the money hasn’t just been handed to them by some quango. This has been a long process gathering funds from a variety of places including local donations. The final chunk came from the European Regional Development pot the 6 month application process for which was apparently a nightmare. So I’m guessing this has been fairly well thought through.
The basic plan is to offer a “third space” for freelancers and home workers, the majority of whom in Moseley tend to be in the creative industries. Facilities will include internet access, desk space, secure lockers and the ability to hire the upstairs rooms for meetings and presentations.
More importantly the space will enable folk to mix and network giving the creative community a base which isn’t a pub/cafe or someone’s kitchen. Essentially they’re looking at developing a Co-working space, something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
At its heart is a desire to provide something the community can use that will keep people in the area rather than forcing them to go to Digbeth or the Jewellery Quarter, especially for those just starting out or who don’t need a city centre office. There’s also, due to the concentration of SMEs, the opportunity for the business support orgs to use it as an outreach / info spot. And Tony was also keen to stress how the centre could be used to “bridge the digital divide” by providing computer-based tools and skills to those who feel left behind by all the nonsense the likes of me spout.
The beauty of this, as I see it, is that it’s not very prescriptive. There’s a space with facilities that people can use as they see fit. Of course making sure the basic facilities are suitable is the most important thing so I hope they’ll be using all the tools available to get this right. A blog or similar detailing the plans and facilitating feedback at the very least.
But yeah, I’m usually quite cynical about such things but this looks like a good un. Moseley-types – go get involved.
Currently topping the Clipstar Animation category, this lovely piece of work by Birmingham agency Warblefly.
Here’s their Animation Forum profile which is where I heard about it (though I think I saw a preview on another blog a while back).
October 4th 1997 saw a performance by Higher Intelligence Agency and Biosphere, aka Bobby Bird and Geir Jenssen, on the 12th floor of the Rotunda entitled Birmingham Frequencies.
on this night, two hundred & fifty people went up into the rotunda for the first time, to hear a soundtrack by geir jenssen & bobby bird, made with location recordings taken from around birmingham over the previous week. visual impressions were also commissioned & projected on to the inner curve of the polo-mint shaped room.
the event was a follow-up / return invitation to an event two years previously, when hia / biosphere collaborated in a live concert overlooking tromso, norway as part of the polar music festival, a performance subsequently released as polar sequences.
A CD, with audio and video content, came out in 2004 and is available on eMusic (where you can listen to clips) and Amazon. I have ordered a copy!
Info came from my favourite American Anglophile Kevin Church.
This year, we get to vote on what we want to see as part of the Fierce Festival!
After a decade of stop-you-in-your-tracks live art events and performances FIERCE is trailblazing once more giving you, the audience, the power to program your own festival!
We’ve reserved a range of spaces from theatres to pavements, broom cupboards and dressing rooms. You decide what goes in them.
* Read the artist pitches
* Choose your top three performances and vote!
* Come back to build your festival line up and use the leader board to help you.Shows with the least votes will be eliminated; the most popular shows will be performed LIVE during Fierce Festival at venues across the West Midlands 23rd – 26th May.
They has a blog too :)
Looking at the Electric cinema’s newsletter I see that the Notorious Choir will be playing a gig there (do choirs gig?) on Sunday the 20th of April at 1pm. Called “As Seen On Tv” it promises “Fun and fabulous music from some televisions best loved shows”.
Lighthearted postmodern fun or symptomatic of a doomed culture bankrupt of ideas, you can decide for £8 (£6 Concs)
Tonight I am overly excited because I just found out that José González and The Bees are playing at this year’s Moseley Folk Festival. How did I find out this most pleasing nugget of news? Not on the interwebs, oh no, but via hard copy – a flyer I picked up at the Moseley Dance Workshop. The contents of said flyer are absent from the world wide web, so by the magic of photography, I bring you a photo of the flyer:
I’m sure it’s gotta be much quicker and easier to put this info online than to arrange to have it designed, printed and distributed?!
Update, May 18th: This post has been edited after we received a legal threat from Surface Unsigned. More here.
Round one of the regional Surface Unsigned Festival ’08 is nearly over, but have no fear sheer volume of acts they are dealing with in the midlands alone should mean there are plenty of gigs to come, if I’ve done the maths right the competition should be finished sometime in 2112.
Now each act are not going to be the-ghost-of-Jimi-Hendrix-playing-a-seven-hour-set-amazing admittedly, but this could be a great way of seeing local unsigned acts.
Tomorrow Digbeth favorite, The Rainbow (whose lack of decent website surprises me for some reason) will, play host too, Product Of This, Trial of Origin, The Singles Club, Planetman, Astro Reality, and Just Sweet Theft.
In the interest of transparency I found out about this because I will be there tomorrow (long hair, scruffy beard/stubble and waistcoat, say hello I’m nice) supporting Planetman, old friends and IMO one of the best unsigned bands in Birmingham.
As this has provoked quite the discussion, I give my report into Surface and the machinations thereof.
As I knew one of the bands at the gig last night any review that I do will have a bias. Anyway the structure of the event and competition as a whole is far more interesting, and by interesting I mean sketchy.
First of all I want to qualify my criticisms with the insistence that I did have a good time last night. Six pounds isn’t a massive price to pay if the money was going to the bands or covering costs. And I still think there is a case to be made for showcase style show with six or so bands playing twenty minutes each.
Walking in the gig wasn’t packed, Surface don’t really do any promotion, that they leave to the bands to do themselves, expecting each band to sell 25 tickets each;
Note: We had previously reprinted verbatim an excerpt of the terms and conditions. Surface have requested we remove this as they consider it a breach of copyright so what follows is a paraphrased version written in a tone that we hope cannot be mistaken for that of Surface.
Oh hai! For to plai at event ur ordiance can haz 25 pipple. U muzt sell 25 tikkits 4 eech gig ur in. If u can not haz cell 25 tikkits u can still haz plai but ur band will NOT go froo 2 necks rawnd no matta haw mannie Sourfice Raiteens U getz. Kthnxbai!
From how empty the venue was, it meant a lot of bands must of eat shit on ticket sales and bought them themselves, you also only get the money back from tickets sales if you sell all 25 which is even then only a pound a ticket. So for 25 £6 tickets, the bands get £25 and Surface gets £125 now there are a minimum of six band at each gig so that means each gig they get a minimum of £750 (not to much maths I hope, my head kinda pickled as it is but I will push on regardless), now the first round of the Birmingham heats there are 38 gigs, which adds up too £28,500! just for the first round, all this, according to the booklet, going towards
“Sound engineer, Venue, Booth Operative, Security, Bar staff, PA, Lighting etc”(bold theirs)
From what I saw last night, lighting and PA was the venues own, bar staff provided by the venue also, there was no security. All the other stuff amps etc were provided by the sponsors, and to be honest the lead guitars speaker actually catching fire during the set isn’t the hugest endorsement for their products.
Another criticism is the choosing of the bands the whole night was Rock/Ska/Pop, which means the Screamo band put in the second from last slot was never going to get as many votes seeing as they drove most of the crowd to the connecting bar. In fact the esoteric voting system is so much BS I won’t go into it in detail, needless to say the MC’s main job was to push the text voting, seeing as the other voting was the highly scientific system of raised hands and I wouldn’t trust this broad to count her children in the car on the way back from Alton Towers.
I would love to see the same structure applied to a regular night were six or so unsigned band played half an hour each and split the door, giving relatively new bands a chance to cut their teeth and punters a regular night to sample a section of the local scene.
