history

“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write,”

Quote | | Paul Greer

“I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you’re going to be dreaming soon”

–
The Daily Habits of Famous Writers: Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, Stephen King etc.

(t)

Bristol Water

Image | | Paul Greer

(at Arnolfini)

 

“In the 18th century, the docks in Liverpool grew larger and so increased competition with Bristol for the tobacco trade. Coastal trade was also important, with the area called “Welsh Back” concentrating on trows with cargoes from the slate industry in Wales, stone, timber and coal. The limitations of Bristol’s docks were causing problems to business, so in 1802 William Jessop proposed installing a dam and lock at Hotwells to create the harbour. The £530,000 scheme was approved by Parliament, and construction began in May 1804. The scheme included the construction of the Cumberland Basin, a large wide stretch of the harbour in Hotwells where the Quay walls and bollards have listed building status.
The tidal new cut was constructed from Netham to Hotwells, with another dam installed at this end of the harbour. The Feeder Canal between Temple Meads and Netham provided a link to the tidal river so that boats could continue upstream to Bath. However, the new scheme required a way to equalise the levels inside and outside the Dock for the passage of vessels to and from the Avon, and bridges to cross the water. Jessop built Cumberland Basin with two entrance locks from the tidal Avon, of width 45 ft (13.7 m) and 35 ft (10.7 m), and a 45 feet (13.7 m) wide junction lock between the Basin and what became known as the Floating Harbour. This arrangement provided flexibility of operation with the Basin being used as a lock when there were large numbers of arrivals and sailings. The harbour was officially opened on 1 May 1809.”

Silva rerum

Image | | Paul Greer
Silva Rerum of Krassowscy (Ślepowron coat of arms) family from Ziemia Drohicka in Podlasie
Silva Rerum of Krassowscy (Ślepowron coat of arms) family from Ziemia Drohicka in Podlasie

“In historical Poland [silva rerum] was written by members of the Polish nobility as a diary or memoir for the entire family, recording family traditions, among other matters; they were not intended for a wider audience of printing (although there were a few exceptions); some were also lent to friends of the family, who were allowed to add their comments to them. It was added to by many generations, and contained various information: diary-type entires on current events, memoirs, letters, political speeches, copies of legal documents, gossips, jokes and anecdotes, financial documents, economic information (price of grain, etc.), philosophical musings, poems, genealogical trees, advice (agricultural, medical, moral) for the descendants and others – the wealth of information in silva is staggering, they contain anything that their authors wished to record for future generations).”

via

On Painting Machines

| Paul Greer



Reblogged from ekstasis:

“Anton Perich

Everything has history. Call the above proto-glitch. Here’s Perich describing his artistic process, in this case building a machine to do his painting for him in 1977:

I dreamed of a machine that would paint. No more hand made paintings, but machine made, with sharp electric lines, on and off, like Morse code, short and long. So in 1977/78 I built such a machine, using surplus materials from Canal Street stores. I wired some photocells to the airbrushes on the motorized scanning unit that swept an area of about 10×12 feet, hung a piece of canvas, and made my first digital painting. In his Diaries Warhol said he was terribly jealous. This machine was an early precursor of ink jet printer/scanner. This was the time long before computer and digital art. I had my first show of electric paintings at Tony Shafrazy Gallery in 1979. I am still painting with this machine every day. It keeps breaking and I keep fixing it all the time.

Not “computer generated,” but computer aided. Not mechanistic, but nevertheless mediated by technology, by the digital. “Glitched,” before such a thing was.

The wonderful Joanne McNeil is in charge of Rhizome’s frontpage these days. Compare Perich’s painting from the 70’s to her post, from 2011:

Today’s information and mass media society have brought about a diffused ‘aestheticization’ where artists are mixing political and war images with those proceeding from adds, commercial cinema and entertainment. Be it by hiding images behind layers, making them transparent or pixilated, applying faded colors and thick paint, there is a slowing down of the experience of viewing an image through a hand made, physical rendering. But, besides this ‘slowness’ and physicality that we traditionally associate with painting, the painting medium is also paradoxically going through an ‘acceleration’ process through its newfound relationship with iPhones, scanners, Photoshop, Facebook, satellites, digital cameras, and 3-D programs.

— The Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem (MMKA) description of exhibition The End of History…and The Return of History Painting (via Bruce Sterling)

…Not “computer generated,” but mediated. That “slowness” is the same as Perich’s, a layer between theory and practice. Perich built a piece of bleeding-edge technology inspired by century old Morse code, by a dream, that always breaks and needs repair. It could be contemporary and would still seem avant garde.

The tools have changed, of course, which changes the context. A modified inkjet printer is a throwback now, a modern process made real by an allegedly dying technology, but the principle remains the same. That’s “the end of history,” simultaneously hurtling forward and artificially slowing ourselves, if only so we can make sense of things. Reaching into the past only to find what we thought was new, revolutionary and not being entirely surprised.”

on “In Our Time”

Quote | | Paul Greer

“I can appreciate that for specialists in whichever field it is that Bragg and his guests are tackling in a given week In Our Time must be a torment. Far from losing themselves in the amiable excursus, they presumably sit at home bellowing at their radios, furious at this irrelevant point, or that partisan analysis. But for us dilettantes, who have only flipped through ‘The Jargon of Authenticity’, and read Hashish in Marseille 20 years ago, while actually smoking hashish in Marseille, a brisk trot from Felix Weil and Carl Grünberg’s founding of the Institute for Social Research in 1923, through the formulation of critical theory, to the exile of Horkheimer and Adorno, the suicide of Benjamin, and Adorno’s eventual repatriation to serve as the Janus-faced figurehead of the 1977 German Autumn, well … it was exactly what I needed.”

— Will Self

Neighbours by Norman Mclaren (1952)

Video | | Paul Greer

“I was inspired to make Neighbours by a stay of almost a year in the People’s Republic of China. Although I only saw the beginnings of Mao’s revolution, my faith in human nature was reinvigorated by it. Then I came back to Quebec and the Korean War began. (…) I decided to make a really strong film about anti-militarism and against war.”

—NM

NFB

“The term ‘pixilation‘ was created by Grant Munro, who had worked with McLaren on Two Bagatelles, a pair of short pixilation films made prior to Neighbours. While Neighbours is often credited as an animated film by many film historians, very little of the film is actually animated. The majority of the film is shot with variable-speed photography, usually in fast motion, with some stop-frame techniques. During one brief sequence, the two actors appear to levitate: this effect was actually achieved in stop-motion; the men repeatedly jumped upward but were photographed only at the top of their trajectories. Under the current definition of an animated short, it is unlikely that Neighbours would qualify as either a documentary short or an animated short.”

See also: Pen Point Percussion

“Madame X” by John Singer Sargent

Image | | Paul Greer

“The model was an American expatriate, ((a young socialite named Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau)) who married a French banker, and became notorious in Parisian high society for her beauty and rumored infidelities. She wore lavender powder and prided herself on her appearance. The English-language term “professional beauty” was used to refer to her and to a woman in general who uses personal skills to advance herself socially.[4] Her unconventional beauty made her an object of fascination for artists; the American painter Edward Simmons claimed that he “could not stop stalking her as one does a deer.” Sargent was also impressed, and anticipated that a portrait of Gautreau would garner much attention at the upcoming Paris Salon, and increase interest in portrait commissions.”


Madame X

“While the work was in progress, Gautreau was enthusiastic; she believed that Sargent was painting a masterpiece. When the painting first appeared at the Paris Salon under the title Portrait de Mme *** in 1884, people were shocked and scandalized; the attempt to preserve the subject’s anonymity was unsuccessful, and the sitter’s mother requested that Sargent withdraw the painting from the exhibition. Sargent refused, saying he had painted her “exactly as she was dressed, that nothing could be said of the canvas worse than had been said in print of her appearance”. Later, Sargent overpainted the shoulder strap to raise it up and make it look more securely fastened. He also changed the title, from the original Portrait de Mme ***, to Madame X – a name more assertive, dramatic and mysterious, and, by accenting the impersonal, giving the illusion of the woman archetype.The poor public and critical reception was a disappointment to both artist and model. Gautreau was humiliated by the affair, and Sargent would soon leave Paris and move to London permanently.”