Matt Hobbs

Lickle bits of Plastic

I’m still amazed by how far the Lego Star Wars franchise is going. Today’s piece de resistance (that’s ‘piece of resistance’ for those of you wot don’t speak French) is the new Imperial Star Destroyer. Mmm… I can see little John salivating already at this new toy. My fave is still the sand speeder though – and that was only $5. ‘Cos it lets you use your ‘magination. Broom. Brooom.

OK. Too much regression to childhood there for a Monday. In the meantime the new Groove Armada album – Lovebox – is quite splendid. Some duff and boring tracks but some real stonkers as well. Particular like ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Madder’ at the moment. Now I’m off from work to brave the terrorist threatened tube… just like being back in New York last year. Sigh.

Shedding

Today’s recurring theme seems to be all about shedding of identity and growth. This first cropped up when I went along to the Royal Academy’s Masters of Colour exhibition – this was after a recommendation from G’ette and as a change from mine and Helen’s normal drunken sundays. Bit of cultcha, init.

Since the queue for tickets was so long I ended up buying a year membership to the RA which lets you and a friend in for free to all exhibitions. We wandered from the colour exhibition which was interesting, especially some of the Kandinsky work, but it was totally packed and you couldn’t really enjoy it. So we left fairly quickly, but then wandered downstairs to the new Aztec exhibition – something that always used to be a favourite subject of mine. This was much more fun – fairly quiet and with some beautiful examples of Aztec art.

Learnt two new things about Aztecs today that stuck in my mind – firstly, their temples are actually layers built on top of old temples. Each temple is successively bigger and contains the older temple. Noone’s quite sure why they did this but there was a clever computer animation that showed it off well. The other thing was that they revered snakes (especially feathered ones) for their ability to shed their skin and continue on to grow bigger and stronger.

The second shedding reference was in the film ‘Morven Callar’. This is a wonderfully shot film telling the story of a girl who comes in one day to find her boyfriend’s committed suicide in the kitchen. Well, awkwardly in the door between the kitchen and the living room actually. He’s left behind a manuscript that he wants Morven to publish post-humously but things don’t quite go to his plan. The story revolves a lot around what people expect of you and you of them and alongside that how you can step away from what you are. This is coupled with a superb Warp records soundtrack and amazing photography – extreme close-ups and subtle colour palettes. Go see it.

I believe very strongly in synchronicity, but I also know I often fight things that happen. I also believe that synchronicity is your brain filtering out what it needs you to ‘see’ from everything that happens every day. This is actually the basis for NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) which is where you actively make your brain notice things you want it to see. So I guess this is some part of my brain telling me I need to shed some part of myself, or maybe even my whole current self. Answers on a synchronic postcard to the usual neuron please.

My god, it’s full of stars

Today I are mostly about exhibits in London… Over the past few weeks I’ve been to a couple of shows that are so completely different I thought it was worth mentioning them both.

First up, Body Worlds. This is an exhibit of ‘real human bodies’ in anatomical poses. What this means is basically human bodies that have been put through a process called plastination which replaces flesh with plastic in the same positions. All very useful for doctors and medical research. Body worlds however is for the public, a public that apparently wants to see actual dead people put into stupid positions with apparently very little respect. Not to say there wasn’t interesting parts to this exhibition – the complete blood system had an amazing beauty to it and looked incredibly eerie floating in water on its own – ie, sans body.

But here are my concerns –

None of what was there couldn’t have just been done with plastic, rather than real bodies.

How do foetuses and young children give their permission for this? Did these people really know they were going to get gawped at my the general public rather than contributing to medical research.

The bodies are suspending with little or no protection – so everyone, especially kids, are poking and prodding.

Flesh post-plastination has no vibrancy. It’s like leather, or even pleather, with none of the beauty and dynamicism of live flesh.

Most of the bodies have been hacked about to ‘present the best view of how the body works’. Bollocks. How does seeing muscles at right angles to the body help us understand how the body works? At best they are just aesthetically appalling, at worst they are sick.

The guy in charge of this, Professor Huygens, is obviously seriously disturbed. There will be no surprise in my mind to finding out in a few years that he’s a serial killer. Definately a ‘must not see’.

Now onto happier things. I’m in love. Yep, it’s true. Anish Kapoor has created an epic, behemoth of a sculpture in the Tate Modern’s turbine hall. Marsyas is the complete anti-thesis of Body Worlds. The huge sculpture is beautiful and engaging, you really have to see it to believe it. I’ve taken so many photos of this which should shortly be up on my photos site.

Marsyas is made of three metal hoops, with diameters around 30 metres, with a deep red PVC membrane stretched between them. The PVC membrane reminded Kapoor of flayed human flesh, hence the name, a mythical character who was flayed by the gods. The shear scale of the thing means that you cannot see the whole sculpture at once and you spend a lot of time walking around, constantly seeing new angles. The way the light changes in the turbine hall means that it often seems like you’re looking at a different sculpture.

The really good thing is that my current job is only a ten minute walk from the Tate Modern, so I went there for lunch three times over the last two weeks. Anyways, it’s on till April next year so if you’re in London go see it, and did I mention it’s free? Yay.Oh – and my latest sad geek toy is Kazaa, a new peer to peer application from which I’ve been downloading Season 7 Buffy episodes. At 400 Mb a pop this takes a few hours, but definately worthwhile. Geek-tastic!

Surfacing again…

For those of you who have been wondering why I’ve been the last month or so… well, apart from a month of not drinking (now finished) I donated my life to relaunching NESTA’s website. This is a wonderful little site, and I’ve gotten to work with some wonderful, interesting new people on the way. Glad it got out in one piece, not too later, and I’ve now only a month left at NESTA which is a shame.

In the meantime though, I’m now re-available for Bar Mitzvahs and other social gatherings. Looking forward to tipping the glass with a few of y’all.

Back in the USSA

Just returned from a week trip out to New York, my first visit since February when I left. Had way too much fun and if I hadn’t of been working back in London I would definately have just stayed there. Luckily Mr Virgin helped ease my return pain by upgrading me to Upper Class again, although the guy snoring behind me like a water gargling hippo down shifting his sixteen wheel rig on the highway put pay to any thoughts of sleep.

New York seems much the same. A few places have closed, and a few opened. Nowhere was crazy busy but then I had arrived on Labour day weekend so everyone was out of town. Ah, planning. I do wonder sometimes if I could move my birthday by deed poll to somewhere that wasn’t in the middle of so many bank holidays in summer. Maybe I should just celebrate my half-year anniversary on February 27th instead.

Tourism was not my goal. I happily wandered around smiling at familiar sights, even in the midst of the torrential rain which I seemed to bring with me. Umbrella sellers on the sidewalk were some of the few people grinning as much as I was. Everything just seemed so vivid and happy to me, which was all to the benefit of the local shop keepers who pried a large chunk of cash from me in my bouncey state of mind. And then there was the food… On the last day I had Brazilian cross-over in the Coffee Shop at lunch, then had Peruvian in the East Village for dinner. This didn’t quite buffer me against the paint stripper strength drinks in Max Fish, so a late night pizza purchase let me sample my favourite – zitti pizza, pasta on top of pizza, mmm… carbohydrate-y.

I’m now back in London seriously contemplating how to get back out to NYC again. London has many advantages, not least a slightly more buoyant job market and me with legal rights to exist here. I also get the chance to hang out with Bob again, flushed with the success of his latest article in the Guardian, something that was picked up in the New York times as well. All good publicity for his book which is currently being edited for re-release to the American market.

When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguro. The story of a post-war detective who got into his career after the disappearence of his parents. A lot of the story is told in flashbacks, from the antagonist’s childhood friend Akira to his return to Singapore to track down his parents. Very readable and more accessible than Remains of the Day, Kazuo’s more famous novel.

and other Short Stories and Tall Tales – Groucho Marx. A collection of Groucho’s letters and short columns written for industry rags during his long career. The Marx style of humour is rife throughout the book, although it doesn’t translate so well into the written word. Worth reading if you’re a fan of Marx brothers comedy. Plus there’s quite a lot of back history on the brothers’ careers.

British Slummer

When, oh when is this summer going to stop being so schizophrenic. One minute it’s gorgeous, next minute it’s pissing down. I guess I’m just not used to British summers after four years of sweltering heat in New York with pretty much guaranteed sunshine. Well, between the amazing thunderstorms anyway.

Farmer’s Tan

Just got back from Glastonbury 2002. Smashing. The new fence kept trouble down to a minimum, the weather was lush, people were great and the event itself was sublime. Perfect Glasto really.

In the meantime, having shelved my travel plans I took a great holiday in Vassilliki (a place called Club Vass) for a couple of weeks and learnt to windsurf. Had a great time, and you can see the pictures at the usual photos link. Having returned though I’ve had absolutely no joy at finding a job. Seems like the touted recovery of the job market in IT related work isn’t quite as strong as everyone keeps telling me. Ah well. It’s not so bad, but I do miss working on things.

So, as part of my efforts to keep up with things, I read all about IBM’s latest marketing concept – Autonomic Computing. Basically it just talks about self managing computers, in an effort to free up intelligent human folk to do other work that computers can’t do themselves. Reminds me in a lot of ways for the work we were talking about doing at AW a while back. I think that makes me glad that we never attempted to actually build it if IBM are only now getting onto it!

American Gods – Neil Gaiman. Another borrowed book, this time from Jon. I’ve been a fan of Gaiman’s work on Sandman for a long time and so had been looking forward to this novel. His novel with Terry Pratchett (Good Omens) was a great cross over, with their individual styles complementing each other extremely well. Gaiman’s new book extends his particular theological approach from Sandman, although it is in no way directly affiliated to that series – the similarities are hard to miss though. The story is of a jailed criminal, Shadow, who gets out of jail to find himself taking up a job with a shady character called Wednesday who claims to be the god Odin. What follows is a journey round the dark under-psyche of America stopping off to visit various gods of the old world who arrived in the new country in the minds of immigrants. It’s all very readable and you learn a lot about various old gods but, at the end of the book, I felt a bit cheated. There was no real meat to get your teeth into and a lot of the ideas are re-hashed, albeit well, from his earlier works. Finished it in a few hours – good holiday read.