The BettaKultcha Random Slide Challenge

April 2nd, 2012

Rich Daley (Pedantic git) commented on twitter that the BettaKultcha Random Slide Challenge was a misnomer and it should be re-branded the Mystery Slide Challenge.

Admitting it wasn’t quite as catchy, it was, he continued, a more accurate description of the process.

His premise was that, as the BettaKultcha team (or whoever puts the slides together) is choosing the slides, then there is nothing random about the process; the slides are researched and selected (unless of course, we have a pool of pre-selected slides and we randomly pull them out of a hat).

But couldn’t the same argument apply to the mystery selection description? Whoever is selecting the slides is familiar with them and therefore the slides cannot be said to be mysterious in any way.

If he is arguing that we take the viewpoint from the final consumer of the slides—the volunteer at one of the BettaKultcha events who is trying to make a story out of them—then to them, the slides are indeed random as there appears to be no obvious link from one to the other.  It could not really be said that the slides are mysterious to the presenter (unless they were so unusual that the presenter did not know what they were meant to represent) as they would recognise what is being displayed.

I therefore contend that ‘Random Slide Challenge’ is an accurate description.

As you can see, very little has happened today and I am able to distract myself with such important considerations…

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Hepworth Private View

February 12th, 2012

HepF

These days, nearly every time I go into an art gallery that is showing contemporary work, I am forced to confront that most useless—and yet intriguing—question of what is art? The answer, of course, is entirely personal, and everyone can secretly identify what they consider to be art and what they consider to be, well, something else.

The Hepworth preview on February 8th was no exception. What the hell is art?

But first the positive stuff.

My thanks to Emma Bearman of Culturevulture for inviting me to the preview despite (or perhaps, because of?) my reputation for candid and forthright opinions. The hospitality at the Hepworth was disarmingly salubrious; a large selection of cheeses, nibbles and drinks shared with the charming company of bloggers. If nothing else, these previews are worth it just for this.

And so to the art. David Thorpe has done a very strange thing; produced, by hand, art works made to look like mass produced prints. These works had taken a very long time to produce. A very long time. In fact, the time element was the most striking thing about these works and there is no denying the skill required to produce the tones and curves of the prints, I mean, artworks. The overall result however, is disappointingly bland. All that work and to such little effect. My overall impression?; perplexed.

HepG

When I was at art college, I studied film making and made a couple of interesting films; Gentle Ihor’s Odyssey in the City of Sheffield and Gentle Ihor learns to speak. We used a really old technology back then—16mm film, so coming across this ancient medium in Ben Rivers’s work was a bit of a nostalgia trip. The nostalgia ended when Ben turned up unexpectedly in the gallery and was invited by the curators to talk about his work. After fifteen minutes of him rambling on about film and stuff, I’d had enough of his monologue and hoped his film making skill was a lot more riveting than his speaking skill (and going by the bit of the film we saw in the preview, it is). The film is about a post-apocalyptic island society, a subject right up my devastated street. I’ll be back… (see what I did there?).

HepE

The final gallery, devoted to Heather and Ivan Morison’s work, had a large balloon in it. The bright light in the balloon made it look like a small sun floating in the cosmos of the room space. It was an enchanting white light and attracted us like itinerant, fascinated moths. And sure enough, some of us got badly burned. Because the curator then told a strange story. It was strange because it was supposed to relate to the iron chairs, wooden planks (made out of concrete), blackened bones and wax flowers that comprised the exhibition, but I couldn’t make any connection at all between the story and the objects in the gallery. This huge image on the wall for example was supposed to symbolise a man being burned or something…

HepA

Yeah, right…

HepD

I can imagine the artists had a great time conceptualising these works on the back of a used envelope from the Arts Council but any meaning, enthusiasm or insight failed to be communicated to me by the blackened bones lying on the floor. They sat there, mute and irrelevant to the story being told.

HepB

Admittedly the gallery was still being completed but it would take a miracle to rescue a successful narrative from the broken pieces of this abstract idea.

We ended up back at the room with the cheese and wine; the only thing that made sense during the evening. I gave a lift to Phil Kirby, Harvi and Hazel to the railway station and felt a satisfying sense of purpose. If only artworks could achieve the same effect.

One day, this will happen. But don’t hold your breath.

HepH

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Will someone please think of the children…

February 3rd, 2012

escape-children

Recently, my daughter brought home a slip of paper given to her by the primary school that she attends. It was a ticket for a charity fund raising scheme at the school. On the top of the ticket was embazened a full colour logo of the ’sponsor’ of the event. This was a huge American doughnut company that can’t even spell correctly. The ticket invited parents to pre-order a doughnut for their child and on a certain date, on school premises, the children would buy and then eat the doughnut. That was it. That was the charity scheme.

The last time I looked at the school’s letterhead, it had a healthy schools logo on it. What does that logo actually mean? Is the school required to do anything to earn this symbol?

As everyone knows, doughnuts are full of fat and sugar, that’s why they taste nice. But fat and sugar are everywhere in processed foods which is why we have an obesity problem and presumably, why a healthy schools initiative was implemented in the first place. To promote such a junk food in a primary school flies in the face of all the government’s health education efforts. What is going on?

But it gets worse. The doughnuts are intended to be sold to the children at below the retail price to make them more attractive. If the event is intended to collect money for charity (the ticket didn’t say which charity they would be supporting, but I’m guessing it won’t be Diabetes UK) then that means that the suppliers of the doughnuts must be practically giving them away. Why would a company do such a thing? Well, it might have something to do with gaining access to impressionable young minds and being able to brand into them their full colour logo as well as addicting their bodies to their fat and sugar products.

When I looked at the doughnut makers website, under a banner headline of ‘Everyone Wins’ they explained their fundraising schemes. I was horrified to discover that they actively facilitate these fund raising charity promotions in schools and are fully tooled up to ‘help out’ on a national basis. Why is this allowed to happen? Why is nobody up in arms about it and putting a stop to it?

Presumably, this means that ANY company that has the financial muscle to heavily discount some of its products, can have access to primary schools if their deal is tempting enough for anyone associated with the school—children or parents. This, dear reader, is the thin edge of the wedge.

How long before burger companies have stalls in schools at lunchtimes? How long before pharmaceutical companies realise it might be good business for them to get children to take home specially prepared flyers promoting their drugs to the parents; “Unruly child? Can’t sleep? Try our new Comatose Tablets for your ADHD little ones and Cloud9 anti depressants for yourself. Go on, treat yourself—it’s for charity!”

How long before an entire school is sponsored by a multinational like Dow Chemicals? Presumably, all that the school has to do is tag on a charity angle and any insidious implications of the relationship are rendered null and void.

But it’s just a doughnut, it’s only a bit of a treat, isn’t it?

No, it is not. I say again, it is the thin edge of a wedge. The hacking of celebrities ‘phones was just a bit of harmless gossip at first which sold newspapers. It is only when a murdered schoolgirl’s phone is hacked that the full thickness of the wedge is revealed as it is hammered painfully into our consciousness.

This practice needs to be stopped immediately before it becomes embedded into our schools. The multinationals already have an inordinate amount of influence over our lives. How much more influence do we want to give them?

Addendum: A follow up piece to this post has been written by Dan Ladds which is a must-read.

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Letters of Note: To my old master

January 31st, 2012

The link to this letter recently appeared in my twitter stream having been enthusiastically retweeted by many people. I read it and enjoyed its surprisingly modern sense of invective.

Then something about the letter kept nagging at me and I knew some things didn’t add up. As ever, in such cases, I thought through the imaginary story arc.

Firstly, amidst all the turmoil of the civil war aftermath, this emancipated slave, Jourdan, had moved away some five hundred miles from his former residence. How was his previous owner, Colonel Anderson, going to track down his address? Presumably, Jourdan, didn’t leave a forwarding address seeing as how Colonel Anderson once tried to shoot him. The other question is why would Colonel Anderson wanted to contact him in the first place? If it was just to offer him his old position of oppressed ’slave,’ how stupid did he think he was?

Unfortunately, we don’t see the original letter that Colonel Anderson wrote to Jourdan, so we’re not sure how he phrased this.

But let’s assume that somehow, Colonel Anderson’s letter found its way to Jourdan and that he considered Jourdan stupid. Being a slave, Jourdan would have more than likely been illiterate so writing him a letter would have been a waste of time. Presumably, there must have been a convention of ‘owners’ or employers reading letters to illiterate people.

So Jourdan gets the letter read out to him. He now knows his former owner (who once wanted to kill him) knows where he lives. Is he worried? No. Does he up-sticks and find somewhere else to hide himself? No. Instead he decides to dictate a sarcastic letter which will only serve to antogonise a powerful enemy.

As an emancipated slave, we can only assume, Jourdan’s pay does not go far, every cent will be precious to him and his family. He also probably works long hours. He would need to find the time, inclination and money to reply. I’m assuming he had to pay to have the letter transcribed for him by a literate person. Who would do this? Let’s assume a sympathetic educated person helped him out without pay (possibly the V. Winters mentioned in the letter).

The letter is dictated by someone who is clearly not stupid, so Colonel Anderson obviously didn’t know his slaves very well. Jourdan even has a grasp of finance as he demonstrates with his workings out of interest payments due on his back pay. Where did he get this knowledge when nearly all of his time would have been spent in the fields? Of course, whoever transcribed the letter could have suggested this line of attack, in which case, how much of the letter is consciously Jourdan’s and how much of it is the anonymous transcriber?

So the letter is completed and only needs posting. Presumably, this cost money. If every cent counted why would he spend money on a symbolic gesture?

My best guess is that his current employer (V. Winters?) did much of the composing of the letter and probably suggested the idea of asking for back pay with interest. He also paid for the postage if it ever got sent, because, finally, the letter had to get into the possession of the newspapers. How did they come across it? Was it kept by Colonel Anderson as a memento of an old slave full of spite and spunk ? Or was it deliberately held back by Jourdan and his helper to pass onto the newspapers as anti slave propaganda?

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Sponsorship (Part 2)

January 30th, 2012

On a walk to school my daughter proudly announced that some children’s television presenter had finally reached the South Pole.

“Why did she go there?” I asked.

“For charity,” my daughter replied.

“For charity? You mean she was taking some unwanted clothes to a charity shop that stands on the South Pole?”

“No! She was collecting money for charity.”

“But nobody lives at the South Pole, how is she going to collect money from there?”

“No! She’s collecting the money when she gets back.”

“So let me see if I’ve got this right… This woman has spent a lot of money and used up many resources—equipment, fuel etc.—to undertake an essentially useless activity to raise money for charity?”

“It was a very brave thing to do, not everyone could do it.”

“Well, you’re right about that; not everyone could do it because they don’t get offered the opportunity from a television company. Most people have to work. But anyway, my point is this; she has already spent a large sum of money just getting to the South Pole—which is a useless activity, remember—so this money has to be deducted from the money she collects from her sponsors when she gets back, therefore the total is much reduced. But hey, I suppose the television presenter gets a personal buzz from doing something adventurous and it helps her television career no end. Oh, wait a minute, does that mean she is really doing it for herself and not for the people she is supposed to be collecting the money for? Which charity is she supporting, by the way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmm, that proves my point. You remember the television presenter and the useless activity but not the charity that it is all supposed to be about. Why didn’t she think to do an activity that would actually be of benefit to someone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, why didn’t she get sponsorship to dig a well in Africa? And to make it ‘dangerous’ and ‘dramatic television’ she could do it by just using her teeth. There, that covers all the angles: it’s got jeopardy; it’s worthwhile; she gets even more famous in her career but more importantly, her activity actually produces something—a well. And the children will remember the stunt as being something about a well in Africa so maybe they’ll make the connection that clean water wells are needed in Africa. And of course, after she’s collected the money for completing this worthwhile stunt, she will have more money to build other wells. Doesn’t that make much more sense?”

“Well…”

“In fact, now that I think about it, the whole set up is a bit suspicious. How do we know that the collected money is going to the people who are supposed to be the recipients? How can we be sure that the money isn’t going to building some fancy new headquarters for some charity administrators? If they so enthusiastically support useless activities for raising funds then they could just as easily support useless activities in the spending of the money. No, I think it is far better to do charity work that is local and that you can see the benefits of…”

“Oh look, there’s Joely! Bye daddy!”

Posted in General, Why the world doesn't work | 11 Comments »

When two tribes go to war

January 21st, 2012

This promotional video of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song, Two Tribes, imagines the, then current, leaders of America and Russia slugging it out in a dusty ring. After I saw it, this ‘joke’ resonated with me for a long time as a dream of extreme democracy.

Here’s the dream.

If the leader of any country in the world had a particular beef with the leader from another country then instead of the usual stupidity of declaring war on the other country, they would be obliged to resolve the dispute personally in unarmed combat.

The fight would take place in a cage measuring fifteen feet by fifteen feet and the combatants would be completely naked. The bout would be televised and the full reality of war in all its disgusting, biting, scratching, hair-pulling, bloody depravity, would be visible for all to see. The winner of the contest (either a fight to the death or until one cried submission) would be deemed to have won the war and the people of the losing side would be obliged to give up their oil, nuclear weapons, terrorist activities or whatever.

Of course, if the people objected to losing the war, they could always refuse to participate and instead, put up memorials to their fallen leaders and have special commemorative days to celebrate their futile but honourable sacrifice for their overtly territorial and political ambitions. Then the people would carry on as normal.

Any elected leader of any country in the world would be obliged to abide by this convention, which would be enforced ruthlessly by the people of that country. Failure to abide by the convention would result in the leader being sent white feathers through the post by anonymous senders before they were humiliated in court and eventually imprisoned.

Imagine for a moment how such a reality would affect politics.

Firstly, you would deter the worst possible people who had the worst possible motives for wanting power. Secondly, the leaders of any country would have to be sure of their fitness, both in their physical condition and in their ability to think rationally. All political posturing in their rhetoric would have to be carefully considered in case their bluff is called and they are required to back up their words with physical force. You would end up with either a giant for a leader or a philosopher.

Either way, it’s got to be better than the system we have today.

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The Wizard of Oz

December 26th, 2011

Never having seen the classic film, The Wizard of Oz I attempted to watch it the other day. The attempt failed. From the outset I was disappointed by what I saw. The film begins in a monochrome sepia tint, it’s shot in 4:3 aspect ratio and uses obvious studio sets in its scenes. The film image quality when compared to HD television is unacceptable and the sound quality recording of the film is only just acceptable. Admittedly, the film bursts into colour after twenty minutes or so but the effect is lurid rather than sensational. And, when all is said and done, it is a children’s film.

No doubt the film was sensational in its day and represented cutting edge technologically in film-making terms. Unfortunately, time is not kind to such boasts and they only carry weight when the film is considered as a historical artifact and not as a work of art in itself. Viewing the film becomes a history lesson then, rather than an enjoyable experience in itself.

The Wizard of Oz is supposed to be a compelling story though, a timeless classic. It might be in print but the improvement in the mechanics of film making over the decades has acted as a barrier to the enjoyment of the story. And such is the young age of the art form that camera techniques and editing styles are still being developed and therefore subject to fashion. And with new media competing for cinema audiences, how much of film-making technique is geared towards instant gratification rather than considered exploration of the subject matter? You only need to look at what is happening in the music industry to see the temptation.

The most successful children’s stories are as equally as compelling for adults. Indeed, the success of any story is determined by its relevance to as many demographics and to as many cultures as possible.

Some stories would be universal and timeless in film but the delivery of the story is not. Technical issues interfere with the connection between the storyteller and the recipient. This is why the written word (and by extension, theatre) is still the best medium for telling a story; the images remain as sharp and the voices as distinct as our own imagination (or eyesight) allows.

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Those Bettakultcha story tellers, they just make it up as they go along…

December 23rd, 2011
Christmas BettaKultcha 2011. Quality.

Christmas BettaKultcha 2011. Quality.

In the colorful history of Bettakultcha, two pivotal moments have occurred  which have polarised the audience. The first happened a few months ago when a controversial film was shown during the interval. In that instance, Bettakultcha emerged bigger and stronger. The second moment has yet to reach a defining conclusion.

Here is the story of the second incident.

At the Christmas Bettakultcha event in the Corn Exchange, Martin Carter, a drag artist,  did a presentation which involved miming to a musical track about vegemite. Martin displayed images and lyrics on his slides and performed in flamboyant burlesque style. The result was hilariously entertaining. I remember thinking, ‘I wouldn’t like to follow that presentation’.

As it happened, the acts that followed Martin were more than capable of holding their own and the evening finished on a massive high.

So what’s the problem? Well, it appears that afterwards in various hostelries around the Corn Exchange, the audience discussed this performance and divided themselves into two distinct camps. On the one side was the traditionalists who argued that miming was, cheating and shouldn’t be allowed at the event. The other side argued that the event was more of a cabaret and shouldn’t be restricted by simple rules about speaking. It was also related to me in despatches (I was not present in the pub but unglamorously de-rigging and tidying up in the Corn Exchange despite my boast to the audience earlier in the evening that after the show I was going to go to a sex and cocaine party thrown by the Krankies) that some people actually thought that the Random Slide Challenge should be dropped!

Here are my thoughts on the matter.

When I started Bettakultcha with Richard Michie I used to joke to the audience that we were making it up as we went along. Except I wasn’t joking. We really were making it up. If something worked we kept it for the next event, if it didn’t, it was dropped. The fact that the concept was based on talking presentations didn’t limit the potential creativity; talking presentations was just the start. In fact the template of twenty slides lasting fifteen seconds each is just a good way of creating a start point for people who might otherwise be overwhelmed when faced with the entire world to explore. The possibilities for innovation with this format are endless, five minute plays could be written, rap songs performed, comedy sketches… we just needed the adventurous people to explore them.

Most people stick to the tried and tested formula of talking over twenty slides. I have no problem with this. If their idea or passion is strong enough, then the template works every time. However, when someone attempts an innovative variation on the template, I rejoice; creativity, originality and innovation is what will set Bettakultcha apart from all the other speaking events that currently exist—it should be encouraged.

So I was amazed that some people actually wanted to halt the development of Bettakultcha at a particular stage in its evolution (sure, we’re running strongly now but imagine if we could fly too). How could anyone imagine that Martin was cheating? Let’s look at the Bettakultcha rules again;

Did he use twenty slides?
Yes.

Did they last fifteen seconds each?
Yes.

Did he do a sales pitch?
Erm, he did mention vegemite but in a negative way, so, no.

No cheating there then.

But I can see the objection raised by the people in the pub. If you allow miming, what’s to stop someone from just playing their favourite music track, whilst showing pictures of their favourite band and they played air guitar for five minutes.

Nothing*.

We would allow that because anyone who imagines that such an act would entertain the audience is either genuinely good or comedically deluded. Either way, it would be interesting to watch and bound to get a reaction from the Bettakultcha audience.

Oh, I forgot to mention one caveat (which fortunately we haven’t had to exercise yet), if Richard or myself don’t like the way something is being presented, then we pull the plug on them. We’ll use our common sense and intuition for the benefit of all. This approach has worked well so far and as Bettakultcha is a story in the making, we’ll continue to employ the same strategy.

*We wouldn’t be able to post the video of the performance on any internet sites though, because of copyright infringement of the music. Martin’s performance therefore, will have to remain a memory for those who were there on the night.

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The technological arms race intensifies on our roads

November 28th, 2011

Driving home from a caricature gig recently, the matrix signs on the motorway informed me that the road would be shut up ahead. As it was still early in the evening I knew it couldn’t be scheduled road works that was causing the road closure, as these generally happen at night, so it had to be an accident of some kind. This meant that it was unlikely that any diversion signs were in place to guide the hapless motorist. As I had SatNav capability, I wasn’t too worried, as I could calculate an alternative route quite easily when I was forced to leave the motorway.

As the traffic approached a junction, the drivers could see that the road up ahead had become a car park and many of them decided to turn off the motorway at the junction, rather than get caught in the queue. I did the same.

When it was safe to do so, I tapped into the SatNav and asked it to find an alternative route. This it did, although it turned out that it wasn’t really necessary to have the SatNav as all the other cars that had turned off the motorway were taking exactly the same route.

I realised, too late, that nearly everyone has SatNav these days and all the devices were going to find the same alternative route to rejoin the motorway at another junction after so many miles of a detour. It was as if the highways agency had actually put diversion signs in place and everyone was slavishly following them.

As we crawled down an A road that was heading into a large town and which was lined with shops I asked my SatNav to find yet another alternative route. Immediately it told me to turn left into a side street then turn right into another side street. This turned out to be a parallel road to the main A road that everyone was queuing in, but was deserted as it was a suburban street and wasn’t even a B road.

I quickly made my way into the town centre down this road that proved quite narrow in places due to the parked cars, but as it was free of moving traffic, I had no problem at all in getting past. Eventually I navigated through the town centre via a different A road, thereby missing all the motorway traffic jamming the obvious A road, and saving myself maybe thirty minutes on my journey time.

So the irony is this; many years ago, when I was one of the few people to have SatNav capability, I could easily escape a motorway queue and rejoin the motorway further along where there was no queue. Now that everyone has SatNav capability, this is no longer possible as everyone escapes the motorway queue, and merely forms another queue on a smaller A road. But I can still easily escape the traffic queue by deploying the technology yet again to second guess where everyone else will be going and asking it to find an alternative route to that route.

How long, I wonder, before others figure this out and create another problem for me to overcome? Will route programers add another option to the menu—’alternative route using the least likely alternative route used by other SatNav owners’?

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Northern Art Prize preview, Leeds Art Gallery

November 23rd, 2011
James Hugonin, Binary Rhythm (detail)

James Hugonin, Binary Rhythm (detail)

Leo Fitzmaurice has done something really clever. He has taken old, rarely seen landscape paintings from the archives of the gallery and put them together in such a way as to create an extended horizon line out of them all. It’s a mash-up of representational art, initially put together using digital software, then by physically hanging the paintings. He’s produced a new work out of old works, but what I really like is the fact that all the paintings used are beautiful works in themselves; traditional painting still has a formidable power to move.

James Hugonin is a painter but a non-representational one. His meticulous blocks of colour remind me of those once popular abstract pictures where you had to de-focus your eyes to see a 3D representational image hidden in the colours. No amount of de-focusing on my part was going to reveal any more insight into his works however. I was impressed with the prodigious amount of work needed to create these works. I could almost imagine James feeling the need to do these paintings in a 90 degree heat so that he physically has to sweat as he applies the colours, such is his commitment to his work. I couldn’t make sense of why he has put certain colours where he has though—I felt I was looking at some epidemiological chart that wanted to tell me something if only I could divine the causes for the results. It’s as if he were studying the very DNA of painting itself and he was mapping its genome in a painstaking and methodical process.

Richard Rigg’s work did very little for me. On one wall of the gallery is a negative cast of a coat hook, so the space of the hook is inside the wall. I marvelled at the size of the plaster slab that contained the piece and that formed part of the wall but unfortunate comparisons with Rachel Whiteread and her ‘inside out’ house were inevitable. His craftsmanship however, as evidenced by his chairs, is undeniable.

At the preview it was explained to us that Liadin Cooke suffers from synesthesia, a condition which confuses stimuli in the brain, so sound appears as an image etc. This means that Liadin must inhabit a world that is completely alien to most people and I must confess, her work left me cold (or possibly blue). It’s as if she has made visual art for blind people. The collected oil scrapings from an artists palette, cast in bronze but painted to look like putty, is an artwork. Maybe to someone who has synesthesia, this is sensational. Alas, I don’t, so it isn’t.

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