Four more days. As I started packing a good two months ago, inspite the possibility of seen as a complete nut by others, I can safely say I am very, very excited. Although England is now quite an upgrade with its January weather to the last three weeks in Finland, where Jess and I discovered the difference between -20C and -25C was that in the latter your nostrils freeze pretty much shut. I will miss London but I shall not miss this rain, rain, rain.

Himmeli is a traditional old Finnish Christmas ornament hung from the ceiling. It’s made of short strips of straw tied together with strings to form a complex three-dimensional structure. Back in the day the Himmeli was hung above the dinner table to ensure that the coming rye crop would be plentiful. There are many different shapes and sizes of himmeli: the bigger the size, the larger the rye crop would be.

http://wearelesscommon.com/magazine/

INFO: Running parallel to the London Design Festival, the ADF will attempt to break twenty-five years of cultural deep-freeze, and reverse the model of culture=money, providing an outlet for new risks and creative exploration in art, image, design, product, film, fashion, performance, 3D, digital and sound through a series of events, publications and venues.

Here’s some photos we snapped of our 20/20 publication.

(to buy some pretty amazing prints, head to the print shop in the ground floor. )

2 days, 10 hours to go.

The last unfinished project is the Expect the Unexpected one, which has been one experiment after an other. Now trying to make a final outcome, something I should have done weeks ago. I titled the project Fail Safe ages ago, now I’m hoping it won’t live up to its name. Here is one illustration for the book of six spines, I’ll get on to making the Oblique Strategies Rolodex tomorrow!

Two books done, Two two go. Five days and 22 hours to deadline.

Reindeers have abandoned use of the daily clock that drives biological rhythms in order to survive the extreme conditions in the Arctic. They can’t tell if it is night, or day.

A little peak into what’ll be in the book of 20/20.

In an attempt to visually research and pay more attention to the rhythm of our daily life, we conducted an experiment where ten people were to photograph themselves every morning and evening. Some of the images we got back were full of detail of the persons surroundings, and  intimacy that the routine of picture taking allowed was displayed in many. Some gave us images that were missing a few here and there. The day had been exceptional, something unexpected would have taken place and the reminder would be ignored. Some images were too dark to tell where or who it was of, only the time would be registered.

Body clock works like a pacemaker for the brain. We all have a rhythm of sleep and a time of day when our alertness peaks, and it is no coincidence that it usually takes place when the sun is the highest. What is around us is light reflective, which  allows us to feel the time of our surrounding. Long periods of time spent in a certain light must have an effect on how we are, and how we experience time. Were the experiment to go on for longer than a few months, we would no doubt be able to map the aspects of our subjects lives, such as what kind of light they have portrayed and surrounded themselves in and how they have experienced their time.

Twenty repetitions from twenty perspectives, placed on a twenty faced (ico.) grid. Location the old west pier in Brighton, or better yet the remains of it. The visual Rhythm of the past, distorted into a present moment.

Now, we can’t wait to make the colour one, getting on with that bad boy tomorrow.

The project has now come to a point where I’ll start making the layouts, and hopefully in a couple of weeks will give birth to a book that sums up the experimentations, including the moving image. Instead of a glorious one final piece, mine will be an offspring of many ideas. Sketchbooks are where my ideas find home first, even before I can make them into a sentence I doodle them on my books and start by making things. Today I started putting my books together. still readable, but once I’ll get them all stuck to each other they will hopefully work as one; a process/progress/ a new idea.

Jess and I are drawing a type family amongst other things, our baby, called the Pier. (Thanks Michael for all the eagle(type)eye advice today as well. )I’ve held on to a brush with ink for the past seven hours, I think we’re getting there but there’s a lot more to do, experimentations fill our to-do list.  Looking forward to my birthday dinner with Ping this evening, a well deserved binge on food I reckon. =)

To see Jessica’s blog.

oh! and I finished the animation for Expect the Unexpected project. Its a 4ish minute long digital poster that I will be projecting, built only of the very basic graphic forms such as circle, star and squares.  ( 6 still images on the bottom) Now, I can start working on the publication (book) and voila. =)

I have the thinking hat on. Now I need to decide what will be final, what to leave behind. The notation drawing was quite a lot of fun, illustrating the song in my own terms. Will test the colour idea and try to push a bit further.. and finally, I’ll think about type.

So I went from drawing, to moving image, to painting like there’s no tomorrow, to realising it actually looked okay on a computer screen, so why not draw it and then vectorise. I think I’ve come a full circle with this one. And I think I’ll put my brushes away for now and take out the digital ones. Oh, and ofcourse about five minutes ago I managed to get fixated with the idea that it should really, really, be done with a silk screen print for a nice finish. So. Barbara will be thrilled when I hog hold on… how many. . umm.. six of her biggest screens? and I’ve never printed more than a two tone one before. uh-oh. 

The still images of the moving image look quite good on their own, but I think I’m happier without all that accurate info, instead I’ll feel my way through this and colour the song as I like, hence the grid that is waiting to be filled.  I’m reading this book by Donald A. Norman called Emotional Design, its a pretty good read.  

Brighton tomorrow, yay!! Can’t wait to photograph with the 20 year old film roll Natalia gave me!

Rhythm (any measured flow or movement, symmetry) is Movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions.  While rhythm most commonly applies to sound,such as music and spoken language, it may also refer to visual presentation, as “timed movement through space.”

As an experimentation on Time, I asked ten people to take a photograph of themselves every 10am and 10pm. Successful an experimentation in the sense I have not laughed this hard for a long,long time, but also, it provided me imagery that led me and Jessica to re-consider the rhythm (of) how we perceive time/space.

I want to thank  Sabina, Nathan, Anne, Anna-Maria, Hana, Hanna, James, Naoyki, Ping, and Nicola. I shall make sure you all get a copy of the publication. X

Looking forward to our week together, and the location of project which will be near the water, in Brighton.

Finished some drawings that are to interpret a song, this is for the transformers project that is moving image, thought it would be nice to have a book (concertina) to support it. I will also take some stills and make them into standing pieces of their own, maybe using some type to go along. This is all in my easter to do list.

Also, really excited to work with Jessica, a collaboration project that will be including lots of building of things and photographing with a twenty year old film. We have been going back and forth with ideas and concepts for a while now and today had the A-ha moment when we could see a project in the end of the tunnel! yay!

Did some drawing on the moleskin over the weekend as well, finished some sketches I doodled ages ago and scanned them in.