When Stephen Hawking died I immediately thought back to his appearance in hologram form at the Sydney Opera House in 2015, where he was interviewed by fellow physicist Paul Davies. It was a novel use of technology, with a charming Star Trek twist as he was ‘beamed out’ at the end of the interview but … Continue reading Holograms at the Sydney Opera House
NICK CAVE, THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE’S SPIRIT CREATURE. (Photo of Nick soundchecking in the Concert Hall in 2013. I found this on Pinterest without a photographer’s credit, sadly.) . . My book is available at editionsballard.etsy.com . . One of the strongest threads running through the book is how the Sydney Opera House has become … Continue reading Nick Cave, the Sydney Opera House’s Spirit Animal
MY SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE BOOK CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER … The title is part of a comment made by architect Jorn Utzon in an interview he gave in 1970, three years before the building, completed by Australian architects Peter Hall, David Littlemore and Lionel Todd, opened. When Utzon was re-engaged as the Sydney Opera House’s architect in 1999 … Continue reading Sydney Opera House Book. Arup Chapter
THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE: AN ALWAYS UNFOLDING NARRATIVE I made a fortuitous error on Tuesday night, misreading the start time for the Kamasi Washington Concert as 7pm not 9pm and arrived at the Sydney Opera House 2 hours early. It gave me time to think about the Opera House’s next life cycle. A living building … Continue reading Sydney Opera House as a Jazz Club
IN PRAISE OF ART GALLERIES AND THEIR SHOPS. … It’s more accurate to say that I’m issuing a piece of music merchandise rather than ‘publishing’ my Sydney Opera House book. After the exquisitely architectural hardcover limited edition it’s moving into a handsome but modest paperback edition. And though it will still have many Reg Mombassa … Continue reading In Praise of Galleries and their Shops
THE ART OF HOMAGE not FAN ART. The David Bowie Instagram account is posting images from the fan art section of the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Nick Cave has booked “talk to the audience” shows on the East Coast of America. Within the photographs and videos she’s posting from backstage and during soundchecks for … Continue reading The Art of Homage
I have Virginia Woolf and a rural childhood to thank for the idea that a handsome book was something that could be made swiftly, as needed. Reading her diaries at a young age, with no worldly experience to attach to what I was reading, I doggedly ploughed through rather than savoured them. And I became … Continue reading ELON MUSK’S IDEA OF A PRINTER ON MARS
