Category: notebooks

The Art of Homage

March 11, 2018March 11, 2018 ~ Jillian Burt ~ Leave a comment

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

A NOTEBOOK THAT’S AN HOMAGE TO NELS CLINE’S LOVERS ALBUM : PART 1

February 3, 2018February 4, 2018 ~ Jillian Burt ~ Leave a comment

For 25 years Nels Cline dreamed of making the Lovers Album, an orchestrated portrait of the shadings on love’s spectrum from yearning to euphoria to regret. A mix of jazz standards, film music, rock songs and his own compositions. When it was released on Blue Note in 2016 it concluded with “The Bond”, composed for … Continue reading A NOTEBOOK THAT’S AN HOMAGE TO NELS CLINE’S LOVERS ALBUM : PART 1

Reflections from the intersection of rock music and architecture, particularly within living, evolving cultural buildings.

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THE ATTACK OF THE ARMANI STORE DUMMIES: The hollow dummies made of a translucent milky white plastic on display in the Armani store in Sydney’s Martin Place are reminisicent of the creepy plastic aliens who took the form of store dummies in the first episode of the rebooted DR WHO in 2005 (swipe for photograph). The brilliance of DR WHO when led by Russell T. Davies, with Doctor’s Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant, was its complex character. The storylines had a pantomime quality that appealed to the imagination of children. Bored children in the Armani Emporium play-acting a game where the dummies would come to life and chase them, as they did Rose and the Doctor. And simultaneously tapping into the existential concerns of adults with storylines that were far enough off to be sci-fi but close enough to be plausible worries: plastic is going to overwhelm and destroy us, humanoid creatures will destroy us. . — Recently the Kings Cross Library culled DVD’s of the fifth series of MIAMI VICE and watching it again I realised that the limp and wan quality of the clothing on the pale plastic Armani store dummies had something to do with the clothing no longer having an edgy cultural context. It’s difficult to imagine Don Johnson’s Drug Squad undercover cop character, Sonny Crockett, being plausible wearing anything other than Armani. Where cop shows ordinarily feature vigorous shoot outs with the bad guys, Don Johnson relaxes into a confrontation with a drug lord while wearing a bubble-gum pink t-shirt under a billowing navy blazer, his sockless feet in loafers. And he seems lethally calm wearing white trousers and t-shirt when sauntering into the tournament of a crooked Jai Alai champion, as Iggy Pop’s REAL WILD CHILD plays on the soundtrack. . — @armani @bbcdoctorwho #fashion #miamivice #iggypop #plastic

THESE FOOLISH THINGS : Yesterday I visited the Powerhouse Museum on a free admission weekend to see the Apollo 11 exhibition. And to visit again the Watts Steam Engine and Mars Rover installations before the museum closes and the collection is moved. —- From many vantage points on the lower levels a strip of silhouettes of ‘iconic’ objects is visible … the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge, obviously, and Marc Newson’s Lockheed Lounge, a ‘rock star’ celebrity of the 1980s. In service rather than on display, without information panels, are two other celebrity chairs, Le Corbusier’s club chair and Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona day bed. . —— In the late afternoon I went to the Bennelong bar at the Sydney Opera House for a glass of wine. Sitting in an Arne Jacobsen Swan chair I was sunk in a deep melancholy about the breakup of the Powerhouse Museum’s collection. I can’t imagine it just disappearing. Walking along the Lower Concourse, past Opera Bar, I’d noted the Arne Jacobsen Series 7 chairs in a poster advertising the opening of a new dining room for functions on the Northern Broadwalk. And an exhibition explaining the origins of the mothballed John Coburn sun and moon curtains, inspired by Jean Miro’s WALL OF THE SUN and WALL OF THE MOON artworks. What if, as in the movie YESTERDAY, which considers a world without Beatles music, all of the mid-century modern furniture, art and music were to disappear? —— Galleries (the Art Gallery of NSW, for example) and foyers (the City of Sydney’s Custom House library’s Arne Jacobsen Egg Chairs) would have nowhere for their patrons to rest. And Bennelong’s atmosphere would evaporate. The music, just loud enough to be perceived, was all of 1950s / 1960s cocktail hour elegance … Miles Davis KIND OF BLUE era icy purity, Frank Sinatra’s waning rock star status about to give way to the Beatles and Elvis. —— When I’m at Bennelong I always think of the scene in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS where Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard are perched on a ledge around the public space of Mies’s glorious mid-century modern Seagram Building in Manhattan, warmly loved modernism in everyday use.

CALDERESQUE .. The spiral-bound notebooks I’ve been prototyping for a number of years are directly inspired by Alexander Calder’s home-made appliances, tools & jewellery. (Latest version shown above, next to a photocopy of a Calder notebook.) — The wire I’m using is stronger than what you’ll find on store-bought notebooks and the spines are finished with CALDERESQUE spirals. I’m repurposing crummy cheap notebooks with new spirals and sturdier covers. . — It was an unbelievable thrill to see some of Calder’s objects recently at the @ngvmelbourne . The only other thing I could have wished for is the display of a selection of Calder’s notebooks. — #notebook #spiralboundnotebook #alexandercalder #engineering

REASSURED BY A STUDIO VISIT TO @MUDAUSTRALIA :The fast food villages in the Botanic Gardens during the 10th anniversary of the Vivid Festival in Sydney last year induced in me a panic about environmentally destructive manufactured food & throwaway plates & utensils that’s been steadily intensifying ever since. Placards on the white picket fences surrounding the food villages in the Botanic Gardens reading “NO PLANTS NO FUTURE”, in line with the gardens being a “living lab” grappling with issues of biodiversity to ensure “quality of life for generations to come” seemed wildly contradicted by the high-concept fast food & merchandise being sold in the Gardens & around Circular Quay to the Overseas Passenger Terminal: glow-in-the-dark candy floss, circular potato fries on sticks, light-up plastic crown of thorns headbands. .. — My inner Wile E. Coyote kicks in when I encounter fast food at festivals. Why couldn’t the ACME Corporation invent some kind of super-strong but lightweight ceramic vessels & utensils to be fed into a solar-powered cleaning & sterilising device the size of a mobile refrigeration unit? But then, being ACME, it would inevitably backfire & begin frisbeeing plates. … — I visited the MUD factory during the Sydney Design Festival & drank a Gin & Tonic from a reject small beaker mug with the tiniest of cracks in the upper edge. The sublime gin was from the neighbouring distillery @younghenrys. A spring of fresh rosemary & roughly cut slice of cucumber garnished the drink. The brilliant colours & forms of the MUD ceramics render them powerfully instagenic but the studio visit emphasised the quality of the manufacturing process, precise & orderly but at each stage guided by skilled humans rather than the kind of salesmanship that would push trends & sets & seasonal must-haves. .. — I need to buy some ceramics for everyday dining & the existential panic, the purchasing paralysis induced by so many throwaway plates, has been quelled somewhat by the hope that I might be able to go to a MUD seconds sale & acquire perfectly imperfect plates & bowls & beakers I’ll use over & over & over & never throw away.

IN THE SPIRIT OF JOSIAH WEDGWOOD: The black coffee mug decorated with the Bad Seed embryo drawn by @markryden reminds me of the ‘Jasperware’ crafted by Josiah Wedgwood in the late 18th century that featured characters from Greek and Roman mythology and portraits of personalities of the day. (@mudaustralia beaker on the right).. — Part of the @statelibrarynsw ’s commemoration of Wedgwood’s grandson Charles Darwin’s visit to Australia in 1836 included various pieces of @wedgwood pottery held in the collection. I imagined Wedgwood / Darwin family gatherings with food served on these myth-studded vessels. With every phenomenal discovery in science and technology in the 18th and 19th centuries the enduring value of myths moved further away from literal interpretation. Our world becomes no less wondrous when we understand it. Alien worlds too. The first century of space travel was in craft named for Wedgwood’s figures from myths — Apollo, Gemini — the second century’s robot rovers on Mars are named for the qualities that underpinned Charles Darwin’s explorations — Spirit, Curiosity . .. — Mark Ryden creates porcelain figures and crockery decorated with figures from American political history, fairy tales and contemporary pop culture. Nick Cave’s songs are studded with references to myths but also a deep fascination with the cultural impact of advances in science and technology: i.e. “Higgs Boson Blues”, the recent Red Hand Files post on Artificial Intelligence. .. — I collect Bad Seeds / Grinderman merchandise in the way that previous generations would gradually add Wedgwood pieces to pass on to future generations. @mudaustralia ceramics have existed since 1994 but I only found them recently, and I’m in awe of them. They’re delicate but strong, and the unglazed exterior and powerful colours are reminiscent of Jasperware. The glazed interior makes them durable and adaptable to many uses. I can’t stop projecting all of Nick Cave’s coffee mugs onto Mud Beakers, imagining them as an expanding collection of heirlooms. .. — @nickcaveofficial #ceramics #charlesdarwin #mythology #merchandise #marsrovers @nasa #nickcaveandthebadseeds @nickcaveofficial

FOUND OPPORTUNITY: @johnbutlertrio made a plea for all present to stir into action to protect the earth’s oceans before performing his composition “Ocean” at the first of his @SydneyOperaHouse concerts this week. The mellifluous beauty of both the music and the message struck me as an antidote to the melancholy of the last message of the Mars Rover Opportunity, who’d been officially declared dead the previous day. “My battery is low and it’s getting dark,” transmitted Opportunity in June of 2018 and was never heard from again. John Butler’s sincerity and integrity has both light and warmth enough to recharge any battery. .. — It was a comment he made during the second of his concerts on the forecourt that made me think of the Mars Rover. When he was calling Missy Higgins to the stage to perform a duet with him he said he’s bad at learning other people’s songs so they’d have to perform one of his. “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me,” he explained, a line from Beck’s song “Loser”. When Opportunity landed on the surface of Mars in 2004 and was preparing to turn on its systems and begin roving it played Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”. I started thinking of the creation of a mythology for remotely operated robots (as opposed to humanoid robots) with “Born to Run” their equivalent of “The Epic of Gilgamesh”. .. — I made up a playlist in my iTunes library for this robot mythology that includes the Wallflowers song “One Headlight’ and Beck’s “Loser”, which has a punk version of a robot rover on the cover of MELLOW GOLD, the album it’s featured on. The song always reminds me of the wild anarchic robotic performance art of @survivalresearchlabs , the ‘act’ I’d most like to see perform on the Opera House’s forecourt. .. — @benmarshall_sydneyoperahouse #rockmusic #robot #marsrover @nasajpl #marsroveropportunity #marsrovercuriosity @springsteen #brucespringsteen @beck

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Architecture Australian music bibliostructures city design Engineering jazz Journalism Manufacturing modern dance movies Music notebooks Paper print on demand publishing Robert Ballard robotics Sydney Opera House

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