Eating an Elephant

Continuing on the long path of creating content for Quiet Voices at the Big Chill. I am trying to aim to create around 5 minutes of animation a day until July - hence the title! Some days, when it all goes tits-up, it seems an impossible task, but I reckon I'm on target. I have to say, it is not always easy to envisage 5 screens all running at once and, in reality, folks will probably only be able to see, at most, 3 of them at one time. The prospect of lighting such a big space with video, however, drives me on, and I have now seen the content tha Tim Hetherington and Kate Flurrie are working on, and this promises to be really beautiful, and very different from my own work.

When Information becomes a distraction.

I received an email from somebody today saying that my hotmail email account had been spamming her. I don't use it much, so wandered over to it and had a look. Sure enough, things were going tonto, so I decided to close it completely. Guess what? It proved to be harder than I envisaged, and I still don't know if I have succeeded. This, naturally got me thinking about all of these things we sign up for, never fully knowing if we can ever fully leave them. So I decided to quit my Myspace account next (I rarely use this now). Guess what? You see a pattern emerging here? The thing that concerns me most, is the trepidation I feel when hovering my cursor over the "close account" button. This, in itself makes me want to do it, yet the drug is obviously still coursing through my cyber-veins, and quite clearly, these need purging. Facebook is the biggie, the class A, the opiate. Part of me feels connected by using it, and part feels slightly inadequate in feeling the "need" to use it. I have found it a good way to squirt useful, individual information to students, in the absence of them being at college 5 days a week, but I have Twitter, and this blog, so this should all still be possible. And if it isn't, I suspect that the earth will somehow continue to revolve. As for my friends, well, I have their emails, their phone numbers and hey, if I'm feeling really wild, I can always talk to them face to face. I simply feel that I am experiencing information overload, and a big part of me would like to shed a load of it. My work as a lecturer is, by its very nature, highly sociable, so its not like I am in need of the "company" - and I use this word with a pinch of salt the size of a small planet! I'm talking myself into this, what do you think? The irony of me posting a link to this on FB is, by the way, not lost on me!

New York

Just got back from our trip with the students, to New York. We had a short stay there, in the heart of Chelsea, taking in the sights and galleries of this extraordinary place. Feeling - as predicted - really odd being back in Suffolk, but I am enjoying the quiet.....More pictures to follow.