Saturday: Surface Detail

Surface Detail

I finished the latest Iain M. Banks Culture novel, Surface Detail, last night. I'm afraid that it was a big disappointment and, for the first time with a Culture novel, I was looking forward to the end of the book.

The main problem is that the story is told from way, way too many perspectives. There is, essentially, a very thin story, or rather two intertwined stories, stretched to breaking point by telling it from several different perspectives in order to pad out the book to just over 600 pages. The main perspectives are:

• A virtual person, a disembodied consciousness, fighting a never ending war;
• Another virtual person suffering in a simulated Hell;
• A reborn person seeking revenge for her own murder;
• The person she's seeking revenge against;
• A Culture agent sent to stop her.

In addition there were other perspectives, but these were simply walk-on parts, not even essential to the story, but adding to the confusion and tedium. I felt like shouting "For Christ's sake, GET ON WITH IT!" at regular intervals.

Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men

I thought I'd have a bash at this next, as it's considered to be a classic. Written in 1930, it's the history of Mankind written five million years in the future by the last man.

Wednesday: Shiny London and Typography

The Serpentine Gallery

After meeting with a friend up in London, I went to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. It was a bright, shiny day in Old London Town and I took a few photos.

The Serpentine Gallery is really small, only about two rooms, and contains only modern art (at the moment). One exhibit looked like the contents of someone's bed room squashed up into a really small space. Another was a set of photographs, like time lapse, being displayed on a wall. Another was a video of a bloke Moonwalking to some classical music. More intriguing was Anish Kapoor's mirror sculptres. Really simple, but rather beguiling:



Now this would get my vote at the Turner Prize.

Typography

As some may know, I have been interested in typography and fonts since I was a kid: my Dad brought home a Letraset book from work and it was facinating. There is currently a very good book on the subject called Just My Type by Simon Garfield, which is a very good read and highly recommended.

Tuesday: Tunng and Duxford

Tunng

Yesterday I did my usual afternoon shift at the Oxfam shop. However, John, who's normally on the counter upstairs, was on holiday and so I replaced him. Although upstairs is quiet (it's the music/DVD section, full of old LP's), it has a little music centre and I took some CD's to play. One of them was a freebie from The Word magazine with the nicest, most charming version of Guns and Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" you have ever heard, by Hellsongs.

Another CD was the latest album by Tunng, called "...And Then We Saw Land". They are a folk band, not a genre I have much to do with, but I heard them on "The Imagined Village" album, which won quite a few music awards, doing a version of "Death and the Maiden". They are a very original band, not avant garde exactly but as near as folk is ever likely to get. For instance, one song on the album ends with what sounds like someone dropping a scaffolding pole onto a concrete floor. I know it's hardly Throbbing Gristle, but we're talking folk music here, remember. The album is patchy, not all the songs work, but when they do it's quite something.

Duxford

I've spent most of the afternoon out at Duxford, photographing aeroplanes. The weather started okay, but by the time I got to the museum, it started to hack down, so a bit miserable. Still, I got to see the Duxford TSR2:



Wayne Rooney

As a long time Man. City fan, I can't help but feel sorry for the Salford Boys Club Football Team (a.k.a. ManU), and although I'm laughing on the outside, I'm also laughing on the inside. They've obviously run out of meat pies for Wayne, and there are rumours that he'll join the only real Manchester football club. City seems to get most it's players from Salford these days, anyway, and if he's as good as "El Torro", we've got the league in the bag. And even if he doesn't, it's still funny.

Friday: The Wounded Platoon

The BBC showed a program a few months ago in the "This World" series about a US army infantry platoon, 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment. It's a revised version that came out in the states. The documentary describes the platoon's tour of Iraq and what happened after they came back. Two of the platoon are currently in jail for murder and attemped murder in Colorado Springs, where the regiment was based while back home. It's worth watching.

Thursday: Pharmacopedia Domestica and Surface Detail

Pharmacopedia Domestica

In a long and otherwise uneventful day at the Oxfam Shop, I came across an old book that Andrew was valuing. It's called Pharmacopedia Domestica by Thomas Fuller M.D. written in 1739! In it there's all kinds of bizzare recipes, including "Salts of Steel" and:

Oil of Earth-worms

Take of Earth-worms, well washed and cut into Pieces, six Ounces; Oil-Olive, a Pint and half; boil them together till the Wine is exhaled, and lastly, strain off the Oil through a Piece of Canvas.

It's Virtues

This Oil is Penetrating, strengthens weak Nerves, corrects scorbutic Acrimony, eases wandering gouty Pains, and particularly designed for the Joins.

For Oil of Adder's Tongue (maybe a kind of plant, not real adder's tongues) this is "To be made in the common way".

Surface Detail

The latest Culture book by Iain M. Banks is out today. It's called Surface Detail and has got some good write ups, some saying that it's his best Culture book since Player of Games. I bought a copy and started reading it this afternoon. I'll let you know.

Tuesday: The Turner Prize

After meeting up with a friend in town, I decided to go and see the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain. I took the Thames ferry which runs between Tate Modern and the old gallery and got quite a good river side view of the city (I took some photographs) . I recommend it.

The Turner Prize is to promote contemporary art and the four artists this year are:

• Dexter Dalwood
• The Otolith Group
• Angela de la Cruz
• Susan Philipsz

Dexter Dalwood

On entering the exhibition space, the first artist's work on display is Dexter Dalwood. Dexter paints canvases, which must be a refreshing change for the Turner Prize. It seems that part of appreciating the work of the artist is to know what the title of the work is and to have some knowledge of the subject matter. For example, this is quite a moody piece, a tree on a moonlight night:



But the title of the piece is "The Death of David Kelly", which puts a slightly different slant on the whole thing, Kelly's body being found in a wood, the controversy surrounding his death, etc.

The Otolith Group

This was lots of TV screens arranged around the room showing a documentary, with a larger screen showing another documentary. I think this is what is called "phoning it in".

Angela de la Cruz

Get a pile of builders rubble. Put a tarpaulin over it and cover the tarpaulin with thick paint. Then enter it into the Turner Prize. I kid you not:



One of the funnier things about this is that with a work of art, the media is listed, e.g. Oil on Canvas, Silverpoint on Coloured Paper, etc. One of the submissions was "Untitled (Hold No 1), Oil on Aluminium Box and Metal Filing Cabinet". Now that's what I call mixed media.

Susan Philipsz

The problem with this work is that it relies heavily on the location. When you walk into the room, it's empty apart from four speakers playing the artist singing an old Scottish folk song. Reading the catalogue, the music is meant to be played under some bridge in Glasgow. This seems like an original idea until you realise it's also the idea behind lift music and the songs they play in supermarkets.

Conclusion

To say which one will win the prize, I'd have to go with Dexter Dalwood, with Susan Philipsz as a close second. The other two didn't seem to be putting the effort in. However, even these two seemed to be lacking something. What I was hoping for was something which engaged the viewer on some level, like when you walk into the room, a motion detector tracked you and produced a sound depending on where you were and how fast you were moving. There's an interactive art piece in the Science Museum which does something like that and there used to be one in the Meadows shopping centre in Chelmsford. This is 21st century art.

I think the last words on the subject should go to Calvin and Hobbes:

Calvin: Art isn't about ideas. It's about style. The most crucial career decision is picking a good "ism" so everyone knows how to categorize you without understanding the work.

Hobbes: You do goofy drawings on the sidewalk.

Calvin: Right. I'm a suburban post-modernist.

Hobbes: Aren't we all.

Calvin: I was going to be a neo-deconstructivist but Mom wouldn't let me.