The 76

Angry and frustrated by London Transport I aimlessly start snapping from the top deck. The result is immediately captivating.

I had been trying to work out a way of visualising London for ages. And suddenly here it is. Monotonous chaos in the patterns of grey paving stones. Concealed figures. A view combining surveillance and vulnerability. Just photos from my everyday life.

I can already imagine a number of way I can develop such a series of images. I think I will probably start a London blog to accommodate them. I'll post the link when I get it sorted.

Bassaleg School rugby tour 1992

Implausibly I have two rolls of film which I managed to keep about 17 years without developing. I Found them in a box of old film at Christmas. They are photos from a school rugby tour I went on in 1992. (That's me down at the bottom there.)

The effect of keeping them hidden for so long made the final result more exciting than simply looking at old photos. The film stock has aged, darkened round the edges and taken on ghostly tints.

I have decided to take a couple of rolls in the coming weeks on film stock that is likely to age badly. I'll hide them away in the film box and come back to them in 5 or so years. See you in 2015.

Dream Landscapes (2)

19/10/08

rock of ages
read the fall out
in the bar:

travelling on from vienna
'Where do you want to go?'
'To a city with a Cathedral.'

sitting on bar stools
bacon & eggs
translations
kissing together
routemaster through Islington


*



8/10/08

I look at them
I thought they were screaming at me

(knock. knock.)

the cyclonic version
'I know'
it gets confused



*



9/1/09

Obama on the radio
resigned yesterday.

whatever. whatever. whatever.

warms up when. glue in the bike shop.
need some time. jumpy end.

zip lines. miniature horses.
waves on the coast of Venezuela
the woman carry goods on their shoulders

James in a model village
dad calls it over
loyalty card
smells strangest at my home.

Time remaining: 5min

32 Postcards

Cacao live at the placard headphones night in Cafe Oto, Dalston. My headphone splitter was playing up, but it still sounded great.

Follow the link for field noise, postcard nostalgia and some nice vectors.
http://quotesque.net/cacao/32postcards.html

Cheers Anil and Miranda.

Capture More

To check or send a message on my new phone I click the control to the right. However, by pushing upward the camera phone mode is initiated.

I took a photo each time I accidentally entered the camera phone. The images quickly built up a picture of my domestic geography. The places where I was intending to write or read a text.

The story is ongoing.











Images (c) David Foster 2008

Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard.

Gerhard Richter 4900 Colours: Version II, 2007
Enamel paint on Aludibond
49 Panels, each 97 × 97 cm
La Collection de la Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création
© 2008 Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter:

4900 Colours: Version II

Serpentine Gallery, London

23^rd September – 16^th November 2008

German painter and photographer Richter is exhibiting 49 paintings at the Serpentine which are composed of hundreds of blocks of flat colour. They were composed by a computer programme which calculated created an entirely chance configuration of tones. The gallery note informs us that a dice was then rolled by Richter to choose the orientation and positioning of the works in the gallery.

Standing in the central space of the Serpentine the blocks of colour give me the sense of being in a nursery. The statistical operations they represent lead me back to thinking about the power of number crunching data to rip huge wormholes in national economies when put into the hands of investment bankers. It also reminds me of a title: ‘Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard.’

Richter’s dice operation makes me think about Stéphane Mallarmé rich and strange poem. I don’t pretend to understand it but I looked it up this evening and was stunned again by its beauty. It's criminal to try and typeset it or translate extracts out of context so here are a few pages from the original French booklet:

A THROW OF THE DICE



NEVER

even when cast in the eternal circumstance

of a shipwreck's depth

You can see the full image of the book here:

http://www.my-os.net/blog/index.php?Graphisme/2006/11

The full text in French and English here:

http://www.tonykline.co.uk/