Official.

The official site is found at: http://www.victoriabaths.org.uk/.

The site includes pictures, words and Quicktime-built panoramas. There are links, contact details and a shop [not online - you must print and post an order form]. There is also a map. Perhaps site navigation could be a little confusing for some users. The design is pleasent, with the deep-green tiles from the 'real' site used to good effect. The layout could be cleaner and more consistent.



The site headings are:

Home
Welcome page and link headings
Restoration
Explaining the facts and developments of the Baths' restoration process
The Building
The story and facts about the most immediate element of this project
How to Help
Voluntary work, financial contributions and the shop
Open Days
Lists what is happening and when it is happening with map and contact info
Memories
Selected personal accounts 1900s-1990s, information about Sunny Lowry
Art Projects
Details art events held in the Baths past and present
News
Forthcoming events and developments
Shop
Merchandise based around the image and history of the Baths
Links
Other internet sites that may be of interest to the users of the Baths site
Contact
Email, phone, post and fax details for the VB Project office


Cow Parade entrant, Victoria Moo

Already, from the official site there is a lot of information. Since it presented on the internet and intended for a browser display, it is in a concise format. There are some broken links. The plans of the building will be of interest to some people. The social function of the Baths will be of interest to some people. The historical evidence could be portrayed in more visual ways than the usual photographs and sound recordings perhaps.



Location - region and community - function - historical and social context - families - parents and grandparents as youths - the experience of the functioning Baths - the difference from now - existing activities provided [colouring in, wordsearches] - the most popular features - the best stories - the comparative social attitudes of its origin - the relevance of the past - the rewards of observation - cameras - drawing - writing - speaking - seeing - hearing - imagining - learning - discussing - tours and talks - building materials - stone - glass - tiles - metal - textures - rubbings - scientific explainations of material change - factual information with justification in terms of relevance to education of children - worthwhile activities - best use of existing resources - no patronising tone - mutual education - independent and group activities.

That is enough for today. I'd best make that dissertation finish.

Day Out.

Cornerhouse, Whitworth, Victoria Baths... [MMU's Chatham Building not shown]




The Tuesday Talk was Total Bollocks, Concrete Thoughts at the Whitworth stank of conceptual blabbercrap cat wank and Vicky B was as beautiful and unpretentious as ever. Following a meeting with a representative, I am delving into the potential of the Baths as a place of educational benefit - making free fun from what is available, learning some facts and going home/back to the classroom with useful memories. That's silly, that last bit. I understand the advantage of avoiding an lazy adult's understanding of "what kids want". It's transparent from anyone but a television. Stop it! Get back to the point! I hear me cry.

There is a lot of potential in the Baths. There is the social/historical side of the building, its use and its users. There is the atmosphere of a retrospective place. There are the textures of the walls and tiles, the colours of the bricks, the stained glass windows. There are stories, there are facts, there are good acoustics. There is science behind the operation of the pump system. There is the water and the electricity. There is the decoration and the class division. There are strange contraptions for bathers. There are details that few people could absorb entirely, the tiny things with character, incidental scupltures and robotic faces in the vents. There are the mysterious dark holes. There are the ticket offices, the business side of things, a similarity to today's indoor swimming experience. There are parallels to keep information relevant and difference which need to be described in a way that encourages imagination. There are apparently ordinary and unsignificant things with reasoning behind them. There is the practicality of the decoration which enforces class hierarchy. There are the descriptions of the past, full of sensation to be shared. The information provided to the children can be encouraged into becoming something else, a story, drawing, discussion, collection. We must provide useful and enjoyable activities that can be linked directly to the requirements of the curriculum. We have a whole load of tools to help us, information in many forms. I am going to start looking at ways that the information could be used in order to produce new work with and by the children, starting with things that I can find on the internet. First stop is the official Baths website...

Civil Twilight.

Simply putt, the gender department of my essay turns to the thoughts and words of Janet Wolff and Helen Scalway for their views of the female Flâneur, or Flâneuse. The suggestion is that walking as a lone woman is not the same experience as walking as a lone man. I now understand academic argument, how people use references and why it is important to obtain weighted evidence that fortify your claims. I can see its intellectual value as well as its social application, and I am so happy about this that in a few minutes I will be refreshing myself with a several servings of juice from concentrate.

I am looking forward to the talk tomorrow morning. Even if it does mean that I am reminded about the seething importance of Pavel Büchler over the period of an hour.

Disrespective.

On Thursday, I attended a seminar about The Institute of Culture, Gender and the City which covered football, brand identity and class identity in intellectual attitudes. Let me just say that the room of minds was distracted enough to avoid becoming a room of bodies. Manchester City Football Club was at the heart of things.

Friday
City Art Gallery:
Beyond the Page: Contemporary Art from Pakistan
René Burri: Retrospective 1950 - 2000
Cornerhouse:
Gypo
Greenroom:
Vaudeville

Saturday
The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester:
Most of it

Sunday
Chorlton:
Roads
Didsbury:
CO-OP

Today
Library:
This/Finish essay
Later:
Weekly Meeting
Presentations
Interim Meeting

Tomorrow
Cornerhouse:
Tuesday Talk
Victoria Baths:
Meeting

Diss Traction.

Words, words are good for your head
The more you use
The less you're dead*

* Not valid at Halloween. Actual colours may vary from those shown.

Five reasons I did this:

[1] Camera had charged batteries and memory space
[2] I was upstairs on a Stagecoach bus
[3] The sky and roof felt good together
[4] Impeccable graphic edge + grime = irony
[5] The crap composition annoys me and pumps me with regret [do better nex'time!]

Which is more evil?

You don't really need to 'click to enlarge', the inverted version is cleary more tuned to the harsh side of man's balanace.


Ghost tours - tourism - guides - trust - lies - gain - money - power - stature - image - society - collection - separation - classification - books - words - letters - stamps - faces - symmetry - reproduction - life - death - ghosts...

It was all worth it.

Wedmix.

First, I have a picture to show myself:


Then I have another:


Then I have work to do. I am off to the Vicky B's next 2uzdy for a[n art]showdown.

Tuesday Talk 2.

I have 3000+ words.
They are making sense.
I caught more sources of reference.
Here they are:

The Arcades Project
Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Date: 1999-11-24
ASIN / ISBN: 067404326X
List Price: £33.95
Hardcover
1098 Pages

The New York Trilogy: "City of Glass", "Ghosts" and "Locked Room"
Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Publication Date: 1987-11-23
ASIN / ISBN: 0571149251
List Price: £12.99
Hardcover
478 Pages

Paul Auster (Modern Critical Views)
Publisher: Chelsea House Publishers,U.S.
Publication Date: 2004-04
ASIN / ISBN: 0791076628
List Price: £31.50
Hardcover
150 Pages

Baudelaire
Author: M.A. Ruff
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Publication Date: 1967-04
ASIN / ISBN: 0340061618
List Price: £1.25
Hardcover
205 Pages

I have Beyceyar to blame for Paul Auster's City of Glass. I like it how the man that wrote it's name turns up in a story...that HE wrote! It feels like one of those games that some readers take seriously and then get a group going so their clever ideas can be given social value. But...there is no social and value is prone to slipping! And I am writing on the internet...what a waste of electricity...what a saving of paper...what a way to live...

The Baudelaire book is biography laced with worship from the author. Genius is so rated. External world, it is time that you gave me some of your water.

Brokund.

Well, today's Tuesday Talk was good and I have the notes to prove it. During Zenib Sedira's presentation, I penned these bits:

It's... PRO-TEAM TIME! [VIP row stands]
Presenter & Listener/Viewer: Factors and conditions of relationship
Beauty with purpose
The art is the is, the else is the maybe
Relationships: people/places/artist/actors/sounds/camera/[dual]screens/material
...And audience! Talking elements.
Man makes time makes stories, isolated forward progress
Accepting my version of what is shown, no questions or curiosity
Scatter & Gather periods
Stuffing rectangles with paced human values
Influenca
Longing to be leaving
Installation: using/controlling space around isolated work as extension/part of whole artwork
Stories of people/places/methods of communication/expression [histories]
Mess and assembly
Mining the unremarkable
This is for Adults

Next is Andrew Hunt:


No matter what 'they' say, Dick shall always be an insult in my mind.

Proper Groups?

Pre-walking person [human history and individual infancy]
Walking person
Walking person with brush
Walking person with camera
Walking person with notepad
Walking person with imagination
Walking person with minidisk, headphones, microphone and enough batteries

'Visual artists'
Poets/thinkers/writers

Verbal/Non-verbal communication

Seperating the individual from the product

Places of massed expression [everywhere]
Designated places of consciously implied expression [galleries/gigs/readings...]

Indoor/Outdoor
Making/Planning

I have to gang the topics again, this time making a handful of titles. My writing so far needs some quotes flattened in but it is progressing happily. The next thing to do is return unwanted books and collect wanted ones, then mine them for a quick "__________". This is cynical referencing and I stand by it, even if it is only a view of a scrap of action.

Norther Than Before.

We went again to Liverpool on Friday, and then to Crosby to see metal men by and in the sea.



Boddy and I made up after my recent training in material relations.



It's like 999 for Dummies.

I have written 2500 words of dissertation and have a solid strand from which to hang, and the next clear point of progress will be having some nice quotes meshed tidily into the text, followed by an edit, then more free writing.

Grew Pings.

Theory/Literary:


Visual:


Galleries:


Technology:


Balls. I placed the photographer in the wrong group. I will amend this mentally. There.

Another Level.

Today I heard from an art walker who seemed very nice from his/her email:


Ain't loaf good?

Vanmail.

Here is the email:


Here is the front image:


Here is the rear [!]:


I draw best when proper alone, or at least in silence. My name appeared on these, oh.

Progreth.

Last night I started on this canvas:

I will continue adding detail to it until it finally feels fulfilled.

I am now constructing an E-card to send to the Caravan Gallery asking for an online interview for dissertation quote purposes. I will show it to the eyes that scan it. Be a patient.

Life Diagrams.

Depicting life is an important component of the artist's narrative. The following graphical images are not intended to be considered exceptions to this suggestion.


Diagram created in order to fairly represent a typical Print Queue.


Diagram to show Love and Inclusion as Hues by their Ability to Affect Individuals.


Diagram to show Common Sense and Theory, in fact, all Ideas.

Oooh, who's trapped themselves outside employment for a little too long?

Next.

Talk 2 is from:



Biography:
Zineb Sedira is a practicing artist who has an internet space.

Because we are people doing things and we know that they are good.

Tuesday Talk 1.

Paul Rooney spoke around screen 2 of the Cornerhouse this morning. He showed three films that he had made: Dear Guest [2005], A Pox On Your Guts [2005], and half of Dust [2006].

Beyond these facts, my notes aren't useful to the rest of the world - it's all stupid code!

Label Order.

A guide to using label templates as a method of ordering little pieces of information. You will need a working copy of Microsoft Word.


Create a new document
Go to the Tools menu
Select Letters and Mailings then Envelopes and Labels...


Select the Labels tab


From the Label products menu select Avery A4 and A5 sizes
From the product number list select L7160 – Address
Click the OK button


Click the New Document button.


Fill the boxes.

DisOrder.

I have structure:


Heading order goes:
Pedestrian.
Fulton.
Long.
Baudelaire.
Flaneur.
Benjamin.
Wandering poets.
Travel writers.
Beachcombers.
Photographers.
Caravan Gallery
Street Art.
URBIS.
Darius and Downey.
Performance Art.
Town Planning/Maps/Navigation.
Opie.
Virtual walk.
Bluetooth.
Nathan Barley.

I will now begin to write with order.

Good.

I just shed a stone in cynicism after catching a crust of the Culture Show.

CANDICE BREITZ
10 October - 28 January 2007
Working Class Hero (A Portrait of John Lennon)

During a recent residency at BALTIC, artist Candice Breitz invited a diverse community of dedicated John Lennon fans to pay tribute to their hero in a recording studio in Newcastle upon Tyne. Each fan was given the opportunity to re-perform Lennon’s first solo album Plastic Ono Band (1970), from beginning to end. The resulting video installation, with a looping duration of 39 minutes and 55 seconds (matching the length of the original album), will be displayed on 25 plasma screens that are staggered spirally around BALTIC’s seven-story-high public stairway. Each 42” plasma screen is dedicated to one fan’s idiosyncratic re-performance of the howling and cathartic songs on Plastic Ono Band, an album that explores the traumas of Lennon’s childhood (isolation, abandonment and death), and which was made parallel to Lennon and Yoko Ono undergoing intense Primal Therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov.

The Lennon fans were recruited from far and wide to participate in the project, the sole criteria for their eventual inclusion being that each was required to answer a detailed questionnaire to prove their sincere devotion to Lennon and his music. Over 400 fans from as far a field as Mexico City, Moscow and Tokyo expressed an interest in taking part in the project. Out of the 40 who were invited to Newcastle to pay homage to Lennon, 25 fans are featured in the final installation. They range in age from 25 to 62, and in addition to 8 Geordies and 5 Liverpudlians, include participants from Wales, Scotland, Japan, Italy and the United States.
Working Class Hero is the fourth in a series of portraits of musical icons by Breitz (preceded by portraits of Bob Marley, Michael Jackson and Madonna). Collectively, the portraits are an ongoing survey of the culture of the fan and the delicate mechanisms of projection, identification and consumption that characterise the relationship between an icon and his/her community of fans.

I liked her ideas and her work. I will go to the Baltic to experience those screens first, er, hand.

HHD#5.

Sprueman is the philosopher MC. His rhymes and rhythms join his silly ideas together and everybody nods like greasy pistons. He is not a 'conscious hiphop artist' who needs to constantly remind you that he is not a gangster and that he has indeed been to the library during his lifetime. He joins Jeremy Strand/Stem Courts as a member of the Artist Profile Society.

Here is a promotional shot for his debut track 'Dassit':


This is my problem with the dissertation:

As are these:


As is this:


Deadline today 4pm 5000 words 2 printed copies 1 digital copy
1 head 10 fingers bye bye bye

Piclist.

Here are the images that I will be using in my essay, along with what I will write about them. How seriously can I take art theory at this stage? Is feigned respect below disrespect?



Julian Opie's painting Imagine you are walking comes complete with instructions. Through simple variations of line and block colour, Opie creates a seemingly three-dimensional environment 'into' which the viewer can walk - but only in their imagination. The graphical style is similar to that of [which was itself an update of Midi Maze which may have inspired 'first-person games' with a sense of environmental depth like Doom and 'third-person' games like Tomb Raider]. I consider this piece to improve when rotated by 180 degrees, giving a black sky and a watery floor, which to me becomes a scene of frustrated escape. Walking in this piece is an invitation, the beginning of something else, a journey that you have to create for yourself.



Andy Warhol's Sidewalk shows what appears to be a print made from an altered photograph of a sidewalk, re-coloured in a manner common to his work. Celebrity hounds the piece, impressions of the impressions of four separate stars from a (presumably) American pavement. Celebrity value comes into question - are those a print of a photo of the original handprints made by the real Cary Grant? Is that a genuine Warhol? In this piece, the walk is depicted as a point of view - the walker would pass over these prints in reality (if permitted, I have no idea of pedestrian's rights in replicated America) and in a gallery would see them flat, at eye level rather than foot level. The surface represented is special version of the everyday sidewalk, with the signatures of famous actors-made-authors, not to mention Warhol's own deliberately noncommittal openness and visual hallmark.



The Tate website says:

"Long began making outdoor sculptures in 1965, but this was his first work to result from the straightforward act of walking in the landscape. By treading back and forth along the same line in a field in Somerset, Long wore away a thin path that temporarily altered the appearance of the land. Remaining briefly as a mark of his activity, the flattened line lasted until the grass grew again. This photograph is the sole record of the line's existence and therefore of the artist's movement through the landscape."

I say:
Conceptual simplicity led to a dull photo but he carried on with this outdoor, natural sculpture stuff and made some much better work. If only the photograph had been printed on dead grass.

Who's best?

Wanking Arf.

I hope this works.

The SALA Festival Walking Art Program continues to encourage creative thinking and positive activity, showcasing the artistic and cultural diversity of South Australian Visual Art in a vibrant, open access festival. Walking Art has expanded, with twelve art and entertainment filled Guided Walks, and eleven Self-guided walks to take at your leisure, through various exhibition spaces, public art works and studios.

Audiences participating in the Guided Walking Art events are able to interact with South Australian Living Artists while engaging with the rich culture of the businesses and precincts that the walks are held in. These Guided Walks will be hosted by various local Arts and Media Identities to encourage discussion regarding the works. Through an exciting and informative collection of exhibitions, artist talks and live performances, we hope to promote South Australian Visual Artists by actively engaging the public with art, and the artists, enhancing the appreciation of art and culture within the city of Adelaide.

Promoting safe, low impact recreational activity, the Art walks will be held in fresh air, people friendly environments with the aim of encouraging present and future generations of Adelaide residents and visitors to be active within the arts. The ‘Walking Art’ program makes art available to the wider public via its maps and innovative program of walks, while challenging the ideas of traditional gallery and performance spaces through the exhibition of work in restaurants, small business and temporary installations in public space. The Walks will again highlight the artistic and cultural diversity already alive and well in the City, and build even stronger links between business and the arts.

Don't we talk some awful bollocks, us people? Do a few little things and advertise our efforts like saviours! Blessed are the Artists...pathetic bunch of idiots with far too much spare time to obsess over their self-importance scale or beautifully vacant eccentrics? BOLLOCKS!

Arking and Walt.

This gentleboy is sectioned under the 2004 Walking Art act...

He may take a while to load.

Sometimes you don't even see or get what you see or get.

Walking Art provides club and corporate events with the most creative and effective means of displaying advertisement, as well as visual entertainment.

Our company creates unique, painted-on artwork using professional, fun models as a canvas. It is done in a very tasteful, artistic way and has been the biggest attention getter at every event.

So I could say that opinion is opinion and words are words and nudity is business and get a job.

And on...

I never knew that the University of Missouri gave a walking art tour. Here is a map of the campus:



Not only that, but in 2002 Dunsmuir hosted a 'Hobo Gathering'. Here is a 'walking art gallery':



He is known as The Master. And then there is footwear:

Merikah "Walking art series" print.

Features:
water friendly upper straps
dual density low profile sandal body construction for comfort and abrasion purposes
anchored strap for increased durability

What else will Google Image throw up?

Walking...Craft..?

From Walking Art, Inc. come these:



It could be argued that the production of walking sticks is an artform. The sticks are useful and can be decorated. Not all people care all that much for decoration. Not all people consider it pointless. Can't we all just get along?