Would you rather be an artist or engineer?

This is a question I often ask myself on trains and planes or as I lay in the still solitude of my bed. Do I want to create art so beautiful, so inspirational that people actually enjoy life a little bit more? Do I want to develop infrastructure and technology that provides clean drinking water for the billions without?

In this crafted and cultured world, this world without boundaries that we have persisted in creating and destroying over ten long, illustrious millennia, which is more important: art or engineering?

Which was more instrumental: myth and wisdom — or creating fire?

The Bible — or the Roman Empire?

Michaelangelo’s David – or Kodak’s film camera?

Band Aid’s Feed The World — or a network of satellites that enable global communication?

Lennon’s Imagine – or Apple’s iTunes?

Art or engineering?

Do I want to be the person that enables and improves the lives of millions through advancing technology? Should I be the one that converts magic, wished-for technologies into the accessibly mundane?

Or should I be the culmination, the end point, the person that uses contemporary technologies to create art? Art that resonates within and amplifies emotions; art that triggers further explosions of creativity until we have a more beautiful world.

I keep trying to be both an artist and an engineer but I fear that it’s time to choose just one.

Michelangelo or Edison.

Einstein or Plato.

I’ve never written poetry before. I just thought I ought to try. The photo underneath is unrelated, but I took it last night and thought it was pretty!

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Evoke love and conjure desire, elicit tears and laughter inspire, craft dreams and banish doubt.
It is from within the desolate plains of mundane that the artist’s seed and culture sprout.

Bunsen and bellows both brazen and bold,
Latent and chemical and forms untold,
Exploited, excited,
Molded, contorted,
Bent to this engineer’s will.

Were it not for the artist,
Plain it would remain.
Were it not for the engineer,
What would we have,
Coal, ocher, fire, spear?

Forged through time, forever entwined,
Twins in kind, differing only in method,
Same in soul, a parity in purpose,
Art and engineering.

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After yesterday’s deep and meaningful I had to change things up a bit and be artistic. Have to keep these things in balance lest your brain begins to ooze out of nose. As a result of being artistic, I give you Dancing Light, a series of images taken from an original photograph. You probably recognise it — it’s the photo of the Atlantic Ocean taken while I was at the G! Festival in July. Lights from the rock performance on stage flit and flicker across the deep-azure water. Some light is reflected, some refracted and some just wobbles about lazily. Take a look at the right side of the photo in detail:

Excuse the large size but the detail is vital! It’s important to note that the photo is ’sharp’. None of the ‘waviness’ is caused by a slow exposure — what you see is purely light bouncing and playing amongst the little peaks and troughs of the ocean wave. I could go on forever trying to describe it — there were no cyan lights on stage, but scattered (prismatic) white light and the dark blue sky above causes some beautiful teal waves to cover the entire canvas. Or perhaps how the pinks are interweaving beautifully between each segment, tying it all together. But I should stop there and let you dive into the photo. Find your own favourite bits.

I listed it for sale in my gallery as a set of six, or if you like a specific part, you can buy a single print. But the series is cheaper as a set!

Tomorrow’s blog should feature more thought on the ‘authority of knowledge‘!

Apparently artists need to be challenged. They need muses, they need inspiration. Without pushing boundaries an artist tends to wilt and wallow, churning out much of the same, day after day, year after year until… well, they die. Scant few become very, very famous, and the rest are forgotten.

So to combat that particular murky mire of artistic dullness, to stir things up, Abi (a talented friend of mine that paints and makes pretty dresses) and Sebastian (photographer and part-time purveyor of baked goods) will be doing a grand project entitled ‘52 Weeks‘.

There are very few rules to 52 Weeks — in fact the only real rule is that we must post one photo each every week for a year. In our case it will be every Monday from August 31st 2009 until whenever 52 Mondays have passed! Is that August 30th 2010? Somewhere around there.

We have no set theme and no limits on what we can submit, as long as it’s one photo, every week, every Monday. Our photos will be placed next to each other, perhaps with a little bit about the photo or what’s going on with our lives. We’ve also never met and live on opposite sides of the country, but might plan for some kind of ‘momentous meet-up’ (or ‘hideous break-up’ as the case may be) during the project.

The photos will be posted both to Flickr and to another blog I’ve set up: 52 Weeks by Abi & Sebastian. It has its own RSS feed so you won’t see my (or her) photos pop up on this feed or this page. If you’d rather follow it on Flickr, you’re more than welcome to — it will all be cross-linked together anyway.

Expect to see some kind of introductory statements from the both of us to pop up over the weekend. Now I’m going to go and work on some cheesy picture of us both together to serve as our ‘title image’… and also have a think about what the hell I’m going to do for Monday. Stay tuned — this could either be very, very good, or diabolical. Either way, it’ll be interesting.

There’s a nasty problem that afflicts most artists. Some would say it isn’t a problem, some would say it’s merely ‘perfectionism’ or something, but the fact remains: artists tend to be very critical of their own work. I don’t necessarily mean that they HATE everything they produce, though some surely do. I mean that the artist judges his work very heavy-handedly. A painter might hate a portrait simply because they got an ear slightly wrong. A photographer might hate a landscape for being just slightly skewed. A singer might think their performance was awful because they hit one wrong note.

But in all actuality, to the audience — those that look at the paintings or photos, those that listen to the singer — it’s still a beautiful piece of art.

What I’m trying to say is that for every single photo you see of mine on this blog or on Flickr, there are probably 10 others that are great, but not good enough in my opinion. But the sad thing is, history has shown that more often than not, it’s those hated paintings, those paintings that ‘aren’t quite good enough’, that become famous.

Because the artist’s viewpoint is heavily biased. It’s like… you can’t see the forest for the trees. You’re so immersed in your own art that you never really get to stand back and appreciate it. You get to enjoy my art more than I do. How lame is that?!

Anyway…

So, because these photos are probably good, even though I don’t think they’re PERFECT, I thought I would share them with you. Scroll through them, there should be something for everyone! The ‘Sebby Landscapes’ are towards the end, if you don’t like PEOPLE photos.

(Click for a slightly larger version of the blonde guitarist — she’s blonde, can’t you tell?!)

(You probably recognise this kid from the ‘peace’ photo I took of him. A whole lot cuter in this one, eh?)

(Painting with light and smoke! Just an experiment… turned out better than I thought it would be!)

(Aw! There’s a better portrait of her, but it’s not public… so this one will have to do.)

(From one of our ‘invigorating’ walks in the Faroes. From the same ’session’ as my ‘meet my Faroese hosts‘ post.)

And FINALLY, an over-exposed-but-deliciously-blue-and-cerulean-and-cyan landscape from the east coast of the Faroes. You’ll recognise this landscape from this Faroes post.

Immersion is the act of being plunged, sometimes without us fully realising, into another place; another world. Be it via book, film, video game or any other form of media, our imagination lends itself readily, eagerly, to immersion in other worlds. It can be a very visceral experience, the new world plucking you from your present reality and sucking you through some kind of warping wormhole with a pop. Or it can be less obvious, the new world’s tendrils slowly creeping up and wrapping themselves around you until, before you know it, it feels like you’ve always been there — only you’re not quite sure how you got there.

And it’s healthy. Immersion is healthy. With immersion comes understanding and with that, eventually wisdom. When we’re immersed in a subject matter, be it vampires or the history of British monarchs (or the overlap of both!), we become dedicated to that cause. In reading a good book we often find ourselves identifying with a character and championing their thoughts and emotions. Hell, many people attribute entire shifts in viewpoint and way of life to books! The same can be said of films and video games too — if a book can be life-changing, so can a game!

‘Life-changing’ is the key phrase with immersion. When we enter into another person’s world — for that’s what we’re doing — we are assuming a new role, a new point of view; in essence, a new body. We glance around with the steady, fresh gaze of the newly birthed, curious and forever analysing. We’re actually granted a fresh set of senses which, depending on the story might vary in purpose or intensity — free, wild; sad, caged — but they are new! New, never-before-experienced senses! Just like that, the senses and experiences we carry with us in life can be dropped: prejudice, fear, pain, stress — gone. At least for a little while. Without leaving the library or even rolling out of bed we are able to live through a gamut of emotions and sensory experiences that might, were it not for immersion in a new world, go unused.

The problem, if there is one, is that that the virtual frontiers to which we are exposed are entirely governed by the author of the book, film or game. If the artist wants us to feel scared or fascinated or mystified, we will be. The author or director takes us on a journey, a tour of their imagination. We see and smell and hear their fears and torments, we feel their passions. We experience the joy, elation and pain of their first love, kiss and heart break.

It seems that, irrespective of how wild or terrifying or unreal a world is to us, we want to immerse ourselves. We want to be deeply involved. We want to be an important part of the world. We want, dare I say it, a world that can revolve around us — even if that world only exists in our own head, on loan from the creator and decorated by imagination for our own needs and wants.

You can be under your duvet with a good book and grinning like a fool or sweating and torturously scared — but entirely unable to put it down because that world — your world — would cease to exist, and you’re never quite ready for that to happen. And this is just single-player immersion! Some people aren’t content with being alone in these fleeting, imaginary worlds that disappear when we turn the last page or finish the film.  Just as sitting in your room reading a book or playing a game can get a little lonely: sometimes it’s better to stomp around a virtual, imaginary world with other immersed people in tow, with companions, with comrades… with friends!

And that is when you log into an Internet forum and find fellow Twilight fans. Or, if you have a penis, install World of Warcraft.

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More tomorrow on immersion for Thoughtful Tuesday!

If you’re reading this after midday, UK time, go and check out week 4 of ‘52 Weeks’ — it’s a good one.

[These 'thoughtful' posts are usually much more free-form and a-wandering than my other blog entries. You are more than welcome to jump in and finish a particular train of thought, or challenge something you think is false. This is as much about me getting my head around something as it is for you! You probably want to read yesterday's entry on 'Single-Player Immersion' before you read this.]

We know that our imagination is powerful — it is as powerful or more so than actual reality. Sure, it can’t physically take us places, but do people really claim that being scared by a horror film isn’t equivalent to being attacked by a knife-wielding maniac? (OK, don’t think about that one too much — just go with it!) And then there’s the matter of time-travel: our imagination can take us back in time! Through the media of books, films and games our infinitesimally short life-span can be expanded and extended to include different places and worlds from throughout history. Magical.

Why though must all of these virtual worlds exist outside the realm of reality? Can you imagine ‘losing yourself’ in the contemporary world — while reading the morning paper? No. You lose yourself while reading about the culture and creepy rites of Ancient Egypt. You readily find yourself escaping to alternate realities where vampires and undead exist, roaming and scheming under the cover of darkness. After that scene in The Matrix, did you stop to consider if it really is air that you’re breathing? I did.

Why can’t we be immersed in real life? Why can’t we attack and question our surroundings in real life with the same fervor?

A quick change of tack: yesterday, I mentioned how immersion can also occur to groups of people. The obvious examples here are table-top role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons and the like), Internet forums and online games. This ‘multi-player shared reality’ is nearly always cooperative, towards some common goal. They take the same form as real-life teams and groups, only… they are virtual. Or rather, their sphere of influence is virtual (though their real-world impact can be quite significant too — some people get married in a virtual world,  and later in real life too).  The inhabitants of these shared, imagined illusions are avatars, projections of one’s self upon the fundament of a virtual world.

This won’t make a lot of sense if you’ve never been part of such a shared reality, but take my word for it: community and social bonds form a lot more readily in virtual spaces. It’s like… necessity throws people together, and somehow… it sticks. Not entirely without conflict, but generally these communities stick it out. This might be stretching it a little, but it’s a little like arranged marriages: you are thrown together, perhaps against your will, but for a variety of external reasons, you are compelled to try your best. Without other choices available, you are forced to survive and succeed (not a bad thing, really?) Those of us in the West look on in disgust at these teenagers being married off without their consent. We think our system is so much better. But their system does seem to work, no?

Anyway…

My point is this: if you think you’ve been immersed in a book or film or game, it is nothing compared to group immersion. It is nothing compared to running around with other people that also think they’re vampires or piloting the same spaceship as you. It’s nothing compared to working together with hundreds or thousands of like-minded friends in an online virtual world.  By sharing the world with others, your imagination is being validated. By occupying the same world as someone else, it’s no longer ‘imaginary’ or ‘just in your head’, it’s actually — holy shit! — real.

So what about FarmVille? It’s a primitive game, sure, but it is a virtual world; a world full of rosy-cheeked, benevolent farmers that spend half their time harvesting, and the other half helping out other farmers. The level of immersion (or ‘gameness?) is limited at the moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ability to group up with other farmers appeared soon. And that then is only one step away from building a town in the middle of a clutch of farms… and then cities and counties and…

Why can’t we be as immersed in real life? What stops us from enacting our imagination in reality? Is it just merely fear of failure? Or… something else?

I’m looking for a real-world analogy here, and again I’m thinking of the New World, America. A bunch of individuals lumped together in a new, harsh environment where the only way out of trouble (and death!)  is teamwork. Are we simply ’stuck’ here in the mundanity of real life because there is no necessity to try any harder?

I am just trying to work out why it feels so damn good to form a group in an online game and work together towards a common goal. I wonder why we so rarely do it in real life. Why is it every man for himself in London, while we readily cooperate in virtual worlds?

Historically, were we more immersed? When it was harder to survive and teamwork was a necessity, did we have to become more involved? I wonder if we need something dramatic like another war to force us back into our own lives, and our own world.

Hi!

It’s a weekday and I’m not posting at 07:30 UK time. I feel so naughty. Like I’m breaking some big, fat, juicy rule and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

Anyway, a few things:

1. I’m now posting over at Download Squad. I almost want to say I’m a ‘tech journalist’, but I think that might be too big a title. Tech blogger? Opinionated tech harpy? Re-news master? Either way, I started there a few days ago, and it’s going well!
2. Some of my fine-art photos are reaching double-numbers! As you all know, it’s all about collecting things with low numbers on the back. Also, considering I raise the price every time I sell a photo, you should seriously consider investing now (note how I am slowly developing the ability to whore myself to the public. It seems this is an abilityvital for survival as a Bohemian artist…).
3. There’s a brothel in Berlin, Germany that is offering discounts for cyclists. Yup, the House of Desire in Berlin is claiming to be the very first ‘green’ brothel in the world. ‘Show your helmet at the front desk to claim your discount.’

That is all for now. More photos to come over the weekend and on Monday for week 9 of 52 Weeks!

I think this week I’ve taken more photos than any other period in my life — other than when I’m travelling of course, but it’s not really comparative. When I travel, my camera’s nearly always out — this week was my first taste of what being a working photographer might actually feel like.

The whole ooh-I’ll-just-grab-my-camera thing was obviously aided in the most part by the snow we’re currently experiencing. And the winter sun… my God, the winter sun. I assume the spectacle of the low-angle sun has something to do with our latitude — we’re fairly far north here, so in the winter, when it’s late, the sun hits the sky at a very slight angle. The colours, the pastel hue, the glorious gorgeousness that results… well, just wait and see.

Then, after that, we have the pretty girl that I’ve mentioned a couple of times. I finally turned my hand to available light portraiture, and God it’s fun, and really, really hard. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to try it! (Photography’s a bit easy, y’see, so I yearn for anything that can spice it up a little!) I’ve taken a few photos of people in situ over the years, mostly family and very close friends, but never a proper session — just me, my camera, and her. When I arrived she hadn’t even got dressed, or done her make-up. So we chatted. I had some idea of how the patter would go. I’m good with people; charismatic, good at instilling reassurance, safety. But this was my first time, so I really had no idea what the frack to do. I kind of knew what was expected of me, a bit like sex in that regard, but I had no idea what she would do, or how it would actually play out. How about this? ‘Er, yeah! More of that!’ How about if I do something like…? <click> Props? Shall we try props? Smoking? <snap> Change of outfit? ‘Sure, I’ll just make some tea…’

And so it went. If I was using my film camera, I would’ve churned through quite a few reels. 2 hours passed way too quickly; and not once did I say ‘yeah baby, yeah!’ despite the temptation. I think I got very lucky with the model; I’ve been thinking about making her my muse. Every artist needs a muse, right?

An eclectic mix of photos follows, but I believe you will find every single one of them both delicious and easy on the eye. Each image has some notes attached; just hover over them.

(Yes, the pink you see on the horizon was even more beautiful in real life. Are you jealous?)

(I’ve been working on my black/white conversion, as you can see.)

* * *

This is just a small sample — I surprised myself with just how many good photos there were from just two hours of chatting, faffing and photographing. There’s a couple more (my favourites) up on Facebook, and I’ll probably throw some up on Flickr over the rest of the week.

I guess the obvious question is: who wants to pay me for a PHOTO SESSION?! In the comfort of your own home! You make the pretty (?) while I make the tea!

Merry Christmas! Or Winter Solstice! Whatever!

As the last few days of 2009 and the decade dribble lazily through the hourglass’s pinch of incessant, unstoppable time, my focus turns inward. I’m not prone to introversion — really, it’s sometimes a little worrying how little I stop to care; least of all care about myself. Obviously, the delicious irony is that the moment I try to think about why I don’t care, I stop caring and think about something else. I guess it’s something deep-seated; or perhaps it’s just not good to care about all the small things?

God knows I’ve done OK so far, without the over-analysis, without the stopping-to-think. Water off a duck’s back. Don’t stop in a storm or you’re liable to get drenched. Maybe nothing bad has happened to me because I’m not waiting for it to happen? We make our own luck, right?

2009 has been a fantastic year; the best of my exciting quarter decade [oops -S] of living. I feel incredibly grateful to have shared it with all of you. I have this blog to thank — or blame — for almost everything that happened to me this year. I have this blog to thank for good, for bad, and for the ugly.

I have a lot to write, and not a lot of time to do it in (damn Christmas), so I’m afraid this will spill into tomorrow’s entry, and maybe even Thursday.

From the top then:

The Good of 2009 (#1): The Blog

Let me gush for a moment; don’t try to stop me [it's late as I write this, so I might ramble]. I’ve been writing for years — but probably not as long as you think. I stopped writing creatively back when I was 16. No real reason: my interest just moved on to other things. I kept a LiveJournal through university, mostly for my family, but it wasn’t particularly deep nor was it well-written. This year… I have begun writing properly, for the first time.

Seriously, before this year, the last thing I wrote was an exam for GCSE English, aged 14. If you look back to the beginning of this blog — way back in January 2009 — you’ll notice that my, er, control of the English language has improved! I can’t read back without wincing; it’s a bit like looking at old photos with bad haircuts, I guess.

Anyway, at the start of the year I gave up my previous job, website design and programming, with the intention of writing. I didn’t really have any other ideas at the time. I just wanted to write.

Basically, I feel like I have something I should share with the world. Writing is a very good way to do that. Speaking is even better, but people that know me in real life will tell you that I’m already good at the speaking thing. I’m rambling. My hope is, by reading, that you feel slightly better off than if you didn’t read.

The Bad of 2009 (#1): No Girlfriend

Yes yes… cry me a river…

It’s now been, shit… three years since I had a girlfriend? No, it must be two… surely…

Anyway, it’s been a long time. If fault must be ascribed, I suppose it’s only fair that it should sit squarely on my shoulders. I mean… I could’ve been more proactive in the whole girlfriend-seeking thing. My mother usually chimes in around now to say ‘Seb, you won’t get a girlfriend if you never leave your room’ and she’s not wrong. If this was a New Year’s resolution thing, I’d probably be saying, at this juncture, that I need to get out more. Fortunately, it’s not yet New Year, and these aren’t my resolutions… so I won’t be getting out more.

I simply like my own company a lot more than that of other people. Sad, I agree. Perhaps I haven’t met the right person yet? (This is to do with friends too: I have no friends, thus no girlfriend.) Obviously I have to go out to have a chance at meeting the right people. Catch-22 (which is a good book by the way, if a little crazy; reading it at the moment).

Perhaps I should just travel more. I didn’t travel enough this year. Or maybe I shouldn’t work so hard so that I can get out a little more and recover the friends I once had. I do hate general ‘out’ places though: pubs and clubs are so banal, so pointless. Cinemas are a little better. Restaurants are great — but you have to get to the restaurant stage. It’s hard for me to describe, without you being inside my head, the actual issue. I won’t bother right now — let’s just leave it at ‘I like my own company’.

But I’d like someone to snuggle. Definitely. And maybe some sex. But more the snuggling. Actually, it’s more so that I have someone to bounce my crazy plans for world domination off, but let’s keep that one quiet for now.

The Ugly of 2009 (#1): Working Too Hard

Ah the double-edged blade of effort. What is too much effort? And what is not enough?

Can a man of such young years, still without a solid career, even consider the idea of working too much? Surely these are the years when I should be working my (sadly) flat ass off to make a name and a position in the world for myself.

But at the same time, I am an artist, I am creative. All work and no play. So far I’ve got by with making sure work is creativity. With my new writing job (I’m now a lead/editor!), and an urge to actually get the cogs turning on a few grandiose machinations, playtime has taken a back seat.

I can’t help but think that kicking back and enjoying well-earnt and delectable pleasures is something I ought to do. I just don’t know if I should take a break now, or in another year. I’ve done so much this year that I probably shouldn’t stop now, but I don’t want to burn out.

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More tomorrow!