Suffix: flow or discharge
In spite of ourselves we’ll end up sittin’ on a rainbow
Some new tracks, some old, and some rediscovered deeeeeep cuts this month – with a big crunchy opener from some kiwi legends who gave awesome live shows back in the day – and a chaotic closer.
I had to include a John Prine classic, rest in peace.
Damn this plague.
If countries were people at a party, Canada would be a delightful, pretty girl in the corner, who smiles and politely says hello, but is so afraid to express an opinion or offend that shows no personality at all. She doesn’t swear. You make a sarcastic joke and she takes it literally, and you decide that’s a perfect time to walk away. If you’d left after five minutes you’d only remember her beauty, but the rest of the conversation has clouded that.
Her older brother USA is in the next room loudly telling stories and grabbing everyone’s attention. Perhaps he’s the reason Canada is afraid to rock the boat. You stand there listening. Some things he says are hilarious, some fascinating, some brilliant – all very charismatic. But every now and then he says something clearly not true. Nobody challenges him on it because he’s far too confident in himself – and you’re pretty sure he just grabbed someone else’s drink right out of their hand and nobody said anything. You hope that he can be reasoned with, because of the side of him which is good. He has a lot to offer if he loses the attitude.
I miss Australia.
Back in the 90s I was fascinated by IBM’s Deep Blue project – which aimed to create a computer program worthy of defeating the world’s greatest Chess champions – Garry Kasparov’s loss in particular was a huge moment in what was seen then as artificial intelligence, but with today’s perspective just some brute-force programming.
AlphaGo (now acquired by Google) is today’s equivalent, with two key differences. This time the game is Go – a 2500 year old Chinese game with far more complexity than chess. Secondly, AlphaGo was designed with deep learning and improves with repeated plays.
The doco makes for great viewing (especially being stuck inside right now) and it’s free to watch on YouTube! It’s fascinating to watch Lee Sedol battle with the emotions of playing against a machine and everyone LOSE THEIR MINDS with move 37.
We’re not just teaching computers any more – they’re teaching us. And what’s more – it’s coming for my vfx industry with Netflix’s Archer being one such example (no, not that one). I’m not one to proclaim changes like this to be doom and gloom for the artist. In my experience, clever tools only free up artists from mundane activities and leave them to focus on the art. I always say “if something can be automated, it should be”, and advances in tech and tools have only led to a greater volume of work. That said, it will be an interesting shift.
The first two decades of my life were spent growing up in the western suburbs of Sydney. Long summers were spent walking or riding my bike in the blazing sun through suburbia. The concrete and bitumen seemed to melt beneath my thongs as I made my way past lone gum trees and street signs casting crisp shadows, sun-bleached billboards advertising products no longer available, deceased sulo bins, and nature strips with rock and roll haircuts.
One of my favourite visual artists when I was in high school was Jeffrey Smart. I remember seeing several of his paintings at the Art Gallery of NSW and being blown away with how unique and refreshing they were. Using subject matter which may have otherwise been considered throwaway, ugly, or mundane and turning it into something beautiful.
Corrugated shipping containers became a perfect study of light and shape. Street signs and kerb-sides reduced the composition down to simple blocks which found beauty in their simplicity.
George Byrne (also Australian born) found his place in this same world and brought it to the world of Instagram. As such, his medium is photography rather than painting. And rather than capturing the industrial space that much of Smart’s work did, Byrne instead captures the world of suburbia I am all too familiar with.
The subject matter – block colours, kerb-sides, street signs, bollards, road markings, palm trees and random passers-by in the middle of nowhere – puts the focus on light, shadow and composition in the same way that Smart did. It’s abstract, yet familiar.
Byrne lives in California and a lot of his photography has taken place between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. I’ll be in Palm Springs in five weeks and plan to channel (or rip off?) his aesthetic.
